"There is no East or West" Really?

 

Before you pick a fight, make sure you know what you're getting into.  (Video copyright Peter Boylan 2020)

 

"How many westerners studied in Japan for a significant amount of time? Few. In fighting, culture means very little. Step into the ring and put your fists up. There is no east or west."

Someone posted this comment in a discussion I am involved in. It seems like a pretty straightforward idea. In combat arts all that matters is what happens when you step into the ring. Everything in a combat art can be decided by getting out there and facing off with someone.

However, stepping into a ring is not the same as a street fight or close quarters combat. The rules are completely different. The rules in the ring are about both people coming out with all of their teeth and no permanent damage. Outside a sporting ring there are still rules. The other people in the fight might not bother to tell you what the rules are, but they have them. What rules do you expect? 

Fighting in a ring is dueling. It’s only 2 people, everyone gets the same equipment, and even when there is no referee, everyone including the spectators know if someone breaks the rules. Dueling is great for the ego.  I love doing randori in Judo. One on one with someone trying to throw me, choke me, pin me or make me submit to an arm lock is just about as much fun as I can imagine. When the world is not threatened by a plague, I try to do it a couple of times a week for as long as my stamina holds out.

Japanese classical budo of the Tokugawa Period (1604-1868) could be brutal stuff. Ambush and surprise attacks were considered quite acceptable. It wasn’t about arranging a nice formal duel if someone besmirched your honor. It was a vendetta and very little was off limits. Many of the classical systems that have survived include teachings about setting up an ambush or a sneak attack. These aren’t friendly dueling arts. These are arts of killing without getting killed. Forcing someone from a very different cultural tradition to fight so you can “see who’s better” is a risky affair. You may think you’re having a friendly duel, and the other guy may break your fingers right off the mark because that’s accepted in the culture he comes from. He may not know about the rules you follow in a friendly duel. This is not something you want to find out the hard way.

 

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What I do in a judo dojo fighting with my friends is vastly different from what I’ve done the few times I’ve had to do anything in “the real world.” Sport dueling is fun, but it really only proves who’s better at dueling under those particular rules. Classical Japanese budo arts have long traditions of fighting that aren’t about dueling in a *fair* environment. They assume that nothing is going to be fair and that everyone will use whatever is available to ensure that they are the one(s) who walk away. People who train for this sort of encounter really aren’t prepared to fight by your rules. Their trained reactions and instincts are not to go for the submission by arm bar, or to win by throwing you cleanly on your back. Their reaction is to snap the elbow or wrist the instant they have it, or to throw you on your head so that you get a concussion and maybe a broken neck.

Every culture has different expectations. In war in Europe and North America there is the Geneva Convention,  whereby if your unit is getting slaughtered, you can surrender and your enemy will take you prisoner, treat you decently and eventually trade you back to your side in exchange for prisoners your side has captured. Disregarding the Convention leaves a warring nation open to charges of international war crimes, when the conflict inevitably ends. European and North American rules of engagement are assumed to be followed everywhere.

Except that, historically, they have not been. Japan has a long tradition across a thousand years, not of taking prisoners, but of taking heads. Soldiers were rewarded based on how many heads they took and rank of the people who lost those heads. Surrendering and being taken prisoner was not an honorable thing to do. If you tried, you’d be so looked down upon for lacking the courage to fight to the last or take your own life that you would be tortured before they took your head from your shoulders.

These different ideas of what was honorable in battle didn’t clash significantly until 1941 when Japan began invading south east Asia and wresting control of European colonies from the British, Dutch, French and Americans. The Japanese had no tradition of capturing prisoners. They didn’t know what to do with all European and American P.O.W.s they suddenly had to deal with. They treated them with all the respect their centuries of tradition taught them a prisoner of war was entitled to: none at all.

On the other side, the Japanese were exhorted to uphold tradition and die an honorable death rather than be taken prisoner and abused by the enemy. Japanese soldiers who were captured were often shocked to be treated according to the western customs of the Allies.

In sports, there are still a lot of classical judoka in Japan who feel that having weight classes in judo competition is a sign of weakness, not a matter of fairness.  For them, the best judoka is the one who wins against everyone.  I’m really not prepared to fight in an open division with the heavyweights and super-heavyweights. For decades in Japan this was the only way competition was done.  In sumo, for example, though there are many rules and traditions of competition, there are no weight classes, only rankings according to where competitors stand in regard to their opponents.

If you’re going to fight, make sure you know the local rules. When I first moved to Japan I had a hard time understanding the local judo rules. I’d done judo for 4 years by that time and had fought in many competitions under International Judo Federation rules. I’m thick and slow. It took me a while to get it through my head that people in Japan don’t automatically use the IJF rules to run local shiai. “Local rules” is a real thing. If you’re getting ready to fight, make sure you know the local rules. Fighting, like most things we humans do, is a cultural activity, and if you don’t know the culture, watch out. What you don’t know can hurt you.

 

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-BIgman for editorial support.

The Power Mistake

Structure versus power    Photo Copyright Deborah Klens-Bigman 2020

We want powerful budo. Powerful budo is effective budo. Powerful budo is good budo. So how do we make our budo powerful? We make it stronger. The stronger someone’s budo is the more powerful it is. How do we make our budo stronger?

Usually we add muscle. We do push-ups and sit-ups. We train with weights to increase our bench press and our squat. Then we throw this additional muscle into our budo so we can hit harder, throw bigger, cut deeper. It makes our budo more effective and more powerful so we can beat the big guys. This is the way to powerful budo. Or is it?

None of the people whose budo I strive to emulate do muscular budo, yet all of their budo is powerful and dynamic. When they cut or strike or throw, the movement is solid and crisp. Nothing is done that isn’t essential to the movement. The cuts look like they could slice through stone. The strikes look, and feel, like getting hit with a truck. Throws hit you with the force of the planet. All of this without being muscular.

My teachers don’t need to be muscular to generate power. They have a combination of structure and technique that creates power and lets them direct it to where it will be most effective. Correct structure allows you to harness all the power of your body, not just a few big muscles. Precise technique puts all that power exactly where you want it for maximum effect.

If your structure isn’t right, even loads of muscle won’t make your budo strong.

There is always someone more muscular. I used to train with a guy who was a good 15 cm (6 inches) taller, 80 pounds heavier, and able to lift me off my feet without using any sort of judo technique. He was powerful and he could throw people around, but he wasn’t doing judo. His raw muscular strength got in the way of him learning good technique. He could jerk people so hard they were off balance from the force of the pull and then he would throw them by manually lifting them into position, but that wasn’t budo.

What frustrated this guy was that even though I was 80 pounds lighter and significantly weaker, he couldn’t throw me but I could throw him, hard. He was strong enough to pick me up off my feet, something I could only do to him with the help of winch, and yet I was the one doing the throwing. I used good structure to hold my partner off without getting tired. If I tried to go muscle to muscle with any of the big guys, I’d be exhausted and beaten in moments. Power doesn’t come from strength, it comes from structure and technique. If I let my structure absorb their power and redirect it into the ground, I can still go many rounds with the big 20-somethings in the dojo.

Just as a building with a flawed structure will quickly collapse under pressure, a person with bad structure is quickly demolished by an adversary. Good structure is not only the key to withstanding pressure, it is fundamental to projecting your power outward. You can only project as much force as your structure can support. Exceed that limit and you will crumble rather than your target. Boxers wrap their hands and wear gloves to improve the structure of their hands so they can deal with the forces they generate when punching. Take off those gloves and all the wrapping and boxers would be breaking the bones in their hands with the power generated by their technique.

If your structure can’t handle the forces you are generating, then your technique will never be able to generate power. Building a good structure is the first step to generating great power. Build a good structure and you build and project power effectively. Good structure also neutralizes other people’s power. That’s how you deal with bigger, stronger and faster. You have a structure that is stable under attack.

Good structure is necessary, but it’s not enough by itself. Technique multiplies your strength using the platform created by your structure. Arm locks, throws, punches, attacks with sticks and other weapons all start with a good foundation. The techniques multiply whatever muscle you have. That’s why a small judoka or aikidoka can manipulate and throw much larger, stronger people.

A 157 cm (5’2” in) person, even if unusually strong, is not going to have the strength to go toe-to-toe with someone twice their size. Yet anyone who spends time around a judo, jujutsu or aikido dojo will see goons like me being tossed to the ground by people half our size. It’s not their raw strength they are using to launch us airborne. It’s technique supported by good structure.

When we are first learning techniques the temptation is to try and force the technique. The more raw strength you have, the more powerful that temptation is. Every time we give in to that temptation we make it harder to learn good technique. Every time we force a technique we reinforce the habit to use strength instead of technique, and we make it harder to learn good technique.

All that technique we practice works to make strength unnecessary. Good technique is as clean and precise as a scalpel. Whether it is uchi mata or ikkyo, good technique will apply your power where your partner is weak. It’s budo, not arm wrestling. We’re going to use every advantage we can find. That means weaving around our opponent’s strength to apply a technique where it can’t be countered, not crashing into their strength. Technique done well feels effortless. When I’m thrown well I don’t feel the thrower’s strength. I don’t feel much of anything as the floor disappears from under my feet and reappears to smack me in the back.

Strength doesn’t do that. Technique does. The technique undermines my ability to stand up and then redirects me at the ground. I know I’ve done a throw well because I’m looking at the person on the ground and wondering why they jumped for me; it feels that easy when the structure and the technique are there. It’s that way for everyone. My jodo students know that they’ve done hikotoshi uchi correctly because their partner’s sword just vanishes without any feeling of having been there.

Strength erodes over time, but time seems to empower technique. As my teachers age they feel more powerful, not less. When he was 80 I watched Sugi Sensei completely dominate a powerful and experienced kendoka 60 years his junior. He didn’t do it with strength and fire, he did it with a structure that was solid, impenetrable, and smooth technique that was everywhere the junior’s strength wasn’t. Sensei’s technique was clean and simple with no wasted energy or motion.

That’s the combination of structure and technique that make budo work. It’s never about raw muscle. Structure gives you access to all the strength you have, and technique multiplies the power of that strength by using it in the most effective way possible.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that muscle equals power. Strength is nice, but powerful budo is supported by structure and propelled by technique.


Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman Ph.D for editing this.

Do versus Jutsu; Round 3

I’ve written before about the idea of DO versus the idea of JUTSU. Since the subject keeps coming up as a topic of discussion and debate, I’ll revisit the argument and hopefully have something new to say about it.  To begin with, what is a do 道 and what is a jutsu 術? What makes them different or similar?

 Non-Japanese keep trying to make jutsu and do into important concepts, such as saying that do is a “way” or “path” for spiritual development and the jutsu is for combat, or that jutsu is for battlefield arts and the do is for peace time arts and sports. When you try to explain these categories to native Japanese, they just shake their heads in wonderment that anyone could come up with such a thing. The concept of do is quite a bit older than the martial arts in Japan.  In fact, it’s quite a bit older than recorded history in Japan. Scholarship shows all the ways DAO道 (the Chinese pronunciation for do 道) was conceived of and argued about in ancient China a thousand years before there was a written language in Japan.

   Interestingly, the Kodansha Online Dictionary lists this meaning for jutsu 術 as "a means; a way." So if jutsu means "a way" and "do" 道 is a way, then what really is the difference? The truth is there isn't one in this area. I've seen great classical swordsmen use the terms "kendo" and "kenjutsu" interchangeably in the same paragraph. I know some lines of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu that call themselves iaijutsu, and others that call themselves iaido. What is the difference between the two?  They are the same art, the same syllabus, the same kata; just different suffixes added to "iai" (which by the way, is perfectly capable of standing alone without any suffix; just as one of the popular names for jujutsu 柔術 and judo 柔道 was yawara 柔,without any suffix at all. 

 Let me add a quick aside here. As Michael Hacker, the author of The Language Of Aikido, has pointed out, jitsu じつ (実)　isn't a term that is related to this conversation. It's the result of a mis-transliteration of the correct suffix "jutsu" 術. 

 One of the greatest, most refined, and storied martial arts in Japan, with a history going back more than 450 years and still going strong, doesn’t use either suffix, yet it’s famous for the depth of its philosophy and the writings of various headmasters. Yagyu Shinkage Ryu Heiho　柳生新陰流兵法.”Heiho” means strategy or tactics. I don’t think anyone would argue that Yagyu Shinkage Ryu Heiho is not a sophisticated system that aims to develop not just skill with the sword, but a better human being as well. Shouldn’t its name include 道 then? Only if you’re a pedantic gaijin (foreigner). Do 道 and jutsu 術 are not meaningful categories in Japanese language.

 A do is a way of doing something; and a jutsu is also a way of doing something. There are many ways of expressing this in Japanese. Across the 500 years or so that various forms of bugei (warrior arts) have been practiced in Japan and around the world, a lot of different terms have been used to describe martial arts. There have been lots of words used to describe other practices that are seen as “ways” as well. Tea Ceremony was known as Cha No Yu for centuries, long before the description “sado” (Way of Tea) was applied to it.

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 I think the real villain in the do versus jutsu argument is our own ego. Many of us would like to think that the art we practice is somehow superior to other arts. Some people feel that emphasizing the philosophical aspects of their practice makes it better than those that emphasize more prosaic skills. Some feel that emphasizing the physical skills the art teaches makes it superior to those that talk about the philosophical aspects. Both sides are letting their ego talk them into something that isn’t true. Developing the mind and the philosophical aspects of understanding doesn’t make one superior to those who focus on physical skills. Emphasizing the development of physical skills doesn’t make one better than those who put more effort into developing their mental and philosophical abilities. Both have their place.

Practicing bugei is a journey, not a destination.  This is a cliché, but one that is true. When you begin training, all of your focus is on the physical skills. It takes all your concentration just to follow what sensei is doing and produce a rough approximation of the technique or kata that is being shown. Later, after you have internalized the movements, you begin working on the mental aspects of training. I used to think that Kodokan Judo was obviously better than classical jujutsu systems such Yoshin Ryu or Tenjin Shin’yo Ryu because Judo, being a “do” art, was obviously more philosophically sophisticated than simple jujutsu systems that predated it. Being a do, I assumed that it must have a more principle-based curriculum than any mere technique based jutsu.

 I was also an arrogant idiot. The idea that Judo is more sophisticated or superior to Tenjin Shin’yo Ryu or any of the various styles of Yoshin Ryu just because it has the suffix “do” in its name is ridiculous. It’s as silly as saying that Aikido is clearly superior to Daito Ryu because Ueshiba made his art a do and Takeda didn’t. None of these arts is superior to any other because of the name or what the art emphasizes. I have real trouble with the idea that any bugei art is superior to any other. All of them have strengths and weaknesses. What makes an art superior or inferior is how well suited it is for a particular situation or person. For a philosophically minded kid such as myself, Judo and Aikido were great arts. 

 For someone whose primary interest is physical skills, then arts with too much talking about the philosophy won’t be suitable. Arts are superior for what they can do for their practitioners, not because they are better for learning fighting techniques. Who is going to make the call as to whether Ono-Ha Itto Ryu or Yagyu Shinkage Ryu is the better art?  Better for what? The only question where “better” should show up is in “Which art is better for me at this time and place?” That’s the only “better” I can think of being at all meaningful.

 I’ve got more bad news for folks on all sides of the do versus jutsu discussion. You can’t make real progress in any art without both the physical skills and the mental/philosophical development. The nice thing about bugei is that they are lifelong studies. You never cease learning new things from them. I do Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho, a style of swordsmanship which has only 22 kata in the curriculum. I’ve been studying it for more than 22 years. You might think that with more than a year of study for each kata I have learned all there is to learn about them and I am bored with them. You would be wrong. The individual kata still teach me things about movement and balance and how to optimize my physical self. I also learn more about quieting, controlling and directing my mind and my self.  Some days practice is all about the physical techniques. I’m not sure I will ever fully master the chudan kata Tobi Chigai. Other days are all about the mental state. I’m sure I will never fully master my self.

 I don’t know of any bugei that has come from Japan that has not been heavily influenced by the concept of do or michi 道。The concept permeates the culture so thoroughly that it is inescapable. There are even a number of styles of soujido (掃除道 - that’s housework, folks!). Arguing over whether something is a do or jutsu makes no sense. If we have time to argue about this, we aren’t practicing enough. We’re much better off spending more time practicing the particular bugei that is best for us where we are.

 

References for further reading

Disputers of the Tao by A. C. Graham, 1999, Open Court Publishing - this looks at not just the Daoist idea of the way, but also how Confucius, Mozi, and many others conceived of the Way in ancient China. 

The Language of Aikido: A Practitioner's Guide to Japanese Characters and Terminology by Michael Hacker, 2017, Talking Budo. Hacker does an excellent job of introducing the multifaceted world of Japanese characters and language, and how it all serves to enhance, and sometimes confuse, our practice of Japanese martial arts.

Efficiency, It's Not Just For Judo

Kano Jigoro realized that efficiency of movement is one of the highest principles. He enshrined his insight in this maxim of Kodokan Judo, “seiryoku zen’you”  精力善用, most often translated as “minimum effort, maximum efficiency.” Seiryoku zen’you is probably better translated as “best use of energy” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue as neatly as “minimum effort, maximum efficiency.” This is the foundation of Kodokan Judo’s technical curriculum, just as jita kyoei 自他共栄 or “mutual benefit and welfare” is the foundation of Kodokan Judo’s moral and ethical principles.

The principle that Kano Shihan so succinctly clarified in just four kanji characters has always been a critical part of martial arts.  Kano’s genius lay in clearly elucidating that principle and building his entire system around it. Even though it took until the 1880’s for the principle to be made explicit and public, it has always been essential in weeding out techniques and practices in the martial arts. Anything that doesn’t contribute to success in conflict will eventually be eliminated because those who rely on it will lose.

Making the “best use of energy” seems like an obvious good idea, but things like this often seem obvious in hindsight. Even if the idea wasn’t explicit, it has always been implicit within the martial arts. The universe is ruthless, and during the long centuries of civil war in Japan leading up to the enforced peace of the Tokugawa Period, anything that wasn’t efficient for teaching, learning, practicing or applying the martial arts was culled simply because anything that wasn’t efficient would get its proponents killed.

Look at pretty much any koryu budo. They aren’t filled with endless lists of techniques. They have a few techniques that are polished like treasured gems, and then are practiced in a variety of kata so students learn the real foundations of the art and how to apply them spontaneously. Effective budo has to be efficient. 

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That’s the secret reason why koryu budo generally don’t have extensive curriculums with endless lists of techniques. It’s not efficient. Instead, a basic principle or two are embodied in the fundamental technique of the system which are then explored through a limited set of kata result in that teaching the plasticity of the main principles.

Sword systems are often based around one fundamental cut, with the entire system expanding on that. Sasamori Takemi talks about the kiri otoshi of Ono-Ha Itto Ryu. Kashima Shinryu kenjutsu is built around the a fundamental cut practiced in the Kihon-tachi. Arts that teach other weapons are similar. Shinto Muso Ryu calls its fundamental jo technique hon te uchi, or “fundamental hand strike.” Judo has a large syllabus by comparison, with five basic principles for throwing expanded into the  Gokyo, or “Five Teachings.”  Aikido also breaks up it’s main principles into 5 techniques, called ikkyo, nikyo, sankyo, yonkyo and gokyo, or “teaching 1, teaching 2, teaching 3, teaching 4, teaching 5.”  In both judo and aikido, there are numerous expressions of the five teachings, but they all start from the same fundamental principles.

It makes sense when you consider it. Which is going to work better under stress, one technique that you can apply to a thousand situations, or a thousand techniques each of which is good for only one situation?  

Efficiency shows itself in myriad ways. Learning one technique well takes less time than learning one thousand techniques to mediocre level. This why in Olympic judo, the competitors don’t spend their time trying to master all the throwing techniques of Kodokan Judo. They focus on two or three techniques and develop their understanding of the techniques and their principles so they can apply them in any situation.

Within those fundamental techniques is another level of efficiency. Techniques have to work with as little effort as possible. This is true of any effective martial art. Efficiency of energy is a key component of effectiveness. If a technique requires a lot of raw strength to perform, it will be useless when you run into someone bigger or stronger. The more efficiently the principle uses your strength, the greater the situations you can deploy it in. I was in Japan recently practicing with one of the shihan from Shinto Muso Ryu, and he kicked my butt over this. I was doing kuri tsuke ( a technique for catching a sword attack and binding the sword to the attacker’s body) and it was working, but Sensei pointed out that I wasn’t doing it as well as I could. He resisted my technique and I was able to muscle through his resistance. He then showed me how to do the technique with minimal modification so that I didn’t have to dig in to muscle past his resistance. If I got the angles right, I left him without a stable platform from which to resist.  I had learned a more efficient way to perform the technique.

He didn’t use the word, but the term that floated through my head was from Kodokan Judo. “Kuzushi”  崩し. Don’t attack strength to strength. Maneuver your adversary to a position where they cannot apply their strength and attack there. In other words, attack where your opponent’s strength is minimized and your own is maximized. Seiryoku zen’yo in action.

Our strength is limited. I might be able to muscle through Sensei’s resistance because I’m a lot bigger than he is. I know plenty of people who are bigger than I am though, and there is no way I could muscle through them. But, If I do the technique efficiently, strength is no longer a concern. The efficient technique is the effective technique. This is true no matter what you’re doing.

Here are a couple of videos that have been floating around the web. One shows a little girl screaming and flailing around with a sword with great effort. The other shows a little girl cutting with no effort at all.  Efficiency gets the most out of the energy being expended. Which one better embodies seiryoku zen’yo?

Flailing little girl

Efficient and effective little girl

Efficiency is a critical component of any martial art. Just because Kano Jigoro enshrined seiryoku zen’yo as a maxim of Kodokan Judo doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist in other arts or that you can ignore if you don’t do Kodokan Judo. Making the best use of your energy is always a good idea.