Visitors Can Watch Svelte Female “Samurai”

TOKYO – In Japan’s hundreds of dojoh (doh-johh), or martial arts gyms, throughout the country it is now common to see young women wielding wicked looking “swords” made of sheathes of bamboo, and shouting ki (kee) or some other sound at the top of their voices.

These young women say that they have taken up kendo (ken-doh), or “the way of the sword,” because it provides them with a direct connection with Japan’s traditional culture and makes them feel “more Japanese,” filling a void in their lives.

This new phenomenon is being analyzed left and right by sociologists, psychologists and run-of-the-mill commentators, some of whom question the motives of the young women. One popular theme is that the women are not so much interested in regaining the spirit of the samurai as they are in “looking good” in skin-tight clothing as they cavort on the dojo floor.

Another explanation is that the young women find that practicing with a makeshift sword is an empowering experience because it allows them to demonstrate that they can become skilled in doing something that was traditionally seen as a male thing.

Practice in using swords was a major part of the lives of the warrior class that ruled Japan from 1192 until 1868, particularly male members, who were required to begin engaging in daily practice drills from the age of seven.

The samurai class was abolished in 1870 and the wearing of swords was banned in shortly thereafter, but kendo itself did not disappear. The military, the police and schools inaugurated kendo programs as a means of developing character and a fighting spirit.

In more recent decades the spirit of the samurai was kept alive in the public mind by kabuki, noh, movies, and long-running television serials. The appearance of the Tom Cruse film The Last Samurai in 2003 resulted in several books on samurai becoming best sellers, including one that was published in 1716 and another one that was published in 1905.

Now there is a full-fledged kendo boom going on in Japan that is part of a revival of the samurai spirit, which provided the foundation of the traditional culture for many centuries.

There is no doubt that practicing kendo dramatically increases one’s courage, self-confidence and outgoing spirit—something that most young Japanese girls of today already have in abundance without any kendo training.

Residents and visitors to Japan who would like to see some of these young women going through their kendo paces can catch the action at Tokyo’s Shinjuku Sports Plaza dojo and the Iguchi Community Center in suburban Mitaka.

Kendo masters point out that the moves in this new “samurai exercise” are not the traditional moves of genuine sword fighters. They say it is an adaptation of the “art form” of sword fighting developed for kabuki, noh and the movies, in which there is no physical contact.

[See my books, THE JAPANESE SAMURAI CODE -- Classic Strategies for Success, and SAMURAI STRATEGIES -- 42 Martial Arts Secrets from Musahi's Book of Five Rings.]

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business , first published in 1959 and still in print, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.