Kagami Biraki: Nippon Budokan, 10th January 2011

Peter Here;

As 2011 woke up from the winter holidays (Fuyu no Oyasumi), the annual ceremony of Kagami Biraki marked the Nippon Budokan's celebration of the new year on January 10, and the beginning of training. Takagi Sensei had again been asked to represent Karatedo by the Nippon Budokan with Arakawa Sensei since they are the official karate instructor's at the Nippon Budokan's Budo-Gakuen, and once again the Shiramizu group attended to take part in the group budo training session.

Everyone arrived at the Nippon Budokan for 11:30; well, everyone except yours truly- a horrendous misunderstanding about the pronunciation of 10:15 and 10:50 meant I arrived at Tobudobutsukoen station a tad later than I was supposed to (note to self: double check all times in writing in the future). However, the ceremony started at 12:30 and everyone including myself managed to be seated comfortably by the time it started.

The mochi breaking ceremony has been well covered by past interns, but a good further explaination to the mochi and embellishments can be found here: http://blog.alientimes.org/2010/01/opening-the-mirrors-kagami-biraki-a-more-comprehensive-look-at-kagami-mochi-revisited/



The round rice cakes were shaped to resemble mirrors because mirrors have been revered in Japan since ancient times and are believed to be receptacles of the gods. You might have seen mirrors set up inside the main halls of a Shinto Shrine. For the New Year, a smaller mochi is usually placed on top of a larger one (sometimes there are 3 mochi cakes in a stack). Sometimes the Kagami-Mochi are further embellished with significant decorations such as a citrus called a daidai (which is a homophone for generation after generation), a spread open folding fan (to symbolize the spreading of your seed), kelp (konbu), which is a near homophone to YOROKOBU (to enjoy). There might also be other plants (all with symbolic meanings) and folded red and white paper (to keep out impurities) used to decorate the mochi.

The reason the hard mochi is broken and not cut is that the SAMURAI avoided using the word CUT, as well as the symbolic action of cutting, especially around New Year’s. Thus a knife is not used, And, even though the Kagami-Mochi is BROKEN, the word WARU (割る), to break, was also avoided (the SAMURAI did their best to avoid being cut or broken!). Instead, an IMI KOTOBA (忌み言葉), a euphemism, is used: hiraku (開く) to open. And thus this custom came to be known as KAGAMI-BIRAKI (鏡開き) the OPENING OF MIRRORS, which sounds very auspicious.




After the mochi breaking ceremony, we assembled outside for a photo shoot. It was pretty cold and windy, so we made it as quick as possible, and then headed inside for the budo demonstrations, or Embu. As was last year, 9 budo was represented at the ceremony: Shorinji Kempo, Aikido, Kyudo, Kendo, Naginata, Judo, Jukendo, Sumo and of course Karate. Each demonstration lasted about 15 minutes and boasted the best aspects of each art: Kempo showed it's Chinese origin with its circular attacks, Aikido demonstrated the use of your opponent's power and the elegance of technique, Kendo was graceful and spiritual, Kyudo displayed incredible focus... each demonstration had superb and enviable qualities.





Karate's demonstration came courtesy of the JKF women's kata team, and the Japan University Championships male team kata champions, with a wonderful performance and bunkai of Kururunfa and Unsu.



The group training followed, with participants from each of the 9 budo styles taking part on the floor. The massive Taiko sounded the beginning and end of the practice, and the twenty minutes between was filled with shouts and enthusiasm, the biggest coming from the Karate area! There aren't the words to describe the feeling of the training- motivation and determination permeated the hall, driving everyone on. Sadly, the taiko signalled the end of the training just as everyone was getting into the swing of it; 20 minutes wasn't enough, even for the kids!



After the training, the 'opened' mochi from the Samurai ceremony was offered in Oshiruko - sweet red bean soup - along with an offering of Sake for the adults. Sake is potent stuff, so after Okano san kindly refilled my glass with his sake offering I could only sip a couple of times before leaving it!

On the journey home Arakawa sensei and I talked about the new year's plans, about the new dojo in Satte, my Shodan test, practising English and Japanese, and where I should start training from next April. We also admired the setting sun, nestling behind Fuji-san in a picture-postcard scene. Inspiring Stuff.

Ein Besuch von Herr Fabian!

Peter Here:

On Tuesday 13th July Arakawa Sensei, Yoshihara Sensei and I went to Narita Airport to pick up our latest guest: Juergen Fabian 4th Dan Sensei from Germany. He stayed with us to train for the Wado World Cup in Nagoya, 14-15th August.


Although Fabian Sensei was naturally exhausted from his flight, Arakawa Sensei took the opportunity to take us to the Nippon Budokan. Impressively large and imposing, it doesn't take much to inspire one to train or work hard here.



Fabian Sensei had his first taste of training in Japan that evening, where his comments on the children were: "they're very fast, aren't they?" They are indeed! Fabian Sensei also presented a gift to Arakawa Sensei- a landscape photography book of Germany. Kireii!

The 37th All Japan Karatedo Championships

Erica here.

On the weekend of December 12^th and 13^th, the All Japan Karatedo Championships were held. I’m told that this is THE competition to win if you’re going to win one. To qualify for this competition, you must have won a competion in your prefecture. Then you compete with all the other gold medalists in your area and the winner advances to represent their prefecture at the All Japan Karatedo Championships.

All of Saturday was used for qualifying matches for team kumite and this took place at the Tokyo Budokan. On Sunday the 13^th, the day I went to watch with Richard Sensei, the final rounds for team kumite, qualifying and final rounds for men and women's kata and individual kumite occurred at the Nippon Budokan.

Men's kumite. Intense.

We arrived at roughly 9am, when the competition started, and already the first 2 levels of seats were filled!! So we settled up on the third level and watched the individual men’s kumite. When I first started watching, the fighters were so fast I wasn’t able to tell who had scored a point first. Then after awhile I slowly began to be able to tell, with the help of Richard Sensei of course. There were 2 big screen TVs on either side of the stadium that had instant replay and that helped spectators to see the reasons for some of the calls the judges made. For example, there were quite a few times when to us it looked like red had scored the point, but the judges would award the point to blue. A replay of that point would come up on the big screen and we’d see that red had actually missed and blue had scored with a counter attack, but from our angle it looked different.

Kata being shown on the big screen.

After the qualifying rounds were over for kumite, kata started and it was amazing to watch. For me, I got to see katas that I’ve never seen before. Sitting up in the stands with Richard Sensei and Arakawa Sensei, we would guess which colour would win right before the judges made their call. Richard Sensei got all of them right except one. I stopped after awhile because I kept guessing the wrong one =_=’

Results!

Men’s Kumite -- Araga Ryutaro

Women’s kumite -- Miyamoto Yu

Men’s kata -- Furukawa Tetsuya (Suparinpei – Goju-ryu)

Women’s kata -- Usami Rika (Chatanyara Kushanku – Shinto-ryu)

Men’s team kumite -- Kyoto

Women’s team kumite -- Tokyo

This is definitely a must watch event!

Me! It was really windy =p

Nippon Budokan Budo-gakuen Training Camp

Louise here,

Last weekend, the 24^th and 25^th of October, Erica and I attended the Nippon Budokan Budo Gakuen's training camp at the Saitama Kenritsu (Prefectural) Budokan (埼玉県立武道館） in Ageo City, Saitama.

Yoshihara Noriko sensei, Yamazaki Yukiko sensei and two junior high school students also attended from Shiramizu. It was a camp also for other martial arts: there were people practicing kendo, judo, shorinji kempo, aikido, jodo, and naginata. Takamasa Arakawa sensei, and Kazuhiro Toya sensei from Guseikai Tokyo, taught the karate sessions. Including the Shiramizu people, there were maybe only a dozen karate people training.

Cover of the camp programme

I was very impressed with the Budokan training halls. The main training building seemed newly built and besides wooden-floored training halls it included an archery range.

The first day we trained in a very large hall with kendo, nagainata and jodo people. In the afternoon there was a seminar about how to treat sport sprains and strains, where we taped up each other's ankles.

The second day we trained in another very large hall. Though there were only a few of us, I enjoyed the training, especially practicing applications from chinto, kihon kumite and jiyu kumite drills. It was also interesting to see how the other martial arts trained, especially naginata, which I hadn't seen before.

One end of the main training hall (jodo to the right, kendo behind to the left)

2009 Japan Wado Kai Championships - Erica's report

Erica (in her Shiramizu t-shirt) in front the tournament sign which states;

''dai yon-ju-go kai wadokai zen-nippon karatedo kyogi taikai''

''45th Annual Wadokai National Athletic Championships''

Erica here.

The second day I got to Japan, I was told that I had been entered into the Wadokai National Championships. At the time, I still had 2 months to prepare so I was not as nervous as I should have been. But time went by very quickly and before I knew it, it was the weekend before the tournament already!

Like Louise, I had not participated in a tournament for quite some time. I think the last one I entered was while I was still in high school (which is about 7-8 years ago). The mandatory preliminary kata for my division was Kushanku and I practiced it at every class before the competition.

Unlike Louise, neither my kata nor kumite scores very close to winning. In fact, it was quite the opposite. All 5 flags in kata were for the other girl and in kumite, I lost 6-0. In all fairness, my sparring partner went on to winning gold for kata. These results were expected, so I wasn’t too upset. I know there is much I need to work on and that is why I’m here.

It was a little heartbreaking to see some of the younger kids burst into tears when they didn’t make it to the next round because you could tell that they had trained very hard and put all their efforts in. Even some of the older competitors shed tears when they didn’t make it through. I guess those are the ones who had very high expectations for themselves.

The second day, we were at the Nippon Budokan and I was a spectator. It was fun sitting with all the parents and watching the different rings and cheering as members from the dojo were up. Before the demonstration performed by Shiramizu members, there was a mass warm-up where all the competitors were lined up and lead by Arakawa Sensei. After that, they all did kata which was really cool to watch. At the end of the day, although none of the Shiramizu competitors received gold, some of them went home with silver and bronze and each one of them knowing they had done their best.

All competitors participating in Pinan Nidan

Masatoshi getting his hair done by Yuki before the competition

Group picture!

Nippon Budokan - Kagami Biraki

Carl here...

Monday 12th January was the Nippon Budokan Kagami Biraki event.

The explanation...
This ceremony which can be literally translated into ‘unveiling of a round shaped mirror’ was originally performed by in the 15th Century by the 4th Tokugawa Shogun before going into battle, The Tokugawa’s won the battle and the ceremony has been popular ever since.


The official program
The ceremony involves an offering of two layers of small glutinous rice cakes to the gods on New Year’s Day to honour and purify a Samurai’s personal armour and weapons. The second part of the ceremony is cracking open a casket of Sake and sharing the contents.

Shiramizu has had these cakes on display in front of the small Shinto Shrine in the dojo for the last few weeks though I haven’t seen any Sake!

On January 11th or a short time after this, these mochi cakes are broken up by hand or hammer (knives aren’t used because they could signify cutting ties with people), and shared with the family or in samurai times, the clan.

This festival is believed to help strengthen family ties and friendship among warriors of the same clan.

Shiramizu
The Shiramizu dojo was invited along to take part in ceremony representing the JKF-Wadokai. In true form, Arakawa sensei took 50 students to the Nippon Budokan.


Kudanshita station
We met at Tobu-dobutsu-koen station on the morning and took the train straight to Kudanshita subway station. After a short walk through the grounds of the Imperial Palace, we arrived at the Budokan.

The ceremony was already underway, with lots of people lined up inside the main hall.


What followed after the bow and opening speeches was a large demonstration of traditional Samurai, in full armour. It was a very ceremonial affair where the chief was presented with a feast by his minions.


After this, the giant mochi cakes and the casket of Sake were wheeled into the middle of the hall.



The chief then proceeded to ‘unveil’ the cakes and casket with the help of a huge hammer.


The samurai clan then marched around the Budokan hall and left.

Demonstrations
What followed were demonstrations from 9 modern martial arts, I caught the Kyuudo (Archery) and Karate demonstrations which were good and a little of the bayonet demo.

Pose!
All the Shiramizu people met the rest of the Karate students from some other dojo (sorry, I don’t know which ones) for a photo outside the Budokan. At this point it started to snow which made us all even colder.


Photo taken from the blog of Arakawa sensei

Arakawa Sensei was quite funny, after the photo was taken it started snowing pretty hard but Sensei still wanted to quickly speak to everyone. I don’t know exactly what he said but I think it was something like ‘why are you complaining about the cold? You’re all supposed to be tough karate students!’ with his trademark grin, everyone started laughing and stopped shivering immediately!

Training in the Budokan
After posing for a customary photo with the rest of the Shiramizu and Hideo Takagi Sensei, we had a short wait until we were allowed into the main hall for training.

This was quite a good experience, there was eight different martial arts practising at the same time in the Budokan. The martial arts were: Karatedo; Kendo; Iaido(?); Aikido; Judo; Naginata; Kenpo(?); and Sumo.


Lawrence in front, that's me just behind him...

Karate was in the middle of the hall, with approximately 80 students training in basics, kata and kumite for about 45 minutes. It was a challenge to keep focused on my kata, especially when I was more interested in the Kendo people whacking each other and the Judo people throwing each other around!

Ikimasho – let’s go...!
As soon as the training was over, and everyone bowed out, the Budokan offered everyone Miso soup. Shiramizu was on a tight schedule though and couldn’t partake in the rest of the event. Everyone had to get back to Sugito for the ‘official’ Shiramizu start of year training session that was taking place on the evening. Arakawa Sensei and I were the last to leave the Budokan, so we had to jog to the station to catch up to everyone.

...just another busy day at the office!