Thank you for your interest in Samurai Swordsmanship Dojo, Gotokukan Imafuji Dojo!
Please watch the video or you can read the script below.
Hi. My name is Hiro Imafuij. Let me introduce myself a little bit.
I was born and raised in Japan and started kendo when I was 7 in 1980. I have been doing kendo for about 34 years now. Currently hold 6-dan, that is 6 degree black belt.
I am currently in charge of instructing kendo at Mudokwan Japanese Martial Arts School in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Friday.
I belong to East Central US Kendo Federation, All US Kendo Federation and International Kendo Federation.
Also I am the head coach of ECUSKF for All US Kendo Championship 2014. What that means I’ll be training the ECUSKF representatives to fight in the championship.
My kendo history. I learned kendo from great teachers, late Tsurumaru sensei, 9-dan, late Murayama sensei, he won a few 8-dan championships and Miyazaki sensei, 7-dan who was a trained by 10-dan, 9-dan and 8-dans in the past. He also was a shihan, the main instructor of a Japanese university kendo club and the club achieved excellent results in many tournaments. These teachers were my main teachers back then.
I lived in New Zealand for 6 years, Guatemala for 2 years and now in US. I’ve been in US since 2004.
New Zealand was the place I started instructing kendo to non-Japanese people. So I have New Zealand accent. Guatemala was the second place to teach kendo and now US. Oh, I should mention that I have some kendo websites to promote kendo to all over the world.
Now let’s talk about what you can learn from me.
Kendo is very unusual martial arts and it is very hard to find a place to learn kendo in Indiana. There is only one legitimate kendo dojo in Indianapolis currently offering kendo, which is the dojo I instruct. Purdue has a kendo club. So basically we have two places in Indiana.
But here I am living in Anderson. This is a great opportunity for me and you to get together and share my knowledge with you.
Usually kendo teaches training with bokuto, wooden sword, and with shinai, bamboo sword. With bokuto, we learn cultural and historical aspects of kendo as well as techniques. And with bamboo sword, we can train actual techniques and also we can train ourselves physically and mentally.
Now I do not stop there. I would like to teach you how to draw a sword as well. It is called Iaido. In old days, kendo was a part of samurai training. Iaido is basically solo training of forms. But they should be learned together to complete the way of the sword.
It is also important to learn the teachings of samurai. Learning only how to use a sword and how to hit each other will not complete the way of the sword. We have the teachings from those samurai who fought for their lives. More importantly, to understand the teachings fully, we must train the complete way of the sword.
So if you like the idea and you want to learn the complete way of the sword, please enter your name, email address and check what days you are available and click “submit”. This gives me a good ideas to have when is the best to set up class day. Mind you, I live in Anderson, Indiana so the training place will be either in Anderson or around.
One of the reasons why I need you to submit when you are available, like I said, since kendo is not well-known, it is hard for me to just start. I need to know how many of you are interested and how many people can actually come. So until I get certain amount of people who are truly committed, I cannot start. More importantly,
After you submitted, you will receive a confirmation email with a link for you to click., This is very important for you. Because by clicking, you are giving me a permission to contact you. If you don’t do that, I cannot let you know when we have class. So please make sure to click the confirmation link.
And also I can give you some online lessons as well if you confirm so please do so.