KAMINARIKAN News Digest — Q3 2022

We sent 12 members to the White Nights Martial Arts Festival in St Petersburg, split evenly between kendo and naginata. The first day featured mawari-geiko for all budo in one hall, with kendo practitioners occupying most of the space while iaido and naginata groups worked around the edges. Many of our naginata members also practise kendo, making it difficult to choose between the non-stop seminars, masterclasses and keiko, but everyone managed to try everything and represent the club well. The day ended with an active mawari-geiko session and a visit to a quirky bar where drinks were delivered by a toy-train on rails.

Day two brought two dedicated halls — one for kendo, the other one for naginata, iaido and jodo. Our members focused exclusively on naginata, spending nearly the entire day practising various renzoku-waza and oji-waza under the guidance of Daria Litunenko, President of the Russian Naginata Association. Some kendo practitioners even joined us, opting out of their own seminar. Meanwhile, the kendo hall began with oikomi-geiko as a warm-up before a seminar on team tactics. Our kenshi who attended reported improved understanding of teamwork, team spirit and the importance of each position — it was not just a seminar but full team competitions with bout analysis. The second day concluded with masterclasses.

Day three was the most intense. We fielded our first full women's kendo team and our second men's team, alongside individual naginata competitions. The women's tournament was short — our team KAMINARIONA fought hard. In the mixed team kendo tournament, our club entered a combined team. The men's team, competing as KAMINARIKAN, reached the semi-finals. Individual results included a silver medal for Daria Belova in the women's kyu tournament and bronze for Andrew in the men's dan tournament. The naginata competition saw Ann take gold.

Day four was exhausting but rewarding. The naginata group spent the morning preparing for grading, focusing on techniques without bogu and shikake-oji. The kendo group moved to open jigeiko, while Andrew led a two-hour masterclass on practical tips for training in jodan-no-kamae — not to teach jodan itself, but to help practitioners build proper interaction with motodachi . Later, Daria, Ann and Andrew conducted a grading in atarashi naginata up to sankyu. Congratulations to Dasha and Adil on passing sankyu, and to Alex on passing gokyu. The day concluded with a masterclass in Tendo-ryu, followed by isshu-jiai — kendo versus naginata matches. It was fascinating to watch kenshi adapt to strikes to the legs and the unfamiliar distance, though they quickly got the hang of it.

Four intense days of training, competitions and demonstrations — a true celebration of budo. Thanks to Daria senpai for her guidance, and to the St Petersburg organisers for their hospitality. We look forward to the next one.

We celebrated our fourth anniversary on 4 September. The club was officially founded in a small hall on Nagatinskaya Street in 2018, with just three people at the first training session. Since then, we have produced several dan grades, built a core of dedicated kendo and naginata enthusiasts, and survived six months of no training, a year and a half of COVID restrictions, the current geopolitical and economic crisis, and seven relocations.

For our fourth birthday, we found a historically significant new home: the former Moscow Budokan, at Litvina-Sedogo st., 3A. Training resumed from 2 September at this new location. We hope these doors will remain open for a long time.