Review of The Boston Shinkendo Shoshinkan Dojo

Since there has been so much bad press and negative reviews of the Shinkendo Boston Dojo located in the the Chinatown district, we thought we would research the truth about this school.

Lets begin with the respected website and blog:

 "WAY OF BUSHIDO"

There are articles on that great site that are very detailed and backed up by strong evidence/material that shed light on why the Sensei of that dojo "Shaffee B" is so despised by so many who have either trained with him or under him.

Here is one link:  Boston Shinkendo Toxic Sensei Syndrome  it is the first part of three articles and definitely worth a read if you are considering training in the art of Shinkendo at the Boston Dojo.

But what exactly is Shinkendo?  

Well you can check out the website at www.shinkendo.com its a style created in the 1990  by Toshishiro Obata, a decent martial artist who came to the USA to make a living and through hard work and good marketing created a pseudo kenjutsu style of his own.

But let us be clear, SHINKENDO IS NOT A TRADITIONAL SAMURAI SWORD ART.

Its basically a rip off of the Toyama Ryu style which itself is barely a Koryu style, and is more of a stripped down style used to train the Japanese military pre-WW2.

Obata threw in a few techniques from Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, to spice the style up a bit, like two man drills, and an emphasis on Tameshigiri as the pinnacle of the style and gives students something to brag again (Obata understood the psyche of insecure martial arts wannabees).

Truth is. this style is really geared toward sucking in American and European students who like to put on a Hakama and Dogi, and play samurai without really having to put in all the cultural and physical effort to learn the true Samurai sword arts, and believe this style is actually ancient (suckers).

Another point to make: there is no sword sparring in Shinkendo, all that nonsense you see on YOUTUBE is choreographed TachiUchie (2 man drills).

If you put one of these Shinkendo guys up against a Kendo player, the Shinkendo guys would get their butts whipped!

Now the Boston Shinkendo dojo is one of quite a few of these "BUSINESS VENTURES" and in the opinion of many is probably the worst.

The proprietor aka "Little Shaffee" is reported to be a serious nutball!

A megalomaniac, and control freak that desperately tries to manipulate the personal lives of his students rather than focusing on producing good Shinkendoka.

The stories are that Little Shaffee actually SUCKS at Shinkendo and leaves the real teaching to a senior student.

The feedback at the many Boston Shinkendo Student Meetups is one that says DRAMA!

All drama!

The students are disgruntled and very few stay for a long period of time.

He has his two kids teaching there and they really suck!

Then of course there are the usual suspects, the typical ASS KISS Students, who don' really train, or suck really badly but kiss butt so much they are called "Exemplary Students" which doesn't seem to sit well with those who actually go to train.

There is a lot of yelling and screaming, and head case drama and that's about it.

Recently there is some rumblings about YELP reviews, and censorship with reviews being removed or squashed that expose the the truth about this dojo, and replaced with fake praise and nonesense.

All in all it would be hard to recommend this dojo for anything.

Shinkendo itself is barely a style but that aside, why train at the dojo deemed to be the worst one?

I sure as heck wouldn't train there!