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Kyo · 10-24-2003, 07:10 PM

Reading through these posts, I'm certainly humbled by the amount of knowledge the rest of you seem to have. While I'm no sword fanatic, I'd like to point out several things:

- To a samurai, the opponent's death is equivalent to victory. It doesn't matter whethery the samurai himself is killed, as long as his opponent dies with him. Anyone who has taken kendo or iaido knows this already - after all, the techniques focus on aggressive attack, sweeping the opponent's blade with the same motion you attack with, counterattacking before the opponent lands his strike, etc. There is little or no emphasis on self-preservation.

- Kendo doesn't present an accurate picture of Japanese swordsmanship. Kendo is practiced indoors, on polished hardwood floors in controlled environments where your opponents have identical combat styles. Second, even keiko does not (and really, cannot) take into account the lethality of a real blade. Having a shinai come down on or across your collarbone is not a point, but if it were a live blade ... And much like other martial arts, your back is not a legal target in kendo, which results in an entire system of fighting that seems akin to suicide on a real battlefield. My point being that kendo cannot be used as a model for true sword combat; even its competitive free-sparring aspect is more sport than combat technique.

10-24-2003, 07:10 PM	#36 (permalink)
Kyo Crazy	Reading through these posts, I'm certainly humbled by the amount of knowledge the rest of you seem to have. While I'm no sword fanatic, I'd like to point out several things: - To a samurai, the opponent's death is equivalent to victory. It doesn't matter whethery the samurai himself is killed, as long as his opponent dies with him. Anyone who has taken kendo or iaido knows this already - after all, the techniques focus on aggressive attack, sweeping the opponent's blade with the same motion you attack with, counterattacking before the opponent lands his strike, etc. There is little or no emphasis on self-preservation. - Kendo doesn't present an accurate picture of Japanese swordsmanship. Kendo is practiced indoors, on polished hardwood floors in controlled environments where your opponents have identical combat styles. Second, even keiko does not (and really, cannot) take into account the lethality of a real blade. Having a shinai come down on or across your collarbone is not a point, but if it were a live blade ... And much like other martial arts, your back is not a legal target in kendo, which results in an entire system of fighting that seems akin to suicide on a real battlefield. My point being that kendo cannot be used as a model for true sword combat; even its competitive free-sparring aspect is more sport than combat technique. __________________ Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.