by Eduardo Brito
I was asked by our General Secretary to write about my participation in the World Kendo Championships, representing Portugal. I thought it was a little bit weird, to write about the WKC when I wasn’t able to go to this year’s WNC.
I thought about what I could write that could be interesting for the Naginata community and made this small article I am here sharing with you. I hope people enjoy it and that it might be useful for someone else.
Who am I?
My name is Eduardo Brito, I’m a Naginata 3Dan from Portugal, 38M, living close to Braga (in the North of Portugal, in the Continent). I started Naginata in 2011 and I’ve participated in international Naginata events since 2012, including all the ENCs and ENF seminars, all INF events in Europe, including the WNC in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2018, among other international events (NNR Spring Seminars, Inazuma Cup, Tokunaga Cup, Isabelle d’Hose Cup, and more). In 2023, for the first time, I was able to place 3rd at the ENC, after coming 2nd and 3rd place at the ENC’s goodwill tournament some times before.
You can find more about me and the history of the Portuguese Naginata association, APNagi, in this link: https://naginata-federation.eu/report-on-the-history-of-atarashii-naginata-in-portugal/
I do hope that, in the near future, the APNagi will be able to have more people being successful at international championships and other people can take over my place as a competitor.
Besides Naginata, I’ve been doing Kendo since 2010. I represented the Kendo National Team at the EKC in 2019 and 2023 and, in 2024, for the first time, at the WKC. I’ve also traveled a lot, especially before the pandemic, for Kendo seminars and taikai, including the “Foreign Leaders of Kendo seminar” in Japan (also known as the “Kitamoto seminar”). I’ve also represented Portugal twice at the EICs and EJCs when I was also doing Iaido and Jodo.
This is some of the experience I have in participating at European and World championships, in some of the forms of Budo I have practiced or am practicing. I will use this experience to talk about the WKC and what it felt like, for me, to be there.
Road to the World Kendo Championship: The Selection Process
The first thing I would note is that, despite Kendo and Naginata being somewhat similar in several ways, the volume of people trying out for the national teams and the process of being selected is completely different.
For me and many of my friends in Europe, the number of people practicing Naginata in most of our countries is so small that to be selected for the team you just need to meet the bare minimum criteria for the grade (3kyu for shiai) and have the money to travel and pay for the championship. This kyu grade requirement is also, in my opinion, very weird.
In Kendo, several people try out for the team, every year, many more than the ones allowed to participate in the championship. There are countries, like Japan, USA, Canada, among others, that have a multi-year selection process where people are expected to go to special practices and training camps almost monthly, sometimes more, and are being watched how well they perform in several championships and tournaments.
Even for Portugal, a country that is arguably much smaller than those powerhouses, we have a selection process that lasts almost 1 year, where people have to go to national practices every month and our performance at the national championships and tournaments is being assessed/evaluated. This can be intense but it also promotes a lot of camaraderie between us, the people trying out for the team.
So, besides having more people practicing with each other regularly, people need to have some extra dedication to be selected and go to the World Championships. This, of course, puts extra pressure on the people trying out for the team, also in terms of personal relationships, work, and finances.
While at the ENC/WNC we kind of expect to see the same people every time in the team, at the WKC we never know whom will we be meeting again in the delegations (not even the sensei! There are always different delegations coming to the championships). This is not to say that we won’t/don’t see a lot of friends from the past! At this WKC, I was able to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in 5+ years from, literally, across the world!
Kendo, at least for me, is still a place where you can find a lot of friends at every championship/tournament/event, mostly because you kinda have to be a Kendo Baka to even be there in the first place, so you’ll see a lot of people that are also kinda baka like yourself! Even in the audience, watching the championship, you see a lot of friends you’ve met over the years at several other events!
Which leads me to the next point.
Getting Ready for the Championships
Look, I don’t usually slack off during practice but still, to get ready for a World Championship, you really need to push yourself to a new limit, even if you are getting older and have more injuries.
Although I was trying out for the team, these last two years have been terrible for my mental health and my professional career. Work sometimes conflicted with my training so I had to sacrifice a lot of my free time with family and friends so that I could make everything somehow work. My wife, who is already used to this (to a certain extent) noticed, as well as most of my friends, that this preparation was more intense than previous championships I went to, including the past ENCs I attended.
After having been selected, I had to travel a LOT for extra practice. Not only for national practices, that was a given, but also for international events we went as a team, some other international events I went “solo”, and also going more to other dojos in Portugal for more practice whenever I could.
Even though you are practicing (and thinking about practice and shiai) most of the time, focusing on the championship, you still need to be aware that you can not get injured. The closer you get to the championship, the worse getting injured is. Unfortunately, one of our ladies had a full rupture to the Achilles tendon the day before we flew off to Milan, Italy… It is very complicated to manage the practice you have to do without getting injured seriously. The harder you practice, the easier it is to get seriously injured.
It’s not like this is all that much different from what I do for the European Naginata Championships, with the exception that there are much fewer Naginata dojos in Portugal than Kendo dojos, but everyone had this aura of seriousness to the championship that was quite unique.
Speaking of aura…
Being in Milan for the World Kendo Championships
Image: Me fighting against Yuya Takenouchi in the Team Matches.
Maybe people have seen this before but, as soon as you stepped in Milan, you were greeted by things like this:
World Kendo Championship 2024 – Milano
World Kendo Championship 2024 – Milano
You could be standing close to the Duomo and have Gucci nearby and you’d see posters on the side of the building, the full side of the building, with an ad for the WKC! Everywhere you went, there were posters and even videos running with the ads for the WKC. It was at the level of something like the Euro 2024 (football/soccer) or the like but with Kendo!
The WKC is 4 days full of Kendo, from morning to night. Essentially, there are two days for individuals and two days for team matches. What most teams do is: arrive some days before (we arrived two days before the championship), schedule some practices on those days, rest and talk with your teammates, and get used to the floor and to the sports hall itself, with people from all over the world doing Kendo, right by your side.
There is virtually no stop once you start. You are either watching the matches, doing the matches or warming up/practicing with your team. The only thing I did besides that was to help out with the ladies’ shinai check on the 3rd.
The amount of people at the WKC is also truly amazing. Many times, especially during the weekend, the bleachers were packed with people watching the championship (and not only competitors and their families and friends). I heard that there was something like close to 600 people competing/participating at the WKC.
The Gradings After the Championships Image: Opening Ceremony of the WKC. It was very early during a work day so the bleachers were empty but you can have a look at some of the delegations taking part and the amount of people that we were over there.
People going for the WKC take things very seriously. With all the time and money invested in preparation and then being there for more than 1 week, for many people it is their one and only chance they can afford to go to a world championship like this. It is the culmination of many years of trying out for the team, to be selected and to finally be able to show your best Kendo for a split second.
Speaking of attending the championship, there are a lot of shops attending the WKC but you barely have time to look at them. I was able to drop a pair of kote for repair, buy some items from my friends at Kirikaeshi and pick up a pair of Kote from 9circles. That was it. The shops are mostly there for the audience and not the competitors (unless you need an extra shinai at a moment’s notice!). At least, I couldn’t find much time to go to the shops. I also tried getting an official t-shirt from the event but I was told that all the 1000 t-shirts they had made for the WKC had been sold on the first day!
After the championship, there is the sayonara party. Personally, I find it quite refreshing that people actually have the sayonara party after all the competitions, being an actual sayonara. For me, it doesn’t make sense to have a sayonara party on Saturday evening and a competition or seminar on a Sunday (or having a seminar before the competition, too). When people have been practicing so much for an event where you are representing your own country, you should be there to give your best from start to finish. After everything is finished, yes, it makes sense for the sayonara party to exist and you can go and talk with all the new friends you made during the championship. I hope that in the future we can have people actually taking the time off for a championship and actually dedicate themselves to it like what we had in the WKC.
The Gradings After the Championships
After the championships, there were still grading exams. I tried out godan for my third time and I failed. It felt closer than ever before so I hope I will be able to pass it soon.
Gradings until 5th Dan are taken care of by the local organization, with a jury of several European 7Dan sensei. 6th and 7th Dan are done with Japanese 8Dan sensei in the jury, besides 7Dan from around the world, and it is the responsibility of the EKF.
Godan had a pass rate of about 25%. We were about 50 people, from what I remember. 6th Dan were about 80 and I think it was around 15 people that passed. 7th Dan I don’t remember well but I think it was less than 10% the pass rate.
Closing words
The WKC was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it again. Next WKC is going to be in 2027 in Japan, the same as the WNC from what I’ve heard.
There are still 3 years until the WNC and I, as responsible for the country, hope very much that we will be able to be accepted by the INF until then and take part in the next WNC. We have been increasing our numbers every year and we have hosted regularly national championships and other events.
No matter what, I do hope that I’ll be able to represent Portugal in 2027 in Japan. Whether I’ll be competing or acting as an official will depend on a lot of things but I do hope that Portugal will be at the WNC, with a full team of men and women, for the first time in the history of Portuguese Naginata.
Until then, I hope that we can have people, including our teams, taking part in the ENC (and other international competitions) with the preparation, dedication, and honor that events like this, where you are representing not only yourself but your country, truly deserve.