Читать книгу Complete Kendo онлайн

30 страница из 41

Part of Kendo's development included the adoption of safety features. It was for this reason that fencing gloves and armor were introduced into practice, along with the widespread use of the shinai. The increased margin of safety in practice encouraged training in Kendo even by those who were not professional fighting men, and, by the mid-nineteenth century, a substantial number of Japanese, samurai and commoners, were engaged in what was known as shinai-geiko, or the type of training in which students used the shinai and protective armor.

During the nineteenth century, Japan entered the modern world with the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor Meiji. At the same time that the government felt driven to modernize Japan's economy and government, however, there was also a feeling that much that was good in Japanese culture and society needed to be preserved. The particular qualities of courage, loyalty, and discipline that were believed to be encouraged by training in arts such as Kendo were considered vitally important by officials of the Meiji government. As a result, beginning in 1871, traditionalists urged the Japanese Ministry of Education to make Kendo compulsory in all public and private schools in Japan.