The famous Miyamoto Musashi (宮本武蔵) wrote the Dokkodo (独行道) and passed it on to his students shortly before his death in 1645 at the age of 61. In this last scripture, there were only 21 lines. The first one was 『世々の道をそむく事なし』. Being the first of the 21 "commandments" and last words of the best known Japanese swordsman in history, it must be the most important message he wanted to pass on to future generations! I tried to find out what it really was saying. By simple translatio

If you have seen samurai movies, or any kind of movies involving fighting, you might have at some point wondered why do the baddies attack the hero one at a time? Well, in the real world, no one takes turn in such fights. So why should we practice fighting one opponent at a time? At any given moment, one must be aware of his/her surroundings: the number of attackers and their positions. We must develop the ability to not only gauge the distance from each opponent (間合い), but

The first technique, Ipponnme, is the most important technique in any style of Iaido. Whether you are a beginner going for your very first grading examination or a master performing a demonstration (演武), ipponme is always done. At my dojo, ipponme is always the first technique to begin with and last technique to end with. This is true for everyone no matter how senior one may be. Some Iaido masters even think no student is worthy of a passing grade if ipponme is not done w