The Rebirth of Kenjutsu as Kendo
3) Swords and Guns: the role of the Battotai Tokyo Police Force in revitalizing the military value of kenjutsu
While gekikenkai represented a minor revival of the cultural meaning of kenjutsu, it was not until the Satsuma Rebellion that the military half of swordsmanship returned to the Japanese stage. The Tokyo Police force division known as the Battotai, a sword-wielding division, participated in the quashing of the rebellion[1] by samurai from the Satsuma domain, led by Saigō Takamori; both their success in using swords to combat swords and the impressive power of Saigo’s forces[2], who fought against modern cannons and guns with the ancient tradition of swords, helped spur an integration of the martial arts – kenjutsu in particular – into the state police training regimen, a policy that continues to this day.
4) The Dai Nippon Butoku Kai and the Rebirth of Kenjutsu as Kendo
In 1895, the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai was formed – this federation sought to bring together all budō (martial arts) into one unified organization, and began to codify and establish the rules and regulations for the revival of kenjutsu, the military discipline, into kendō, the martial art[3]. The image shown to the right is from a document from that same era, titled Kenjutsu Kyōhan (literally “Teaching Methods of Sword Technique”) dated to Meiji 27, or 1894[4]. In the two panels of the image, one can see the establishment of two of the strikes that continue into modern kendō: kote, a hand strike, in the left panel, and tsuki, a throat strike, in the right. The highly diagrammatic nature of the illustrations and the use of katakana in place of hiragana indicates the formal nature of this text – it is designed as a manual for the proper teaching of kenjutsu. Rather than emulating the variegated schools of the past, this manual clearly describes specific hits with specific posture and style – a clear deviation from the previous image of the gekikenkai, where combatants swung swords haphazardly in many directions, and moved in unusual positions and postures. This document thus represents the formalization of the more abstract and complex combat art of kenjutsu into the modern sport of kendō.
Bibliography
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(1864). Kenjutsu Kyōhan. Kindai Digital Library, Kawanaga-dō.
(2004). "History and Philosophy." Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://www.dnbk.org/history.cfm.
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Kapp, L. K., Hiroko; Yoshinodo, Yoshihara (2002). Modern Japanese Swords and Swordsmiths: From 1868 to the Present. Tokyo, Kodansha International.
Kiyota, M. (1995). Kendō: Its Philosophy, History, and Means to Personal Growth. London, Kegan Paul International.
Tsukioka, Y. Geki-ken kai. MFA.org, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.