Sports Chanbara (Spochan)
スポーツチャンバラJapanese swordplay with soft inflatable weapons. First touch wins and the rules are kept to a minimum. Created by the kendo teacher Tetsundo Tanabe in the 1970s.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Sports Chanbara (Spochan)
Sports chanbara, in Japanese supochanbara, is swordplay with soft weapons created as a deliberate counterweight to kendo. The weapons are made partly of styrofoam with an air-inflated tip, so a hit cannot injure — and because it cannot injure, it does not need to be hedged about with rules. It was created by Tetsundo Tanabe, a Yokohama security executive and kendo teacher, in the 1970s. His starting point was simple: kendo fixes stances, target areas and shouts, and in doing so puts off anyone who simply wants to fence. Chanbara therefore governs neither posture nor form. Tanabe summed it up by saying you can lie on the ground if you want to, and wear anything you like. Competition falls into two groups. Datotsu kyogi, the hitting games, are divided by weapon length — from a 45-centimetre dagger to a two-metre spear — and are won by whoever touches the opponent's body first, anywhere. Kihon dosa is the basic-movement event, judged on the speed and honesty of the response to a command. That absence of barriers is why chanbara spreads: it is practised regardless of age, weight or sex, and a child and a pensioner can stand in the same group. It has reached more than thirty countries and claims roughly 400,000 students; Germany alone has thirty member schools and eight thousand registered practitioners.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.