The other day I attended some very high level kendo (Japanese fencing) bouts, my first real exposure to it other than having seen a bit six years ago during a visit to a Japanese high school.

Last week I posted a couple of lone photos here and here, but finally I'll actually write a bit about the event.

The sign says something along the line that it's the 110^th All Japan Kendo Martial-Arts Exhibition.

I live a short stroll from this place, so it's a shame that it's taken me 10 years to make a visit. I had no idea what to expect, so I went in gingerly and observed how others acted to determine what I could do.

There seemed to be two bouts going simultaneously, each with two practitioners facing off against each other and three judges in suits.

Court-side are tatami areas for upcoming participants to get ready... kendo has quite the impressive uniform.

The armor flap in front shows their city and name.

The bougu protective uniform is quite impressive, with 100+ years of martial-arts tradition built on top of thousands of years of samurai-warrior tradition. There's meaning in every little bit, as illustrated by the length of this introductory description. Later I noticed some stalls outside the venue selling sets of the “armor” part of the uniform at prices ranging from $700 for a set, to $10,000. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg.

As for the sport itself, apparently they get points for making a strike to certain areas of the other's armor, but only if done with sufficient control so as to never let themselves be open to counterattack.

Bouts last just a few minutes, and have a slow highly-choreographed look for the most part, except that it's punctuated at moments by short ferociously-quick bursts of energy of movement.

Everyone I saw was at a sufficiently high rank to be considered a master of masters, yet some were still so surprised and caught off guard by the sudden burst of energy from their opponent that their feet couldn't keep up with their body's retreat, leaving them sprawled on the ground.

Even to someone like me who knew nothing, this was amazing to see.

Not only couldn't I tell who won each bout, I truly couldn't tell whether there was a winner at all. According to the Wikipedia page on Kendo the referees have colored flags to match colored ribbons on the back of the fencers, but this was not the case here.

I checked out the nameboard to find a hint, but after a match both names got an unceremoniously final red “X”, and then they were slid off the end and removed from the display....

An interesting tidbit from the photo above is that the bout just completed is numbered 429. It was a busy tournament.

Also of note is that the referees are listed, each name given with the honorific reserved for the highest kendo rank. If one devoted oneself to kendo from childhood and advanced at the fastest rate possible, this highest rank could be achieved no earlier than 54 years old. So we know that all the referees are older than 54, and are the highest masters of kendo.

Reasonable color balance was a challenge due to the wildly-different nature of the gymnasium artificial lighting from the shade flooding in from the huge entrances in each wall. The color in the shot two above is probably more realistic than that of the shot immediately above, which is balanced more for the guy in the foreground.

They had quite the good seats, but lucky for me they didn't occupy them most of the time I was in a position to get nice shots.

Continued here...