Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. Your fond memories of a time, place, or item tend to sugarcoat the actual events as they happened. But in this scenario, I don’t think that’s fully the case.
This video started it all for me in 2009…
Those late twenty-aughts and early tens were such a fun time for me in fishing, and more specifically, tenkara. First, I was still in my thirties. Thirty two when I started. Young, energetic, and able. Fly fishing was new-ish to me, tenkara was brand new to us all, and we just didn’t know what we didn’t know.
The landscape was much different than today. Tenkara USA, led by founder Daniel Galhardo, was the only company selling rods and the online forum it hosted on its website became the de facto gathering place and hub for information exchange. The internet was extremely instrumental in tenkara’s growth, with the Tenkara USA forum and a handful of blogs dispersing precious tidbits of information as they were unearthed.
The Japanese had already long discovered what we were then uncovering as “new”, but with translation tools rudimentary at the time, information was very tough to get at.
Instead, it was an era when a bunch of curious folks gathered in more or less one place, bouncing a river of ideas off each other. Nobody was coming from a place of authority, but rather excitement and discovery. Everything from discussing fly patterns, trying to understand these rods’ boundaries, to building D.I.Y equipment.
A lot of pool noodles were sacrificed as tenkara line holders in those early days.
I imagine it being like being one of those early computer engineers building hardware and writing code in their California garages in the 1970s. Just far more nerdy and niche, as crazy as that sounds.
Daniel became the chief evangelist and pretty much our cult leader, and when he finally broke down those initial barriers with Japan… Wow! He went there, met the masters, took video diaries, and introduced us to a whole new world. He even organized the first events in the U.S., inviting some of those skilled foreign anglers, such as Dr. Hisao Ishigaki to attend. Daniel’s content creation at the time was unmatched and we all seemed to benefit.
Eventually, things started to fragment. New brands popped up, personalities emerged with their own agendas, and general commercialism crept in. I’m sure there was more ego and infighting than I remember, but again… nostalgia.
Today things are still fun, just in a different way. I’m one of the old heads now, rapidly approaching 50. Likewise, tenkara isn’t “new” anymore and that exciting age of discovery is largely behind us.
In parallel, most of the original voices have gone silent (sadly, Daniel included), and the newer voices are seemingly spread out so far and wide across various physical and social media platforms they’re just a little more difficult to hear.
My focus is now is the fishing and friendships this whole tenkara curiosity has brought me. I’ve traveled the country meeting and fishing with fellow tenkara anglers. Visited some of the most beautiful places and caught some of the prettiest fish with some amazingly interesting people. In fact, some of my best friends today are people I first met in that Tenkara USA forum back in those early days.
If I do it right, I’m looking forward to being as equally nostalgic about the next seventeen years as I was for the last seventeen.
Mike:
Having come late to the Tenkara party I enjoy reading the history from the not too distant past. Your narrative of the early days of Tenkara parallels my participation in rock and ice climbing in the early 1970s. Having western fly fished for decades and now finding Tenkara and the Tenkara community, it’s so refreshing to meet people of all experience levels and backgrounds. Tenkara is non pretentious and welcoming, and thankfully, not weighed down by over priced equipment and commercialism.
Thanks,
Steve