Yaegaki-Kai

For those of you who are TV series addicts and more precisely fan of the ongoing “Game of throne” will be intrigued by this post title. Yes summer holiday is coming …

Our last 2010-2011 season Keiko will occur this Thursday 30 June and the new season 2011-2012 will start on Tuesday 2 August 2011. Our last trainings are now dedicated to practice sessions with more kumitachi (kendo no kata – tachi uchi no kurai) and serious Kihon renshu. And for our very last training days we decided to prepare some tameshigiri/shizan (試し斬), Shito (試刀) session.

So this sunday morning we rolled tatami omote, making sure our future victims were tightly rolled and ready for a safe and rewarding cutting session. Tameshigiri historically defines a method used for testing swords quality. In our modern time, the practice of tameshigiri has come to focus on testing the swordsman’s abilities, rather than the sword’s.

Tameshigiri is not a goal in itself, but it is an excellent method to work on the cutting dynamic, correct hasuji, tenouchi usage while cutting hard target and understand the natural efficiency of the Katana as highlighted in our previous Datsuryokou tōhō post.