Kendo — The Way of the Sword
Kendo — The Way of the?Sword
Kendō (剣道, lit. ‘way of the sword’) is a modern Japanese martial art, descended from kenjutsu?. Originally, it was mainly practiced by samurai. Today it is considered a discipline in which the mind and body face each other in a sporting challenge.
The Japanese sword may have emerged around the Heian Era (794–1185) used by a tribe that specialized in cavalry battles in northern Japan.
In the Kamakura period (1192 to 1333), samurai used swords in their training, and later in the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573) Japan entered a period of anarchism that lasted for about a hundred years where, along with the shogun?, the samurai led the way into battles against the various shoguns.
After a long period of internal conflict, Japan entered the Tokugawa or Edo period and it was 250 years of peace and balance of power. Samurai had no reason to train for battle, so schools of kenjutsu (later called Kendō ) began to appear and different ken (sword) techniques developed.