Kendo master on path that never ends
CAMBRIDGE — How old is Gabriel Weitzner? Don’t ask.
In kendo, the Japanese art of swordplay, age is irrelevant.
So the wise-beyond-years Weitzner, who recently returned from Tokyo after successfully passing an exam to make him the 24th seventh-level kendo dan in Canada, dismisses the calendar-based query with the slicing verbal wave of a philosophical bamboo stick.
“You can practise with a guy who is 80, 85, 90, 100,” the Cambridge resident says with a wrinkle-scarce grin below a Groucho Marx moustache.
“And he can still kick the butt of someone who is 20. You wonder, how the heck do they do that?”
That’s the timeless magic of modern kendo, culled from an ancient swordwielding Samurai past. Age disappears the deeper your mental shinai slashes into the demanding, empty-your-mind discipline.
“Age is just a number,” Weitzner says. “It has nothing to do with your capabilities.”
You want a number? Take 4,000. That’s how many kendo practitioners lined up before judges at Tokyo Budokan late last month seeking seventh-dan status.
Only 144 made the grade, with a two-minute demonstration against an unknown masked opponent at the martial arts arena. Weitzner was one of the 144. The rest were Japanese.
He doesn’t want to brag. Kendo etiquette hinges on humility and respect for your foe.
So what if Weitzner represented Argentina at world championships in Brazil, France and Korea in the 1980s. He didn’t win titles. But with kendo, winning isn’t the point.
“Failing is a very good teacher,” said Weitzner, who failed three times to reach the seventhdan level — two tries in Canada and six months ago in Kyoto.
“The difference between the last time I failed and now? I dedicated the last six months to increase the mental power … To try to understand more the philosophy part, the hard part.”
He was drawn to kendo by chance decades ago.
The Argentinian-born Weitzner, who spent 17 years in Montreal as a McGill University researcher, was studying Japanese. He served as translator for the Japanese fencing team at the world French fencing championships in Buenos Aires. The captain of the Japanese fencing team suggested kendo would suit Weitzner well. So Weitzner gave it a try. “When I went the very first time, somehow I fell in love with it,” he said.
Countless years later, so much about his life has changed.
He left Quebec for Ontario and has been a Canadian citizen for a quarter-century. His wife died of cancer at a young age. He has lived in Waterloo Region for 11 years and now works for a technology company. But kendo remains a consoling constant. He practices regularly, sometimes at the University of Waterloo and often in Etobicoke.
But the enduring value of kendo, with its empty-your-mind focus and mental training, has become clearer to him, as the passing of time and his own age have grown murky.
“It helps you in your job. It helps you when you lose your parents, when you lose your wife,” he said. “Dealing with the facts of life, it helps you tremendously.”
It allows your personality to emerge, too. That’s the art part of the martial art.
“You try to go as deep as you can go to understand it. Then, you make it your own. You become your own Picasso, your own Salvador Dali,” he explained.
“You are painting your own masterpiece.”
And that’s what the judges are looking for at the promotional exams. Weitzner must wait 10 years to make a bid to become an eighth-level dan.
By that time, he’ll be age … oh, never mind. It won’t matter. In kendo, it never does.
“This is the reason you have people who are 103 and they are still practicing,” he said.
“This is the path that never ends.”