Unravelling The Cords: The Instructions of a Master in the Tradition of Taisha-ryu

 

 

 

 

 

Unraveling The Cords: The Instructions of a Master in the Tradition of Taisha-ryu 
Georgi Krastev & Alex Allera (authors), Yamamoto Takahiro (contributor)

476 pages

Hardcover and softbound

2023

Available through Amazon and the Purple Cloud Institute

I have finished reading the most insightful book I have ever encountered on budo thought and philosophy. “Unravelling the Cords: The Instructions of a Master in theTradition of Taisha-ryū” by Georgi Krastev & Alex Allera, with significant assistance from Yamamoto Takahiro (Contributor). Krastev and Allera are longtime students of Taisha Ryu, and Yamamoto is a shihan of Taisha Ryu. They know the ryuha, and at least as important in this case, they know the literary and cultural background of the author they are translating.

What they are translating is Nakano Shumei’s 17th century treatise, “Taisha Ryu Kaichu.” Taisha Ryu is a sister art to the more well-known Yagyu Shinkage Ryu. Like Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, Taisha Ryu was founded by a menkyo kaiden student of Shinkage Ryu founder Kamiizumi Ise-no Kami Nobutsuna, in this case, Marume Kurando. Nakano Shumei was a late 17th century master of Taisha Ryu, and he wrote the Kaichu to help later generations better understand and practice the art.

The translation of Taisha Kaichu and other writings by Nakano Shumei is excellent, and makes up about a quarter of the Unraveling the Chords. A history of Taisha Ryu and Nakano Shumei, along with the discussion of the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian thought that flows through Nakano’s writing takes up about half of the book, and reference materials, including the original Japanese for all of Nakano’s writings, makes up the last quarter of the book.

Until this volume was published in 2023, Taisha Ryu Kaichu was unknown outside of a few scholars of Taisha Ryu. Like the Heiho Kadensho by Yagyu Munenori of Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, it is a treasure of information and budo wisdom. The authors of Unraveling the Chords have done a masterful job of not only translating Taisha Ru Kaichu, but also locating it in the history of Chinese and Japanese philosophical thought. Through extensive footnoting, the authors have made clear just how much an education in these philosophical concepts is needed to truly understand their subject. They point out where seemingly mundane phrases are references to important philosophical concepts that transform the meaning of what is being read.

Knowing neither ‘Enemy’ no ‘I’

Serene is made the twilight sky

By wind rustling the pines.

                                        Page 178

This is the last of fifty teaching poems by Nakano Shumei contained in the Kaichu. It seems straightforward, yet the authors of Unraveling the Chords took half a page just to list all of the references contained in this brief poem. Without the copious footnotes, the meaning of the Kaichu and all of the other things translated would be completely missed by readers.

In addition to the translation, the authors provide more than 200 pages of history, as well as explanations of the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian ideas and concepts that are necessary to understand Nakano Shumei’s writings. Alone, this necessary background should be a requirement for anyone who is serious about understanding the mental and philosophical aspects of the Japanese martial arts. As a companion to the widely known and generally misunderstood Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, Heiho Kadensho by Yagyu Munenori, or any of the writings of the zen master Takuan Soho, this book is an invaluable resource.

I’ve read all of these books many times, but after reading the Unraveling the Chords, I find myself really seeing them for the first time. What Krastev, Allera, and Yamamoto have done is lay out much of the philosophical world that these volumes were written in, and give the reader the chance to begin drawing sophisticated connections. The discussion of the much abused terms setsuninto and katsujinken is remarkable. Rather than being terms that Takuan and Yagyu came up with in their discussions of budo, these are ancient ideas from Buddhist thought that carry a great deal more meaning than the simple translations usually seen of “death dealing sword” and “life giving sword”. There is far too much to attempt here, but the depth brought to these concepts is eye-opening.

This is a treasure for all practitioners of budo, whether classical or modern. The clear explanations of topics that have been presented in translations of other books that do not contain the accompanying history and philosophical explanation make reading this book a must. I am rereading all of my classical budo texts, and what I have learned from reading Unraveling the Chords has made all of them completely new books for me.

This is simply the most important text on budo that I own. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. You could buy it from Amazon if you had to, but if you can, I recommend buying it directly from the publisher so they get as much support as possible from the sale.

 

Thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman for editing the mess I gave her.

Seitei versus Koryu

by 田所道子, copyright 2017

A friend asked me to contrast seitei systems and koryu systems in Japanese budo, and their relative benefits and drawbacks. “Seitei” are standardized systems, generally practiced by large organizations that intend to create a common standard for rank testing and competitions. “Koryu” are classical systems, generally defined as having been founded prior to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868. Seitei are used by organizations that can be global in reach, such as the International Judo Federation, the International Kendo Federation and the International Naginata Federation. Koryu are generally small groups ranging from fewer than 10 people, to a few hundred or a thousand.

The advantages of standardized training systems are straightforward. Everyone knows what is expected. The syllabus and the path to promotion are clearly defined. Since it is standardized, you know that anywhere you go in the organization, people will be doing the same thing in the same way, and that your experience and rank will be respected. Because the decisions about rank are made by the organization, you should be able to clearly see and define differences between ranks. If you run into a personality issue in one dojo, it is not difficult to move to another dojo training the same curriculum. The biggest benefit is that there are many people pushing against each other to improve, so there is a great deal of experimentation in how to teach things, and successful techniques are shared widely, making the teaching ever more effective. A similar benefit for the art is that people are naturally competitive, comparing themselves to others in the organization and finding more ways that they can improve. Actual competition deserves its own essay.

Koryu is the antithesis of a standardized practice. There have been thousands of koryu throughout history, and there may be a couple of hundred that remain today. They each have their own prescribed kata, and the variety is amazing. Not just unarmed combat, sword arts and naginata (similar to a glaive), but somewhere in the syllabus of one of these koryu you’re likely to find methods for fighting with nearly anything that was recorded as being a weapon in Japanese history. Koryu are personal rather than organizational. Koryu’s strength is actually this lack of standardization. The kata are there, but they are not carved in stone, or even really printed on paper. Koryu grow and evolve as their practitioners explore new ideas and pathways. Different groups doing koryu of the same origin are free to go in different directions. This flexibility and adaptability mean that healthy koryu never stop evolving. It is much easier for a koryu to modify or add to its syllabus than it is for a large organization where everything is codified and overseen by committees that have to come to agreement about how things will be done. Koryu can adapt quickly to changes in the world around them.

Large, standardized, organizations are large, standardized, organizations. This means that they come with all the baggage of any large bureaucracy. There are internal politics and petty fights to satisfy petty egos. They tend to be rigid and have difficulty with change, even when the path they’re on is clearly heading off a cliff. All that standardization that makes it possible for people to freely train with each other also tends to drive things down narrower and narrower roads. The effort to match the ideal of the standardized kata often means that anything that strays from that limited model is deemed “wrong”. This makes cross-training difficult because you will be criticized for anything that bleeds through from other systems, styles, or schools into the standardized set. I find this a particular issue because I sincerely believe that martial arts whose practitioners don’t cross-train are doomed to fade and die in weakness and irrelevancy. Cross training in martial arts isn’t optional. It’s necessary. 

 

Where I mouth off about a lot of things!

The rigidity of the bureaucracies includes another problem: ego building. The one thing that is truly required for someone to become the head of a group, section, division, or even an entire international organization is that they want the job. Competency is not a requirement. Look at all the big companies that have been run into the ground by incompetent CEOs. Then combine this with an unhealthy dose of ego and you get all sorts of problems. People argue and fight over who’s going to be in charge. They fight because their self-esteem is so small that they feel threatened by anyone who is competent. I find organizational politics to be so petty and contrary to every reason that I do martial arts that my reaction is to go somewhere else. I have great respect for competent people who are willing to put up with organizational politics in order to preserve and grow what is worthwhile in the organization. 

Another weakness of organization budo is the tendency to mistake technical skill for individual maturity and organizational ability. Too often, the people who are the most technically skilled, the ones who can win in competition, are the people who end up at the top of the organization. The traits required to develop great personal skill are very different from the traits required to effectively manage an organization. Just because someone has a great  o soto gari doesn’t mean they should be put in charge of anything. Look at the people who become great coaches and managers in team sports. Very rarely were they great players. Many baseball general managers come up out of the minor leagues without ever playing in the major leagues. Playing and managing are unrelated skills. Respect those who develop great personal skill, but don’t put them in charge. In budo organizations though, it is far too common for people with high rank but little organizational and managerial skill to be given positions of responsibility. Then things get messy. 

Koryu don’t generally suffer from the problem of the best technicians rising to the top. They do suffer from the problem of not having clear standards for when someone is ready for the next step in learning or responsibility. It all depends on the soke’s or shihan’s ability as a teacher, leader, and organizer. If the current leader is good at these things, then likely this generation of the ryuha will do well and flourish. If they’re not, the leader’s incompetence could kill a ryuha that has survived for hundreds of years. If the leader isn’t a skilled teacher, critical elements of a ryuha’s curriculum and pedagogy can be lost. If the leader can’t manage people, they can end up creating jealousy, anger, and frustration among the ryuha’s members. A teacher who plays favorites, or plays students against each other can seriously weaken and even destroy a koryu. 

Koryu lack the quality control of a large organization’s clear, easily evaluated, standards. The standards all exist in the leader’s mind. They aren’t clearly written out, argued over by committees of experts, and easily evaluated. If the leader is great technically, but not good at teaching and evaluating students, the quality of the skills the ryuha teaches can deteriorate and the teacher can end up hurting it even more by elevating unqualified students. The end result is that unqualified people end up leading, and the ryuha slides towards death.

Another weakness that destroys koryu is their relative isolation. Koryu practitioners don’t have to get out and deal with people from other groups. They can stay in their dojos and only deal with people who do the same koryu. They don’t even have to deal with people from slightly different branches of the same ryuha who are trying different interpretations. The result can be ryuha that gradually become duller and duller, losing the sharp skill levels that competition and contact with a variety of different practitioners brings. Koryu where the practitioners don’t get out and train with outsiders will get insular and weak. Practitioners who don’t train with outsiders from time-to-time don’t have their assumptions and skills challenged. Cross-training challenges us and polishes us just as abrasives sharpen a sword. Without active competitions and large training seminars, koryu risk becoming dull and weak.

There are small groups that work to keep people in slowly diverging lineages in touch with each other and training together. They work to prevent practitioners from getting isolated and stagnating. They don’t impose a single, standard way, but provide people with the opportunity to test and explore their ideas with people who will challenge them to find the optimal way of doing things. There’s never agreement on what’s optimal, and that’s a good thing. That means that the testing and exploring won’t end. Isolation and elitism are the path to extinction for koryu budo.

When people are involved, nothing will ever be perfect. Koryu and seitei budo organizations all have faults. The biggest ones are that they are run by fallible, egotistical, humans. In koryu and seitei groups, human weaknesses and faults find different ways to express themselves. It’s up to those of us who love and value budo to resist these human traits that can tear down everything that decades and centuries of effort have created. More than 99% of the ryuha in the Bugei Ryuha Daijiten are extinct. Part of our training is our effort to maintain healthy organizations and push back against our inherent human faults so future generations can experience the growth that training in good budo provides.

 

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman Ph.D. for editorial support and bad idea busting.

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Being Uke Versus Taking Ukemi

 

Photo Copyright Girgoris Miliaresis 2014

 

Nearly everyone in the gendai (modern) budo world talks about taking ukemi (receiving a technique), and being uke. Real ukemi is not something you take, and uke (one who receives a technique) is not a passive existence. The character in both “ukemi” and “uke” is “受け” “to receive or incur”. Being uke is really about receiving your partner’s technique and how you absorb it, and it is a very active role. There is nothing passive about it.

Gendai budoka, be they judoka, jujutsuka, aikidoka, or any other group, will say that they “take ukemi.” What they really mean is that they put their body out there for a partner to apply a technique to without offering resistance. The only time resistance shows up is during whatever sort of randori training their group does. Their ukemi is passive, and their job as an uke is to present no difficulty or opposition to their partner. The only real requirement for the job is that you be skilled enough to survive whatever technique is being practiced. 

  The real depth of the role of uke becomes clear when you look at the structure of uke’s role in koryu budo, or classical Japanese arts. The teacher, or other high level senior, takes the role of uke.  They are actively engaged in what is going on, not just passively “taking ukemi.”   In all of these precursors to the various gendai budo, uke’s role is considered critically important, and a beginner cannot understand what is required of a good uke.

Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2019

Uke indeed receives their partner’s attack, but not passively. If stand alone techniques are being practiced, uke has to decide how they will receive the attack. If the attack lacks a critical element of timing or kuzushi, if the attacker is not well-balanced and solid, uke is under no obligation to let the technique succeed. If any of these elements is missing uke may decide to simply stop the technique from continuing, or they may decide that their practice partner needs a stronger lesson about the suki, or opening, that they are leaving and counter-attack into the suki. Uke has to be skilled enough to understand what suki are being presented, and be able to execute the counterattack without endangering the tori (there are many terms for this role, I use tori because it can apply to any art or weapon being practiced).

This is true whether what is being practiced is some sort of empty-hand jujutsu or even if weapons are involved. My students know that if they leave too big an opening during an attack that my sword will fill it, stopping their attack and showing them their weakness. It’s not me showing off. The trick is judging when the kata is broken and attacking an opening. Students are learning, so of course they leave openings. I’m constantly calibrating my responses for individual students. Someone learning a new kata gets a lot of leeway to make mistakes while they learn movements. The same student practicing something they should know well doesn’t get much room for mistakes at all. If they were practicing with someone who wasn’t already skilled in the art, they would end up practicing all sorts of incorrect movements, spacing, and timing,  embedding these mistakes in their bodies.

Collected Essays of the Budo Bum

 

For uke, there is also the challenge of receiving attacks properly. Uke isn’t passively accepting whatever the student does to them. Uke is trying to receive the technique in the best way possible from a martial perspective. If uke is just going along with whatever the student does, uke is teaching themselves to move in ways that aren’t optimal for receiving such an attack. Uke has to be able to move in such a way that they receive the energy of the attack in a manner that is safe and gives them the best opportunity to counterattack.  

It’s not enough to just receive an attack in such a way that it doesn’t immediately end the encounter.  If your receiving technique simply sets you up for a different finishing technique, it’s not effective ukemi. It’s a failure. Good ukemi should move uke to a position where she can counterattack or break off the encounter. Even in kata practice, there should always be a tension between uke trying to successfully attack tori, and tori trying to eliminate the possibility for the uke to attack. Uke has to learn to move not just to receive the attack, but to the most advantageous position to receive the attack. As long as it is possible, uke’s movement should put her in a strong place to both defend, and to launch another attack. Tori’s job is to close all of uke’s options until uke is defeated.

Throughout a kata, uke should be seeking opportunities to attack. This seems obvious, but I see lots of kata being done where uke makes an initial attack, and after that they only attack the most obvious of openings. This is where a kata can come to life. If the kata is well designed, when done correctly there is only one optimal movement for uke in each situation. When tori does their part correctly, uke’s options are constricted so the best choice may well be limited to one thing. If uke is participating in the kata with the intent of continuously attacking tori, they will attack into any opening tori leaves.

The Budo Bum gets interviewed and answers tough questions.

 

Uke isn’t breaking the kata when she does this. Tori breaks the kata when she leaves the opening for uke to attack. It is this interplay that makes kata live. If uke is just going through the motions, then tori isn’t going to learn much. If uke is seeking those openings that tori leaves and filling them with attacks, tori quickly learns to close those openings.

Uke isn’t there to receive an attack. Uke is there to teach tori how to move and act without leaving openings that an opponent can exploit. Receiving an attack is the smallest part of the job.

 

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman, PhD. for editorial guidance and support.

Teacher Responsibility in the Teacher-Student Relationship

I've written before about the responsibility a teacher has for their students in Japanese martial arts. Here is a great example. A sumo wrestler was severely punished for the misbehaviour of one of their students. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68381695 Teaching martial arts is not something to take lightly. It is a deep responsibility.

Budo: The Way of Change

 

Great day of training. It must have been 95F (35C) in the dojo, though.

I talk a lot about the benefits of budo. We go to the dojo and we sweat.  We work at improving some aspect of our skills every time we enter the dojo. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been training or how old we are.  My iaido teacher, Kiyama Hiroshi, was still training in his 90’s. A friend of mine pushed himself to improve his jodo to challenge for 8th dan when he was 90.He didn’t make it to 8th dan, but he was pushing himself to improve until the day he died.

Budo, much like other Japanese arts such as chano yu and shodo, makes three assumptions about practice and us. First, that perfect technique can be imagined. Second, that we can always work to come closer to perfection. Third, that we’ll never achieve perfection, but that’s no excuse for not continuing to grow and improve.

All of the streams of thought that come together to form budo assume that human technique and character can, and should, continue to develop throughout one’s life. Confucius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), all provided strands of thought and ideas to the cultural stew of China and Japan. All of them assumed that people could change, grow and improve at every stage of life.

The Zhuangzi is filled with stories that emphasize taking your time and learning things. The idea that learning and development never end is intrinsic to the all of the lines of thought in ancient China that used “way” 道 as a metaphor for their school of thought. There were a lot of them.

On the other hand, there is a common idea in Western thinking that we each have some sort of unchanging, immutable core or essence. I’ve heard many people say “I can’t change. That’s just the way I am.” or “I don’t like it, but that’s who I am.”  Once they finish high school or college, many people seem to think that they are done growing, changing and evolving as a person. Thankfully, there is no evidence to support any of this.

A curated selection of the best of the the Budo Bum

 

Everyone changes, every day. Whatever we experience changes us. Little things change us in little ways, and big things can be, as the saying goes, “life changing.” Life never stops working on us, changing us, molding us. We are not stone. We are soft flesh that changes and adapts to the stresses it experiences. An essential question is whether we are going to be active participants choosing how we change and what we become, or are we going to be passive recipients of whatever life does to us..

A central concept of the idea of a Way, michi or do 道 is that there is always another step to take, another bit of ourselves we can polish, a bit of our personality that we can improve, and that we can direct that change. This is true whether we are talking about Daoist thought or Confucian thought or something in between. The idea of a finished, unchanging human really doesn’t come up. 

Budo constantly reminds us that we aren’t finished growing, developing, improving. Rather than declaring that we can’t change, budo is a claxon calling out that we change whether we want to or not, and that we can direct that change if we choose.  Budo is about choosing to direct how we change instead of just letting the circumstances of life change us.

We are making the choice to take part in how life shapes us from the moment we enter the dojo, although I doubt many realize how much budo can influence who we become when we make the decision to start training. Good budo training should, and does, change us. Physically we get stronger, more flexible, improve our stamina and develop the ability to endure fierce training and even injuries. That’s the obvious stuff. More importantly, budo changes who we are. It should make us mentally tougher and intellectually more flexible. It should help us to be more open to new experiences and ideas. It should teach us that we can transform ourselves. It’s a cliche that budo training makes people more confident, but it’s also true of good budo training. You go to the dojo and you get used to people literally attacking you, and as time goes on, you’re not only okay with that, but you look forward to it. I don’t know anyone who started budo training because they enjoyed being attacked, but it doesn’t take very long before that sort of training, whether it is done through kata geiko or some sort of randori or free sparring, becomes something you look forward to with a smile.

Keiko, the formal term for budo practice in Japanese, is the highlight of my week. The time I spend in the dojo practicing and doing budo never tires my spirit. It exhausts my body, but my spirit always comes away refreshed, recharged, and ready to deal with all the stresses of life outside the dojo. Budo practice isn’t something we “play”. In Japanese you never use the verbs associated with play when talking about budo, and even judoka avoid words that emphasize the competitive and focus on terms like tanren 鍛錬, forging. Budo is about change; conscious, self-directed change.

The wonderful thing is that once we learn how to change ourselves in the dojo, we know how to do it outside the dojo as well. The discomfort we get used to while pushing ourselves in the dojo teaches us how to deal with discomfort outside the dojo. That’s one thing budo doesn’t eliminate - the discomfort of changing. Self-directed change is difficult and pushes us into places and situations that are anything but comfortable. I can remember being a pugnacious jerk, and dealing with disagreement and conflict as a win-lose scenario that I had to win. It took a lot of time in and out of the dojo to learn that just because there is conflict there doesn’t have to be a winner and loser.  There are lots of other ways to deal with conflict, and I’m grateful to my budo teachers that I learned something about conflict as something other than a zero-sum game.

Budo has a lot to teach us about life, how we can change and adapt to the world instead of letting the world change us. All the effort that we put into learning the techniques and skills of budo also teaches us how to direct an equal amount of effort into changing any aspect of ourselves that we wish to confront. The budo path has no end destination. We just keep working at it.

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman, PhD. for her editorial support and advice.

 

Budo's Principal Lesson

 

Photo Credit Patricia Anderson Copyright 2023

Koryu budo schools teach many things: strikes, throwing techniques, joint locks, strangles, weapons, defenses, counterattacks, proper breathing, proper walking, techniques for receiving attacks, ukemi. However, the one thing every koryu budo school that I have encountered spends the most time teaching and practicing isn’t any of these techniques. It’s awareness; self-awareness, spatial awareness, temporal awareness, and awareness of others.

I’m purposely limiting this to koryu budo because gendai budo spend most of their practice time drilling competition techniques and sparring. Koryu budo schools spend most of their practice time on mental focus and awareness. If you give it a little consideration, it is clear that the amount of time spent on technical skills is second to what is spent on awareness and mental development.

The bulk of koryu budo training is kata. Pick any koryu budo ryuha and watch some of their kata. A kata might take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds from the start to finish of one repetition. The technique practice in the kata will generally last from 1 second to around 10 seconds. The rest of the time is spent practicing awareness and focus. This is true whether it is iai or kenjutsu or jojutsu or naginata or jujutsu or anything else.

If we look at the first iaido kata in Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu and Muso Shinden Ryu, the kata starts while the practitioner is standing. She takes the time to sit in seiza carefully and attentively. Once she is sitting, she does not rush into drawing her sword. She stays calm and focused. She begins moving carefully, being fully aware of what she is doing and what her kaso teki (imagined opponent) is supposed to be doing. She begins drawing her sword slowly, completely focused on the situation, and does not rush anything. When everything is right, she finishes her draw and cuts quickly across kaso teki. She pushes forward and raises the sword over her head, then cuts quickly down through kaso teki. She pauses. Focusing and extending awareness, she considers if kaso teki is still a threat. She shifts her blade and pushes it slowly out to her right, then brings it in close to her head and drops it across her front for the chiburi and rises to her feet, all the while remaining focused on kaso teki, just in case the threat has not been completely eliminated. She pushes her right foot back into a relatively deep stance. Maintaining her focus on kaso teki, she brings her left hand to the koi guchi, and the tsuba close to her left hand. She pulls the back of the sword along her left hand until the tip drops into the opening in her hand and then slowly brings the saya over the sword tip and begins sheathing the sword, still staying focused on kaso teki. As she sheathes the sword, she slowly lowers herself to her left knee. Once the sword is sheathed there is a pause while she continues to focus on kaso teki. She rises, still focusing on kaso teki. Only after all of this, does she lift her eyes from kaso teki. Maintaining her mental focus, she expands her awareness to the whole space around her, and then she returns to her starting place with deliberate care and focus.

That’s a lot of time and effort to practice two cuts. The most important lesson isn’t the draw or the cuts. It’s the focus and awareness. Awareness combined with the ability to focus on what is critical are the most important skills in koryu budo. That’s why we spend more time practicing them then everything else combined. Awareness will keep you out of more fights than any technique can win, and focus will prevent distractions that cause losses. 

 

 

Paired koryu kata spend just as much time on awareness and focus as iai kata do. Take the omote kata Monomi from Shinto Muso Ryu. The partners start facing each other separated by around five to seven steps. The kata starts when tachi raises their bokuto to chudan. Jo carefully moves their weapon so that they are holding it by one end with the right hand and the other end is touching the ground on their left side, all while maintaining perfect focus on tachi. Tachi raises the sword to hasso and steps forward with their left foot, keeping their eyes and mind focused on jo. Tachi advances carefully into cutting range without breaking their focus on jo. When they are one step away from being able to cut jo, tachi swiftly raises the bokuto, steps forward and cuts jo’s head.

Jo has spent all of this time focused on tachi, ready to act the moment tachi begins any sort of attack. The instant tachi begins to raise their bokuto, jo moves just enough to the left to be out from under the bokuto’s cut and simultaneously brings their weapon up. As the sword is cutting through the space where jo’s head was, jo steps back with their right foot and brings their weapon down on tachi’s wrist. Tachi and jo are each focused on the other, minutely aware of each other. Tachi pulls their bokuto out from under the jo and steps back into jodan. As tachi is stepping back, jo whips their weapon around and points the end directly at tachi’s eyes, preventing tachi from stepping forward to attack. Then jo steps forward and thrusts the stick into tachi’s solar plexus. Jo carefully raises their weapon to tachi’s eyes, and tachi carefully slides back and lowers their bokuto. Jo and tachi are focused on each other, watching for the least sign that the other will try another attack. Jo moves their hands to the ends of their weapon and places their right hand on their thigh without letting their focus on tachi waver. Jo shifts their hands on the ends of the weapon and tachi deliberately pulls their left foot back to their right foot. Jo brings their left hand to their front and slides their weapon through their right hand to its middle and brings their left foot forward next to their right foot. Tachi begins to carefully retreat back to their starting point, remaining focused on jo the entire time. After tachi has taken their first step back, jo begins carefully backing towards their starting point, never letting their eyes leave tachi or their focus waver.

That’s a lot of time spent focusing on each other to practice one cut, one strike, and one thrust. The action takes about a second, maybe two. The rest of the kata is spent developing focus and awareness. When will tachi attack? Jo doesn’t move until tachi begins their attack. Move too soon and the opening is lost. Move too late and you’re hit in the head. Tachi has to be aware of everything that jo is doing and not doing. Jo has to be just as focused on tachi. If jo’s focus wavers for the smallest instant, tachi can cut them before they can act. After the cut and counter strike there is a brief impasse, with the partners focusing to sense the smallest intention to do something. If tachi tries to do anything other than step back, jo has to sense it and ram their weapon into tachi’s solar plexus. If tachi detects jo’s focus slipping they will instantly launch an attack. 

After the final thrust, jo and tachi are still focused on each other, each without an iota of trust for the other, until they are finally back to their starting points and the kata is over. The ability to maintain that sort of focus without letting it break for the slightest instant takes time to develop. Jo often learns to not trust tachi the hard way. I let my focus waver towards the end of a kata once and tachi hit me, seemingly without warning. As my sense of awareness improved, I began to sense when tachi was going to try to “cut” me and I could move to stop it. When I got better, I could sense tachi’s intention and shut it down by sharpening my focus, without making any movement. As tachi, I’ve learned to watch for breaks in my partner’s focus and attack into them. Jo learns to never trust tachi for an instant.

The principle lesson in koryu budo is mental. It’s the one that we devote most of our practice time to, and it’s the one that is most applicable to every moment of every day. Stay aware and focused. Don’t let your attention be diverted from what is important. 

Our society doesn’t encourage focus or awareness. We are surrounded by distractions. TV, radio, internet, cell phones. Advertising works best when it can distract your mind, interrupt your focus and make you think about what the advertiser wants you to think about. Distracted driving is such a menace that it injures more people than drunk driving does, and the number of deaths attributed to it is climbing fast. We have trouble staying focused in classrooms and in offices. Distractions on worksites are as much of a danger as distracted driving. 

 

Learning to focus and be aware was never easy though, even without our modern distraction machines. If it had been, the people who crafted the koryu budo that we train in would not have devoted so much of their pedagogy to practicing staying focused and being aware. All the other things we do in the dojo feed back into this principle lesson. If your breathing and posture are bad, you can’t focus nearly as well as when you are upright and breathing properly. If you are tense, you will focus on the wrong things, and you’re liable to react to the wrong stimuli. Proper posture and breathing help you to stay relaxed so you remain focused on what is critical. 

The essential mental state in koryu budo is known as heijoshin 平常心 in Japanese. One reading of heijoshin is “normal mind”. When I was first learning this I thought it was strange, because the focused and aware mind that koryu budo teaches is anything but normal in the world I live in. I don’t meet many people outside koryu budo who can combine focus and awareness like the experienced koryu budoka I have known. This kind of mind is special, and requires a great deal of specialized training to achieve. The goal of all this time spent practicing focus and awareness in the dojo is to transform that special state of mind into our “everyday mind”. 

Being focused and aware is more complicated than just paying attention. You have to learn how to mentally acknowledge things beyond you and your training partner without losing your focus on your partner. I’ve seen people who didn’t understand what was happening (or whose awareness was atrocious) walk right up to people who are swinging weapons about. I’ve also trained in a lot of places that weren’t exactly perfect for what I was practicing. Places where the walls were a little too close to be able to move as you want to in the kata, or where there is a pole or other object in an inconvenient spot in the dojo, or outdoors on uneven footing. If you are so focused on your partner that you don’t know what else is going on around you, or where the walls and obstructions are, or what is under foot, you need more awareness practice.

As your understanding of budo grows deeper, you begin to be aware of critical details that you couldn’t have noticed in the past, things like what your partner can and cannot do from a particular stance or position. In that Shinto Muso Ryu kata above, if tachi is so focused on jo that they don’t notice where jo’s weapon is targeting, they are likely to try an attack that will end with them (hopefully) on the ground because down was the best direction to go to avoid the counter-thrust to their eyes. If they are too slow or overcommitted, they may end up taking the stick in their eye. Awareness includes being aware of which options are open, and which are closed. When can your opponent attack? Which potential attacks are viable, and which can be ignored? Where is your opponent likely to attack you? Where is your opponent open to your attack? This kind of awareness takes a lot of time to develop, and you don’t develop it by doing reps. You develop it by taking time to see your opponent and by taking the opponent’s role. Slowly you become more aware of not just your opponent, but of everything around you. 

In koryu budo, we spend more time practicing being focused and aware than everything else we do combined. It’s that important. None of the cool techniques will work if you aren’t aware of a threat or aren’t able to stay focused on a threat. Awareness and focus are critical at every step in training, and they are just as critical, if not moreso, outside the dojo. Anyone who has driven on Detroit freeways knows how important awareness and focus are to getting home in one piece. There are accidents all over the freeways caused by people who aren’t focused on driving and lack awareness of what is going on around them. Detroit commuter traffic is the perfect application for the focus and awareness that all of my koryu budo training is developing.

 

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman PhD. for editorial support.

When The Senior Is You

 

Adam Grandt, Deborah Klens-Bigman, Kiyama Hiroshi, Peter Boylan.  Photo copyright Peter Boylan 2023

I still remember clearly, the first time at the judo dojo in Omihachiman, Japan, that we lined up to bow in and there was no one to my right. I was so shocked at being the senior on the mat that I promptly forgot half the commands that the senior calls out at the beginning of practice. Thank goodness the dohai on my left remembered them and was kind enough to whisper them so I didn’t look like too much of an idiot. Maybe I should have realized that this could happen and made a point to really memorize the commands, but I never in my wildest imagination thought that I would be the senior person on the mat. Fortunately, on that occasion it didn’t last very long: about 10 minutes into practice a sempai showed up and I was quite happy to have someone else be responsible. 

Being the senior in the room is one of those things that happens slowly, and then suddenly. We start training and we have no idea what we are doing. As the weeks go by and we get a sense of how things work in the dojo we don’t have to know much and we don’t have any responsibility. As the weeks turn into months we start learning some of the basics and we’re able to contribute a little to the dojo besides our dues and our ignorance. As the months turn into years we find ourselves helping beginners figure out that they need to step with their other left foot, how to take a fall or a strike, how to do the warm-ups and what the dojo etiquette is. 

Gradually our place in the lineup shifts towards the deep end without us doing anything more special than showing up for practice regularly and putting some effort into learning what sensei is teaching. If you’re lucky, sensei will help you learn the senior ropes and maybe even have you teach occasionally while she watches so you can get some experience at the front of the room and start feeling the weight of being responsible for teaching well and making sure everyone finishes practice in health as good as when they started.

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 It’s not uncommon though, to be taking your time edging your way up the seniority ranks, when you show up to practice and sensei is out sick, or one sempai has to work late, or another has child raising duties…no one knows where the others are, but you’re in charge! 

Dennis Hooker, the late founder of Shindai Dojo was fond of saying when asked how you become a senior martial artist: “Don’t die and don’t quit!” - that, and a little genuine effort to learn your art are all it really takes. Seniority certainly doesn’t take talent. If that were required I would still be a white belt.

Becoming a senior student is something that happens if you don’t quit and you don’t die. Succession in the martial arts is fraught with ego, but first you have to not quit and not die. One of the arts I train in, Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho, very nearly ceased to exist when the soke passed away, and then a month later his son and successor was killed in an automobile accident. Suddenly my teacher, Kiyama Hiroshi, was the most knowledgeable person practicing Shinto Hatakage Ryu.  He didn’t set out to be the head of the system. He was just learning it as best he could by copying what Noda Shihan was doing. 

It doesn’t take planning and desire to become a senior; it takes the quiet dedication to show up for practice day in and day out. Then one day you don’t do anything new and suddenly you’re the senior in the room.

I’ve seen lots of people so desperate to be the senior at the top of the heap that they will start their own organization or even invent their own art. Somehow folks imagine being the senior is a glorious parade where everyone treats you with deference and you can do what you want. Being senior is the opposite of glorious. 

What is often missed in training is that increases in rank aren’t rewards. They are weighted with responsibility. Every time you move up in rank, the responsibilities become a little heavier. As a white belt my responsibilities were to show up, and if I got to the dojo early, make sure I was on the floor sweeping it before anyone senior to me could show up and grab the broom. As you get more senior you get more responsibility. Maybe you start handling some of the record keeping, or you’re taking care of the bookkeeping. Then you start teaching occasionally. Then one day sensei asks you to take a regular spot on the teaching roster. 

Rank doesn’t equal privilege. Rank equals responsibility. Kiyama Sensei passed away in September. That means that three of us who have been around long enough without quitting are suddenly responsible for everything that he taught us. We are responsible for teaching all the principles that he shared with us to the very fullest of our ability. We are responsible for Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho. We are responsible for whether this ryuha and these teachings live and contribute to another generation or are forgotten and lost forever.

That’s what happens when you become senior. You get the responsibility. Deborah Klens-Bigman, Kawakami Ryusuke and I received this responsibility. If we fail, then Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho becomes just another footnote in some books.

Everyone who does budo, whether koryu or gendai, has this responsibility to a certain extent. We are all responsible for the arts we train in. We are responsible to those who gave their time to teach us, and we are responsible to those who take the time to learn from us. Our rank just tells us how much responsibility we bear.

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 In an art like judo or kendo or aikido, with plenty of dojos around, you don’t have to worry much about being responsible for the survival of the art. You still have the responsibility to your teachers and the other members of the dojo. If you’re teaching, you have responsibility to your students, and the responsibility to carry on the traditions of the dojo and to pass on the understanding of your teachers. That would be plenty of responsibility for anyone. Those who climb to the highest echelons of an art take on the responsibility of seeing that the art that is passed on to the next generations is a strong, healthy one.

Small styles like Shinto Hatakage Ryu are wonderful jewels. There are perhaps 200 small ryuha surviving in Japan. Many of them have only two or three or even just one dojo with a handful of students. In such an environment it doesn’t take long to find you have a lot of responsibility. When you're at the top, you’re responsible for everything in the dojo, from teaching the classes to making sure the toilet works. If you belong to a small koryu you might discover that you have at least some of the responsibility for the art living into the next generation. 

That’s what happens when you’re the senior.