Seattle Branch, USA / Oct 2003 Contributor: Colin May

AKI MATSURI September 13, 2003

On September 13th, thirteen kenshi from the Seattle Branch participated in the Aki Matsuri ("fall festival") held in Bellevue, the town immediately to the east of Seattle. As a major point of trade on the Pacific Rim, the area around Seattle has a populous and vibrant Japanese community--vibrant enough to support two major Japanese community festivals every year, located within about 20 minutes' drive of each other. The Shorinji Kempo Seattle Branch performs demonstrations at each of these festivals.

Our goal was to introduce the thought behind Shorinji Kempo at the same time as showing the process by which technical skills are built up (tan-en, soutai and embu). To this end, we introduced Shorinji Kempo's founding and purpose while the group performed Chinkon-gyo meditation; demonstrated basic movements and Tenchiken Dai-ni; showed hokei for tsubame gaeshi, hangetsu gaeshi and uwauke nage performed by Sensei with a partner; presented embu; and finally demonstrated some appou for both combat and therapy.

A special congratulation goes to nikyuu kenshi Denys Klivak and Danny Norris. Danny attends practice regularly despite driving over an hour each way to and from the dojo; Denys, formerly of a Ukraine branch, only moved to Seattle and joined us in August. The two of them were given less than three weeks to create an embu using all of the techniques they will need for their ikkyuu examination. The result was excellent.

This Aki Matsuri demonstration had special meaning for our branch because it was the first demonstration presented under the guidance of our new branch master, Hiroshi Onaka. In spite of challenges such as short preparation time due to business trips by Onaka-sensei, and an unexpectedly carpeted demonstration space, the demonstration was well executed and well received. All of our kenshi are grateful to Onaka-sensei for his excellent instruction, and we are excited to continue learning and sharing Shorinji Kempo.

 

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