For the Carls who were tired of the Valentine’s Day cuddliness and ready for more serious action, last weekend’s Martial Arts Expo was just the ticket. Onlookers could escape the rampant PDA in Sayles and check out their peers kicking, punching, and whacking each other with wooden sticks — without actually hurting each other, of course. It looks way more painful than it actually is.
Carleton is home to a wide variety of martial arts groups, from the ubiquitous karate and the lesser known naginata. At the expo, the best students from each of the group showed off their chops for the entire campus. A member of the Tae Kwon Do club performed her moves to music. The karate students went through their forms with grace and style.
Members of the aikido club and the kendo club took two very different approaches to sparring, the part of martial arts where practitioners actually square off against each other. Less threatening, aikido is known as “the way of harmony.” It is a technique that was once taught to samurai to help them use their opponents’ attacks to their own advantage. Students “roll with the punches” literally, following the momentum of a blow and rolling to their feet to be ready for another attack. The sparring resembled a dance more than it did actual fighting.
The emphasis of kendo, on the other hand, is on killing or maiming your opponent as quickly as possible. This sport also hails from Japan, and used to be taught as part of the school curriculum around the turn of the century. To protect themselves at the expo, the kendo club students wore some pretty impressive full-body armor. The sparring resembled a scene from Braveheart, as the students attacked each other with dummy swords.
The Carleton naginata club also made an appearance. Most students get to see them sparring with their poles at the Activities Fair every fall, but at the expo, the naginata coach shared some of the sport’s history as well. It’s one of the oldest martial arts in Japan, dating back to the medieval period. The naginata pole fell out of use in actual battle with the advent of the musket, but women continued to use it to defend the temples. Naginata has come to be known as a women’s sport, though both women and men practice it internationally. Only a small contingent of Naginata Club was present at the expo, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for with some awesome pole-swinging moves.
