Even in Jest, Kendo Should Not Be Linked to Porn

To the editors:

Dara Horn's most recent column (Opinion, April 29) was a biting critique of the Harvard billboard culture and delivered an honest statement about many Harvard personalities. Despite her candid arguments, I am disappointed with her forcing an unfounded marriage between the Harvard-Radcliffe Kendo Club and pornography. Certainly, just as Horn would not--even in jest--draw any groundless association between blatantly sexual advertising and any other campus group, she should not have done so with the Kendo Club.

While Horn may have made an arbitrary decision to use the Kendo Club in her article, including the phrases "FREE HOT PHONE SEX" and "kendo" in the same sentence belies a deep misunderstanding of classical Japanese martial culture. Kendo--literally, "sword path"--is not any of these things. Born from the civil wars that engulfed Japan for almost seven centuries, modern kendo embodies the ethical code to which the Japanese warrior so stringently adhered. These values--resolve, courage, compassion, courtesy, sincerity, honor and devotion--play an especially important role in the lives of Kendo Club members and are inherently incompatible with anything as base as teleprostitution.

If Horn were to indeed "cometotheKendoClub," she would find that underneath the animated exterior of Japanese fencing lies an unshakable atmosphere of courtesy, honor and respect that would fundamentally clash with the obscene nature of her imagined posters. For this reason, the Harvard-Radcliffe Kendo Club has never and will never employ such indecent advertising strategies.

Chit-Kwan Lin '99

Jotin Marango '01

May 2, 1998

The writers are former officers of the Harvard-Radcliffe Kendo Club.