Freshly sore from boarding, I headed to Suidobashi for the instructors' seminar led by Niina-gosoke. At least Suidobashi is well air-conditioned. Too well, it turns out, as it soon became very hot after Niina-gosoke had us run through a couple hundred cuts for warm-up.
He then ran us through all twenty kata, picking out the specific points we have to be careful of ourselves when we teach.
Finally he took us through the okuden and naiden advanced kata, which I can still barely remember let alone do correctly.
He ended by decreeing that all members over 3dan are to wear a second; either a wakizashi (short sword), tanto (dagger), sensu (fan), or my personal favorite tessen (steel fan.) He explained that wearing two swords was the privilege of samurai, whereas yakuza and other criminals wore one sword. Back when iai started to become popular, and incidentally starting losing touch with its original effective intentions, practitioners stopped wearing a second because it was in the way.
But as we practice a traditional samurai art, and we are not yakuza, we will wear a second, so as to not lose touch of our origins.
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