What is Iaido?
by Charles Ham

Sword fighting in Japan developed during centuries of warfare, and was refined in duels and assassinations during two centuries of uneasy peace. Consequently there were many schools or styles of using the nihonto, the Japanese sword. The surviving schools of sword fighting are known as ryuha (styles, schools, or factions) of kendo, kenjutsu, iaido, iaijutsu or battojutsu. Kendo, as organized by the All Japan Kendo Federation (a.k.a. the ZNKR), is the largest of the Japanese sword arts. Here at Eastern, we are lucky to be able to study a classical ryuha of iaido in addition to kendo. What separates kendo from iaido is the main method of learning. In iaido, the main method of learning how to handle a sword is through doing kata. In Japanese kata means form, pattern or mold. In martial arts, a kata is set series of movements that take the student through a hypothetical encounter. By practicing kata, the student internalizes the correct movements and uses of the sword.

Most iaido kata consist of four sections; the student draws the sword from the sheath, counters the opponents attack and counter attacks, swings the sword in a controlled arch to remove most of the gore from the opponent, and sheaths the blade. Generally, the first two sections of the kata blend into one movement as the sword leaves the sheath and goes right into the imaginary opponent. For this reason many people describe iaido as the art of the quick draw. Iaido kata should be done with a real sword, but many use an iaito, an unsharpened sword. Beginners will often start with bokken (wooden swords) and two men exercise designed to teach timing and distancing are also done with bokken. However, the ideal is to handle the real weapon as often as possible. Kendo has kata and drills as part of its curriculum but the main emphasis is on free sparing with safety equipment. Because of the emphasis, many techniques have also been modified for safety. Even the kata is normally done with bokken, not with real swords. For this reason, few people in kendo regularly handle real swords. Because of this, many kendo sensei worried that kendo, the way of the sword, was loosing touch with its roots and becoming shinaido, the way of the bamboo safety weapon. In the late 1960s the ZNKR formed a committee on iaido. This committee devised a kata based on techniques from several traditional schools of iaido. Its purpose was to act as an introduction to the fundamentals of iaido, and now the ZNKR encourages all its members to learn at least this one kata, which is commonly known as Seitei kata or Seitei Iai. Since the All Japan Kendo Federation is so large and provides a huge pool of potential students, many iaido ryuha now teach Seitei as part of their curriculum. Many other ryuha do not teach Seitei Iai for a variety of reasons.

Muso Shinden Ryu (MSR), the style we practice here at the Eastern Kendo Club, does use Seitei Iai as an introductory kata. In fact many members of the ZNKR iaido committee were also MSR sensei. We who practice MSR are a smaller part of the club, but we feel that this is a symbiotic relationship we have with kendo. Kendo and iaido may appear to be very different martial arts, but in reality they are very complimentary. The tendencies of kendo to emphasize its sport aspect are balanced by the reality of wielding an inflexible curved piece of metal (my favorite comment during free sparring is "Lets see you do that with a shinken"). Iaido has also become the main method in modern kendo for transmitting traditional etiquette involved with the use of the sword (e.g. how to actually wear the sword). Like the ZNKR sensei of the sixties had hoped, practice with a real sword does help one realize that kendo is first and foremost a martial art not a sport. Kendo also allows people who do iaido to use techniques in a "real" situation against a real person. Since kendo makes sword fighting safe, students of kendo can experiment with timing, distancing, feints and focus much easier than in iaido.

Another of the benefits of studying iaido is that iaido, with its older traditional schools, tends to conserve techniques that may other wise have been lost. The kata are great gold mines of techniques now illegal or impractical in a kendo matches. Iaido gives us a glimpse at the way one may have fought centuries ago. My own personal favorite is a kata that teaches one how to knock an opponent down and step on his clothing so that the opponent is pinned but the defenders hands are free to handle the sword.