Sports Chanbara

A friend of mine, a traditional Japanese Swordsman, recently competed in a "Spo Chan" tournament in Japan. He did not place, and was defeated by opponents that did not use the weapon "as a sword". Many Chanbara competitors use the light weight of their equipment, as well as its flexible nature, to compete in an "unrealistic" manner, similar to scoring via flick in Olympic Fencing. My friend attributes this to the following:
"Tradtional sword arts are a dying breed in Japan. Many influential people want to shake the military stigma of Japanese history, so sport is very much pushed. I'm obviously not saying that iaido & kendo will end tomorrow but the amount of practioners is shrinking in Japan.
In Japan, the children are truly the only natural resource. So, why teach your children how to be soldiers when there is no war? Japan wants to educate the young to be better adults and they feel sport is a more appropriate way. Now don't get me wrong, Japan is still very proud of its past so the martial arts won't disappear. There is just a strong drive to look to the future and the Japanese are very good at adaptation. Sport Chanbara is simply an adpated form of swordsmanship."
In a culture that actually gave rise to a martial art, I can see how this view might be legitimate. As a foreign practitioner on the other side of the world, however, I'm not sure I agree, because of the basic idea that martial training implies "training soldiers". Centuries ago, this may have been the case. I suppose even in the WWII era this may have been the case, as the Japanese military "machine" of the time was driven very much by the country's nostalgic love affair with the samurai. But my point is this: If I want to train a soldier, I'm going to teach him how to use a gun, not a sword. I might even teach him some of the same empty hand techniques found in many martial arts. But I have no reason to teach him tradition, ceremony, etiquette, or philosophy. It is these things that make the martial arts what they are, and differentiate them from pure and simple "fighting methods". So I think just maybe the proliferation of the sort of Chanbara witnessed in Japan today is more a result of keen business, coupled with western influence, than true philosophical change in heart about the future of the children. Just my humble thoughts.
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