A Brief History
The UCLA Kendo Club opened in Winter Quarter of 2002 under the head instruction of Masaharu Makino, 7th-Dan instructor from the Long Beach Kendo Dojo. The club received sponsorship from the UCLA East Asian Languages and Cultures Department through Dr. Asako Hayashi, a professor of Japanese Language. In its first year, the UCLA Kendo CLub established its board of officers and trained a team sent to represent UCLA at the 2004 Harvard-Radcliffe Intercollegiate Kendo Tournament. The tournament is currently the largest intercollegiate Kendo tournament in North America. In its debut in intercollegiate Kendo, UCLA Kendo faced schools such as Harvard, Yale and Cornell to win the team tournament and receive the prestigious Shoryuhai Trophy donated by former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. Since then, the UCLA Kendo Club has been three time national champions.
The UCLA Kendo Club was founded with the desire to introduce a unique life-long activity to UCLA students, providing them the opportunity to receive proper instruction, whether they wish to practice leisurely or to become avid competitors. The UCLA Kendo Club strives to practice and teach proper Kendo, balancing competitiveness and self-cultivation. Our club has grown significantly since being establish and has gained recognition as a top competitor in the growing collegiate Kendo community.
The UCLA Kendo Club currently consists of a committed group of roughly 40 participants ranging from undergraduate to faculty. The majority of members are new to Kendo, but the senior students and instructors have since been committed to introducing the fundamentals towards developing strong Kendo. While the club remains small in comparison to the UCLA community, the UCLA Kendo Club is always evolving and participating in any viable community events such as participating in demonstrations with other clubs.
As a community at UCLA, our purpose is oriented towards providing students opportunities to attain educational benefits as well as personal and social enrichment that derive from participation in extracurricular activities and stimulate on-campus discussion and debate on a variety of issues. As a competitive club, we participate in various tournaments, such as regional Southern California tournaments and intercollegiate tournaments such as the annual Harvard Shoryuhai tournament. In 2008, we hosted our first annual intercollegiate tournament titled "Yuhihai" (great leap), and will continue to host it every spring. With the support of our UCLA Recreation, SCKO, SCKF, teachers, officers, and members, the school years to come will prove to be very exciting.
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