Last Monday was a public holiday in Japan, but a special one for the bamboo wielding, screaming-while-pounding public, because it was also the day of the All Japan Kendo Competition. And of course I went. I’d be fucking mad not too…..blimey. Who do you think I am?!
Many reports that you will read will give results, and I’m sure I will too, but I wanted to focus a little on other things too.
So let’s start where the competition did, in the first round. Now, although this is technically the cream of the Japanese crop, you will still often see a gap here between some of the higher level and more well known competitors, and the representatives of prefectures with nothing in them but toothy old fishermen and lots of rice fields. The first round can often at times be dull and tedious to watch, as you wait for the guys you want to see come out and demolish some poor guy, or get held up in some long drawn out match. This day was no exception, with the first match of the day on shiaijo 2 taking almost twenty minutes. I don’t even remember it. This is also the longest round of the day as well, as it contains more matches than the rest of the comp combined (simple maths, that is!). The only big highlight of the first round was watching Hatakanake of Wakayama (though in reality the captain of Tokyo Uni kendo powerhouse Kokushikan) all but secure himself his pick of police spots by beating Higashinaga of Saitama, who came THIRD in this years police thingy. Admittedly, the wee fella (a spritely 21!) was lucky, as Higashinaga came close again and again, and at least once I’m sure he got a definite ippon. Poor fella.
Once you get out of the first round and have had your pee break is when things get interesting. The people who have got here have now woken up and are ready. Uni boy was no exception and actually very convincingly dispatched his second round opponent (Takeuchi of Fukui, another first timer) with a superb tsuki men and then another nice nidan waza. Lovely! The crowd were all well behind him by this point, because everyone loves an underdog (just look at Rocky). This round also contained two Tokyo based upsets with previous winner Harada going out, and potential favourite Koseki also going out. Koseki looked VERY sharp in the first round, and I was honestly shocked to see him lose, to some dude from Mie. Wherever that is.
This round also produced an enthralling match involving Yoneya from Saitama. Yoneya has great looking kendo (though a dodgy attitude at times) and is most famous for breaking his Achilles the day before the World Champs in Taiwan, which he was due to fight in. Not many people actually know that he once placed second in the Police Taikai (in 2004) to Sato Hiromitsu (3rd in this taikai last year). There you go.
This match was great. He and his opponent (Matsumura from Hyogo) both came very close on several occasions, and neither gave any ground either. The pressure in this match was continuous and intense, to the point that even when someone I wanted to see was on another shiaijo I ignored it in favour of this one. This is something I love about kendo: if the fight is really interesting, and both guys are truly going at it, then it doesn’t matter what else is going on around it or me, I get totally in to it. I just couldn’t take my eyes of it. And to top it off, Yoneya finished it after a bloody long encho with a katatezuki worthy of this kind of match! Awesomeness. Plus instead of doing the generally recognised step back after the tsuki he actually went forwards, through and past his opponent, which just made it sexier. Man, I love that guys kendo!
And on to the third round. Finally you start getting things that are interesting happening in almost every match. This round saw the exit of last years runner up, Takanabe, to Sato of Tokyo, with a Tsuki that bent him over backwards. More please! Other interesting departures were Matsumoto from Osaka, losing to a first timer from Hiroshima, Ariba, who he really should have pounded in to the floor. The runner up from two years ago, Furusawa from Tokyo, was also pounded on by the mighty Wako of Hokkaido. Wako was looking very good indeed today. Totally calm and composed, dominating the people he fought and never looking under too much pressure. And I absolutely love this guys kendo. It’s just beautiful. Seriously some of the nicest looking Big Fella kendo you’ll see. He’s my new hero! On the other side of the draw the only other big casualty, if you could really call him that was Shimizu from Aichi, losing to Teramoto. Shimizu is usually “one to watch” and does OK most of the time. His kendo is nice enough to watch but I always get the impression that ultimately he struggles to compete with the big boys.
In this rounds, Yoneya scored a stupendously good hikimen (laid down with force!) and the wiper snapper also won through with a sweet kote-men (his second of the day!) in encho to get the furthest a Uni student has in something silly like 20 years or so. He still had much support from the crowd, including the noisy Kokushin kids in the “sky seats” up top.
Another piss break (I drank too much coffee and water today!) and a quick view of the line up produced a minor surprise. 8 peeps (obviously) but also 8 different prefectures. Not even the might of Tokyo, Kanagawa or Osaka had managed to get more than one each in to the last eight! Of the dudes that made it there 3 were first timers and one was on his second. But there was also 4 pretty experienced guys to bash the new fellas down.
1st Match – Wako (Hokkaido) – Hatakenaka (Wakayama) – wee kid! He’s 21!
2nd Match – Ariba – who? (Hiroshima) – Sato (Tokyo)
3rd Match – Tanioka – again, who? (Mie) – Yoneya (Saitama)
4th Match – Teramoto (Osaka) – Shodai (Kanagawa)
Hatakenaka gave it a good try, but Wako, captain of the Hokkaido police that he is, was just a little too much for the wee fella, who last men right literally on the buzzer for time. He got the second biggest round of applause on his way out though (the biggest for the winner, obviously!) and he did come fucking close to Wako’s men at one point. But like I said, I love Wako’s kendo, so I gladly watched a little more!
In the next match, Ariba got a men from Sato right of the bat, with literally his first shake of the shinai (is more than 3 shakes of the shinai also a wank?) and then continued to hassle and harangue the Tokyo riot copper for time. Sato came very close on many occaisions, and I could have sworn was denied a decent shout at least once, but couldn’t scrape it through, giving Ariba the semi final spot and Hiroshima it’s first All Japan medal in literally 20 years.
Tanioka and Yoneya turned out to be an anti climax. Yoneya took an early point then spent the rest of the match basically closing Tanioka down, but not in an effective seme or attacking way, but a blocking, running away and lots of ineffective tsubazeriai way. After the awesomeness of his second round match, and the authority of the third round match this was disappointing. He sealed with men later on, but I couldn’t give a fuck by that time, I wanted him to just do something.
Interestingly though, the men he did score was oikomi men, after a failed kaeshi dou from Tanioka. You don’t normally see this ippon at this level because either the dou goes in or the dude doing it has the zanshin level ramped up and doesn’t allow anything to follow. What made it even more unusual is that I saw not one but THREE oikomi men, and all after failed kaeshi dou. It was more than anything else surprising to see that sort of ippon than anything else. But I still prefer a good wind pipe crushing tsuki.
The last quarter final, and the most exciting was Teramoto, last years champ, against Shodai, jodan wielding young fella (at 27 he’s younger than me!). Not only was it a proper edge of your seat nail biter but we were treated to 3 fucking great ippon, and all inside of time as well.
Teramoto started very well, keeping the youngster under constant pressure, never allowing him to settle and therefore not giving to chance for Shodai to unleash his speed or reach in anything like the same way that he had done up until now. And it paid off. About 3 minutes or so in (time for the quarters onwards is 10 minutes now!) he managed to pressure Shodai enough to break his kamae and took a storming men ippon. It was great. This was why I came. But it wasn’t over. Shodai, knowing he still had time on his side and refusing to even think about going quietly then came back with the pressure and the threat and within another minute or two took back a fantastic morote men, probably the best ippon I think I saw him score all day. Still weill inside time, and now both guys knew it was back on and still up for grabs and seemed to bring out even more, just in time for Shodai to score an immense morote debana kote (!) as Teremoto came in! Whilst not as good as the previous men for me, it was still technical brilliance with a shinai.
Right up until that point, I was expecting Teramoto to own it, maybe even go the whole hog again. He started off in ace form, and his second and third round matches were so amazingly convincing (both nihon gachi) that I honestly couldn’t see him losing. But what the fuck do I know?! Shodai I am not!
This set up Wako and Ariba, and Yoneya and Shodai. In contrast to the quarters, both matches were finished well inside time. Wako professionally dispatched Ariba, scoring the third oikomi men of the day I saw and still looking the epitome of calm and collected, and Shodai took care of Yoneya. He took kote very early on with another first shake of the shinai ippon to set up a way more offensive Yoneya than the previous match, and at more than one point I’m convinced that Yoneya scored (there was a tremendous Tsuki that was too good not to score. I think the refs were looking at girls in the crowd or something when it went in) but alas it was not to be, as Shodai took another actually very convincing ippon to line himself up against cucumber-cool Wako.
The final was looooooong. 10 minutes of normal time, and a good 10 minutes of encho as well. I thought Wako was going to take it. He looked by far and away the calmer of the two, and so comprehensively shut up shop that I thought it was inevitable, but for some reason, there was the tiniest of sparks missing from him that had been present in the other matches. He managed to get at times very very close in terms of maai to Shodai on a number of occaisions, but did nothing with it. He also made some great opportunities for Tsuki and threw in loads of them, all katate, some of which really appeared to catch Shodai completely, but they were lacking the same spark that was missing from everything else. It seemed that at times he almost didn’t want to win. Even though, he maintained the pressure, used his distance amazingly well (with one very obvious exception Shodai was not really close enough to score with his men uchi) and did create some great chances, he just didn’t use them. It kind of looked at times like he had one specific ippon he was after, and was damned if he was going to actually risk scoring anything else. I really do wonder if had had actually calmed down too much. Watching them walk to the line before hand, Shodai trotted up to it and did some last minute quick stretches, flapped some arms around a bit and fired himself up, where as Wako strolled slowly to the line and did nothing.
The eventual winning ippon was debana men to Wako’s tobikomi kote, crowning Shodai as the first All Japan champion to win in Jodan in more than 20 years. The crowd predictably went wild, Shodai is a crowd favorite because not only is he strong with his Jodan and exciting to watch, but he’s quite unorthodox at times, so you’re often left wondering what he’s going to do, or indeed what the hell just happened.
But I still preferred Wako’s kendo! Poor fella!
