My astonishment turned to anger very soon after that, and I vowed never to let my students volunteer for that competition again if the girls were going to forced in to that job.Īs anyone who has lived in Japan for any amount of time knows, although there is push for change, this type of institutionalised sexism is the norm. Although the boys were working on the courts and watched lots of shiai I was *astounded* (to say the least) that the girls had been forced to work making and delivering tea to the (all male, all older) shinpan all day… they barely got to see any kendo. The next day in the dojo I of course chatted to the students about their experience and thoughts. On the day I watched from above and took pics, noting some of my students working on some of the courts. Being able to work on the courts and watch some of the top kenshi in Japan at close hand would be an amazing experience, so we were more than happy to help out. Not long after being ousted (= forced to resign) he again made the news for speaking badly about women, this time calling a politicians female aide “too old to be called a woman.”Ī number of years ago the local kendo association asked if they could use some of my students as “volunteers” for the upcoming Todofuken taikai. You probably heard/saw the news earlier this year pertaining to the olympics: the octogenarian head of Japan’s Olympic Organising Committee, the gaffe-prone ex-Prime Minister of Japan, Mori Yoshiro, stated his opposition to increasing women on the committee, his argument being that having more women would mean (because “they like to compete with each other” and therefore “will talk needlessly”) meetings would take longer. Obviously, by that time, I had already been living in Japan for waaaaay too long. To be honest, I was actually surprised that I said it myself. I slowly quaffed my beer and very deliberately said something like “unless something changes that will never happen.” Needless to say, coming from such an egalitarian society as Sweden, she looked shocked.
(Note that I added an UPDATE section at the end of the article)Ī number of years ago, while on a seminar in Edinburgh (actually, in the pub afterwards), a young female kenshi from Sweden asked me why there were no female kendo hachidan (they exist in iaido and jodo).