[AndyColemants]

I guess I'll throw in my two cents here too.

I more or less hold the same opinions as KhawMengLee, though I don't know if I agree 100% with this statement that "kendo doesn't kill people, people kill people". Taken at face value, this is of course true. But if you dig deeper, I think really the objection raised by our grandparents is precisely the distinctly Japanese martial philosophy -- the whole a-bushi-is-ready-to-die-for-his-lord/kamikaze mindset -- that made that era so cruelly brutal. And it's true that this mindset is somewhat reflected in kendo philosophy. What I think they don't understand is that this easily (at least for me) transmutes into the argument that a certain percentage of that mentality is needed to really push oneself beyond one's perceived limits. It's that disregard for self (ego) that permits you to improve, in kendo and in all other walks of life.

Hong Kong was slightly better off during the period of Japanese occupation b/c it was under British rule. Still, my grandmother had to cut her hair and dress like a boy for obvious reasons. Walking near the bay, there would be headless bodies (and worse) from the Mainland floating out to sea...

It's hard to justify practising kendo in light of these things, but I make an honest attempt. What I get out of kendo -- lessons learned from perseverance, the mental gamesmanship, etc -- transcends cultural and historical boundaries. It might be true that you could very well learn these same lessons from Chinese martial arts, but then we get down to the question of personality. Even *within* Chinese wushu, someone's going to ask you why you choose to study shaolin instead of wing-chun, right?

Ultimately, the reasons for my choice are very personal. The straight-forwardness of kendo ("Keep center!" "Go forward!" "Zanshin!") resonates with aspects of my own character. It's straight-up. The cerebral me is fascinated with the seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy of reigi and the act of bashing someone's head in (that's another thread). And the quixotic me is happy to spend so much time learning something that is so practically useless.

Speaking along the lines of its impracticality: kendo is sufficiently divorced from its martial roots (the roots are more ancient), which -- I think -- makes it somewhat more palatable to my grandparents. Contrast kendo with jukendo (the crazy bayonet "art")... even I think that's a little extreme.

In the end, people have to be proactive about bridging cultures, especially when there's been a bloody history amongst them. My generation doesn't know the horrors of East Asia in the 1940-50s and as a result, it's senseless for us to continue intensely hostile sentiments. I sometimes run into very nationalistic people my age who point to that period in history as a reason for censuring all things Japanese (or British, b/c of the colonial rule - which incidently, I think ultimately brought a lot of good to HK). That kind of puts me off because these people usually hold such sentiments because they don't really understand their own culture and end up using this kind of extreme nationalism as a cover for their own cultural illiteracy.

As KhawMengLee said, we shouldn't forget history, but this is so we aren't doomed to repeat it...