Sensei’s Blog

Canada Day Seminar Report – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

Today may be a bit slow for me, after three days of Niten Ichiryu and Choken Kage Ryu. Kajiya soke and Watkin shihan (that's not the way to address them by the way, but a shortcut to introduce them), provided almost 20 hours of training for a few more than 20 participants from Friday to … Continue reading Canada Day Seminar Report – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

History is not culture – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

It's often useful to remind ourselves that history is not culture. Culture is what's happening, history is what happened, specifically, what we remember happened. Dave Green sensei made that observation on a trip to Japan many years ago in a photo essay somewhere in the moribund photo magazine I used to edit and publish. What … Continue reading History is not culture – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

Riai and Research – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

Does my study of academic papers truely help with my understanding of budo or should I simply get out to practice more often? Being an academic, spending most of my working life in a University setting, I'm not likely to say that research is useless. Having written 20 plus books on the subject I'm also … Continue reading Riai and Research – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

Budo as housekeeping – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi

This is a wee bit of a lecture I gave the students and visitors at the Seidokai weekend in Tombo Dojo. It started out as a simple "cottage rules" but sort of morphed into Musashi's discussion of budo as carpentry. In other words I presented it as a lecture on budo and slipped the cottage … Continue reading Budo as housekeeping – Kim Taylor, Renshi, CI Sei Do Kai Guelph ON, Nanadan Iaido Renshi and Roukudan Jodo Renshi