Itten Dojo

  The March edition of Sword and Spirit has been posted. In “The Sacred Legacy of Hayashizaki Myojin,” Itten Dojo chief instructor Robert Wolfe kicks off a several issue series on the birth and development of iaido. This month, the focus is on the Iai Shrine in Yamagata Prefecture, where the art of iaido was born. For the April issue, we anticipate a guest contributor will share what is clearly the most extensively researched and documented history in English of Hayashizaki Jinsuke Shigenobu, the founder of iaido. Download the newsletter by joining the Sword and Spirit group on Facebook, or directly from our website, at https://www.ittendojo.org/dbfiles/download/swordandspirit/pdf/101. All back issues of Sword and Spirit are available at https://www.ittendojo.org/articles/swordandspirit. #ittendojo #japanesemartialartscenter #iaido #jujutsu #judo #shodo

Following our October 2025 trip to Japan that included training at the birthplace of iaido with the members of the Shinbukan dojo and a ceremony at the Hayashizaki Jinja (known as the Iai Shrine), we decided to restore a kamidana  (a small, elevated Shinto shrine) to the shomen (front wall) of our dojo in honor of the connections that we had made. In the same way that an embassy is considered sovereign territory of the nation it represents, we wanted to bring a tangible representation of the “spirit” of Japan into our dojo. The presence of a kamidana in a traditional Japanese martial arts dojo can cause hesitation among Christian practitioners, as well as members of the Judaic or Islamic faiths. The concern is understandable: the First Commandment strictly forbids placing other gods before God, and a  kamidana  represents  Shinto —a religion involving  kami , or spirits. However, a closer examination of the role of  kamidana  within the context ...