Kendo for self defense?
Kendo actually has a lot of things useful for self defence. You don’t have to find a stick if you are carrying an umbrella, and even a metal 30cm/12 inch ruler will be a weapon in your hands. Besides the speed, reaction and reading body movements, you also learn about keeping your distance, avoiding attacks if possible and timing when openings are available to you. It does however depend on how you train and learn your kendo philosophy, because if you do not treat the shinai during your practice/jigeiko as a live weapon, you will not be able to gain the skills that you do if you treat it like a weapon that will kill you. This changes the perspectives on how you attack, and defend too. Kendo is ‘fencing’ by English language definition, but it is the path of the sword by definition because Kendo = Ken + Do, where Ken is the word for sword, and Do is the component of Budo, or the “path of”. So someone who is a serious student and practitioner of Kendo is living the path of the sword. If y
