Kendo/iaido photos

[Andrei Arefiev]

To help out some of my friends in decorating their dojo's front hall, I'm looking for a few (4-6) photos of kendo and/or iaido that could be printed out in large (A4 or letter-sized) format with decent quality, and which their owners wouldn't mind sharing (there will be one copy and they won't be used for any commercial purposes).

Also, for myself, I'm looking for a decent, but not necessarily high-quality or big resolution picture of a Muso Shinden-ryu noto that I want to put on my website along with a picture of a Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu noto for comparison.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,

[Joseph Svinth]

In the 1913 edition of EJ Harrison's "Fighting Spirit of Japan," there is a very nice photo of a pre-WWI Japanese kendo dojo. Find a copy of that, and you can scan at as high a resolution as you like. There are also some nice photos of the Kodansha dojo during the 1930s in Arthur Grix's "Japans Sport in Wort und Bilder." Both may be available in some university library.

Places to look for stock photos include:

http://pro.corbis.com/search/search.asp

http://oldphoto.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/unive/ctr.asp (Warning: Some of the late 19th century photos of "samurai" were staged by photographers who didn’t have a clue.)

Newsreel footage of kendo between 1930 and 1950 is also available from http://www.britishpathe.com

Finally, if you are interested in jpegs of Nisei kendoka in the Pacific NW before WWII, send me an e-mail address that accepts large attachments, and I'll send you some. Nobody famous, and no action shots, though, just posed images of Nisei teenagers in bogu with shinai.

[Andrei Arefiev]

Mr. Svinth,

Thanks a lot for the links! I will check the library for the books you mentioned. And thanks in particular for the britishpathe link: I have a few of those videos downloaded, but couldn't find the link again when I wanted to forward it to a friend.

Could you please send me a couple of those Nisei photos to the following address: andrew_a at abbyy.com,-- so that I could show them to my friends? It might actually be best that they show teenager kendoka, as the dojo they are intended for is in a public school gym, and recently they had to get rid of the drawings they had there (of samurai, ninja and the like), forced by the school administration. Such photos as you mention should be more acceptable.

Thanks again.

[Joseph Svinth]

Two pictures sent. I have more, but those are indicative. Let me know if you want more, or something different.

[Andrei Arefiev]

Originally posted by Joseph Svinth
Two pictures sent. I have more, but those are indicative. Let me know if you want more, or something different.

Mr. Svinth,

Thanks for the photos. They got filtered (but, fortunately, not deleted) by my anti-spam program (it often does this with "new" senders), and I only found them now.

I will show them to my friends and will let you know if they want more. But I like them and will probably put them somewhere myself if they don't.

Best regards,