{"id":1031,"date":"2025-11-12T13:53:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kodokankendo.uk\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2025-11-15T19:32:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T19:32:38","slug":"the-future-of-international-kendo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kodokankendo.uk\/index.php\/2025\/11\/12\/the-future-of-international-kendo\/","title":{"rendered":"A View on the Future of International Kendo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Paul Budden<\/p>\n

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So what of the future direction of international kendo? John Bowen, former member of the GB Judo team, mentioned to me that there are moves in British judo towards making it even more of a sport than a life-forming discipline. This transition took seed after judo became Olympic in 1964. We can also see how the sportification of kendo has altered the fundamentals of a once martial discipline \u2013 bugei, Knutsen sensei in his book \u2018The Line of Beauty\u2019 states that:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll sport demands, to succeed and become popular, on organisation and regulations; the result, on one side, is often fracturing through rivalries; on the other, it is chaotic. Sport cries out for administrators, often hordes of them, and many of these \u2018officials\u2019 lack the real experience that will smother creativity and the application of inner understanding. I won\u2019t elaborate only to suggest that complex rules are not applicable to the bugei. Secret levels, arcane traditions; these things never come under artificial controlling rules and \u2018sport\u2019 totally opposite to the true martial arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a discussion with my old friend Ian Parker\u2013Dodd on this subject, he pointed out that we cannot ignore the positive changes wrought by Kan\u014d in the move from jujutsu to judo, i.e., from practical fighting to education for living. The transformation of kenjutsu into kendo followed a similar route from practical fighting to education, but Ian added:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a sporting aspect in both educational kendo and judo, but I think the fact that the sporting aspect has come to predominate is the problem and it\u2019s a more general late 20th-century phenomenon \u2013 for example, Aerobics was designed as an activity for all, but commercial pressures turned it into a sport. So, turning things into competitive sports has given the Olympics (IOC) a power that I think is not always for the good of humankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

This affirms Roald Knutsen\u2019s comment on the issue of \u2018inexperienced officials.\u2019 However, we should also consider that this may not just be by an individual\u2019s actions but collectively by misguided organisational committees with ill-thought-out \u2018agendas\u2019 outside the membership\u2019s best interest and the future of the sport or activity.<\/p>\n

Ian then also offered the following synopsis:<\/p>\n

\u201cSports activities have criteria for winning and losing. These criteria indicate what controls a sport as well as offering a way to see which theoretical disciplines could offer insight. Kendo, however, is claimed to be more than a sport. It\u2019s a budo, of which kendo is a part and is a way of self-development that requires the practitioners to see beyond mere technical skill and challenges them to be self-disciplined, courteous and socially responsible. These challenges, whilst present in some sports, are central to kendo. They are outside the classification for sporting criteria. Epilogue However, I do find it useful to classify kendo as a sport because some of its attributes come within a definition of sport according to the following;<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It is essentially competitive; that is, a struggle for ascendancy takes place;<\/li>\n
  2. The rules encapsulate an arbitrary problem; yuko-datotsu (a valid strike in kendo), has certain characteristics which are defined by the rules;<\/li>\n
  3. A contract to compete requires certain things to happen and certain things not to happen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n