Kendo by Bennett Alexander C

Author:Bennett, Alexander C.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520284371
Publisher: University of California Press

FROM SELF-PERFECTION TO SELF-SACRIFICE

The second stage of kendo’s militaristic development, according to Sakaue and Ōtsuka, was the period falling between the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, 1938–41. This was the most concentrated period of kendo’s militarization. With the implementation of the National Mobilization Law in 1938, numerous aspects of Japanese society were modified to support the war effort, and kendo was restructured to be more combat-oriented through changes to match rules and teaching methodology. The following excerpt from a report by the Budo Promotion Council is telling: “As budo inspires the Imperial Way [kōdō] and aims to protect and develop the Japanese empire, its study should not be limited to being a vehicle for individual character cultivation, but viewed as a means to directly strengthen the nation to sustain the national polity.”34

Nakayama Hakudō (1872–1958), one of the most famous twentieth-century masters of kendo and iaidō (the art of sword drawing), inadvertently demonstrated how markedly the philosophy of kendo changed as Japan became ensconced in war. Interviewed in the Japan Times and Mail on July 25, 1926, about the philosophy of kendo, he is reported as saying: “The ethics of swordsmanship, Mr. Nakayama wishes to clarify, is not in aggressive manslaughter. It lies primarily in psychic training. . . . The instrument, the sword, is necessary to give that serious frame of mind. What is more serious than life as forfeit for mistakes or inattention? The cold, mirror-like glimmer of the blade facing you, you cannot but be serious.” However, a few years later he showed his warrior colors regarding the role of the sword in the modern theater of battle: “It is fighting with cold steel that makes the enemy petrified of our Japanese army and is our greatest weapon and strongest point. The idea of using one’s own body to attack the enemy in hand-to-hand combat is the quintessence of the Japanese spirit.”35

Such parti pris was also endorsed by other prominent kendo teachers, and the Kendo Deliberation Council petition of 1938 stated that, although modern warfare is fought with “science and technology,” final victory is attained only by soldiers “facing the enemy front on, and stabbing and cutting them.”36 Modern kendo practitioners will know at least some of the seven signatories: Ishii Saburō, Takano Sasaburō, Nakayama Hakudō, Ogawa Kin’nosuke, Ōshima Jikita, Saimura Gorō, and Mochida Moriji.

Charles Nelson Spinks also observed an arrogantly aggressive attitude in Japanese military men and their fetish for swords: “General Sadao Araki once boasted that Japan was not greatly concerned about the standards of her material weapons, that if imbued with the real Japanese spirit, her soldiers could defeat the world with bamboo swords.”37

Given the militaristic and statist ideologies engulfing Japan, it is hardly surprising that leading figures in martial arts education followed suit and assisted in the exploitation of kendo for violent means. By 1942, all physical training, not just budo, had militaristic objectives. Cultivating steadfastness in the face of danger surpassed matters of athletic prowess and well-being. Kendo and the other

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