‘A lot of healthy deaths’
Taos Kendo Club teaches a modern Japanese martial art
Hip hop heads intimate with the Wu-Tang Clan’s catalog or cinephiles familiar with samurai films that brought to light feudal japan before a modern world will instantly recognize the following quotes from the movie “Shogun Assassin.”
“When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire. And he was the Shogun’s decapitator. He cut off the heads of 131 lords. It was a bad time for the empire…. He wasn’t scared of the Shogun, but the Shogun was scared of him. Maybe that was the problem. Then, one night, the Shogun sent his Ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but they didn’t. That was the night everything changed.”
These words conjure up images of a stoic samurai, the glint of swords being unsheathed and the spraying of blood from many a fallen foe.
In Taos, there is a group of people that are carrying the traditions of the way of the samurai through the modern martial art of kendo. They meet at the Taos Charter School gymnasium on Fridays and Sundays to practice the “sword path” or the “way of the sword,” which is the literal translation of kendo. Long before they hack each other with bamboo, they don the customary keikogi (the traditional jacket of kendo) and hakama (the traditional skirt-like pants of kendo).
When Travis Webb, the kendo assistant instructor, led the class in some footwork drills, the utility of hakamas became more apparent. The garment obscures the feet just enough to not give away your intentions in a would-be sword fight.
Kendo descends from kenjutsu and differs from it in that the swords are replaced with a shinai — a bamboo version of a traditional sword. There is a leather grip between the pommel and the would-be hilt, and a leather wrap around the tip of the shinai.
The two pillars of the practice rely on respecting Japanese customs and manners and treating the shinai as though it were a real and potentially dangerous sword. It’s a matter of devotion and also role play.
As practitioner Gina Gargone put it, “it’s a stick, but it’s a sword, but it’s a stick.”
As such, there is a string along the shinai representing the back
of the blade. When presenting the shinai to someone else you must have the sharp end pointing toward you and the string pointing out, as a sign of non-lethality. An uncouth thing to do would be to let the tip drop to the floor, or step over a shinai.
The class starts and ends with a seated bow, the hands form a triangle and come out in front of you onto the floor. The shinai is to your side, safely cast aside. A framed picture of Rod Nobuto Omoto sensei was propped on top of a chair for reverence and guidance. Omoto was born in Hawaii but moved to Japan after high school. Then he found himself drafted in the Japanese Army during World War II. Back in the states, he started to teach kendo in Tacoma, Wash. He later founded the Kendo Club at the University of Washington. Omoto died in 2013.
In kendo practice, one must yell. The gymnasium reverberated with yells.
As lead instructor Aaron Garlick explains, the shout is imperative for scoring points in competitive kendo. “How a point is scored, is — a number of things have to come together. It’s not accidental. So we’re in Bogu. I have to call out the moment I hit the point, what I’m hitting. And there are initially three points, four points ultimately. There’s the men, which is the head, the kote, which is the wrist….there’s the do, which is the stomach, and then finally when you get to a higher level, there’s the throat, which is the tsuki.”
In real-time competitive kendo matches, these strikes can happen within a tenth of a second. Without shouting out the target, no matter how quick and proper you execute a strike, you won’t be rewarded an ippon, or a point, in kendo. All it takes is two ippon out of three to win a match.
Aside from the strategic element of yelling, Garlick talked about the other benefits students can get from the yelling in kendo.
“It’s a very mentally clarifying thing because it gets kind of intense when you’re in bogu (the traditional Japanese armor used in kendo) and you have someone yelling at you and you’re yelling back and you’re doing your best to try and win a match. And you’re also trying to do it with intention, clarity, uprightness of being, proper footwork, proper timing. And as you start to develop that, that clarity, if you’re doing it on a regular basis, tends to leak out into your life in a really wonderful way.”
Webb also talked about the mental aspect of kendo.
“It’s [the rank of 8th Dan in kendo] harder than the Bar exam, it’s harder than prestigious college exam entries and things. There’s something like a point nothing
loud, aggressive thing be able to win, it’s much more about perception….And that’s, that’s one of the things that has always kept me coming back to this is about that seeing and encountering each other with dignity and a lot of healthy deaths.”
After a series of drills, Garlick and Webb demonstrated kendo kata, or the fixed patterns and forms of kendo. They used blunted katanas for the demonstration. Even knowing the element of the danger was removed, there’s something to watching two grown men aim swords at each other. There’s the nerve-wracking thought of sharp metal cutting through a person, engrained from so many samurai films. Kendo kata is a learning tool between someone playing the role of teacher and the other playing the role of student. In theory, a strike should not land, but the swords get close to the face.
Those wishing to learn this traditional Japanese sword-fighting art can visit taoskenyukai.com for more information on how to join the Taos Kendo Club.