When I first joined the club, there were eight of us, including myself. Mr. Yonekura ordered us to start attending club activities during spring break. The floor of the kendo hall, which I stepped into for the first time, was as cold as ice.

The new students were lined up in a row, and according to Hokushin High School tradition, they were to introduce themselves in order. Mr. Yonekura instructed them to loudly state their names, the junior high school they attended, their rank, and their past achievements. In front of the new students were their senior club members, all with shaved heads, sitting cross-legged. Everyone was scrutinizing the new members with keen eyes.

The first student introduced himself by saying, "I was the runner-up in the prefectural tournament when I was in sixth grade," and the second student said, "I was third in the prefectural tournament when I was in third grade." When the third freshman said, "I made it to the top eight in the junior high school tournament in the summer of my third year," the seniors roared. Some of the seniors even said, "Is that him?"

It was humiliating to say "I don't have any particular track record" in front of such a distinguished group of people. Naturally, none of the seniors showed any interest in me. Watanabe and I were the only ones out of the eight of us who had no notable achievements. I sensed something similar in Watanabe, and we quickly became friends.

The Hokushin Kendo Club is a strong school, so naturally practice is tough. Of the new members, Watanabe and I were the only ones who weren't even allowed to wear protective gear at first. All we were required to do every day was run and strength training. Apparently, it was decided that we didn't have enough basic physical strength and would only be a burden if we participated in practice. We weren't allowed to wear protective gear until we could run 30 laps around the school grounds. That was the first practice menu that Mr. Yonekura gave us.

As I ran around the schoolyard, I couldn't help but hear the sounds of clashing bamboo swords and shouts coming from the kendo hall. As I ran alongside Watanabe, I was burning with a desire for revenge. I would definitely show my seniors and six classmates who were now practicing kendo at the dojo what they had done. With that resolve in mind, when Mr. Yonekura told me to run 30 laps around the schoolyard, I ran 40. When he told me to swing my wooden sword 1,000 times, I swung it 1,500 times.

As I continued practicing in front of the mirror, a fellow club member who had just finished practice snorted.

"You're still doing it?"

He wanted to hit him with his wooden sword, but he calmed his anger by imagining himself beating him in training a year from now. "I've only just started," was all he could muster.

Two months later, on the first day we were allowed to join practice, one of my classmates who had made it to the top eight at the All Japan Junior High School Championships was gone. I asked the other classmates and they told me that he had quit the club the day before. Apparently, he had quit kendo because he wasn't happy with Mr. Yonekura's teaching methods. What a shame. If he had just listened to what he was told, he could have become a regular right away.

In addition to the regular training menu, he imposed additional training on himself: sliding steps and swinging the wooden sword. Fifty sliding steps and 500 wooden sword swings. He had no time to worry about muscle pain. It was all for the sake of winning the match. He was supposed to be an ordinary kendo club member, but before he knew it, he had begun to develop an obsession with winning.

"There's no way you could win a fight with a straight sword."

One day after practice, Mr. Yonekura said this to me face to face.

"You can't win by doing things normally, so think about how to win."

He was confident that he had a stronger desire to win than most people, but he was also painfully aware that desire alone would not produce results.

"Now, prepare yourself as I tell you to."

Raise both hands in front of you and point the tip of the sword to the lower right of your body. Hold the bamboo sword almost above your head so that your men is hidden. This will hide three areas from your opponent at the same time: your men, kote, and do.

"Tuck your wrist inward more. You're just making your opponent do a little slash."

With both arms folded awkwardly, I grumbled to myself. Why do I have to assume such a strange stance? Thinking this, I corrected my stance as instructed. After a period of trial and error, Yonekura-sensei nodded in satisfaction.

"That attitude will take you all over the country."

To be honest, I was skeptical. No, I was about 80% skeptical. However, I knew that in order for me, who was not an elite kendo practitioner, to win, I had to do something different from others. So I decided to incorporate the sansho-kakushi stance into my training.

At that time, I had gotten into the habit of sleeping with my head on the dining table while eating dinner at home. I would tell my parents with a straight face that I wondered if I was really going to die there. I was the only one in my family who practiced kendo, and my mother was worried about her son who came home exhausted every day. I heard from him when he was in the third grade that his mother thought it was not educationally good to make him quit something he had started so soon after, and that she had secretly decided to keep an eye on him for a year, and if his situation did not improve, she would encourage him to quit the club.

While he was frantically practicing on his own, Watanabe, in contrast, focused on beautiful kendo. In kendo, strikes that are too straightforward are often easy for the opponent to read and counter. It is often the case that slightly messier kendo makes it more difficult to play against. Because Watanabe's strikes were accurate, he was often described by club members as "easy to counter" and "easy to play against." True to his reputation, he struggled to win intra-club matches.

A year later, another student left the club, leaving only six students. From this time on, Mr. Yonekura thoroughly drilled pulling techniques into us. In a normal strike, you strike forward and move forward, but in pulling techniques, you take a step back from a tsuba-tsukai (sword-holding match), strike, and then slide back. Every day, we practiced just the tsuba-tsukai (sword-holding men), tsuba-tsukai (sword-holding kote), and tsuba-tsukai (sword-holding do) for over an hour. Of course, we also participated in suburi (swinging), kake-gyo (pick-up practice), and ground-holding practice. It was always Watanabe who would join us for over an hour of independent practice. The other members no longer had the physical or mental strength to compete, and there was a mood that we should go home before Daigo caught us.

This is how Professor Yonekura taught us how to play the game.

"Daigo is extremely skilled at dodging his opponents' strikes, but when it comes to striking, he is no match for them. That's why in the middle he concentrates on avoiding strikes and wins the fight using only pulling techniques. It's all about pulling techniques. In a one-step, one-sword attack or strike, he will no doubt be unable to beat someone who has trained for many years, but if he focuses solely on pulling techniques, he has a chance of winning."

From the time he was in his second year, he began to put this strategy into practice in practice matches. At first, he would lose a point while blocking his opponent's strikes, or he would mistime his pulling technique and get hit by it instead. Even when he made such mistakes, Mr. Yonekura never raised his voice, but calmly pointed out why he had been hit.

"Whatever you've been taught, correct it on the same day," was Mr. Yonekura's favorite saying. If a member lost a practice match, he would make them practice twice as much as usual. The other members called this "extra-large-scale training," but he was confident that he had done more extra-large-scale training in three years than any other member in the club's history.

Around the summer of his second year, he suddenly started winning matches. He wasn't sure why, but Watanabe said that strong wrestlers always go through a period like that. His opponents were easily fooled by his hooks, so he simply had to hit them with men or kote. Little by little, he could see the other members of the team seeing him differently.

In the Inter-High School team preliminaries, he was the only second-year student to play as vice captain, while the third-year students dominated the regular positions. The team won the Hokkaido championship and also advanced through the preliminary league in the main tournament.

The day after the main tournament ended and the third-year students retired, Mr. Yonekura gathered the club members in their judo uniforms before practice.

"From today onwards, Daigo will be in charge."

No one disagrees.

Mr. Yonekura told me, "Next captain, say your greeting." I immediately stood up, turned to face the other team members, and slowly spoke the words I had been thinking of.

"I intend to turn the Hokushin Kendo Club into a winning team."

Gazing at the tops of the heads of the other members of the club, he was deeply moved. The sense of accomplishment he felt at having outdone the elite kendo players with impressive careers and risen to the position of captain of a prestigious school in just a year and a half was incredible.