The main reason I knew this was because I have a cousin who although a bit of a closet weeb did study at an actual Kendo Dojo while in Japan, and mentioned to us he never handled an authentic sharpened Katana for the two years he was stationed there. When another cousin asked if that meant he was bad at it, my Weeb cousin replied that was actually fairly standard to not use an authentic blade until you had everything down and as you said it was mostly for presentation and ceremony. He was allowed to bring his blunt training blade back with him and if you saw it from afar you would think it was the real deal, but nope it was just blunt.