It is my great pleasure to welcome all of
you to the 2011 American Kyudo Seminar hosted by the Minnesota Kyudo Renmei.
Although this is our first (inter)national event here in Minnesota, we are
pleased to have the largest number of participants yet, including growing
numbers of participants from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico.
I would like to express my deepest
gratitude to Suzuki Mitsunari sensei and the All Nippon Kyudo Federation (ANKF)
and the International Kyudo Federation (IKYF) for their continuous support of
efforts to promote Kyudo outside of Japan. Their expert guidance and support
makes it possible for us to practice Kyudo in our own communities. Through Kyudo,
we can share just a bit of Japanese culture with our friends, families, and
neighbors, which, in turn, creates opportunities for greater understanding
across people and cultures. Through Kyudo we all work towards promoting greater
peace and harmony across the world.
This year we are lucky enough to receive
instruction from Iijima-sensei, Satake-sensei, and Kubota-sensei, and I’m sure
I speak for all of us when I say we are eager to learn all that we can from
them during their stay. Their generous commitment to improving Kyudo in the
Western Hemisphere is humbling and deeply appreciated by all. I know that each
one of us will take care to heed all of their instruction. To enable this, we
decided to make the seminar gift a notebook and pen, so that no one will be
without a notebook during instruction.
Carleton College has kindly allowed us
the use of their facilities for this event, for which we are grateful. Ten
years ago, the first Minnesota Kyudo Kai member was a student of this college,
and our first regular practice location was a racquetball court in the very
building where we have constructed the shajo for this seminar.
In conclusion, I’d like to thank the
American Kyudo Renmei for its support of this event. In addition, we could not
conduct an event of this scale without the long list of people who have
volunteered their time and efforts. Our list of volunteers is long, and
includes not only Kyudo practitioners from around the country, but also friends
and family members who were generous enough with their time to support the art
that we all love. We could not have conducted this event without their help!
I look forward to spending this
time learning alongside all of you!
Warmest
regards,
Carly
J. Born
President,
Minnesota Kyudo Renmei