Feeling of Kata

MY ATTITUDE TOWARDS KATA
by undisclosed author.

For a few years I have noticed that a lot of kendoka/beginners I have met through doing kendo do not enjoy kata very much, or find it less exciting than shinai kendo.

When I first started kendo and was taught the katas, after a while I felt like I was just going through the motions of the choreographed set of movements (this is by no means meant as any disrespect to my teacher/s).

When I started to travel to other dojo’s or attend seminars etc, I found that on the whole the katas involve the same choreographed movements but that usually the timing differed slightly from dojo to dojo, kendoka to kendoka and at times both opponents would be doing a different kata unbeknown to each other.

Regarding the later example although this did happen on occasion, incidents were rare.

After I had experienced incidents like this a few times and were my opponents bokken came too close for comfort, it was a good wakeup call when I had to get out of my opponents way to evade his bokken, to revaluate a fresh approach to kata mentally.

•First I watch to see how my opponent wears his hakama and kekogi how he carries his sword/bokken, his rei etc.
•When he takes his kamae, is his kamae good or poor.
•As we move into issoku itto no ma ai I try to see everything:
◦his kamae
◦how he moves (is it smooth or broken) with each step
At this point I can usually feel confident how well he/she knows the kata, but if say my opponent is motodachi, then I have still yet to see his timing and so I can not take the kata for granted and assume that this is a choreographed move.

I could still get caught out with the timing of his sword/bokken.

This is how I approach my kata mentally through my experiences with other kendoka when visiting dojos or going to seminars.

I am very grateful to my opponents for helping me develop this kind of attitude toward kata it is very enjoyable and mentally hard to do kata now. I try to put this kind of attitude into my keiko and so in this regard for me the two are connected kata and keiko.