18th Impact: Sports and Martial Arts

With its tatami and its numerous certified instructors, the Budô area was the meeting place for every martial art fans. This year, you could discover a new stage where the best practitioners of 14 disciplines presented by no less than 10 organizations fought.

Among them, you could meet: the USV Aïkido and the FFAAA who presented you aikidô with classes adapted to anyone; the AFDP Nanbudo to learn nanbudô and to defend yourself against any aggression; the Shorinji Kempo Club Neuilly who showed you shorinji kempô, a zen self-defense method; the Temple du Ninja thanks to who you could try ninjutsu techniques; and the Fédération de Katori Shinto Ryu for lessons of aikibudô and kobudô.

You also had the opportunity to train with two great masters of martial arts who came just for Japan Expo: Master Mitsuru WATANABE from the Association Nationale de Nihon Budo and Master IMAI, a budô karate expert and the leader of the Imai Dojo.

For those of you who liked ranged combat better, the Ligue Ile-de-France de Kyudo showed you the path of the bow with demonstrations of kyûdô, Japanese traditional archery. You could try this ancestral art for yourself and discover the necessary tools of kyudô thanks to the league’s exhibit.

The CNKDR too shared its passion and its expertise with you by presenting you 5 of its martial arts: kendô, iaidô, chanbara, jôdô and naginata, disciplines you could also discover during shows.

The CNKDR indeed met you on the Sakura stage to present you the kendô champions, young prodigies who won many international competitions. But the comity went even further: a complete demonstration of 5 of its 6 disciplines that it teaches took place on the Nezumi stage to show you the wide range of techniques that martial arts has to offer you.

The Imai Dojo wasn’t left out since you had the opportunity to attend a demonstration of Master IMAI himself on the Sakura stage. Together with his students, he presented you the basics of budô karate and showed its effectiveness during fight simulations against several enemies.

Sword fight enthusiasts were spoiled with no less than 3 performances mixing music and martial arts. The samurai of Aki Hiroshima Busho-Tai cut through the air with their swords in front a large crowd who came to watch their techniques accompanied by rock songs. The Ichigo and Sakura stages rumbled under Haten Kohro's powerful electric guitars who charmed you with traditional dance and sword fights. As for the brush of Mai YASUDA and the saber of NINJA -KAGERO-, they met to offer you a poetic show.

The most curious of you could have a look at the booth of Au Fil de la Lame (literally "along the blade") to watch a blacksmith create weapons before your eyes!

Besides martial arts, many other sports were presented to you. And the 18th Impact marked the comeback of women's pro wrestling! 2 fighters faced each other to ensure you amazing matches: Yoko BITO and Konami, two champions of their disciplines in Japan.

5 other renown pro wrestlers fought on the ring to show you puroresu. The Japanese stars Andy WU and Kotaro SUZUKI met the European fighters Pierre "Booster" FONTAINE, Senza Volto and Tristan ARCHER during spectacular fights.

The bravest of you could even took part in initiation sessions 3 times a day to learn how to fight like pro wrestlers.

You also had the chance to discover Japanese national sport, yakyû! Many pro baseball players are trained in Japan where fans of the sport are plentiful.

To show you this discipline, you could count on the association Tomcat Baseball Club de Tremblay-en-France, pioneer in French women's baseball, who was awaiting you for initiation sessions with their inflatable structure and their pitching machine. Did you hit the ball?