I had a conversation with one of my Shinto Muso Ryu students that was interesting. He was having a common issue with a core technique. He was trying to make the technique unnecessarily complicated. The technique (in this case Maki Otoshi) is difficult enough without making it complicated.
Good budo is simple. Every koryu I’ve had a chance to work with at all has been extremely simple. Shinto Muso Ryu has 12 fundamental techniques. The more I practice and study them though, the more I believe there are only 2: a strike and a thrust.
The Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai I do comes down to drawing and cutting. Even the defensive movements such as suri age and uke nagashi are applications of the fundamental mechanics and principles of good cutting. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Cut down. Reverse the motion and suri age. Maintain the relationship between arm, hand and sword and move it to the side for uke nagashi. They are all one.
Kodokan Judo has an impressive list of techniques: 65 throws, perhaps a dozen strangles, and a number of arm locks. They all manage to express the principle of 精力善用, or “maximum efficiency minimum effort” as it is most commonly translated. The throws, all of them, from big throws like seioinage and kata guruma to subtle foots sweeps like de ashi harai to the seemingly impossible uki otoshi all rely on the principle of kuzushi. The more I study, more I see kuzushi as a simple thing, rather than many different movements I was taught for achieving kuzushi when doing various throws.
Good budo is always simple. I can do all of the jo kata from Shinto Muso Ryu in about 20 minutes. The iai kata of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu can be done in a similar amount of time. The kenjutsu kata of Muso Shinden Ryu can be done in about 10 minutes. There is nothing complicated in any of them. Iai kata are all “draw and cut” or sometimes “draw and cut several times.” Jo kata, no matter how advanced all come back to those 12 fundamental techniques.
A good question to ask is “Why is good budo always simple?” Simple has several advantages. First, it’s easier to teach and learn. For iai, if you only have one grip on the sword, and you always use the sword the same way, you can learn it much faster than if you have multiple grips and a variety of ways to handle the swords in different situations.
Simple is smoother and more stable. Short, simple, uncomplicated actions are smoother to carry out and leave less room for mistakes. Complexity creates weak points. If I’m doing sword and I have to repeatedly change my grip I create an opening every time I have to change my grip. There is a moment during each grip change when my control of the sword is weak because I have to let go to make the change. If my opponent attacks at the moment there is nothing I can do since I don’t have a solid grip on my weapon, and she will defeat me easily. The same goes for footwork. Judo footwork is stunningly simple and uncomplicated. We avoid doing anything complicated that involves crossing our feet. The whole time our feet are crossed, we are standing on one point instead of two, making us unstable and vulnerable. Complex is weak because it has many connections or joints where it can be attacked. Simple is stronger because it has fewer suki, openings, to attack.
Good budo is based around a few basic principles and movements that can be deployed in an exceptionally broad variety of situations. Good budo almost never focuses on principles or movements that can only be used in a very few situations. The focus is on making the broadest possible use of the fewest learned movements. That makes each system much more efficient and effective.
Simple systems are easier to apply and use. If I have to choose from dozens of very different techniques, the possibility of me mixing elements of two techniques and ending up with neither increases quickly. With simple, consistent systems, the techniques are built on a single, common foundation. This common foundation makes the elements of the different techniques common, which means that there is little to mix up or confuse between techniques, and flowing from one technique to the next is easier because the fundamental elements of all the techniques are the same.
Complex techniques open up another set of problems. Every additional step required for a technique multiplies the opportunity for making a mistake by an order of magnitude. The best techniques are as simple as possible, creating no extra space for mistakes and getting the job done quickly and efficiently.
Simple techniques are also just faster. A two step technique takes twice as long to perform as a one step technique. A three step technique takes three times as long. The longer it takes to finish a technique, the more opportunity there is for Murphy’s Law to come into play. I don’t about know about anyone else, but I don’t want to give Murphy the least chance to interfere.
As my student was discovering though, simple does not mean easy. It takes a lot of work to develop the most fundamental skills. For me, the most difficult technique in Kodokan Judo is the first technique from the first kata people learn, uki otoshi. After 29 years, I finally feel like I’m beginning to understand it. It’s as pared down and simple as a technique can be. It’s also as difficult to do right as anything I’ve ever tried. My version of Occam’s Razor is “The simplest budo is the best budo.”
I hosted a budo seminar last weekend. It was attended by a small, focused group of experienced budoka from a range of disciplines. Seminars can range from very good to OK to a complete waste of time and money. This was close to my ideal of what a good seminar should be.
Budo is a physical activity that is exceptionally personal. At lower levels a lot can be learned from just seeing techniques demonstrated. Students can pick up movements and concepts from teachers even if they don’t experience what is being done. At higher levels though techniques become progressively more subtle and difficult to perceive the important aspects of what is happening.
There are lots of reasons for attending seminars. Most of them don’t have a lot to do with improving your skills. That doesn’t make them bad reasons, they just don’t have much with to do with getting better.
One reason that has motivated me to go to seminars even when I was unlikely to get anything else out of the seminar is just to see someone great. In Hindi, the act of going to see a great teacher or expression of divine is called darshan, This seems like an appropriate way to describe going to a seminar with the primary goal of seeing a great exponent of an art I study. The great practitioners and teachers have transcendent skill and technique. It’s a privilege just to be able to see them express their skill in person. I’ve been to a few seminars for this reason, and a couple of times I’ve had the great good fortune to feel these teachers’ skills personally. The lasting memories from these experiences are ongoing inspiration for me. I’ve had the opportunity to see and feel people who are the best in the world at a few seminars.
Sometimes I go to seminars just for the social fun. I know the seminar is unlikely to offer me anything special in the way of new insights or ideas, but the opportunity to hang out with a crowd of other brain-addled budoka can be irresistable. On these occasions the training is an afterthought, and can even get in the way of the real point of the trip, talking with old friends and new ones. Being able to freely talk with people who share my passion is rare and wonderful.
Some of the other reasons for attending seminars besides developing your own skills are less exciting. For those of us who belong to one of the big budo organizations that use dan tests administered by panels of judges, there are a couple of useful reasons to go to the seminar. Organizational standards are set by committees, and I’ve yet to see a committee that could sit down, look at the existing standards and say “Yup, those guys last year did a great job. We can’t improve on what they’ve done, so let’s leave it alone and go get a drink.” Never happens. Which means that if you are testing, you need to go to the organization seminar and find out how they are doing things this year. Not a particularly inspiring reason to go to a seminar, but if you need to grade, you’d better do it. Go, find out what the judges are supposed to be looking for, and then do it.
On the flip side of seeing what the organization is asking for this year, those big, organization sponsored seminars are usually lead by the same folks who sit on the grading panel. That makes them a chance to be seen by the judges and let them get familiar with you and your skills. Judges are human after all, and if they have seen you practice and are familiar with your skill level, you increase you chances of passing when the test comes around. And there is always the chance that you might catch a personal comment or two during the seminar.
I know people go to seminars for the wrong reasons as well. I don’t enjoy dealing with people like this, but they are always a risk at an open seminar. These are the people who show up to show off. The want everyone to see how good they are. Every moment on the mat is a chance for them to display the wonder of their technique so the rest of us can appreciate their greatness and tell them how awesome they are. They drive me nuts because you can count on them to not pay attention to what the instructor is trying to teach. Instead they will do every technique the way they like so their partner can feel the clear superiority of their technique and everyone else can see how good they are.
Worse, the show-offs are there to prove how good they are to every one of their training partners. Anything the teacher asks that might present them with difficulty or challenge is ignored in favor of the way they already do things. I hope that Sensei sees them and intervenes if they do have trouble with a technique, because their response will almost always be to crank up the raw force to make their partner react, even if they can’t do the technique. Forget about trying to figure out the lesson being taught and figuring out how to apply it. They aren’t at the seminar for that. Show-offs are there so everyone can see how great they are, and if their partner won’t cooperate by falling down easily, they will drive their uke down with raw force.
That makes these people even more dangerous than absolute beginners. Beginners are liable to substitute strength for the technique they don’t yet have, but that’s a stage everyone goes through. After you’ve been through it, you usually have enough skill to protect yourself from the mistakes of beginners. Show-offs though have some technique, but when that isn’t quite enough, they amp up the strength as well, which is a lot more dangerous than the innocent pushing and pulling of beginners. Watch out for show-offs.
Over the years, I’ve been to lots more seminars than I can clearly remember. What I’ve learned is that I don’t enjoy the really big seminars for anything other than socializing. Once the floor gets crowded, real learning and exploration is often lost in crush of fellow budoka and the effort to not get hurt. Anytime people are getting thrown around in a crowded room, or sticks are being swung without lots of space, I spend most of my time making sure I and those around me aren’t getting hurt, and relatively little time focused on improving my skills. I’m not big on organizational seminars either, though I recognized their necessity and function, they aren’t the seminars are really enjoy and get the most out of.
That’s why when I planned my own budo gathering a few weeks ago, I tried to implement all the features I’ve found most enjoyable and which contribute the most to a great learning experience.
One of the most important features of a really great seminar for me is that it be relatively small. This is tricky unless you have a wealthy sponsor, because seminars cost money to run and teachers deserve to be properly compensated for their time and effort in sharing their understanding. Ideally, I like seminars that are around 20-25 people. There are a number of reasons for that size. First, it means that the instructor will be able to work with everyone multiple times throughout the seminar. She won’t be stuck at the front of the room demonstrating something and then having to helplessly watch as the crowd tries to replicate it.
With a small seminar, the teacher can provide hands on corrections to everyone there many times. I can’t overemphasize how important this is. Budo is an inherently personal activity that is learned directly from the teacher, whether it is koryu budo where the teacher is expected to act as uke for the students trying their techniques, or a training paradigm like aikido, where students are expected to learn by feeling their teachers’ techniques. Either way, without that direct, one-to-one experience, it’s nearly impossible to truly understand the higher levels of the art. Small seminars give teachers the chance to share one-on-one throughout the day.
On the flip side at small seminars, students not only get to work with the teacher, but they get to train with everyone in attendance and be part of many different responses and explorations of what the teacher is offering. I like to get to know my training partners. In a small seminar, you can do that. When I go to big seminars, I find that I either end up working with the same 2 or 3 partners the whole time, or I never work with the same person twice. I enjoy working with different people, but I also like getting to know people. Small seminars let me do both easily.
A few things I like at any seminar are a focus on a limited number of key points, having time to make notes between lessons, and having a little review at the end of each session to reemphasize the lessons ideas covered. These are all things I learned when I was teaching school as full time occupation.
It’s important to keep the major points being covered and emphasized to no more than 5, and I think 3 is even better. There’s a good reason for this. Our brains can only hold that many ideas at one time without dropping the others. As soon as we go over 5 individual points, our brains start dropping stuff, and it becomes difficult to hold onto anything. A good seminar focuses on just a few key points or principles and approaches them from a variety of directions and means. We all learn differently, so approaching a principle from a variety of angles gives all the participants a chance to examine the lesson from a perspective that’s best for them.
The other advantage to staying focused on few keeps points and attacking them from different angles is that students can gain a better, more complete grasp of the points. I’ve been to classes and seminars where the teacher introduced a dozen or more important points. I got nothing out of these experiences because the were so many points that I never had a chance to get a firm handle on any of them, and there were so many different ideas presented that I had trouble even remembering what had been presented, much less any details.
I’ve also learned to appreciate breaks spaced so I can make useful notes. An hour of focused learning is about all I can handle and hold before my mind needs a break to absorb what’s happening. Everyone is different, but I find that for me, a five or ten minute break every hour to make some notes and mentally organize what I’ve been learning is helpful. The note making process helps me organize and anchor what I’ve learned, and gives me some references for use later when I’m practicing.
A good seminar doesn’t happen just by having a nice venue and a skillful person leading it. It takes planning, preparation and an instructor who is not only a skilled practitioner but also a skilled teacher. Seminars that are too crowded make it difficult to learn. Teachers who throw too many points and principles at participants do them a disservice, since we can only hold so much information before it all starts to spill out of our heads. A modest sized seminar, with a teacher who focuses on just a few key points, and gives me time to make some useful notes is a wonderful thing.
I’ve been thinking lately about how pointless the study of koryu budo would be if we were just preserving the way people trained 200 or 300 or 400 or 500 years ago. We would all be maintaining museum pieces good for nothing more than taking out and displaying for people along with other artifacts. While dwelling on this, I ran across this quote from Gustav Mahler, a 19th century conductor and composer.
"Tradition is tending the flame, it's not worshipping the ashes"
This quite nicely encapsulates my feelings about studying koryu budo. Many classical arts, not just koryu budo, can wither and die under the pressure from those who want to maintain them in an unchanging form. Mahler, although now remembered as a great composer, was known primarily as a orchestra conductor during his lifetime. As a both a conductor and a composer, Mahler ran into people who resisted change and innovation in both the creation of new music, and in the interpretation of classical works. Anything outside what had been done before risked resistance and criticism as a departure from tradition.
For many, there was only the classical way to perform Bach and other revered composers. The traditional way of performing music, and the established rules for writing new music were difficult to escape.
This sort of adherence to past precedence is all too common in both koryu and gendai budo. It’s
easy to become so focused on what has come before that we forget to use the past as a platform from which to approach the future. Yes, the great ones of the past were great. This is true whether we are talking about music or art or budo.
Blindly worshipping what the great individuals achieved though is to forget that they were innovators themselves. They took the traditions they received, and didn’t just accept it as the way things must be done.. Those great geniuses took what they had and moved a step forward.
They avoided the trap of focussing so much on the way things have been that they forgot about the present and the future. In something like budo, this is a particularly easy trap to fall into. Especially with arts that have storied histories, it’s easy get lost in that rich history and forget to turn and face the future. Too much time spent on an art’s past slowly dries it out and robs it of the vitality of a living art.
The past is the foundation of the future. If all you do is focus on the past, eventually there will be no future. Spend much time at all moving in budo circles and you will encounter people who want their art to be done exactly the same as the founder of the art did a hundred, two hundred or even five hundred years ago. This seems as likely and as interesting and worthwhile as trying to do every performance of Swan Lake exactly as it was performed at it’s debut.
These people who imagine that is what studying an art with a long tradition is all about miss the essence of living traditions. These are people who worship those ashes Mahler is referring to. It’s as if no one since the founder of the art has had any insight or new understanding. All that is left in their minds are the burned up and dried out ashes of what the founder was doing.
Uchi always does the attack in exactly one, and shite always responds in a precisely identical manner. The form and technique become about replicating exactly what someone is supposed to have done decades or centuries ago. In an effort to preserve things just as they saw them, these preservationists drain the life from what they are doing and leave it desiccated and empty of real value. Nothing more than those ashes Mahler refers to.
This can be seen when people start to value something simply because it is old. There are ancient styles of music and dance in Japan such as Dengaku that have been preserved for 700 years and more. When they were young, this music and dance was a sensation and is said to have caused near riots in major cities. Now the only reason for performing what remains of these once lively and popular arts is that they are old. There is no life left in them. The people who have preserved these arts have preserved even less than a flower dried and pressed in a book. There may be be some bits left among the ashes, but there is nothing left that can even inspire the mind to imagine what the dance was like originally. The only value remaining to it is that it’s old.
This is a danger for all budo, whether koryu art or gendai. It’s relatively easy to see how the kata of ancient koryu bugei ryuha can be venerated and preserved to death. In an effort to do things exactly as their teacher did something, students can stop treating the kata as living lessons and start treating them as fossils, unchanging and dead. Sadly, if you attend some of the big koryu demonstrations in Japan, it is all too likely that you will see some groups that have succumbed to this temptation.
What might surprise people is that there are aspects of judo, kendo, aikido and karate that can fall into this trap. Even in modern organizations it’s all too common to see people elevating their idea of how a revered teacher did something, rather than seeking the principle and spirit of the practice. The shape of how even the greatest teachers do things will change and evolve over the course of their lives. Choosing one snapshot out of a teacher’s career and deciding that is only valid way of doing things is ridiculous. Which moment do you choose? How do you know that iteration of the technique or kata was the greatest and is universally applicable to every person and possible use?
I see this danger in some of the kata in judo. Judo is somewhat saved because you always have a partner, so at least the surface point of the form is obvious. I’ve heard about karate kata though where people have learned all the motions, but not the bunkai. They don’t really know what the purpose of particular motions are anymore. Already within some lines, less than a lifetime since it was brought from Okinawa, the art has begun to dry out and die. This sort of thing is more likely to happen with solo exercises such as karate or iai kata, but it’s possible with any system. Even in paired kata, if both people are simple copying motions without learning and understanding the depth and reasons for the motions, then that too will dry out, burn up and die.
Tending the flame of a budo system, a ryuha, takes effort and thought. Like the Taoist parable of the finger and the moon, the kata and techniques that we practice are the finger. They point us at the principles and fundamental concepts that the founders and those who came after them discovered and developed.
When I study judo, I study all the parts of it, techniques, randori and kata. Each part informs the other, and keeps them alive. I know too many people in the judo world for whom the kata have already become museum pieces because they only learn enough to go through the motions without understanding the principles embodied there. If we truly want to respect the genius of the founders and brilliant teachers who created these arts and passed them on to us, we have to do more.
Those who tend the flame of their art work at pulling the principles out of the forms and then feeding the forms with their understanding of the principles. I’m working on Ju No Kata in judo right now. This is a kata that is very susceptible to being nothing more than a burned out shell. There are no big throws or huge techniques. As I work at it though, I discover things about kuzushi that I feed back into my practice of the kata. Each time I do it, the kata becomes more alive. Where at first my practice was just about “Uke pushes here and tori turns there, grabs uke’s arm and lifts.” Now my practice looks very much the same as before but it’s about uke pushing and tori creating instability destroying uke’s base with very subtle, almost unnoticeable movements and connections.
The insights that come for figuring out kuzushi in Ju No Kata then feed the flames of understanding and application when I practice individual techniques or do randori. This exploration transforms what looks from the outside to be a boring, bland set of simple movements into a fascinating exploration of fundamental principle.
The more I understand those principles, the more they come alive outside the dojo and in areas other than randori. There are all sorts of places and ways to apply lessons about kuzushi, timing, power generation, power dissipation and all the other principles and lessons that an art can teach.
Don’t focus on the outward form leached of all meaning and depth. Look for what the form is supposed to contain and bring that to life. Don’t fall into the trap of worshiping the ashes of your founders teachings. Use your heart and mind to add fuel to fire their genius.
Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman for the information on dengaku.
I watched the Avengers: Age Of Ultron last week. I admit to being an old school comic book geek. I’ve got nearly the entire run of Marvel Comics from the 80s in boxes somewhere. Watching the movie reminded me of one of the old motivating fantasies many have for starting martial arts; to be able to be able to do things other people can’t, to have something like a super power. While watching the movie, some of the heroes, especially Black Widow and Hawkeye, did things that looked fantastic on screen. While what was these characters were doing on the screen is an exaggeration, it made me think about that fact that budo practice really can endow people with extraordinary power.
Black Widow runs around fighting and beating the daylights out of whole armies of foes. We all know that’s not realistic. On the other hand, a average size women, with plenty of training, is going to be quite effective against an ordinary man. Yes, the man will have size and strength. After a few years of budo though, the woman will have an understanding of spacing and timing, as well as technique that will effectively multiply her strength because she will put it to targeted work rather than just lashing out. I’m pretty sure any of the women who make it to the medal stand in Olympic judo could go through me so fast I wouldn’t know what happened. That’s speaking as someone who’s done judo for decades. Their extensive and focused training makes them that much better than just about anyone.
Power is relative. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary we get the meanings
(1): ability to act or produce an effect
What budo practice endows someone with isn’t super-power, but it is power, and it’s available to anyone who is willing to work at it. There are lots of different sorts of power developed, and strangely, few of them have to do with raw force. The real power of budo comes from learning the precision application of small amounts of force in the correct way, at the correct moment. All the strength in the world, applied incorrectly, will not result in power.
That’s the genius of Kano JIgoro’s maixm 精力善用 seiryoku zenyo, usually translated as “maximum efficiency minimum effort. Kano was able to identify and encapsulate this in a simple phrase for Kodokan Judo, but it’s true of all budo. Regardless of whether we are talking about ancient or modern budo, karate, judo, aikido, weapons or any other art, the best, most effective budo will be that which applies force with the maximum efficiency and the least amount of effort.
It’s skill that brings about that efficiency and effectiveness. That skill multiplies the power of whatever strength someone brings into the dojo. Power “is the ability to act or produce an effect” and in budo there are two sides to that. The one that catches most people’s attention is the ability to do things to the world. Whether this is a karateka’s punch, a judoka’s throw, a the precise strike of a jo, or the clean joint lock of an aikidoka, these are all examples of power, and none of them require a huge amount of strength to be effective.
Karate folks know full well that the location of a blow is at least as important as the force behind it. Strike a strong man in the chest and you might knock him back. Strike him in the side of the knee or one of a number of other choice targets and it doesn’t take much force at all to leave him broken.
How much strength does it take to throw another human being? Surprisingly little. A college friend of mine who weighed something north of 300 pounds could be easily thrown by a young lady in our dojo who weighed less than of third what he did. Strength had nothing to do with it. He could bench press 3 of her. When he picked her up from behind in a bear hug though, she could put him in the air. It was not a landing he was fond of, but it was great at demonstrations. She could never match him strength for strength. The lesson was that she had to apply her force and technique in the right place, at the right moment. Then she was powerful enough to throw someone 3 times her size.
The right point of application and proper timing have far more to do with the power to do things than raw strength. Otherwise, the young gung-ho guys in the dojo would be the powerful ones. Instead, if you go into a dojo, it’s the people with the most training time who are really powerful. Watch out for the relaxed looking older ones. They don’t have the strength and the stamina anymore, but for some reason they can keep up with 20 somethings when randori starts. People wonder why, but they really shouldn’t.
In common sense thinking, there is no way someone in their 50s or 60s or 70s should be able to keep up with, much less regularly dominate, people in their teens and 20s. We all know life doesn’t work like that. Hang out in a good budo dojo for a while though, and you’ll see it happen all the time. Knowledge and skill make the folks with the gray hair powerful. They don’t need youthful strength and stamina (though it would be really nice to have) to be powerful. They know when an attack will be effective and when it won’t and they don’t waste their energy on things that won’t work.
They have something else too.
It’s not just what the experienced folks can dish out. It’s what they can roll with and keep coming up for more. In that movie, the Black Widow gets thrown all over the place, and instead of going splat into the ground, she does neat ukemi and comes up ready to go. That’s another sort of power. The power to absorb and negate. In the dojo we learn how to do that! I get thrown into the ground all the time at practice, roll through it, get up and dive straight back in for more.
Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis
In budo, power is a coin with two sides. The side that leaps to the front of everyone’s mind is the power to do things to someone else. Equally important, is the power to absorb and handle other people’s power. When I used to watch Suda Sensei, who was in his late 70s, handle the attacks from all the teenage kendoka in the dojo, it was a lesson in minimum effort and properly applied power. He could absorb and redirect their attacks without getting tired.
Hikoshiso Sensei at 65 would do randori for 15 minutes straight with young judo guys in their teens and 20s and throw us all over the place. He could absorb our attacks without effort. He would also let students learning techniques throw him around. Imagine a 65 year old man getting thrown repeatedly to the ground, and smiling about it. That’s power too.
That’s a lot of power. Think about what would happen to a normal, untrained person who was picked up and hurled at the ground. Bruises? Broken bones? Concussion? Death? Yet I see people in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s taking ukemi and getting thrown around. Then there are the 70 year olds competing in judo and throwing each other around!
70-74 year division judo competition
It takes power to be able to throw someone, but it takes power to be able to be thrown and stay healthy as well. Imagine the kind of power that allows people in their 70s to throw someone, and to survive being thrown. That’s real power that comes from budo training.
Budo training won’t turn you into a super-hero. But if you keep it up, it does give some extraordinary power. Budo will empower you with whatever you train for. And that power stays around as long as you train. Just ask these karateka.
I noticed that I’ve been writing about what things aren’t quite often lately. This is an attempt to write about what something is. What makes a great dojo? The dojo is the center of budo practice, and finding a great dojo is tougher than you’d think, even in Japan. When we look for a great dojo, what are we searching for?
“Dojo” is an old term for a place where one studies the teachings of Buddhism. When Sanskrit was translated into Chinese, this was used to describe the spot where the Buddha completed the path to enlightenment. It was the dojo 道場. the way place. The word dojo therefore, was ancient when the Japanese martial arts instructors in the Edo Period (1604-1868) began using it to describe their training halls.
The usage has drifted a long way from the original meaning of the place where enlightenment was achieved. The ancient Japanese applied it to mean places where the teachings of Buddhism are studied, and within Buddhist organizations in Japan, this meaning is still used. The meaning though wandered further when some Edo Period martial artists started calling their training halls “dojo.” Now the word is commonly used throughout the world.
I’ve seen many gorgeous dojo in Japan, from the stately Butokuden in Kyoto, to the lovely and peaceful dojo at Kashima Shrine, to many small, private dojos that are delightful pockets of beauty. The longer I train though, the more I come to understand that a dojo, no matter how lovely, is empty space that we have to fill with life and breath. I’ve noticed that both non-Japanese and Japanese alike will use “dojo” to refer to the members of the training group, not just the facility. This recognizes that it is really the people who make the empty space into a dojo, not the designated purpose of the space.
Interior of the Butokuden. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan
It’s the qualities of the people and their relationships that make a dojo great. I had a discussion with a some friends about what they feel makes a great dojo. A lot of the ideas were about the physical space and things that are nice. While I agree that a beer fridge is a wonderful thing to have in the dojo office, I’m not sure it’s a necessary component of an excellent dojo. I’ve had great experiences in the parking lot back of Sensei’s house, and lousy ones in gorgeous, dedicated spaces (with beer fridges!).
The things I look for in a great dojo are the people. I find that if you’ve got good people, the physical space will get taken care of. On the other hand, if the people and relationships aren’t good, the physical space won’t keep things together.
The number one item on most people’s list of requirements for great dojo, and what everyone thinks about first, is the teacher. Having a good teacher is important, because the teacher sets the example for everyone else of how things are supposed to be in the dojo. In a merely good dojo, the teacher can be anywhere from a competent technician to world class, but they will likely maintain a somewhat distant teacher-student relationship. The teacher never stoops down to the students level.
In a great dojo though, the teacher is more like a head student than a teacher standing above everyone at the head of the classroom dispensing the lesson. These teachers are every bit as much students of the art they are teaching as the newest beginner. They find a joy in polishing their own skills, and discovering new things about their art that is as strong and fierce as that of any student. This joy in practicing, improving, and discovering new things about their budo, and the teachers ability to share this with the rest of the dojo is what stands out for me in the teachers at great dojo. The teacher’s personal skill level is almost incidental. It may only be a few steps ahead of the students, but that’s fine. The teacher is leading the dojo on a great, joyous journey of improvement and discovery, not dispensing wisdom and correction from on high.
This sort of teacher demonstrates and establishes the critical respect and trust that, for me, has to permeate a dojo for it to be truly great. Because these wonderful teachers are sharing a journey with the students, they naturally treat everyone as respected and important members of the dojo. In a great dojo, everyone is contributing to the activity of learning and discovery, from the most senior members to the the lady whose dogi is so new you can still see the creases from the package. As hard as it is for beginning students to believe, they are critically important too. They don’t know what’s supposed to work on them, so they only react when techniques really do work. In great dojos, that respect is there for everyone, regardless of rank or experience. The teacher sets the example, and everyone in the dojo respects the teacher and each other deeply and sincerely.
I’ve written about the unusual trust that can develop between martial artists before. In great dojo, this feeling of trust is everywhere. Students trust the teacher and each other. In great dojo, people who can’t be trusted are not welcome to train. If someone cannot be trusted to treat their partners with respect and to protect their partners body and health as if it were their own, that person will be gently but inexorably rejected by the dojo. Members of great dojo are great people, though they never think of themselves that way. They trust each other and take care of each other.
That trust and care means that people watch each other and go out of their way for fellow students. Trust isn’t just about what we do with the techniques. It means trusting each other enough that we can pull each other aside if we see a problem developing and bring it to each other’s attention without engendering anger or resentment. This really differentiates the great dojo from the merely good ones. There is always a sense of zanshin regarding the health and safety of all members in a great dojo.
I mentioned above a little about the value of beginning students in a dojo. In great dojo, all the students are seen as valuable, and are valued for the variety of knowledge and experience they bring to the group. Great dojo have members with a huge variety of budo and conflict experience. These dojo usually have a good share of students who train more than one martial art, and usually a sprinkling of law enforcement officers corrections officers and military veterans. All of these different sets of experience and viewpoint are valued and drawn upon in a great dojo. Great teachers and members of great dojo aren’t intimidated by people who practice other arts and have different experiences. They treasure such members for the variety of perspectives they bring to the dojo. Instead of ignoring everything that doesn’t fit within a narrow orthodoxy, these members will be called on to share their perspective, regardless of their rank in the dojo. No art has a complete knowledge of every aspect of conflict, and law enforcement officers can bring one set of perspectives about violence, while students of weapons arts can bring valuable understanding of the real capabilities of weapons to dojo that practice arts that primarily focus on empty hand technique. In great dojo, everyone with expertise and perspective are will find themselves called on in class to share what they know, especially if it is different from what most in the dojo expect to be true.
This is the next thing I look for in great dojo, a ruthless desire to reexamine everything students and teachers think they know about their art. In these dojo there is no sacred orthodoxy. Instead there is a constant search for greater, deeper, more complete understanding. Recently I’ve been in a number of Aikido dojo that are notable because they are inviting people from other traditions and styles to teach and share their arts, even when it calls into question they way things have been done in that dojo. These are great dojo. Their search for understanding and mastery doesn’t end at their door. Instead of closing the door on anything that contradicts their understanding, they invite those teachers with different perspectives in.
Only training in one art, and never experiencing other arts and perspectives leaves you with a very skewed understanding. No art is big enough to contain everything there is. I’m not saying you have to study everything. There isn’t time in one life to do that. Great dojo and great teachers realize they don’t have all the answers though, so they make a point to expose their students to a variety of styles and perspectives. Kodokan Judo includes some efficient techniques versus knife and sword. However, if you only practice them with people who aren’t experts in the use of those weapons, you won’t understand all the ways things can go wrong. A few hours with a qualified swordsman can clear up a lot of misconceptions about the real maai and speed of the weapon.
A poor dojo declares theirs is the only way, and discourages students from seeking other perspectives. A good dojo acknowledges that other ways and perspectives have value. A great dojo makes sure students encounter multiple perspectives and ways of doing things by having them demonstrated and shown in the dojo so students can get a taste of them.
Great dojo don’t rely on just one teacher either. A great dojo may well have one exceptional teacher, but they aren’t limited to that teacher. I always love going to study in Japan. The dojo I am a member of there are filled with high level teachers. Imagine dojo where the median rank is 5th dan. This sort of dojo is quite common in Japan. At the dojo in Kusatsu, I can remember nights when there were four or five 7th dans and an 8th dan on the floor. I started iai in a little country dojo with two 7th dan iai teachers. The kendo dojo had 7 teachers with 7th dans in kendo. This was in the countryside.
Great dojo develop depth and encourage breadth among their teachers. My iai teacher, Kiyama HIroshi, is 7th dan in iai, jodo, and kendo. He has lesser ranks in judo, karate, and jukendo as well. The other teachers in the dojo are 6th or 7th dan in iai, and most have dan ranks in at least one other art. If Kiyama Sensei can’t teach, the people teaching the class in his stead will all be highly experienced teachers as well. Great dojo have room for many people to be great. It is assumed that everyone can become great, and it’s expected that everyone will to the best of their ability.
This leads to the next element of a great dojo. No one is ever satisfied with where they are. There are no destinations in a great dojo. Everyone, including the top teachers, are still striving to improve their skills and understanding. Everyone is encouraged to keep pushing forward along the Way. Any Way 道, including budo 武道, is a path, a journey. Great dojo always quietly remind all the members, beginning students and senior teachers, that the way doesn’t have an end point. Everyone is always trying to improve. When I train in Japan, the senior teachers will teach, but if you watch, you’ll see them quietly training as well. Omori Sensei, even though he was 8th dan hanshi and 90 years old, still trained every time he came to the dojo. He would often play with the kata at such a level that I had trouble understanding what he was doing. Seeing a 7th dan teacher ask her fellow 7th dans to critique her technique and accept their comments and work to integrate them into her kata is a marvelous experience. People may hit plateaus, but they always keep working, moving forward until they get off the plateau.
There are many elements that make up a great dojo, but for me, they are about the members of the dojo. A big, spacious building with a beautiful shomen and lovely decorations, stacks of equipment, and a refrigerator stocked with beer is pointless if the people are arrogant and callous, unwilling to learn anything new or different, and indifferent to their partners’ health and welfare. A great dojo is filled with concern for everyone who trains there, from oldest to newest, and they are always striving to transcend their current level of understanding, even if it means giving up ideas they had thought incontrovertible.
Competition seems like the ideal place to test your budo. You can test your techniques against other people. Challenge your abilities. Polish your skills. See how you do under the pressure to win. Learn what it takes to be a winner. Learn how to be a winner with humility and grace. Learn to lose with honor and dignity.
Those sound like great benefits. They are exactly the arguments used to support all competitive sports.
In martial sports competition, one person wins, and one person loses.
A problem with this paradigm that that most things in life, including conflict, are not games with clear winners and losers. There are far more situations where everyone involved can gain, as well as endless opportunities for everyone involved to lose. Life is not defined by a win/loss column.
When you see the world through the lens of competition, it’s a zero sum game. Someone wins and everyone else loses. When you see the world through the lens of budo, it’s a non-zero sum world, just like keiko in the dojo. When we train together, you don’t have to get weaker and less skilled for me to become more skilled. We both grow in skill and strength and understanding when we train together.
Budo keiko offers many profound lessons that will not be found in the arena of competition, and defining things in terms of competition, in terms of winners and losers, misses a number of those points. There a plenty of outcomes that aren’t covered by the idea that there is a winner and loser in every conflict.
I had this reinforced in a memorable incident. I was teaching an evasion to a sword attack that involved stepping to the side and cutting up, under teki’s arm as it came down with the sword. I did my step to the right just fine and placed my cut under teki’s arm. I did so just at the moment her sword smacked me in the side of the head. I had moved too early and teki was able to track me and adjust her attack. The result was not a winner and a loser. It was two losers. Her attack would have killed me at the same moment my counter attack killed her. Not a very satisfying outcome. One fight, no winners.
That lesson that can come as a huge surprise if you’ve never focused on anything other than fighting in tournaments. Tournaments provided a very limited view of budo. They are safe, controlled duels. They follow rules. One person wins and one person loses. One of the problems with that arrangement is that in pretty much everything outside of competitive sports, nothing works out that cleanly. Life is not clean and clear. It’ messy and unfocused.
Remember that yin-yang symbol that is used to decorate so many dojo? Inside the black half is a drop of white. Inside the white half is a dollop of black. Things aren’t clear cut. In my example above, we both achieved the basic objective, and we both would have died doing it. Sports competition can give students of martial arts just as skewed a view of martial arts as watching action movies can. In competition, there are two options. You win and your opponent loses, or you lose and she wins. Simple.
In real conflict there are lots more options. All parties end up so badly damaged that there are only losers. One side decides to give in for the sake of avoiding the physical conflict. All parties decide that the fight isn’t worth the risk and everyone goes off in a different direction. The police show up and everyone involved is arrested. There are a whole range of possibilities beyond “I win,” or "I lose."
Budo practice teaches a not just about fighting, but about recognizing all those other possibilities. I’m not going to say competition is entirely bad. It's great fun, and it gives people with too much energy a way to stay focused on something. I’ve seen that as a young judoka. The weakness is that we focus far too much time on competition and forget about the rest of the path. The lessons of competition seem tiny compared to all the other lessons that can be learned on the journey that is the study of budo. That in itself may be the first lesson.
It’s a journey, not a destination. Winning a match or tournament doesn’t mean much in the context of that journey. You’re still trying to learn the lessons. When you start to study budo, and not just a martial sport, you’ll discover that there is a whole lot more to your budo than the stripped down set of techniques allowed in competition.
I’ll start by using Judo as my example. Competitive judo prohibits strikes, a range of throws that endanger your opponent, a few throws where you can endanger yourself, gripping techniques that you can hurt yourself doing or that provide an unfair advantage, grips below the belt (don’t ask why, I still don’t understand the IJF explanation), attacks to any joint beside the elbow, throwing with an armlock, and numerous other things.
Even though these things are all banned in formal competition, most of them are part of the formal syllabus of Kodokan Judo. Just take a look at the two videos below.
The Kodokan Goshin Jutsu and the Kime No Kata are both part of the Kodokan syllabus. Almost nothing in either kata could be used in competition. If you focus on competition, you miss all the rest. Competition presents too small a slice of the possibilities that are budo, and the possibilities that are life. In life there are lots of options beyond simple win or lose scenarios. Business people spend much of their time trying to fashion what they call win-win agreements, so that everyone involved gains something in the exchange. They don’t always work out, but just being able to try for something like that seems a lot better than scenarios like a match where one person wins and one loses, or worse, tournaments, where there is one winner, and there are many, many losers.
Often the ideas of learning to be a gracious winner and accepting defeat honorably are mentioned as benefits of competition. The weakness I see here is that outside of organized competitions, there are almost no opportunities to practice this lesson. Life doesn’t consist of of competitions with clear winners and losers. There are other lessons that I find useful every day though. The best people to be around aren’t the ones keeping score. The best people to be around are the ones who don’t keep score. The ones who try to, in the words of Bill and Ted, “be excellent to each other.”
One lesson of competition is to keep score. The lesson of budo practice is that there is no score. We all improve together. I can’t improve my skills without your active support, and you can’t improve yours without my active support. If you and I are busy trying to keep score of who learns the most techniques, or who gets the most reps, or anything else, we’re not providing the mutual support necessary to truly improve our skills. That kind of practice is a lot more like life than any competition.
The other, discreet lessons of budo apply beyond the dojo as well. Budo teaches numerous lessons about ma’ai and timing. Ma’ai isn’t just for combat, and neither is timing. I haven’t gotten to all the places where an understanding of the principles of structure will serve you. Understanding ma’ai is about understanding the weakness or strength of a particular position relative to those around you. It’s a fluid, constantly changing as the situation changes, even if you don’t move at all.
Timing is important in whatever you do, from gardening to business. Structure too applies outside the arena of competition, mostly in place where being aware of strong, stable structures and weaknesses that can undermine them are critical to not getting hurt in physical, or not-physical, ways. Timing needs to be considered for anything you want accomplish, in or out of the dojo. Too early and you give away your objectives and strategy. Too late is, well, too late.
One of the most critical lessons of budo practice is that it’s OK if you don’t master these lessons today. The goal isn’t to master anything thing right away. In budo there is no illusion that we will ever perfect anything. We learn that there is no goal to reach. The point of budo is to improve a little bit every day. To be better today than yesterday, and be better tomorrow than you are today. This isn’t a goal because a goal is an endpoint, a place to get to and stop. With budo, there is no endpoint.
What you do every day is more important than what you do during any 5 minute match. It doesn’t matter what the match is. Dr. Ann Maria DeMars is a former world champion judoka. Let that sink in. World champion. At some point, she was the best on the planet at what she did. Yet now she can write about how she completely forgets having done that. Whatever we do, it will quickly be in the past, and we can’t live there. Life is a journey, not an event. Each day we have to continue that journey. With competition, we focus on the events and an artificial concept of a winner and a loser. With budo, we focus on the journey, of moving forward and improving every day. Working with our teachers and seniors and partners and juniors so we all are a bit better today than we were yesterday, and so tomorrow we’ll be a bit better than today. We don’t stop at any event.
Competition is a limited view of the world. It’s a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers. Life isn’t a zero sum game. Life is big and messy and so very unclear. In life, winning and losing isn’t decided by a set of rules. It’s more like a fluid range of success, and that success is much more dependent on not keeping score than it is about winning points. You have to work with the people around you, your training partners, so you all succeed and improve together. If you aren’t better today than you were yesterday, that’s probably the closest thing to a loss. You succeed when you and your partners are better people tomorrow than you were today.
