The Hsu diaspora
At the 17th World Kendo Championship, which was held in Incheon, South Korea in 2018, Taiwan’s men’s team was coached by Hsu-clan acolyte Liu Yu-yuan and took third place in the team event, thus vaulting Taiwan back onto the World Kendo Championship leader board after a 12-year absence.
Liu Yu-yuan was 12 when he first met Hsu Heng-hsiung. The Liu family operated a wushu club, but young Yu-yuan was always slipping off to practice kendo. The thing about kendo that hooked him, he says, was its emphasis on cultivation of the spirit.
Liu has had many mentors, but Hsu Heng-hsiung was the one who influenced him the most.
A five-time member of the Taiwan national team at the World Kendo Championship, Liu feels his best performance ever was at the 1997 event in Kyoto, where he got into an overtime battle with Fumihiro Miyazaki. The video of that match is still getting views online today, and Liu received the Fighting Spirit Award that year.
Kendo trains both body and mind. It is a competitive sport, to be sure, but winning or losing is just a small part of the pursuit. The most important thing is the fencer’s state of mind, and his or her ability to withstand pressure. Hsu Heng-hsiung urged his students to forget about the pressure of competition and just seek to score a beautifully executed ippon strike.
Liu Yu-yuan, who continues to practice kendo today, says: “I want to keep alive Coach Hsu’s way of thinking, and his spirit.” In 2000, Liu opened his own dojo.
Using the standard okuri-ashi footwork, the fencers practice striking at the men (a face mask protecting the head and shoulders), the kote (gauntlets protecting the hands and forearms), and the dou (a breastplate protecting the torso). Coach Liu ceaselessly stresses the importance of footwork. He requires students to use all their strength in executing strikes, and to use energy (ki), sword (ken), and body (tai) as one. A kendo strike is lightning fast, but to achieve that sort of speed one must practice making hundreds of strikes every day until the action becomes a matter of muscle memory. Only then will a fencer perform in the same in competition as during practice. But this is far easier to understand than to execute. It is each person’s task to reach that level, and this is the real meaning of the Chinese characters hanging on the dojo wall: “You put in the practice, you reap the reward.”
The sounds of fencers shouting and bamboo swords slapping continue to reverberate in the dojo late into the night, but my attention is especially drawn to a skinny little fencer of elementary school age. Gripping a bamboo sword that’s almost longer than she is tall, she exudes a certain fearlessness as she practices her footwork and straight-on strikes against the face mask. She brings to mind something Coach Liu had said: “The thing we get from kendo that has the biggest impact is ‘authenticity.’ We do lots of things in life that require our most genuine effort.” The truth of many principles that apply in life, it turns out, can be corroborated in the practice of kendo. Indeed, we’ve seen them applied in Taiwan’s kendo community.
The ultimate goal in kendo is that magic moment—kikentai ichi—when energy, sword, and body are as one, and a perfect strike becomes possible. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
The ultimate goal in kendo is that magic moment—kikentai ichi—when energy, sword, and body are as one, and a perfect strike becomes possible. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Ritual is all-important in kendo, for it is a sport that trains both body and mind.
Ritual is all-important in kendo, for it is a sport that trains both body and mind.
Liu Yu-yuan requires students to use all their strength in executing strikes. Giving one’s all is the essence of sport.
As a torchbearer of the spirit of Hsu Heng-hsiung, Liu Yu-yuan (fourth from right) continues to act upon the spirit of kendo by cultivating the fencers of future national teams. His daughter Liu Chiajung (fourth from left) is a member of the national team. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
“You put in the practice, you reap the reward.” In kendo, authenticity is everything.