The Third All Japan East-West Kendo Tournament

The shock I felt on first seeing the photograph at the beginning of this article was considerable. It is a photograph of the 3rd All Japan East-West Kendo Tournament, held on 29 April Shōwa 31 (1956). (The 1st All Japan Naginata Championship was held at the same time, and the photograph shows a naginata embu. I have only photographs of naginata to hand.)

At Miyagi Stadium, which is today the home ground of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, an audience of 'more than twenty thousand' gathered to watch a kendo tournament. A crowd of spectators, quite unthinkable in today's kendo, watched the matches.

In the evening edition of the Kahoku Shimpo of 29 April, the tournament was reported at the top of the front page, using about three-quarters of the page. Because it was co-hosted by the All Japan Kendo Federation and the Kahoku Shimpo, it received exceptional treatment. I should like to look back at this tournament once more, quoting from the articles. (The following quotations are from the Kahoku Shimpo.)

Headlines such as 'A Gorgeous Picture Scroll on the Plain of Miyagino — The 3rd East-West Kendo Tournament Opens', 'The Hall Abuzz with Excitement — Great Impressions from the Various Kata', and 'Twenty Thousand Spectators Intoxicated by Marvellous Techniques' dance across the page.

'On the first day of Golden Week, the popularity of the castle town of Aoba concentrated on the kendo tournament at Miyagino-hara. The wind was chilly, but the sky was utterly clear, and the kendo fans who filled the stadium stands numbered more than twenty thousand. As if to celebrate the future of kendo, revived as a new sport, the cheers of the whole of Tōhoku shook the plain of Miyagino all day long.'

Miyagi Stadium, which has become 'Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi' through naming rights, has been repeatedly renovated and now accommodates more than 30,000 people, but its capacity in the Miyagi Stadium era is given as 28,000. Because the outfield seats were grass, this figure is not accurate, and some materials state that in reality it was about 20,000. Judging from the published photograph, the inner-field seats with chairs were almost full, and there are even people standing at the very top of the stands. However, since there are also spectators on the ground itself, it may be that the outfield seats were not full. So what kind of people came to watch, then?

'The crowds of spectators who had waited impatiently for the gates to open on this day began gathering from early morning. Among them, enthusiastic fans began forming a sporadic queue from around five in the morning. By eight o'clock, when the gates opened, the queue stretched endlessly across the square and out to the road in front. In particular, the inner-field seats on both sides were packed to overflowing with groups of primary and junior-high school pupils, and the little fans who chanted the names of their local competitors, which they had learned by ear, already numbered nearly two thousand before the matches began.'

I do not think that all of the more than 20,000 spectators practised kendo. The young kenshi numbered about two thousand, as the article above says (even if their numbers later increased). And only three or four years had passed since kendo was revived after the post-war blank period. Even if this was the first large tournament in Tōhoku since the revival, I cannot believe that 20,000 people would gather from among those who practised kendo alone. There will have been some who had practised kendo before the war, but I suspect that a considerable number were also 'kendo fans' who did not practise kendo — people who were simply interested in kendo, people who had been invited by friends, and so on.

'What stood out among the stands were the supporters' groups for local competitors. To begin with, the supporters' association of Teruo Kayaba of Kakuda-chō, Miyagi Prefecture, and the Igu Gōyū-kai arrived that morning in five buses carrying more than two hundred people; then the supporters' associations of Yoshiaki Nyūi of the Kanan Kendo Federation, of Keizō Horigome of the Kuroda Kendo Dōkō-kai, of Yōzō Takahashi of the Tōda Kendo Yū-kai, and of Sadao Numata of the Shiogama Kendo Federation all rushed in great numbers to cheer, and more than ten banners reading "Pray for Certain Victory" fluttered in the wind in the stands, praying for the gallant efforts of the local competitors.'

I have a feeling that the people in these 'competitors' supporters' associations' were not only those who practised kendo.

Now, this tournament was held simultaneously with the 1st All Japan Naginata Championship.

Before the war, naginata was under the umbrella of the Dai Nippon Butokukai, and at the Butokusai Grand Embu Gathering, embu were presented together with kendo, jūdō, kyūdō and others. The fact that naginata embu are still held today, after the Kyoto Tournament was renamed the All Japan Kendo Embu Tournament, continues that tradition. After the war, at the 1st Kyoto Tournament of May Shōwa 28 (1953), which was the first tournament held by the All Japan Kendo Federation, naginata embu were also performed. At that point naginata too was under the umbrella of the All Japan Kendo Federation (Zenkendōren). However, in February Shōwa 30 (1955) the course was set towards independence from Zenkendōren and the formation of an All Japan Naginata Federation, and in May of the same year the All Japan Naginata (なぎなた) Federation was inaugurated. It was in Shōwa 33 (1958) that the name came to be written 'なぎなた' in hiragana.

Nevertheless, from the 1st All Japan Naginata Championship in Shōwa 31 (1956) to the 3rd tournament in Shōwa 33 (1958), the All Japan Naginata Championship was hosted by Zenkendōren. I do not know the detailed circumstances, but I surmise that the financial and human environment needed to hold a tournament independently was not yet in place.

It is recorded that the naginata championship was held first, as the first part, and finished at 11:50. Before the matches there were kata embu of Tendō-ryū naginata, Jikishinkage-ryū kusarigama, and Jikishinkage-ryū naginata. Among these, it is reported that the 87-year-old Hideo Sonobe, Hanshi (a woman), entered the venue supported by two people and, even while being supported, gave a dignified embu that drew applause.

'When the kata was finished she left again supported by the two, but the figure of this aged Hanshi, who had lived for budō alone, moved the people who sent her their applause.'

'The naginata matches were new to many, and their rarity made them very popular. (…) Ōwada's sune was the first to be awarded, and a great cheer went up.'

It seems that naginata, too, greatly stirred the venue.

The results of the East-West Tournament were published in the morning edition of the following day, the 30th. As expected, the results were reported with an article taking up about four columns at the top of the front page and a large photograph, and inside the paper the scoring techniques of every match were listed, giving detailed coverage.
Tadashi Sakakibara, the East's fourth man, swept ten opponents. He was the winner of the 1st All Japan Championship three years earlier. This gave the East a commanding lead, but Ken Sugie of the West recovered ground by sweeping seven. Then Kiyoshi Nakakura, the West's fifth man, swept nine opponents, up to and including the East captain, Yoshihiro Nyūi.

It was at this third edition that the tournament was first held in the nuki-shōbu format, but the spectators must have thoroughly enjoyed the attractions of nuki-shōbu. Incidentally, nuki-shōbu was adopted eleven times up to the 24th tournament, in nearly half of all editions. It must have been popular. However, at the 24th tournament the West won by a large margin, with nineteen fusensha (more than half of the 35 competitors), and after that it ceased to be adopted.

Kiyoshi Nakakura, later called the 'demon of the East-West Tournament', said the following in the pages of the Kahoku Shimpo:

'Attacking from jōdan through and through was what succeeded. My speciality is the nuki-dō from jōdan. Perhaps because I was in good form, this sutemi senpō worked wonderfully.'

Nakakura's strength, learned under Hakudō Nakayama, is described in detail in Kiden (published by Ski Journal). I have seen the tachiai of Nakakura Hanshi, 9th dan, in his later years several times in Kyoto, and his kenpū stood apart from that of today's 8th dan class: he wielded the shinai freely and brought forth technique after technique. Even among practitioners of the same generation, most did kendo in which they contended for the centre and decided the match with few moves; he stood out in sharp contrast.

I believe that the winnowing out of those who wielded the sword as Nakakura Hanshi did is one factor in the decline of the kendo population. The reason for the decline is that one cannot be promoted in rank with that kind of kendo. An acquaintance showed footage of Nakakura Hanshi's tachiai to university students, and they remarked: 'Is this person 1st dan, or 2nd dan?'

There is another reason for the recent drift away from kendo — or, to put it the other way round, a reason to believe that this East-West Tournament must have been interesting.

If one examines how Tadashi Sakakibara achieved his sweep of ten, he took two ippon in all ten matches, and of these he won by two ippon to one in three matches. Only one match went to enchō.

In Kiyoshi Nakakura's sweep of nine, he took two ippon in eight of the nine matches, with only one win by a single ippon; he conceded a single ippon to his opponent in only one match, and that was also the only match that went to enchō.

The match time is thought to have been five minutes, but it is clear that yūkō datotsu occurred far more frequently than in today's matches. There were also few cases of enchō.

The figures for the tournament as a whole are as follows (64 matches in total).

• Two ippon to nil: 39 matches
• Two ippon to one: 16 matches
• Win by one ippon: 9 matches
• Decided within time: 58 matches
• Decided in enchō: 6 matches

For comparison, the figures for last year's (Reiwa 5) 69th All Japan East-West Tournament are given below (40 matches in total).

• Two ippon to nil: 7 matches
• Two ippon to one: 2 matches
• Win by one ippon: 15 matches
• Decided within time: 20 matches
• Decided in enchō, or drawn: 20 matches

The frequency with which techniques decide matches is overwhelmingly lower today. It has fallen from what it once was, but today's All Japan Championship surely has more matches going to enchō, and more wins by a single ippon, than this East-West Tournament.

In the first place, today's kendo is a contest in which the first to take two ippon wins. The five-minute match time is probably a guideline established so that matches in which only one ippon is decided are not continued endlessly. The original intention was for matches to finish in five minutes at most, and I suspect that the case in which neither competitor can take an ippon within five minutes and the match goes to enchō was scarcely envisaged.

At the 3rd East-West Tournament, 55 of the 64 matches were decided by one side or the other taking two ippon. It can even be said that the nine matches won by a single ippon were exceptional outcomes. And 58 of the 64 matches finished within time. I suspect that enchō was regarded as an exception among exceptions. Of the six matches that went to enchō, four were enchō after each side had taken one ippon, and only two matches went to enchō with neither side able to take an ippon.

Incidentally, according to the article, the time taken by the East-West Tournament was a little over five hours. Taking five hours as 300 minutes, even including the time taken to enter and leave the court, the average per match was under five minutes. The figure of 64 matches is almost the same as today's All Japan Championship (63 matches). In the era when the All Japan Championship was held on a single court, matches began at 8:40 in the morning and were scheduled to end at 5 p.m. (my memory of the finishing time is vague, but it was set to suit the television broadcast); however, as match times grew longer and could no longer be accommodated, from Heisei 2 (1990) it became a two-court event.

This is true of any sport or competition: the moment a point is scored is the most interesting and the most memorable. Of course, in sports such as football, where points are scored infrequently, there may be discerning fans for whom the process leading up to that moment is what interests them; but at the very least, people seeing the sport for the first time, or those without deep knowledge of it, will watch a point being scored and think 'that's cool' or 'that's fun'.

Therefore, I think one can state plainly that the kendo of Shōwa 31, when ippon were decided frequently, was more interesting, at least for ordinary people.

To say that this is precisely why so many spectators gathered would be to reverse cause and effect, but might it not be that they gathered precisely because the kendo of that time was like that? Looking at the results of the early All Japan Championships and so on, many techniques were scored in the same way.

And as I said earlier, if among the great audience there were many people who did not know kendo well, or fair-weather fans, then there were also many who saw these matches and came to like kendo, who became kendo fans, and among them there may have been some who took up kendo. That is precisely why I believe the kendo population continued to grow afterwards, and the number of young kenshi reached its peak from the Shōwa 40s to the Shōwa 50s.

I think it is necessary to study rules that would make ippon more frequent and allow many matches to be decided within five minutes. I cannot think of any concrete measures at present, however.

To offer a view from yet another angle, it may be that the great audience gathered in expectation of a 'new kendo'.
In the evening edition of the Kahoku Shimpo several days before the tournament (26 April), Keizō Horigome (later Hanshi, 9th dan), a standing director of the Miyagi Prefectural Kendo Federation who also competed in this tournament as jihō, wrote an article entitled 'New Kendo'.

'Kendo originally arose in order to cultivate the technique of seizing the initiative with a sword. The purpose of those who practised it lay in killing or wounding the opponent, but kendo as a sport is not action bound by such external purposes. The heart of one who practises a sport lies in an utterly plain and simple enjoyment. That is to say, one does it because doing kendo is enjoyable.'

Many may find this jarring, but it can fairly be said that this was the common understanding among those involved in kendo at the time when it made a fresh start as a sport after the war. He goes on:

'In kendo as it has hitherto been, competition rules as complete as those of other sports had not been drawn up. Matches were left to referees of high rank, and not the slightest objective criticism was permitted. Herein lies the reason why kendo activity has been made something unclear, and regarded as something the general public cannot well understand.'

So he states. Regrettably, can it not be said that exactly the same is true today?

Horigome's text continues. Precisely for this reason, the All Japan Kendo Federation drew up the rules with the utmost caution, hearing the views not only of kendo specialists at large but also of informed members of the general public. 'However, the competition rules are not thereby complete, and further study will be needed hereafter. It is when these competition rules are complete that kendo will, for the first time, be established as a modernised sport, I believe.'

There have been several revisions of the rules since then, but can it be said that they are complete now, in the Reiwa era? And at least since the establishment of the 'Concept of Kendo' in Shōwa 50 (1975), I feel that kendo has been aiming at something other than a 'modernised sport'.

One more thing to add: earlier in the article it was said that the young kenshi were chanting the names of local competitors and getting excited. Today they would be told 'Quiet!' and 'Cheering is by applause only.' I do not remember which year of Heisei it was, but at an East-West Tournament held in a certain prefecture, it was decided not to admit primary and junior-high school pupils, lest they make a noise and spoil the atmosphere of the venue — so an old acquaintance, a local kenshi, quietly told me.

I was staggered, and asked for whom on earth the tournament was being held (it must be, I suppose, for the eminent masters who form the core of the Kendo Federation). If such things are done, it is only natural that the kendo population should decline.