New Approach For A Sword Club Meeting J.c.c.c. Token Kai Toronto Ontario

[b.hennick]

Our club today had a different type of presentation. The usual speaker talks, audience listens - perhaps ask questions. This gets to be quite boring.

As a retired teacher, the urge to give a good hands-on lesson is still strong. Here is what we did. The first part of our handout follows.

Task 1

You have 4 Koto katana/tachi laid out for your examination. You are to look at all of them and then decide which is the best sword. If you cannot determine which is the best then which is your favourite. Rate that sword #1, rate your second best as #2 and least favourite or worst #4.

Task 2

Think about the best/your favourite and write down three reasons why it is the best.

For your least favourite, three reasons why it is the least favourite.

Task 3

We will divide up into groups to discuss your #1 sword and your #4 sword. One member of the group will present a summary of your discussion to the group.

 

Here is what happened:

People were enthusiastic to see good papered, reasonably well-polished blades. Two of the four blades were selected by all as favourites. The members were divided into two groups based on their favourite. They discussed the blade and one or two members reported to the rest on their thoughts. I then told the group who made the blade and things that might be noticed about that particular sword. This was repeated by the second group and then I told people about the two blades that were not selected.

 

Those swords were put away and a second set of five blades were set out for a repeat of the process. The owner, my partner in the presentation told the group about his blades.

 

The members enjoyed the hands-on nature of the meeting and being able to express their views.

There were no right or wrong answers in this approach. Some were very surprised to learn who made the blades that they did not select.

 

If you decide to try this at your meeting, please let me know how it works for you.

 

[Vermithrax16]

Barry,

This sounds interactive and thought driving as a process. You are a retired teacher and I am a scientist, so I think we can both appreciate what can be learned when people think out loud without pressure. I really hope this catches on and somehow a New England meeting happens.

[b.hennick]

Hi:

I taught science in high school.

[Vermithrax16]

Hi:

I taught science in high school.

All the better!

 

I was bound for a railroad trackman job (in the steps of my father) until a High School Biological Sciences teacher I had freshman year changed my life.

[Brian]

Love it!
Wish we had enough collectors here to be able to do similar. Great approach to discussion.

[paulb]

Barry

Every time I read your meeting posts I always find myself wishing I could attend. I have already attempted to use the alternative kantei approach you had mentioned previously and I would very much like to try something like this as well.

One of the slides I used in a presentation last years says

"Not liking a piece doesn't make it a bad sword. Liking it doesn't necessarily mean its good!"

The border between quality and personal preference can get very muddy. I wonder in your exercise how that worked out?

Thanks once again for the innovation I will certainly give this a go when I get the chance.

 

BTW cant join in the science love in as a very poor chemist who went to the dark side of sales, marketing and general management very early to hide my technical ineptitude!!

[b.hennick]

Hi Paul:

One of member told me that for the first round he was very technical in his examination. In the second round he found that he was going with his gut. I would point out that all the blades were mumei, all papered and in reasonable to very good polish. People could look at the tang.  In the first round both first choice blades were ubu. In the second round at least one, first choice blades was suriage. I'm not sure of the second one.

People were chatting so much about the blades in the first round that I had to break up the conversations so that we could get to the second round in a timely manner.

[b.hennick]

Other more member focussed meetings include:

1. doing tang oshigata (I provided, instruction, tools, paper and in some cases blades)

2. drawing the kissaki and boshi of a blade (I provided, instruction, tools, paper and in some cases blades)

3. kantei to determine era, School and smith

4. kantei for quality

5. I did a presentation on a sword data sheet, with the hope that members would do a sheet for each of their blades and then do a presentation on a blade. I got little response on offers to present a blade and data sheet.

 

Mike Yamazaki has often done presentations on fittings at shows where groups people worked cooperatively to determine whether or not a piece would paper and at what level. In the end, Mike would discuss each of the five pieces each team considered.

 

Please include what presentations you or your club members have done of this type.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Barry, I brought in several swords from the same school, & had the newer people in our club try to identify school, jidai, & whether they were papered.

 

Interestingly, no one was able to figure that they were all Bizen, or that all five blades were papered, but they did pretty well on jidai (Kamakura tanto to Shinshinto katana).

[b.hennick]

Hi Ken:

Did you have individual or group efforts? I found that groups efforts are better learning experiences. More experienced people can explain their reasoning. Beginners can ask questions to learn more. It makes people think about specific things. For Bizento I would expect to see utsuri, koshi zori etc. 

I also like smaller groups with each group giving a report to the larger group. 4-6 works well. You need at least one experienced person in the group. 

[Ken-Hawaii]

We have four "sensei," who have many years of experience, myself & one other guy in the middle, & the other 25 or so have little or no practical experience with kantei, Barry.

 

The room we rent for meetings is too small to break down the larger group very far, & it was a well-attended meeting, with guests, so there was a lot of milling around. I agree that we should have had smaller groups, but it wasn't practical. The big group self-organized around two spokespeople, who communicated their questions, & that worked pretty well. After about 30 minutes, I asked them to summarize what they had found, & then our sensei (one of whom used to be on a shinsa team) explained what they should have found (nie-deki in older blades, choji, mokume hada, etc.). All of my blades except one are suriage, so hard to judge sori, & no one caught the utsuri on two of them.

 

Everyone said they enjoyed that meeting, & I'm planning to do another one based around yoroi-doshi, & hopefully with smaller groups.

[John A Stuart]

One thing that is important, to me at least, is comfort and relaxation. Oftentimes I have found kantei when with important figures in the nihonto world very stressful and I don't want to lose face by a really bad call. I have even sweated with the pressure. Making it a relaxed friendly non-competitive process would go a long way, the freedom to be nonjudgementally wrong. John

[Ken-Hawaii]

I agree, but also want to make it a learning experience, rather than having them just look, without even trying to SEE anything.

[Jussi Ekholm]

I would have guessed your teaching background from the way the session was held. Funnily enough month or two ago we had quite similar session at school but that focused on group dynamics and how well we worked with other people as the subject was totally different. Activating participants is great and you have to dive in and learn in different way so it is also motivating, or at least I think so.

[Ken-Hawaii]

My sword mentor's mantra is, "What do you SEE?!" & he's absolutely right. Until I could retrain my brain to really look at a blade, I got nothing out of it. I also learned how hard it is to get other people to SEE.

[SAS]

My sword mentor's mantra is, "What do you SEE?!" & he's absolutely right. Until I could retrain my brain to really look at a blade, I got nothing out of it. I also learned how hard it is to get other people to SEE.

 

And that is the difference between craftsmen and hacks.