I am told that somewhere along the way our style was changed to reflect a more combat oriented format.
Take a second to think about just how strange that sounds.
Are you saying that someone took a
koryu kenjutsu style like the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto ryu or one of the Itto ryu factions in Japan that was founded by men who
killed people with swords and used by others to
kill trained swordsmen and then made it more combat oriented
without getting into real combat with a sword themselves?
Or are you saying that someone actually did get into sword combat and that is where these changes come from?
It is like when I asked about Phil Elmore's combat experience over his book on the sword. Nothing other than a life and death encounter has the same feel as the real thing. You
can't know with any great certainty that what you do will work when parts of your brain take over from your normal mind and massive amounts of chemicals dump into your system.
So how would you even know that what you do has merit- unless you have had to face someone with your sword?
If by having merit you mean that you have fun with it, ok. There are people that play Live Action Role Playing games that also can say the same thing.
But if you are going to talk about swordsmanship
as if what you do is Japanese related- you had best have a link to Japan. And if you want to talk about what you do
as if it was the same as an art bathed in blood, you had best be sure that this is the case.
If you just want to have fun, then admit it and know your limitations.
. MT's a bit different than the Planet but I think you'll like it here.
