art of Kendo - Interview with sensei

"It's supposed to be hard; if it wasn't, everyone would do it.
The hard is what makes it great"
~ Tom Hanks in "A League of Their Own"

Part (I) - Taro Ariga Sensei, CEO of e-bogu.com
It is my pleasure to have the opportunity of being able to conduct a short interview with the CEO and founder of e-bogu.com, Taro Ariga sensei.  For most of the kenshi, regardless where they buy shinais and bogus from, e-bogu.com has been a well-known brand name in kendo world.  Ariga sensei has traveled and practiced in many different countries; he experienced the needs of having high quality kendo equipments available to kenshi not living in Japan, so he utilized his IT expertise and founded e-bogu.com, the online kendo as well as other martial arts store.  

Q: Sensei, we know you started practicing kendo in 1975 when you were only an 8-year-old boy, how did you start it?

A: I was at that time living in Sao Paulo Brazil, because of my father's job.  As you probably know, Brazil has the largest population of Japanese community, outside of Japan.  As a result Brazil has been in the past, one of the strongest countries in the World.  They have placed second place twice in the WKC.  My uncle, who is currently the vice-president of the AUSKF, was on the Canadian team at that time, and in one of the WKC, he happened to play against a Brazilian player, who came to visit our home in Sao Paulo, and invited me to start kendo.  My father thought that was a great idea, and took me to a Dojo near our house, where I practiced until I was 17, when I moved to Canada.

Q: Have you seriously tried other martial arts of sports? Are you always keeping the same level of passion about kendo?

A: During Middle and High School, I played volleyball, for the school varsity.  To be honest, in high school (in Sao Paulo) I was representing the city of greater Sao Paulo, which made me shift most of my time into volleyball for about 2 years.  I played volleyball everyday, and kendo 3 times a week.  However, kendo practices were after the volleyball practices, so I would be very tired to do kendo.  However, my parents forced me to do kendo, and doing kendo was the condition to keep up with volleyball.

Q: We often hear from senseis that doing kendo will polish our human character, it might be a little hard to understand for most of the beginners, could you elaborate this a bit?

A: I think the way you do kendo really resembles your character.

Q: How we see things always change with age, could you describe how you see kendo in different stages of life?

A: I used to be very competitive when I was younger.  I hated losing at a tournament.  Because of that, I won basically all categories from the Brazilian Junior Championships up to the Canadian National Championships.  However nowadays, I see kendo in a different perspective.  It is not just a matter of winning or losing.  I can win a tournament, but if I could not do the type of kendo that I aim for, then I would be very upset.  On the other hand, if I did the kendo that I am satisfied with, I can really bow to the opponent and say "Arigatougozaimashita" (thank you very much) from deep inside my heart.

Click here for more information about Targo Ariga sensei's bio.

More Kendo Articles
Many excellent articles regarding the art of kendo are available on the Internet, here are few:
The purpose of practicing kendo (All Japan Kendo Federation)

KENDO- Samurai of Southern California (archive from Black Belt magazine)

Kendo Reference (Southern California Kendo Federation)

Art of Kendo? (A concise yet complete kendo page in Shidokan Web site)