FIK European-zone Kendo Referee Seminar was held on February 9 and 10, 2008 in Brussels, Kingdom of Belgium, as in the past years. Before the formal seminar, Ji-Geiko for 90 minutes was carried out in the evening of February 8 joining 105 participants.

The FIK instructors of this year were as follows.

Mr. Hitoshi Murakami, Hanshi 8 Dan
Mr. Kiyoharu Kai, Hanshi 8 Dan
Mr. Osamu Asano, Hanshi 8 Dan

Number of formal trainee is 82 from 14 countries but including local players for referee training, the number of participant is over 120. Following to the opening message by Mr. Alain Ducarme, President of European Kendo Federation and Mr.Hitoshi Murakami, This year instructor of International Kendo Federation,
Mr. Kai spoke to the participants about the aim of this seminar, i.e. making sincere efforts in improving the referring skills to judge Yuko-Datotsu correctly and to deal swiftly and properly with prohibition items and positioning among the referees.

In the morning of second day, the seminar continued mainly reviewing last day’s study and in the after noon the grading examination was held with the applicants of 96. The results were as shown in the following figures of success/number of applicants. Shodan 4/4, 2Dan 1/1, 3Dan 3/5, 4Dan 2/15, 5Dan 0/10, 6Dan 7/49 and 7Dan 0/12, Average passage was 17.7%.

As general observation, almost all of the applicants presented an obedient KENDO and posture, attitude and Datotsu were well appreciated.
We could have wished to do more challenging practice and expect further devotion.