Godan

The left hand shows the state of your mind. Do not move it.
The grip of the right hand. Especially its looseness.
To express earnestness

At this stage, I gradually started thinking over the dignity and the Kamae. The dignity stems from the perfectly calm mind. Then, how can you attain such a mind? When I was questioning this, one Sensei told me, "Shimano-kun, don't move your left hand. The left hand is the mind. Never move it". He says that the mind and the dignity will be naturally obtained when the Kamae is well-proportioned and vice-versa.

As for Kamae, they say that it is important to use your wrists as if you do Chakin-shibori (movement of wringing a tea napkin). What does Chakin-shibori mean? Does it mean to simply squeeze a Shinai with both hands? If you do it in that way, the force of a stroke will be weakened and, if done with a real sword, the sword will stop right before it actually cuts through. To cut something with a sword, you have to use your hands so that the vertical force will be fully developed at the instant of impact. In other words, you must have proper hand and wrist control to point the blade towards the object and to push the sword through naturally. To do this, you have to move your wrists inwardly in parallel with the direction of the blade and, at the same time, to use the hands as if you milk a goat. This movement is what Chakin-shibori actually means. However, recently, there are many people who take Chudan posture so that the right wrist is kept really inward so as to cover Kote. With such a posture, the right arm is stretched too much and is too tense. As a result, the stroke will be more like pressing than cutting, and the Shinai will remain sticking upward. In fact, I had this kind of problem before, since I had been told that the right hand was to rest on the top of the Tsuka since my childhood and was too conscious about it. I realized recently that the right hand should have rather rested on a Shinai sideways slightly. If you take Chudan in this way, the right arm will be naturally relaxed and, thus, will have more reach. The tip is to imagine that you are holding a huge barrel with both arms in front of your chest.

I would also like to mention about the necessary attitude at an exam. Lately, many people seem to pay attention to showing proper Kendo too much, though they must have been trying to score points during regular practice. As a result, their Kendo will lack one of the most important things: the earnestness. The other day, one Sensei, who has a lot of experience as a judge for grading exams, told me, "Recently, the earnestness such as 'look at my Kendo!' is not conveyed to us. Everyone is just making up a good appearance. I don't feel like watching such superficial Kendo". I thought that it is probably because those people are taking a practice and an exam in an opposite way. As long as you practice proper Kendo at a regular practice, you should be able to play as you feel like at an exam. If the outcome is then not acceptable, what you ought to do is to simply reexamine what you do during regular practice. Both to get stronger and to get better means you must change.

written by Ryoichi Shimano

translated by Hiroyuki Otaki (Shidokan Kendo Club)