Dublin seminar 2009

StAKC members Andy, Mark, Ezra and Michael attended this year’s Dublin event and enjoyed it fully both in terms of kendo and social life.

The event was again led by Yanai sensei who is a seventh dan and used to live in Britain. He has been supporting Irish kendo for many years and has overseen a development, which has resulted in a thriving kendo community on the Emerald Isle. A symbol for the success of his work was the result of this year’s team competition: after ten years of trying an Irish team won and they did so in impressive fashion.

The Friday seminar’s teaching was focussed on patience (‘tame’). We did a very simple exercise all morning in which you have to apply sustained pressure and maintain readiness to strike until sensei blows a whistle and you explode into the cut. We did this with big and small cuts, from issoku itto no ma’ai and to ma’ai over and over again. This exercise worked amazingly well and yielded good results regarding kiai and alertness. In the afternoon there was kata practice with an eye on the forthcoming grading and a session on refereeing & shiai. Third & fourth dan kendoka did the refereeing and – as always – most people’s relatively low level of experience led to interesting debates on the validity of various cuts.

Saturday saw first the individual competition in which one member per registered team was allowed to fight. Mark fought for St Andrews and did well, although he was knocked out of the competition early on. In the afternoon, Andy, Ezra and Mark fought as a team. Michael participated in an Edinburgh team. Everybody had a good time and experienced two fights. The star was Ezra who won a fight at his first ever competition. It was through hansoku (his opponent stepping out of the shiaijo twice). Ezra displayed good tactical skills in this and avoided a hansoku himself, which is always the danger when you push someone out. Michael’s highlight was to cut ‘do’ against a very short fighter. (He still does not know how it was possible and is waiting for the video evidence.)

On Sunday – after a brief senseigeiko, Ezra and Mark had their grading. It was good to see that in terms of kirikaeshi and kata they were amongst the best on their level. Where StAKC still has a lot of room for improvement is in the effective and consistent delivery of scoring cuts.

In the afternoon, we joined the boisterous youngsters of EUKC for a walk through central Dublin, some sightseeing and a celebratory pint of overpriced Guinness. All in all, it was a very enjoyable, instructive and successful weekend and we are resolved to return next year in greater numbers.

Michael Gratzke

dojo leader StAKC