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Too Bad. My apologies again. Although I did not say "Spirit is the most important thing for beginners"... I sort of lead everyone into this misunderstanding. Now let me clarify:-

Confound ::: "Spirit doesn't get you a point in a match"
Ippon=(Ki+Ken+Tai)+Zanshin
First of all, by "Spirit" I do not mean crazy Kiai. In a match in order to score, Kiai merely means that "Men~" shout when your sword and body arrive. Yes, Kiai-ing after Sonkyo does not score. But if you forgot your Kiai when you've actually delivered your clean cut with the correct footwork... Oops! So the Kiai part, afterall bears 25% of that Ippon.

Maybe the term "Spirit" is far too ambiguous for this situation. And at the moment we're all taking it differently. I'm an atheist and I do not believe I've a soul, but in Kendo there is this thing called spirit in me. "Never give up" is one example. Memory flashback: first time in armour... obviously I wasn't trying any waza/didn't know any. And all the seniors made me do tons of Uchikomi, keep getting hits on my Men... and at the end of that class they made me do 8 Kirikaeshi (most of those are kiai-less, and Sensei was shouting "BIGGER!! BIGGER!!" all the way). Comment from Sensei, "Nice spirit Jenny!".

Same comment when I was being pushed to the walls, or shoved to the floor. Bad spirit for those lie dead on the floor. Good spirit for those who fight back.

It's also part of sportsmanship. You must have heard tennis players' Kiai. You must have seen them playing properly even the know they're losing. When you start, you were taught by the seniors to do proper footwork, do Suburi, do waza etc. But Kiai is something they won't really need to teach. It's already in you. Wherther or not you choose to show it by shouting louder/longer/more depends on you. In other Martial Arts there is something called "The Slient Kiai"... Maybe that refers to Seme. Say Taichi, Aikido and some Kenjitsu. Spirit is strong in them but you cannot hear it.

Spirit is not aggression. I guess it's just a wrong wording. Aggression sometimes does not mean brute force. You're holding a sword and being agressive will not do any good. In Kendo, do the goddamn cut! It's the eagerness to put the tip section of your shinai on top of the targets. And if the sword is real, it would have been the desire to slice the enemy up. At its root, that would be called "aggression". Now most of the time when I think I got a good cut I would laugh, not because I'm an aggressive psychopath who enjoy chopping people in half, but just too happy. (Luckily laughing inside the Men is fairly unrecognizable... otherwise it does look like psychopath)

It's 2.30am now and the muscle pain is coming up... My brain is not functioning properly, and I guess my fingers are out of control. Sometimes I think engaging in this kind of discussion can be quite addictive... Anyway I hope I've explained well enough.

P.S. Antonin::: "in the last competition i have been at (the Bowden Memorial Taikai in the Uk), there werea lot of agression, or "spirit" if you prefer the term, around from some people, runing around like headless chickens, and hitting people without concept of kamae, zanshin, mae or tenuchi."
Errr.... was that me??