With an impassioned yell, two students, clad in heavy samurai armor, clashed their wooden swords together. This yell, called a kiai in Japanese, is the call of a Kendo fighter who is ready to hit his opponent. If you walk through the Freeman Athletic Center on a Wednesday or Saturday you may hear the faint sound of kiais emanating from the multipurpose rooms. Follow the sounds and you’ll find WesKendo, a student club started in 2001, whose handful of members practice the martial art of Kendo, developed by Samurai during the 17th century.

The origins of WesKendo are murky, but its current members believe the club was started when one student contacted his father’s friends in Japan, asking them to send him donations of armor and equipment. In WesKendo’s first year, the club attracted five members. Today, WesKendo lives on with around seven active members.

Kendo is unique among martial arts in that it does not focus on violently attacking opponents, but rather on sparring in a competitive and friendly way.

“A lot of martial arts tend to attract a crowd of people that are interested in beating the crap out of each other,” said Isaac Meyer ’10, co-captain of the team. “But since Kendo doesn’t have that application, it tends to draw people much more interested in exercising and learning an interesting skill.”

Kendo, which means “way of the sword” in Japanese, is a 400-year-old form of martial arts from a period in Japanese history when feudal lords ruled the country and samurais dominated the battlefield. During times of peace, the samurai developed Kendo to practice non-lethal sparring in order to keep their sword skills sharp. After Japan modernized in the late 19th century, Kendo was transformed into the sport that is practiced today.

The team wears armor that consists of four pieces: the Men, which protects the face and throat, the Dô, which protects the chest, the Tare, which protects the thighs, and the Kote, which protect the hands. Underneath the armor, there is a two-part uniform consisting of a top called a hakama, and a bottom called a keikogi.
“It’s basically old samurai clothing,” Meyer said. “It’s what they wore during that time period.”

Two types of swords are used: the shinai, for sparring matches and most practices, and the bokuto, a solid piece of wood for kata practice, where the team practices different forms. The shinai is a four-part flexible bamboo sword, 37 to 39 inches long.
The club meets twice a week on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at 1 p.m. They begin with a warm-up and review of basic drills and then move on to practicing footwork and sparring. Although many members of the team have different levels of experience, they try to practice together most of the time.

“I’ll take people with less experience aside and practice with them alone,” Meyer said. “But as much as possible we try to practice together, because practicing with different people with different styles is the best way to learn.”

There are various intercollegiate Kendo tournaments that the team attends each year. They most recently competed in a tournament at Harvard University, where they won two matches. Three judges, who award points based on a player’s form and ability to hit specific targets on their opponent’s body, scored these matches.

“One of the best things about Kendo is playing against other college teams,” said Colin Hill ’10, the other co-captain of the team. “A lot of those teams are made up of people who have only done Kendo in college, so it’s fun to be able to play against people who have my same level of experience.”

Though they enjoy the competitions, members of the team agree that it’s difficult to compete with bigger Kendo programs at other schools.

“In all Kendo competitions across the United States, the competitions are dominated by teams on the West Coast who have the money to fly to competitions on the East Coast,” said WesKendo member Demetria Spinrad ’11. “It’s really hard for small schools to compete with those teams.”

The team tries to recruit new members at the beginning of each year by attending the student activities fair and putting up flyers around campus. While 20 to 30 people usually show up each year to the first few meetings, this number gradually drops off—now there are only four active freshmen on the team. The team demonstrates their skills at different cultural events during the year.
“We went to the Japanese Culture show this year,” Hill said. “We’re trying to be more visible around campus.”

In the future, the team hopes to raise more funding, as some of the uniforms initially donated to the team 10 years ago are beginning to deteriorate. Spinrad, who will become co-captain of the team next year, plans to focus more on promotion tests, a chance for members to demonstrate their progress.

“One of the things Kendo has which is a bit like karate or Taekwondo is promotion tests,” Spinrad said. “You have to get five qualified people to judge you in a promotion test. There’s really no one in the area that can do that, so my goal next year is to take those that are interested to New York, Boston or a friendly dojo that would be able to set that up.”