One could say I have had quite the martial arts day today. Iaido and and Jodo throughout the morning, then out with the same group for lunch. Home for an hour and then off to watch some of the Australian Kendo Championships which happen to be close by this year.

So for details sake I believe it was the 32nd Annual Kendo Championship and I was there for a little over an hour for the later stages of open kyu competition. I went to get a first-hand spectators view of what goes on in kendo competitions.

In conclusion I still don’t know what to say about it. I guess basically I don’t like it.

It is a sport requiring certainly a degree of strength and quick reflexes(which are aided by good technique). I really couldn’t figure out how the scoring worked. I was of the opinion that it was basically unobstructed strikes to the face, throat, chest or wrists got you a point (maybe 2 maybe 1/2 but a point nevertheless). There are 3 judges and it seemed that you got the point if two of them put up your flag. But generally it was hard to tell the difference between something that scored a point and something that didn’t. Sometimes there were things like a good block from an overhead strike turned into a slash across the opponents stomach that went unrewarded.

The other thing a don’t really like is the locking up of opponents together pushing close to each other with swords against each other. It just doesn’t seem like real swords.

On that note, bamboo swords certainly do flex a lot. I’d always wondered how flexible they really are, at one stage one kendoka stabbed and pushed forward and there was a huge flex. Apart from circumstances like this you don’t usually see much flex.

Something I didn’t expect to see was the use of two swords by a combatant. The regular long shinai and a smaller one (a wakizashi although it looked a little short to me).

Kendo looks like Taekwondo for swords to me :). It has a very different attitude compared to Iaido. While a lot of the strikes have similar foundation the execution is very different. Most kendo blows looked like they hit someone, not slice through them. Essentially they have little choice in this due to the armour and shinai but needless to say I like Iaido techniques more.

In case there are any hardcore kendo fans reading, their is nothing inherently wrong with Kendo. I personally just don’t like the look of it.