The Introduction and Early Development of Iaido in the United States and Canada

In the quiet of the dojo, the drawing of the sword is never merely a technical act. It is a confrontation with readiness, with the self that hesitates, and with the lineage that has carried the practice across oceans and decades. To examine how iaidō took root in the United States and Canada is to follow a path marked less by grand institutional decree than by the steady, often solitary efforts of individuals who recognized in the art something essential. What follows is an account of that introduction and early development, grounded in the documented efforts of those who practiced, taught, and organized in the decades after the Second World War.

Iaido did not arrive in North America as a fully formed export ready for mass adoption. Its transmission was fragmentary, carried by Japanese immigrants, returning servicemen, and a handful of determined American and Canadian practitioners who sought instruction wherever it could be found. Pre-war foundations existed in limited form. In 1929, Nakamuraichi Tokichi established the Hokubei Butokukai Nanka Renmei on the West Coast, promoting both kendo and iaido for men and women. Japanese American communities in Hawaii and California maintained some practice of sword arts alongside kendo. The war and the internment of Japanese Americans interrupted this continuity. Dojo closed; instruction ceased. When the conflict ended, the Allied occupation of Japan imposed restrictions on martial arts organizations viewed as militaristic. Public practice was curtailed. Yet the arts were not extinguished. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, as bans eased and new federations formed in Japan—the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei among them—practitioners in North America began to rebuild.

On the East Coast, early post-war instruction centered in New York. Yoshiteru Otani, a judoka who relocated to the city in the mid-1950s, began teaching Musō Shinden-ryū iaidō in the early 1960s, framing it as “moving Zen.” He founded the New York Iai Kai, which moved through various homes including the McBurney YMCA. Concurrently, Buddhist priest Kan Shunshin and Daniel T. Ebihara co-founded the Ken-Zen Institute in 1959, offering judo, kendo, and Musō Shinden-ryū. These efforts provided some of the earliest sustained iaido practice available to non-Japanese students in the Northeast. John Slocum opened the Samurai Dojo in Queens in 1961, becoming one of the first non-Japanese Americans to teach the art publicly. Joseph Cummins, a career soldier who had studied in Japan, also contributed to early instruction. These were not large organizations. Classes were small, often held in shared spaces, and students frequently trained in isolation between sessions.

The West Coast followed a parallel but distinct trajectory. Walter Takeshi Yamaguchi, a student of Torao “Tiger” Mori, played a central role in California. He later served on the boards of the All United States Kendo Federation and regional federations, and helped establish the Northern and Southern California Iaido Associations. Other early figures included Arthur Ichiro Murakami, Frank Koji Fukawa, and Henry Shigeru Asai. Returning Japanese Americans and servicemen who had trained in Japan during the occupation and subsequent decades brought technical knowledge and, equally important, the conviction that the practice retained value beyond its military origins. Donn Draeger and Gordon Warner, though better known for broader contributions to the study of Japanese martial culture, encouraged serious engagement with sword arts among Western practitioners. Their writings and example helped legitimize the pursuit at a time when many still associated Japanese swordsmanship primarily with wartime imagery.

By the late 1960s, the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei had established a standardized set of iaido forms, the Seitei-gata (later Zen Ken Ren Iai). This curriculum, introduced in 1969, expanded practice within kendo dojo across North America while, in some cases, reducing the number of practitioners pursuing the older ryūha of Musō Shinden-ryū and Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū in their more traditional forms. The standardized forms provided a common language that facilitated ranking and inter-dojo exchange, yet they also highlighted the tension between gendai standardization and koryū transmission that continues to shape the art.

The 1970s and 1980s saw broader growth, driven by cultural fascination with Japanese martial traditions as much as by organizational effort. Films ranging from classic jidaigeki to Star Wars and later action pictures introduced the visual vocabulary of the sword to new audiences. Practitioners who had begun in karate, judo, or aikido often found their way to iaido as a complementary study of presence and precision. On the East Coast, Mitsunari Kanai, Shozo Kato, and others expanded instruction. On the West Coast, the network of sensei associated with Yamaguchi and related groups continued to develop. Isolated pockets of practice appeared elsewhere; Guy Power, for example, began training in Mugai-ryū under Albert Church in South Carolina in 1970 and continued independently for years.

Canada’s early development followed a similar pattern of individual initiative within kendo frameworks. Douglas Tamaichi Funamoto founded the Shidokan Kendo Club in 1974. Formal iaido instruction under Fred Y. Okimura began later, around 1987, though students had already pursued related sword studies. Kim Taylor established the Sei Do Kai at the University of Guelph in 1987, offering Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū and related practices. He began a series of annual seminars that brought Japanese and North American instructors together, and he founded The Iaido Journal to connect the scattered dojo then operating across the continent. Goyo Ohmi provided important technical leadership in Ontario. These university-based and independent efforts proved durable; the Guelph program, like parallel university clubs later established in the United States, offered continuity and a venue for serious study outside commercial martial arts markets.

National organization in the United States lagged behind local practice. Iaido training under a national governing body did not occur until 1994, when the Kendo Federation of the United States of America organized the first formal seminar in Colorado Springs. Twenty-one participants attended; promotional examinations followed. A second seminar in New York City the following year drew more than forty practitioners and included the first national championship. When the federation evolved into the All United States Kendo Federation, responsibility for iaido passed to a dedicated committee, initially chaired by Mark Uchida and later by Takeshi Yamaguchi, whose long service helped stabilize the national structure. Summer camps and ranking opportunities gradually created a more coherent community.

Throughout this period, the predominant ryūha remained Musō Shinden-ryū and Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū, transmitted both through kendo-affiliated channels and through independent teachers. Later introductions of Toyama-ryū and related battō forms, beginning in earnest in the early 1990s, added further diversity, but the foundational work of the preceding decades had already established the art’s presence. The early development of iaido in the United States and Canada was never the product of a single lineage or centralized plan. It grew through the accumulation of small, persistent efforts: a class held in a borrowed room, a student who trained alone for years, a sensei who traveled to share what he had learned, a journal that linked isolated practitioners. Those efforts demanded the same qualities the art itself cultivates—attention, perseverance, and a refusal to mistake appearance for substance.

The result is a living practice that continues to require of its adherents the same disciplined presence that the early teachers brought to their own training. In that continuity lies the real measure of the introduction and early development of iaido on this continent.

Bibliography

All United States Kendo Federation. “History of Iaido Summer Camp and Shinsa.” https://www.auskf.org/department/iaido/history-of-iaido-summer-camp-and-shinsa.

Deen, Anthony. “A Short History of Batto-jutsu in America.” Parts 1–3. Zentokan Dojo, 2023. https://www.brooklynbattodo.com/reading/6-1-2023/a-short-history-of-batt-jutsu-in-america-part-1; https://www.brooklynbattodo.com/reading/9-8-2023/a-short-history-of-batto-jutsu-in-america-part-2; https://www.brooklynbattodo.com/reading/12-23-2023/a-short-history-of-batto-jutsu-in-america-part-3.

Draeger, Donn F., and Gordon Warner. Japanese Swordsmanship: Technique and Practice. New York: Weatherhill, 1982.

Power, Guy H. Interviews and historical notes cited in Deen, “A Short History of Batto-jutsu in America.”

Taylor, Kim. Writings and The Iaido Journal referenced in historical accounts of Canadian practice; Kim’s Big Book of Iaido series (self-published, 1990s).

Warner, Gordon, and Donn F. Draeger. Japanese Swordsmanship. Weatherhill, 1982 (and related earlier works on kendo and related arts).