Arigató gozaimasu

26.9.2006

It´s a priviledge to me that my hand, that has been learning how to use the Japanese sword for nearly twenty years, has got an opportunity to write these lines. My mind isn´t concentrated to the enemy now, but is opening an essence to you, an essence of all what has been put in it by every meeting, learning new culture, hit of the shinai.

Let´s get back to the break of the years of 1984 to 1985.
I´m standing in front of the Japanese embassy, having various feelings in my head. I´m raising my hand and my thumb is pulling the bell button...
An endless while of silence is coming, then I´m opening the door and entering the unknown uncertainly. Yes, I´d like to express the deep silence so much, but how could I?Perhaps as a lull before a storm, a stagnant water surface, a result of a one hand clap, an astonishment at the sunrise or the atmosphere in the zen garden. By this silence I´d like to honour my teacher deeply, Mister Toru Giga.
I had to wait by June 5th, 1986 to meet this man.
That time, when I forced my way into the dressing room of the Japanese teachers who had just finished their first public exhibition of kendo in former CSSR, I could see a likable Japanese man of forty who was following the masters of the sword. I had no idea that moment how deeply they penetrate to my life and to the lives of all of us.
It´s October 9th, 1986.
A wine-red coloured Audi is bringing our first teacher, Mister Toru Giga and his wife Sumiko. A historic event is coming in a while. The first official training of kendo.
An unexpected end of it is coming after the first ten minutes.

Our teacher has just broken his Achilles´tendon.
Our hopes start dwindling away.
However, we didn´t give it up and neither did Mister Giga.
Thanks to the understanding from the side of the Japanese embassy that gave a chance to its worker to go on even if the beginning was different from all of us wished to be, Mister Giga is coming back to widely open the door to the world of kendo to us. To the world of learning new culture but also a world of learning oneself.
We still bow down to his everlasting message in the dojo left for us in the form of the symbols expressing the characters which every kendoist should keep in their mind, not only in the dojo.
These are: seishin (a strong spirit), nintai (patience), reisetsu (respect, politeness).
Mister Toru Giga is no longer with us. I couldn´t cope with the sad news of his death for a long time. I received it together with his congratulations for my birthday which this first teacher of mine, a unique man, sent me from his holiday in Hawai.
However, the truth was cruel and I had a feeling that time that also a part of me has left this world.
Since that while I´ve started to realize the meaning of a word " passing nature" much more deeply and I´ve started to ask myself many questions that had never come to my mind before.
For example: Who is my sensei actually?
In the past twenty years I was having many opportunities to learn many opinions and practise under a leading of many Japanese teachers. Mister Toru Giga has opened me a way to Mister Akira Kubo who invited me to Japan for the first time.
Thanks to him I met Mister Yasumichi Ogino sensei and a deep friendship came into being.
Many teachers devoted their time to me and provided their bodies to my hits, by means of them I was expected to learn something and ... to spread it.

However, everything would have been different if Mister Toru Giga had decided differently in the year of 1986.
Thanks to this positive decision he made, there will stay forever what he helped to create. Every cross of the swords will represent making friends, every hit of the shinai will be the opportunity to make you and your opponent perfect. Every kendo meeting will enable those ones who have never held the sword in their hands or who will never hold it to understand more of the culture of Japan. To see the world through the prism of martial arts will help to eliminate various prejudices, fears, illusions and disillusions, I hope.

In the lapse of time I can realize how many times I have said "thank you" - arigato gozaimasu- thanks to kendo, in fact to Mister Giga. The last sequence of the film that I have been shooting more than twenty years in my mind is running in front of my eyes.

I can see the faces of my teachers, I can see the students, children, Japanese policemen and also men older than seventy.Their faces are hidden behind the steel guard of the kendo helmet. Nevertheless, their hearts are speaking clearly by means of the bamboo swords.
Imaginarilly I´m taking off this helmet and making a deep bow to everybody who have crossed their swords with mine. I´m looking into their sweat-stained faces again and again sayig the words that represent a part of the way of kendo.
Thank you - arigato gozaimasu.

And with this word I would like to conclude my memory of my teacher, Mister Toru Giga who opened the way of notion to me and to everybody from the Czech Republic. We have already been following this way for twenty years. Before his leave I couldn´t realize myself that I had been following his example for a long long time with no opportunity to cross our swords. He was showing me how to live my own life. With his life and acts he fulfilled the words we could hear from the mouth of M. Sonoda sensei after the performance in June 1986 - " kendo is the life, the life has been growing up, and so has kendo.
"The end", this is what we can see when the film is finished.
I decided to use the word THANK YOU ARIGATO GOZAIMASU.

I thank Mister Toru Giga and his wife Sumiko Giga.

I thank everybody who have crossed their swords with mine and also those ones who were listening to me in my lectures.

I thank everybody who have helped or who tried to help the Czech kendo but nobody couldn´t have learned about their help.

THANK YOU --- DOMO ARIGATO GOZAIMASHITA.

Vladimír Hotovec
The former president of the former Czechomoravian Kendo Association