The Teacher

The instructor at Shinseikon Dôjô is Lenny Pedersen, a Bujinkan student of 30 years, who received his shidôshi no menkyo (teacher’s/instructor’s licence) after passing his godan shiken (5th dan test) in Bujinkan Honbu Dôjô in Noda-shi, Japan on 29th March 2009.

Lenny is originally from Denmark, where he began training in Bujinkan Ninpô Dôjô Aalborg in the summer of 1995 (at the age of 15) under shidôshi John Svendsen, and later Thomas Andersen when the former retired from active teaching and the latter (John’s senior student) took over.

Due to Lenny’s immeasurable love and passion for shinobi no jutsu (ninjutsu), kobujutsu, Japanese military history and Japanese culture in general ever since childhood, he sought out a source for these very things and one of the places in which he discovered them was Bujinkan Dôjô.

It was for that same love and passion, and the sincere desire to deepen himself in his martial studies and practices, that he moved to Japan in 2008 where he initially (when living in Tôkyô) became a student of Nakadai Keiji-sensei, one of the Japanese shihan, or senior instructors—today one of the daishihan who teaches classes at Honbu Dôjô in addition to his own at Nakadai Dôjô. In 2009, Lenny moved to Ôsaka and there became a student of Sakaguchi Takayasu-sensei, the senior-shihan of the Kansai region. There, Lenny also trained regularly with Mitsuhashi Genichi-sensei, who today is also a daishihan in the Bujinkan as well as a shihan in Nindô.

Today, Lenny is a student of Tezuka Wataru-sensei, a daishihan and also Honbu Dôjô instructor who resides in Tabata, Tôkyô, where he also has his own dôjô, Bujinkan Tezuka Dôjô.

In 2019, Lenny, his wife and daughter decided to leave Japan for work and educational purposes and chose to move to the UK, and Scotland specifically because of, according to Lenny, ‘the beauty and historical richness of this country’.

Due to his insatiable passion for the old/classical Japanese warrior arts, Lenny also eventually became a student of Asayama Ichiden-ryû Hyôhô directly under the current sôke, Seki Nobuhide-sensei, as well as a student of Nindô—the ninjutsu study & training programme founded by Kawakami Jinichi-sensei and the Nihon Ninja Kyôgikai—under shihan, Ichikawa Izô-sensei.

Lenny returns to Japan as frequently as possible to train with Tezuka-sensei—both at Bujinkan Tezuka Dôjô as well as Bujinkan Honbu Dôjô—and the other Bujinkan Honbu Dôjô instructors, as well as his teacher of Asayama Ichiden-ryû Hyôhô, Seki-sensei, and his teacher of Nindô, Ichikawa-sensei. In addition to that, he stays in regular contact with all of them as well as other teachers of these arts.