The purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristics of kendo matches by junior high school players. The Kanto Junior High School Kendo Championships were recorded with a video camera to depict locomotion traces of players using the DLT method. Intervals between two competitors (ma-ai)during a match were also calculated with their locomotory floor patterns to see how these intervals changed. This was because an adequate interval is one of the essential conditions for expertise in kendo.
The results of this study are summarized as follow.
1) The travel distance of a junior high school player during a match was longer than that of a senior skilled player. A female player tended to travel farther than a male player.
2) The velocity of a player varied second by second. The occurrence percentage of a velocity of 1 m/sec or less was 53.6% for males and 59.1% for females. Therefore, quite a long part of a matchby young playerswas occupied by high-velocity movement.
3) Competing players positioned at the central part of the court for relatively long periods. This tendency was more conspicuous for males (73.8%) than for females (65.3%).
4) The occurrence percentage of short ma-ai (2.5 m or less) and intermediate ma-ai (2.5-3.5 m) during a match were 65.0% and 19.7% respectively, for males and 58.6% and 27.2% respectively, for females. The above-mentioned results suggest that physical-fitness factors are more dominant than technical factors for young players, whereas technical suggest factors are more influential for skilled players.

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Nowadays the number of the young people practicing kendo is remarkably decreasing.
We made a nation-wide survey and collected 11846 answers to grasp the factor and suggest the countermeasures possible.
Followings are the results and the suggestions.
1. The youth acknowledge the value of the traditional part of kendo, and we should reviewing the Dan examination, and clarifying the judgment of the valid strike, and clarify cultural characteristics which is accepted everywhere in the world.
And it is necessary for the people who continue to practice kendo to establish the teaching method to realize they are making progress.
2. The people who gave up practicing kendo acknowledge the tradition of kendo, but they consider it as a kind of sport.
We should investigate the cause why the students gave up practicing kendo.
3. We should review the kendo class as soon as possible.
Those who have teaching experiences are likely to lose willingness for practicing kendo.
4, We should assure their safety and relax their uneasiness and pain for amateur kendo-ka.
We should think out how to teach the pleasure of practicing kendo.

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There seems to exist a prejudice, among the Japanese people, especially those who are not familiar with the history of European style of fencing, that it is too defensive or technical aspect of the fencing is too much emphasized when compared with the offensive Japanese Kendo in which the traditional straight downward cut, for example, the “Kiri-otoshi” or “Hitotsu-gachi” in Itto-ryu school has been respected. It may partly be because of the difference in their fighting styles. Meanwhile, it is an undeniable fact that the term “fencing” derives from “defencing” by losing its suffix “de”, and the French word, “escrime”, which corresponds to the English fencing, comes from the Frankish “skirmjan” meaning defence through “escremie” or “eskermie”.
Originally, of course, fencing was really based on the fight of life or death and it is not so deffensive as we Japanese generally suppose. Even after the World war II (in 1958 & 19687), duels with a real sword were fought. They have pursued this art of fencing very seriously.
But historically speaking, as Egerton Castle pronounced in his School and Masters of fence, 'Paradoxical as it seems, the development of the “Art of Fence” was the result of the invention of firearms. Its history need not therefore be taken up higher than the fifteenth century.' We may safely say that modern fencing marked its first step is fencing history in the 15th century with the invention of firearms and has developped technically as the weight of the sword deminished. It was not until the latter half of the 17th century that core techniques in modern fencing, such as <parade-riposte> in two times or <on guare position> closing the line of attack, etc. appeared.
In this study the authors tried to clarify the characteristic features in styles of four representative masters of fence in the 16th century Italy where systematic teaching of fencing first appeared and the theories of fencing masters were published in printed treatices. Their names are Achille Marozzo, Camillo Agrippa, Giacomo di Grassi and Angelo Viggiani.

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[in Japanese]

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To find out effective measures for diagnosis of basic physical fitness of College Judoists,29 measures validated to measure 11 ability domains extracted as factors were chosen through examining 52 items by the factor analytic procedure in former studies.
The following question, however, remained; whether the easier and more practical procedure can be devised, because measures are still trouble some and time consuming to administer.
(1) Ten items were chosen; stature, body weight, back strength, shoulder-arm pulling strength, side step, vertical jump,400 meter run, trunk extension, dynamic balance, percent body fat, from each ability domain extracted as factor in former study: body linearity, body bulk, static strength, agility, explosive strength, consecutive exertion of power, flexibility, balance and body composition.
(2) The item validity was evaluated by the correlation of each item chosen with the ability domain score computed by the mean of standard scores of items involved in each of 10 ability domains except speed domain.
The results were; body linearity (0.955), body bulk (0.968), static strength (0.822), agility (0.872), flexibility (0.717), explosive strength and speeds (0.876), body balance (0.639).
It remains to further examine the validity from different point of view, how the basic physical fitness estimated by using 10 items and the actual competition records of individuals are connected.

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