This platform highlights women’s perspectives and achievements in martial art and combat sport. It also challenges mythmaking and other dominant practices that undermine equality and safety in martial art and combat sport.
Kate Sylvester
Author | Researcher | Coach | Kendoka
New Publications
Journal Article
Kate Sylvester (2023) Resilience Building Pedagogies and Women’s University Club Sport in Japan, Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture, 2:3, 296-317.
Abstract: Anglophone studies on school club sport (undō bukatsudō 運動部活動) in Japan commonly consider sport as cultural fields that reproduce hegemonic masculinity and ‘traditional’ notions of femininity. This study suggests that school club sport for women in Japan is more diverse and complex than what the dominant symbolic level gender ideological frameworks imply. This article is based on a broader embodied ethnographic project that examines how university club kendo contributes to the construction of women’s identity via member relationships and sport’s cultural learning.
Book
Women and Martial Art in Japan
Kate Sylvester (2023)
This book, based on extensive original research, examines the practice by women in a university sport setting of kendo, the Japanese martial art. The book illustrates an unexplored example of identity construction in Japan, one which legitimises women’s sport experiences within a male-centric physical culture, unpacks the notion of “tradition” in kendo.
Latest Posts
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The 3rd Women Aki Takai with Aurélia Blanchard (France).
By Kate Sylvester. Now recognised as the largest women’s kendo event in Europe, and led by 7‑dan women sensei from around the world, the Women Aki Taikai (WAT) will take place later this year for the fourth time. Building on the steady development and success of the event since its first edition in 2023, the…
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One Step Closer #7: “Failing” Forward with Gratitude.
I had felt all fired up writing up my journey to my 7 dan exam. For a while, I was writing with enthusiasm about all the things I was learning―not just about kendo, but about myself. I did not expect anyone else to read my blog―but several did and sent beautiful messages and expressed kind…
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Kate Sylvester Perspectives 