The Beginning

Kendo started in Finland over 20 years ago. A bunch of kyudoists organized the first introductory kendo camp in the city of Porvoo in November 1986 and invited a sensei from Germany to teach them. Not one person from this very first camp ever continued kendo for very long, but it set a spark for something, that burst into flames a little later in Helsinki, which is close to Porvoo.

A group of young teenagers started training at the Olympic stadium, using a borrowed corner of the local judo club's tatami. This was the birth of our oldest club, Helsinki Kendo Club Ki-Ken-Tai-Icchi.
By chance the Japanese military attaché at the Japanese Embassy in Helsinki was at that time Uematsu Daihachiro sensei, who held the 5th dan in kendo. Somehow he had learned of a bunch of kids training at the stadium and went for a visit. They must have been quite a sight, since sensei uttered the words, that have become a popular legend among Finnish kendoists: ”I think I can help you”. And so he did. As did many other wonderful senseis before and after him.

In the past 20 years many things have happened. Kendo has spread all the way to the northern part of Finland and we hold the unofficial record of having the most northern kendo club in the world in the city of Rovaniemi at the Polar Circle. The Finnish Kendo Association has 22 clubs as its members and the number is increasing. With around 700 members (in 2007) the FKA is not that small a kendo association (in European terms) anymore. Among the FKA's members are people training kendo, iaido and jodo.

The practice of kendo up North

The beginning for many a club has been this: a group of enthusiastic young people, who know absolutely nothing about what they are venturing into, meeting, forming a club and starting to beg bigger sports clubs or cities to give them a place to train. Samurai-movies at the cinema, an invasion of Japanese popular culture into Europe and hard PR work and time bring fluxes of beginners into the clubs. Some stay, most don’t. Sometimes a club official becomes tired, stops and kendo activity in a club comes to a halt. New beginnings for clubs are witnessed often with the appearance of a new generation that is willing to take up leading the club again. Beginners are many, sempais are few and really experienced kendoka are rarities.

Many clubs operate under the jurisdiction of larger sports clubs that feature many other disciplines. No club owns their own dojo and very few have the luxury of training always in one and the same place. Usually the halls are shared with cheerleaders, floorball-players and others, who sneer at the smell left behind after a hard day’s keiko. Most kendoka get their training hours from cities and municipalities, which means that they train in public schools’ sports halls owned by the city.

When asked, “who is in charge of your club?” Finnish kendokas do not name their sensei (we have not one, but many and they come to visit us, when they can), they instead name the person who negotiates their training hours with the city sports board, who does the bookkeeping for the club and who teaches beginners without being an actual teacher.

In kendo we have the luxury of naming many very highly skilled 6th, 7th and 8th dan from Japan when asked who our sensei is. For some years now, we have also had two of our own 6th dans. The beauty of it is, they do not limit their knowledge and hard work in kendo only to the benefit of their own club, they share it with all the 700 kendoka we have in Finland. Sharing could be named something that is very typical for Finnish kendo life. Maybe it’s due to the Finns’ protestant work ethic and sense of “kristillinen tasajako” (sharing equally according to Christian values), but the idea in this Association has for a long time been to make everything together, humbly, not raising one person above the other.

For iaido and jodo the dedication to certain senseis and their teachings is, of course, a different matter due to the different nature of the disciplines. Their senseis however also come from abroad and do not reside here permanently, so that the effect is the same. Teaching from senseis comes, when they are able to travel here. Other times it is the sempais’ responsibility to keep things up and running.

Challenges for Finnish kendoists

What one might come to notice is that one of the major challenges is making people stay with the discipline and continue practising. There is no weight of history, no pressure from parents or sense of tradition here up north when it comes to budo. People however have a sense for the foreign and the exotic. They are perhaps mostly drawn to budo because of it being “different” and because of people's interest in other cultures and cultural others. These can be great tools for filling up beginner's courses, but it is hard to build something lasting on impulses and whimsical actions. The truth remains, that you cannot develop, unless you exercise, sweat and get tired. You cannot become good, unless you dedicate yourself to something and are ready to sacrifice your spare time. This is what most people might find the most difficult part.

Kendo just celebrated it's 20th anniversary in Finland. The thanks for kendo making it through its first 20 years in Finland goes not only to all senseis (of course to them!), who have taught people over the years but also to all, who have taken up time to hang up advertisements, coach beginner's classes, get wrapped up in paper work, sit in endless meetings and wonder where all this is going to, travel abroad for further instruction in their discipline and spend most of their holidays practicing budo instead on lying on a beach somewhere.
Thanks to people's input we've seen a lot of positive developments: the gradual addition of iaido and jodo into the Association’s programme, an enormous increase in the amount of juniors starting out, the start of new clubs in new cities, development in the way things are organized nationwide and a more if not professional, then educated approach to instructing people in their everyday practice.