The concept of Seme, and inspiration
So the next memorable session I had was one where we focused on the concept of “seme”, which you can think of as the presence/pressure you exert on your opponent to force them to act in a way favourable to you. I’ll go over the interpretations of this in a little bit.
So at the kendo club I go to, we have sessions on a few times a week (Mon, Wed and Sun for all levels, Fri for more advanced), and at this point I was only going to the Monday session. I wasn’t really super invested in kendo at this point. I’d made a few friends, and I was enjoying it, but I was still not quite at the level where I was willing to make a greater time commitment - at this point it was more about having fun. At this point all we had as beginners was a shinai and a bokuto, no armour or even hakama and gi! It’s a little weird to think about it now!
But anyway, we would split the Monday group into Bogu (armour) and non-bogu, which at this point was equivalent to the more experienced members, and the beginners, respectively. Depending on the week, we would either be lead by the sensei while one of the senpais lead the bogi session, or vice versa. The senpai we had was really nice (she was the women’s captain), but as is usually the case, the people who are the best at something are those who can explain it best, and so I really enjoyed training with the sensei. He always watched all of us intently to correct mistakes we made, and he would typically explain things in a very inspirational or interesting way.
This brings me to the session where we were being trained by him, and instead of focusing on men cuts or footwork, this section was about one of the (arguably) more spiritual aspects of kendo - seme. So, kendo is a deeply spiritual martial art, and is focused quite heavily in improving oneself, as well as just getting better at kendo. Seme was described to us as the presence you exert on your opponent in order to control their mind, and make them attack when they think they’re ready, but actually you’re ready, and then you strike! Practically, I can understand this; the ability to read you opponent and feint them, sort of controlling their actions, but not necessarily equivalent to mind control.
Anyway, the sensei was quite keen on talking about how kendo blends into your everyday life and helps you become better as a person, and so in addition to the combat aspect of seme, he talked about confidence.The “presence” that you exert on your opponent, he thought that he big part of it is confidence. He said that seme is “being able to give a presentation, and being confident that you can give a great presentation, and if someone asks you a question, you can give a great answer”. Something about this really resonated with me. I think this was the point at which I started getting a little more serious about kendo, the point at which it started to blend into my life.
I actually had to give a presentation a few days later, and I was trying to channel my seme!
