Coffee with Sensei
Thoughts and comments by Sensei Jorge Kishkawa
1st World Kenjutsu Championship - 25 Years in the NIPPAK NEWSPAPER
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Translation
1st World Kenjutsu Championship concludes 25 years of celebrations of the Niten Institute perfectly.
Held on October 20th and 21st at the APCD - Paulista Association of Dental Surgeons - in the north area of Sao Paulo, the 1st World Championship of Kenjutsu ended the 25th-anniversary celebrations of the Niten Institute with perfection. The competition was attended by more than 400 athletes from the 70 units established in nine countries: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, United States, Portugal, and England. At the time, the founder and president of Niten, Sensei Jorge Kishikawa received a tribute from the governor of the State of Sao Paulo, Márcio França (PSB). The plaque was delivered by Massaki Shimada of the Sao Paulo State Patrimony Council and former president of Ceagesp.
There have been contests in all categories, from children´s (5 to 11 years) to senior, including the Team Tournament. In the top category, Gilberto Vieira, from Sao Paulo, won the title among men while among women, the Argentine Paula Cintioni surprised by beating Brazilian Ana Lucia Pieri.
In the team competition, Brazil was in the first two places in the male category - with Brazil "A" and Brazil "B", respectively - while in the female category, Brazil gave "A" in first and Argentina "B" in second.
Besides the disputes, practitioners were able to watch the most real samurai duels after 400 years and also witnessed an unprecedented event in the Americas: the shooting of a Japanese musket of 1850 (hinawaju) fired by Sensei´s eldest son, Yoshimitsu Kishikawa. According to Kishikawa, the weapon is identical to that used in the movie "The Last Samurai," starring Tom Cruise.
Little push - For the students, the tournament "took a long time". "They said it took twenty-five years for us to hold such an event. But everything in life has its right moment", explains Kishikawa, realizing that even he did not expect to go that far.
"Blame", in part, for his wife, Mika, a partner for almost three decades and who has closely followed the whole trajectory of the Niten. Currently responsible for the kid´s training, Mika also guides the administrative part and it was from her the necessary "push" that allowed the expansion of Niten beyond the capital of Sao Paulo.
"At the beginning, still in Itaim Unit, by the way, our first Unit, we received many letters and emails from Rio de Janeiro, and even from Minas Gerais interested in practicing. She insisted Sensei to go to these places, but he always claimed that he could not handle a single unit, "Mika laughs, remembering that at the time Jorge Kishikawa still split his time between teachings and shifts at the General Hospital of the Army.
Mika started to do the opposite: she asked for these people to come to Sao Paulo. And they came. This is how Niten began to form its first monitors. Today there are almost a thousand practitioners who seek Niten for many different reasons.
Emptiness - "Before, people were looking for the Niten to fill the emptiness they did not find in other martial arts. Most of them were middle-aged, who had already practiced martial arts and who saw in the Institute a proposal to fill the philosophical part that they did not find in other martial arts", says Kishikawa, adding that he himself, twice a Brazilian five-time champion of Kendo, dropped the modality in search of bigger challenges.
"After I reached the peak of kendo in terms of Brazil, both medal and graduation, I felt I could not stop my way like that. I had to keep getting better, developing myself. That´s when I began to feel a spiritual emptiness, and this spiritual emptiness, in part, was the tradition calling me. So my interest turned to search for the origins of what I was doing with kendo, "says Kishikawa, adding that over the years the age group of practitioners began to shift to a younger age group and with them came many descendants of Japanese, who at first were rare.
"Many of these descendants look for the Niten in search of their origins because the Niten established itself as a reference in the search of the origins for being a place where the tradition is preserved, where the oldest things are taught, explains Sensei.
According to Kishikawa, the Niten was born not only with the purpose of spreading the millenarian teachings of the arts of the samurai sword, "but with the purpose of doing a job that was not only aimed at winning medals and graduations, giving priority to the philosophical part as well. "
"The Niten Cultural Institute is called like this because it assumes that you have to be always researching and developing yourself, not to be stagnant in your rules. That was another reason I got out of kendo. The rules are the same and can not change. That is, there is no freedom to express myself in an artistic way because everything is regulated, "says Kishikawa, noting that with the birth of his three sons - Yoshimitsu (15), Takemitsu (14) and Hiromitsu (12) - created the KIR Junior, aimed at children from 5 to 11 years old. "In KIR Junior about 70 to 80% are descendants of Japanese. They are children whose parents want children to know their origins and learn the Japanese tradition", says Kishikawa, noting that over the years, Niten has also become a reference in Japanese culture. "Even our goal in the course for children is for them to be educated in the samurai way, that is, our goal with them is education. "
Golden Moments - "I can not talk about spirituality or culture with children as I speak to adults," Kishikawa says that in Niten the students learn the technique but also the spiritual side and the philosophy passed, mainly, through conversations, the so-called Golden Moments, when, at the end of each training, the students meet around Sensei or the responsible Senpai for training to hear teachings about samurai culture and Japanese philosophy.
"In these master-disciple relationships, we approach concepts such as discipline, self-control, concentration and stress control under the samurai view, and students learn how to use the sword teachings in their daily lives," says Kishikawa, explaining that this coexistence takes place outside the usual classes, in the form of gashuku, intensive training held in parks, mountains and clubs.
"We have already done in such places like Nippon Country Club, Cooper and Pinhal Colony", says Kishikawa, who, in the future, hopes to achieve
10,000 students and have the World Championship "with at least 1,000 participants". "If we had about 400 in this, I think we will have to wait another 25 years," Kishikawa jokes, concluding that in Niten, the most important thing is to see people happy.
"I tell my students that you will not be happy reading self-help books, but training and living together. That´s the way I have if there are others I do not know. And I can say that in these 25 years I have been able to make people happy, "he says.
(Aldo Shiguti)
[subtitles]
1st World Kenjutsu Championship held in October in Sao Paulo, gathered around 400 practitioners from nine countries.
Kishikawa receives homage from Governor Márcio França delivered by Massaki Shimada.
Yoshimitsu Kishikawa shoots with Japanese musket from 1850.
One of the first photos of Niten practitioners at Itaim Unit.
1st World Kenjutsu Championship held in October.
Over the years, the Niten Institute has also been wanted by children.
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