Change in Classical and Modern Martial Arts

The classical arts of Japan (pre-1868) have a very different structure from the modern arts. The classical arts are entirely defined by their kata. If you take something like Suio Ryu or Shinto Muso Ryu, they have a clearly defined set of kata. Changing the kata is frowned upon, not because innovation is bad, but because it's really difficult to find anything in the kata that has not been boiled down to the essence of effectiveness.

Most koryu (again, pre-1868 traditions) kata are paired kata, always practiced with a partner. The reasons for doing the kata a particular way become vividly clear in a bright black and blue manner if you try to change things. The attacking partner is an immediate check to see if what you are doing is effective or not. And when it's not, you may well end up with a beautiful bruise as proof. Recently a friend and I spent a morning working through some kata slowly. Each time we tried to change the kata, we discovered that the kata form was the strongest way of responding for both the shitachi and the uchitachi. Each time we tried something different the openings and weaknesses of the new positions were clear. After hundreds of year of practice and examination, our forebears in the system had worked out the most effective way for things to be done. Our lesson was to understand why they designed the kata as they did.

The practice of the kata define the koryu traditions. Nearly all of the lore and wisdom that generations of teachers have accumulated is in embedded in the kata. It's up to students to tease this knowledge out. One way to do that is with what my friend and I were doing. You deconstruct the kata, try different reactions and attacks at each juncture and see if they work, or as we discovered, why they don't work.

Traditional Japanese systems, koryu budo, generally have very specific and clear pedagogy. Shinto Muso Ryu has a clear set of 40+ jo kata, as well as 12 sword kata, 12 walking stick kata, 24 kusarigama kata, 30 jutte kata, and I've forgotten how many hojo kata. These are very clearly defined. It's extremely difficult for teacher who hasn't been training for decades to make changes, and the kata themselves make it difficult. As I discussed above, we couldn't find any weaknesses in the kata we were exploring. We just learned a lot of options that don't work as well those taught in the system already. With this kind of situation, there just aren't many opportunities for innovation.

The most common way koryu arts change is that someone develops a new kata to address some situation or condition that is not considered by the existing kata. In Shinto Muso Ryu for example, they developed some new kata at the end of the 19th century to make use of the walking sticks that had become popular at the time. This is a logical extension of the principles of the stick that is the main weapon in Shinto Muso Ryu to a shorter stick. They didn't change old kata, or get rid of anything. They developed a few new kata to teach an understanding of the ranges and uses of the shorter stick. Systems do change, but they do so very slowly. With koryu, those changes are usually minor additions to the system rather than revolutions in the way things are done.

People sometimes wonder why koryu systems don't have lots of sparring and tournaments like the modern arts of kendo, karatedo and judo. Surprisingly, this is not a new question. Groups have been arguing about the value of sparring type practice in Japan for over four hundred years. When Japan was at war with itself, which was most of the time from about 1300 through 1600, there were more than enough opportunities for people to test their ideas, techniques and skills, so the question didn’t come up. Once Tokugawa Ieyasu unified the country and removed the last possible source of revolution in 1615, those opportunities disappeared. Soon after that sparring and challenge matches started to appear. Arguments over the value of sparring compared with kata training began almost immediately, and have continued unabated to this day. Over the centuries though, the styles that emphasize sparring as a part of their training never demonstrated significantly better records in the many challenge matches. If the sparring faction had shown consistent success the other systems would have changed rather than lose.  The systems that emphasized kata weren’t losing, so there was no need to change. Kata remained the core of training because when done properly, it works.

Tournaments are a relatively recent phenomenon. Tournaments first showed up late in the 19th century once the Japan had reformed its government and sword teachers had no way to make a living. Some people started doing matches to entertain the public and try to support themselves as professional martial artists after traditional positions working for daimyo disappeared.. These didn't last long, but they contributed to the development of modern kendo. Modern kendo equipment dates back to that used for sparring and some challenges as early as the 17th century.

Sword demonstrations and prize matches during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) popularized and contributed to the creation of a sport form of kenjutsu done with shinai (bamboo swords). Similar matches for jujutsu schools contributed to the rise of Kodokan Judo. Kano's students won a number of noted victories and the Kodokan was invited to participate in inter-style matches by the Tokyo Police. The Kodokan did exceptionally well in most of these matches and earned an impressive reputation. These matches though also drove some significant changes in the Kodokan's curriculum.

Fusen Ryu is reported to have defeated a number of Judo representatives with strong ground techniques. At the time, Kano was not in favor of focusing on ground fighting because he felt it was a dangerous place to be in a street fight. However, these losses on the ground in public matches pushed him to develop a groundwork curriculum for Judo. One of the big surprises about this is the way he went about it. Contrary to the idea of martial schools jealously guarding their secrets, at this time at the end of the 19th century, people were much more open. Kano invited the head of Fusen Ryu to teach groundwork at the Kodokan Dojo, and he did. With the help of the head of a rival system, Kano significantly strengthened the Kodokan curriculum. Kano never became a huge fan of groundwork, always believing that staying on your feet was optimal in a fight, but the pressure of doing well in competitive matches drove him to adapt his art.

In addition, Kano changed from the classic menkyo, or licensing, system, and created the modern dan rank system based on competitive ability.  The koryu systems award licenses based on a persons level of understanding and mastery of the system, up to and including full mastery of the system.  Kano abandoned this system for one in which students were ranked according to competitive ability in matches.  If a student could defeat four other students of 1st dan level (commonly known as black belt) , then he was promoted to 2nd dan (black belt).  This resulted in tremendous changes in what is taught and how students train.  Anything that is not allowed in competitive matches is marginalized in training, even if it is effective in combative situations outside of training.  The focus narrowed to those techniques which are most effective in competition.  The up side of this focus is that it drives innovation and experimentation.  Judoka are constantly looking for innovative ways to win in competition and refining their techniques to make them more effective.  The down side is, as I describe above, that anything not useful in competition is largely ignored, even if it is highly effective in situations outside of competition.

Various pressures on competitive martial systems are still visible today. For the larger systems such as Judo and various Karate styles, two of the big pressures are popularity and money. In the last 15 years the International Judo Federation has been busy making numerous changes to the rules for competitive Judo matches in order to make Judo more television friendly to maintain popularity and keep it's place in the Olympics. The matches are seen as being too slow and difficult to follow, so changes were made to speed things up. In addition, there seems to be some reservations about how well people from other systems, such as wrestling and BJJ, do when they enter Judo tournaments. I have heard complaints that wrestlers and BJJ players use a lot of leg grabs and take downs that aren't classical Judo. The techniques work though. My feeling is that in Judo, we are reacting in the worst way possible to these challenges from wrestlers and BJJ players. Instead of inviting them into our dojo to learn from them, as Kano did, the IJF has chosen to ban the leg grabs and take downs from Judo competition. To me this only makes Judo weaker and less worthy of study.

In the Karate world, I see a lot of things in tournaments where combative functionality is not even considered. People invent kata that are flashy and athletic, but have nothing to do with the rich history and combative effectiveness of the Okinawan traditions. I have seen rules for weapons kata that require a certain number of weapons releases. This means that people are required to throw their weapon into the air! From a standpoint of combative functionality, this is ridiculous. However, to people who don't know better, this looks impressive. These Karate tournaments seem to be responding to a desire to be as popular as possible, rather than as effective as possible. It is a similar to what the IJF is doing make Judo more television friendly so the International Olympic Committee won't drop Judo from the Olympics like it tried to do with Wrestling a few years back. I won't even get into the silliness that is Olympic Tae Kwon Do.

Many of the modern arts are relatively easy to change because they are competition focused and committee governed, so changes in the rules will drive major changes in training. The koryu arts are deeply seated in kata that have been refined over centuries, and I can't really imagine any pressure big enough for them to make significant changes to their curriculums. Since the classical systems are not looking for rapid growth or tv money, they are under no pressure to change except that which they have always had; to adjust their systems to they remain relevant to the world around them. Judo and Karate both have strong depths of kata, well thought out and highly refined, but these traditional, effective and functional kata are often ignored in the race to perform well in competitions. The desire to do well in competition and to be visible on the world stage will continue to drive changes in these arts. I would love to see the pressure and focus of modern arts return to combative functionality, but I doubt that will happen when it is so easy to get caught up in the ego trap of popularity.

The Budo Teacher - Student Relationship

I write a lot about my teachers, how important they are to me, what they teach me and our relationship.  With a few exceptions though, you don’t see me using their names.  I wrote about a big Shinto Muso Ryu gasshuku recently, and never said who was teaching it.  I don’t usually publish my teachers’ full names either.   That makes it difficult to check and see if I really do some of these things or if I’m just blowing smoke.

In the budo I practice, the teacher-student relationship is very strong, very important and central to the nature of the budo..  The classical ideal for relationships in Japan is that of the parent and child, and many aspects of the budo teacher and student relationship resemble that.  The teacher is ultimately responsible for what the student does and says in public, just as a parent is responsible for what a child does and says, and the student is expected to look to the teacher for direction and to support the teacher publically, even when there are differences of opinion.  This is quite different from the way teacher-student relationships work in the USA, where I grew up and did my initial budo training.

 

Everything I say and do will be seen in classical budo circles as a reflection on my teachers. If I’m behaving badly or making ignorant or foolish comments, people in the budo world will complain to them and ask about the kinds of things they are teaching me.  It’s my responsibility to be a good representative of my teachers, and to do nothing that might embarrass them or cause them problems.  If I say something, it will be seen as being authorized and approved by my teacher.  My teachers will be held responsible for cleaning up any messes that I make.  The classical budo world in Japan is small, and you’re almost never more than a couple of degrees away from someone. 

My teachers each took a risk in accepting me as their student, but they didn’t do it lightly or quickly.   No one makes you sit for weeks by the temple gate in a typhoon before they accept you as a student, but you don’t become someone’s student just by signing the roster and paying your monthly dues.  Wayne Muromoto has a nice story about people who go to a teacher but don’t get taught the real thing.  These people aren’t real students, the teacher doesn’t trust them, doesn’t teach them genuine art, and takes no responsibility for what they do when the leave.

When I came to Japan, I joined a great local Judo dojo, paid my monthly dues and went to every practice I could.  I wasn’t a student though. I was guest.  I wasn’t a student until I had been there at least a year.  After that first year I started getting invited to dojo social events and trips, and most notable for me, my name appeared on the dojo member board.  The teachers were taking public responsibility for me.  At that moment my status went from being another guy who trains there, to Yoshikawa Sensei’s student.  Up until then, if I did something stupid in practice or at a tournament, well, I was just a guy who was passing though.  After that, I was Sensei’s student and if I did something wrong, I wouldn’t be told directly.  Sensei would get chewed out for not having taught me properly and he would be responsible for the consequences of my actions.  I would only hear about whatever pain and embarrassment I had caused after Sensei had started cleaning up the mess. 

If things work this way in a gendai budo like Judo, they are even more intensely personal in a koryu bugei.  Koryu bugei are not openly taught public entities like Judo or Aikido or Kendo.  They are more like family treasures shared with just family and close friends whom you deeply trust.  It takes a long time to really earn that, and it’s not always an easy relationship.  The responsibilities and expectations can be quite high.  I have on occasion made mistakes which my teachers have taken me to task for, whether it is something simple like doing a poor job during a demonstration (I now hate and fear youtube.  Any mistake I make in public will be preserved and broadcast for eternity!) or something more serious such as how or what I am teaching.  I learned early on to be really careful about public behavior so I don’t embarrass them.  They worked really hard to teach me the ins and outs of navigating the budo world so I won’t embarrass them or anyone, myself included.

I first entered the koryu budo world by invitation of a sword smith, an artist of the first rank.  Knowing Nakagawa Sensei lead me to my first iaido teacher, who introduced me to others, where I encountered a Shinto Muso Ryu student who introduced me to her teacher who introduced me to his teacher, who accepted me as his student and who introduced me to his teacher who graciously welcomes me into his dojo as a student of his student.    There were a lot of introductions along that path, and many people who stood to suffer if I didn’t behave well and respectably.  Now that I have been accepted as a student, everything I do reflects directly back on my teachers.

The responsibility isn’t just a one-way street though.  As I said, if I make a mistake or cause a problem, I may not hear about it until after Sensei has started cleaning up the mess.  If I’m responsible for being a good representative of my teacher, he is responsible for teaching me well and taking responsibility for any problems I may cause.  The closer the student-teacher relationship, the bigger the responsibility this becomes.  Initially this responsibility is only within the budo world, but it can grow to include all sorts of aspects of life outside the budo world.  Teachers have been known to help people find jobs and arrange marriages and secure loans.  Teachers accept a lot of responsibility when they accept a student.

Just as the teacher accepts responsibility for the student, the student accepts responsibility for the teacher.  Teachers are not ultimate paragons of humanity.  They have been known to drink too much, say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and engage in feuds, just like everyone else.  Once you have passed beyond that probationary period and are really someone’s student, that’s all your responsibility too.  If Sensei drinks too much somewhere and makes a mess, it’s his students who make sure he gets home OK and clean up after him.  If Sensei has a fight or a feud with someone, you are automatically included on Sensei’s side.

The web of relationships and responsibilities extend far beyond just the teacher and student involved in the core relationship and can have wide ranging impacts.  It’s no wonder teachers take a long time before they consider a student to really be “theirs.”  Students should really be spending that probationary period looking very closely at the person they are considering studying with as well, because the responsibility is a two way street, and just as the student’s public behavior reflects on the teacher, the student is judged by who their teacher is.

All of this is to say that, for the most part, I don’t freely publish my teacher’s names and contacts.  I have friends whose names have been used without their permission to gain access to their teachers, and I want to protect my teachers from people like that.  A fraud will eventually be discovered and treated appropriately, but it’s my responsibility to make sure my teachers don’t have to deal with one to begin with.  So if I don’t go putting my teachers’ names out there, please forgive me. 

What Is Martial Arts Rank?

I got involved in the another discussion about the real importance and value of rank again.  This conversation has been around since at least Kano Shihan establishing the now popular system using black belts and ten steps of rank (known as dan 段 in Japanese).  You’d think I’d be over this discussion, but I can’t seem to let it go by without taking another whack at it.  I’m sure there were huge discussions within the Kodokan, because the rank system there evolved over several decades before it was finally settled in the form we are all familiar with.   

The question of what does a particular rank mean can be an interesting one.  People are constantly asking “ What is a black belt?" and “What does rank really mean?”  These questions need to be looked at in connection with a couple of other questions.  Those are “What is a sensei?” and “What is a student?”  

In the world of classical Japanese martial arts, the koryu bugei, these questions don’t seem to exist.  It might be because people are not evaluated in comparison to each other’s level of attainment.  They only give scrolls that correspond with the portion of the system you have learned, and teaching licenses that lay out what you are qualified to teach.  This only leaves one question to ask if you are talking to a possible teacher, and one to ask anyone you are training with.  The question for possible teachers is “Are you licensed to teach?” and the question for training partners is “Can you do this technique or kata?”   

For me, part of the issue is that I’ve been in the iaido and koryu worlds for a long time.  I started in judo, and I still train, but I spend a lot of time in other arts.. The Kendo Federation (where I got my iai and jo dan ranks) has ranks, but there are no symbols of rank. Everyone in the room dresses alike, from the guy who just started, to the 8th dan who's been at it for 80+ years. The koryu dojo I'm in are even less about the ranks and such. Yeah, you get some paper sometimes, maybe a license, but that's pretty much it. There are even fewer signs of rank there than in the Kendo Federation. The fascination with belt colors is only in judo and karate systems, and something that is big outside Japan. In Japan, you get a black belt comparatively quickly, and all it tells people is that you are a real member of the club who can take the ukemi.

This leads back to the initial questions: “What is a sensei?” and “What is a student?”  These seem obvious.  A sensei is someone who teaches, and a student is someone who learns.  Those answers work fine in a standard school classroom setting where most questions have right and wrong answers, the kids sit in the desks and the teacher stands in front of the white board.  They don’t work so well in dojo where everyone mixes, the teacher might be in his 30s or 40s and the students are anywhere from 9 years old to 91, and even the teacher is working to improve her understanding of the art.

The student’s role seems straightforward.  The student is there to learn the art.  To do that, that the student is responsible for showing up healthy and ready to learn, with a good attitude.  The student is responsible for herself.  That was quick and easy to write, but it’s not very satisfying.  Showing up healthy is pretty simple.  Budo is practiced in close contact with other folks, so please take responsibility for yourself and don’t expose your training friends to every illness you get.  Stay on the sidelines when you’re sick.  This might not be a complete answer, but what is a sensei needs to be considered before we can go any further.

So what is a sensei, and what is she responsible for?  I’ll start by disappointing everyone who wants to break down the Japanese word 先生 and define it by it’s parts.  We don’t understand the modern meanings of English words because their original German, Greek or Latin roots meant something a thousand or two thousand years ago.  We define them based on how they are used today, and the same goes for Japanese.  In Japanese today,　”sensei” is used to address a teacher, doctor, lawyer, politician or other important person.  Most commonly, it just means teacher.  Nothing more.  It has no fancy, special, abstract or mystical meanings.  It just means teacher.  The word doesn’t help us.

In a budo dojo though, the sensei doesn’t do a lot of classical talk and chalk teaching.  Keiko in a budo dojo is a different situation from teaching an academic subject in a classroom, with different concerns, conditions and goals.  The teacher has responsibilities to the students and to the art she is teaching.  I’m partial to the modern version of koryu budo instruction rather than the military style instruction that became popular in Japanese and Okinawan during the 1930s and 1940s in militarist Japan, and which continued and was spread worldwide afterwards in gendai budo like karate.  Koryu is generally done in smaller groups, with more personal instruction and less regimentation.  This reflects what sensei is responsible for.

Sensei is responsible for students’ having a safe training environment, that should go without saying, but it doesn’t, so I say it often.  This is koryu bugei, and one significant difference I’ve found between koryu bugei thought and practice and nearly every other teaching situation I’ve seen is that in koryu bugei the sensei has no responsibility for making sure students learn anything.  Sensei is responsible for making sure students can learn if they make the effort.  If someone doesn't make any effort and doesn’t learn anything, that’s the student’s issue.

In both koryu bugei and gendai bugei, the sensei is not only responsible for teaching the student.  The budo sensei is responsible for the art as well.  They are responsible for passing on the entirety of their art to the next generation.  They are not responsible for popularizing the art and teaching to as many people as possible.  In fact, many senior members of koryu bugei systems  view trying to spread an art as being an abdication of their responsibility to the art.  Trying to spread an art quickly risks having poorly or incompletely trained people teaching and not doing a good job of teaching, and worse, corrupting the art because they don’t understand it well enough.

The lessons of any good budo system, koryu or gendai, are far more complex, and deeper than just the movements.  In addition to the physical movements there are strategies and tactics for controlling the spacing between you and your opponent.  There are techniques and concepts for controlling yourself and your mind.  Most of a budo system is beyond the physical movements, and these are the real heart of a system.  WIthout a proper understanding of these aspects, an art cannot truly be taught or learned.  The sensei’s responsibility to the ryuha includes making sure that only students with an adequate understanding of all parts of the system are teaching.  It is better to remain small and obscure and pass along the entire system than to grow into a huge, globe straddling organization that is teaching only the merest shadow of the original art.  The teacher’s responsibility to the art is greater than to any individual student.

Interestingly, it’s strange how quickly most students begin to see and understand this.　The art, the system dates back generations, particularly for koryu bugei ryuha which can be more than 500 years old, but even Kodokan Judo, the exemplar of gendai budo, is over 130 years old.  The ryuha (system, school, art) has it’s own priorities and requirements and benefits. These outweigh the needs of individual students.  As students develop an understanding of the deeper nature of the ryuha’s teachings, they also understand that the ryuha will continue long after them, and that their responsibility is to learn the system to the fullest of their ability so that those who train with them and follow them will get the full system and none of it will be lost or corrupted.  

Students who begin to understand this, also begin to see and take on responsibility for maintaining the system.  Mastering the art is no longer just about gaining personal skill.  It becomes about being part of a larger structure that stretches back into history, and pushes on into the future.  As students move from beginners to experienced students to teachers licensed to teach a portion of the system and occasionally become licensed to teach the entire system, their rank isn’t about status.  It’s about responsibility.  The higher your rank, the more responsibility you have to the system.  Students who are only interested in learning the system for themselves and who don’t take responsibility for the system should be, and usually are, slowly frozen out of the school, and sometimes even simply expelled.

This is the way it should be.  As I’ve been reading more about the early days of the Kodokan and the new rank system that Jigoro Kano Shihan implemented, and it’s evolution, it becomes clear that in the early Kodokan, rank, at least at the early to middle levels, was strictly about how well you could fight.  Students were promoted when they defeated 4 people of the same rank, instead of based on how well they knew the whole of Kodokan Judo.  I suspect that this caused a not so subtle twisting of priorities amongst the growing membership of the Kodokan.  We can see the effects today in the way the International Judo Federation values competition above all else, and downplays or ignores the other 90 percent of the Kodokan syllabus.  What has happened is that in many modern budo, rank has simply become a symbol of competitive accomplishment and not a reflection of system mastery or responsibility.

This leaves me with the sad reflection that we have two different answers to the question of rank.  The first is what should rank mean?  It should be a reflection of student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it.  The second question is what does rank actually mean?  In koryu bugei, rank is still a reflection of a student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it.  In gendai budo sometimes rank is a reflection of a student’s mastery of the system and their responsibility to it, and sometimes it is a recognition of the student’s competitive accomplishments.  Figuring out which is which usually isn’t too difficult.

Interviewing My Teacher

I'm headed off to Japan in few days to spend a week and a half with my sword teacher, Kiyama Hiroshi.  Kiyama Sensei is 88 years old, had been doing budo for all but 5 of those years.  He has more ranks than I can wrap my mind around.  He is 7th dan Kyoshi in iaido, kendo and jodo.  He holds ranks in Shito Ryu karate and judo.  Those are just the arts I know about.  He is an absolute budo treasure.  I am looking forward to this trip, and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about what sort of questions I want to ask him and the things I would like to hear him talk about.

I know from experience that anything he wants to talk about will be fascinating and give me food for thought for months and years to come.  He's very much a traditional Meiji man though, which means he tends to be reticent and reserved and not much for light conversation.  Getting him talking sometimes requires a bit of prompting.  That's why I like to go in with a bunch of questions ready to help get the conversation going. 

I've got a few.  I'm still asking him about various points in his budo career.  Lately I'm really interested in what it was like training kendo, iaido, jukendo and judo in the 1930s during the war.  I'm also curious about what the postwar training environment was like.  The common myth that martial arts were banned by the Allies after the war is just that, a myth. (See Joseph Svinth's article at ejmas.com). That doesn't mean that the training environment was incredibly difficult.  Food was scarce, the country was in ruins, and through efforts of the militarist government budo has been used and manipulated for the war effort.  People were working hard to find enough to eat and rebuild the country from literal ruins.  I want to know how he and others found the energy to train in these conditions and what motivated them.

I'm really interested in how he managed to train to an advanced level in so many arts, both from a matter of time, and how he kept them all straight in his body.  I constantly find aspects of one art showing up where it shouldn't when I am training in something else.  I really want to know how he kept, and keeps, them straight.  At 88, he is still in the dojo

Which is another topic I want to ask him about.  What is he working on in the dojo now?  Does he have any goals for his daily training?  Are there particular aspects of his budo that he is still trying to polish.  I look at how my training goals and motivations have changed over the comparatively short time I've been training and I wonder how Kiyama Sensei's have changed (next to someone with 83 years of training, my 27 years feels like I'm still at the elementary school level).

Kiyama Sensei was trained during a pivotal time in the development of modern Kendo, Judo and Iaido.  I wonder what his thoughts are on the changes they have undergone in his lifetime.  Kendo and Judo seem to have become more and more about competition every year.  How does he feel about that?  On the other side, he has also delved deep into koryu bugei.  He has been doing Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu for at least 60 years, and he did Shinto Muso Ryu for I don't know how many decades.  He knows both the koryu and gendai budo worlds intimately.  Does he prefer one to the other?  How  well does he think each is adapting to the 21st century?

These are the lines of thinking I'm following, but if anyone has good suggestions, I will try to bring them up with Kiyama Sensei and see what he says.