<\/p>\n
During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate severed all relationships with foreign countries except on rare occasions. It was a period of peace for more than 260 years with almost no civil strife to speak of. Therefore, the martial arts matured into a culture comprising of both facets of character building and competition. However, at the end of the shogunate with the arrival of Perry’s America East India fleet, the re-opening of the country drew near as pressure from foreign powers became stronger. The shogunate sensed an impending crisis and started to reform its military system. The K\u014dbusho, a place for bujutsu<\/em> training, was established to bolster Japan’s military preparedness. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The K\u014dbusho primarily emphasised kenjutsu<\/em>, s\u014djutsu<\/em>, and gunnery as necessary training for the battlefield. The training in gunnery was based on Western artillery, and kenjutsu<\/em> and s\u014djutsu<\/em> revolved exclusively around competitive training. Instructors were not selected through lineage but on their skill in the martial arts. For example, Odani Seiichir\u014d from the Jikishinkage-ry\u016b and Kubota Sugane from Tamiya-ry\u016b Iai Kenjutsu were selected as instructors, whereas the Shogun’s instructors from the Yagy\u016b family or the Ono family were not appointed. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Odani, as the head of the K\u014dbusho’s kenjutsu<\/em> department, decided to regulate the length of the shinai<\/em> (this was a step towards “sportification”) to approximately 117cm. The idea was to keep the length close to a real Japanese sword (about 100cm), but with a slightly longer tsuka<\/em> in order to grip the shinai<\/em> more easily when wearing kote<\/em> (protective gloves). It was regarded as the perfect length for actual fighting, and expected good training results with the regulated length and weight.<\/p>\n \nBecause the training at the K\u014dbusho was focussed solely on shiai<\/em> (matches), barriers between the different ry\u016bha<\/em> gradually vanished and exchanges between exponents from the same ry\u016bha<\/em> increased. This can be considered as an important step towards the unification of kenjutsu<\/em> after the Meiji Restoration (1868). Nevertheless, the Tokugawa shogunate’s efforts were in vain: the shogunate collapsed with the Meiji Restoration, and Japan entered the modern era. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate severed all relationships with foreign countries except on rare … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/1110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/budo-world.taiiku.tsukuba.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"