Swords, Budo, and the centuries

My friend Kawahara Sadachika is a sword smith in Japan (he's a Buddhist priest too, but that's an entirely different story).  I managed to squeeze in a visit to his house in the Shiga countryside during a business trip last month.  He is always a tremendous pleasure to visit.  His home is on the grounds of the temple he cares for and it is always lovely.  It's called Nenpo-ji and was built in 1712.  Here are some pictures of the temple.

Kawahara Sensei is gracious and wonderful gentleman.  I've known him for about 15 years.  Hopefully I'll get to visit him again soon when he is working in his forge.

This time though we looked as some swords he has made, as well as a beautiful Nanbokucho Period blade that he was studying.  I always enjoy looking as Japanese swords, because each one is so unique, not just in shape and history, but also in appearance.  Each has a unique hamon (temper line) and jihada (steel grain).  We looked at a couple of nice blades that Kawahara Sensei had made.  They have a wonderful, lively jihada.

It is always a pleasure to watch him work with blades, even just to clean them.  He does it with a sense of respect and honor towards the blade he is handling that is truly impressive.  In the above picture he is working on a wakizashi that he made.  It's a lovely piece, and my picture below doesn't do it justice.  I really need to take a better camera on my next visit.  The picture is fuzzy, but the blade itself is delightfully clear with a lively, active jihada.

We talked quite a bit about the beauty of the blades, and in particular about the Nanbokucho tachi that he was studying.  It's a really fine blade with a wonderful shape and general appearance, as well as beautiful detail.

As we were talking about the incredible craftsmanship and beauty of this particular blade, Kawahara Sensei commented casually that he would be satisfied if he could ever make a blade of this quality.  This stuck with me because I have heard similar sentiments from another friend of mine who is also a sword smith.  Nakagawa Sensei has said to me many times that he “wants to make a sword that someone will look at in 1000 years and say 'He made a beautiful sword.'”

At first I thought of this just as wanting make something of quality, which is in itself quite a worthwhile objective.  Later it struck me that Nakagawa Sensei and I had been looking at, appreciating and talking about swords made a thousand years or more before we were born.  Sensei has every reason to consider what someone a thousand years from now will think of his swords.  It is quite reasonable to believe that some of his swords will be around in collections in the 31^st century and that people will be sitting around looking at them and commenting on the grace, power, balance and beauty of his swords.

It’s quite common to talk about future generations, but how many of us really consider the future that far out?  Who seriously considers what someone one thousand years in the future will think about their work?  Who among us has reason to think about things that far in the future?  But if we practice budo, there is a good chance that a thousand years from now people will still be practicing the arts we practice, and they will be the descendants of what we teach. 

If you practice a koryu budo, you are practicing something that is already hundreds of years old.  Ogasawara Ryu kyudo is already nearly a thousand years old.  Katori Shinto Ryu dates from the 1400s, while Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu and Muso Shinden Ryu trace their origins to the 1500s, and Shinto Muso Ryu dates from about 1610.   When we start considering our practice in the scale of hundreds of years rather than decades, that should impact how we practice and what decisions we make.  Can we think about the arts we practice with a longer view than just a few years that are easy to imagine?  Can we imagine someone a thousand years in the future doing what we are doing and benefiting from it?  Can we make decisions about how we practice recognizing that what we choose now may influence how people train in the distant future?  Should we?

So what does it mean to practice with an awareness of hundreds of years of tradition leading up to us, and of hundreds of years of practice flowing down from us?  To me it emphasizes everything that we are doing, and it explains why teachers can seem so conservative.  It places even more importance on me getting it right, so that when I demonstrate for someone, or teach someone, I’m passing on the lesson correctly.  If I’m a poor student, I can only be a poor teacher as well.

The fact that after hundreds of years and revolutions in the technology of combat the koryu arts are still practiced and appreciated by people, and people still find so many relevant lessons is testament to the depth and enduring value of the lessons they teach, and the effectiveness of the way they teach their lessons.  It also suggests that whatever imaginable and unimaginable revolutions we have in combat, the lessons of the koryu we practice will continue to be relevant.  Scary thought there. 

We are teaching stuff that will be important for someone hundreds of years in the future.  I can see it pretty easily though.  The little lessons are the techniques and kata that we practice.  Those may or may not be directly relevant to anyone.  But the big lessons about movement, posture, timing, spacing, positioning, zanshin, and rhythm, these lessons I expect to be relevant as long as there are beings in conflict.  I find the idea of being part of a stream that stretches back hundreds of years, and will flow on for hundreds more to be an incredible thing.  It makes me awfully small, but with a huge responsibility.

Knowing that these lessons remain relevant after centuries, and will continue to be relevant is also tremendously exciting.  It means I’m not just preserving a fossil.  The art is useful and alive and contributing much more to student’s lives than just preserving a memory of things long past.  As long as people are people, there will be conflict, and it will involve blunt sticks, clubs, bladed weapons, chains and ropes.  The capacity for violence is part of who we are and I don’t think any amount of wishing is going to make it go away.

I’m ok with that.  I’m also ok with training that helps deal with that capacity.  I find the idea of training in arts that have successfully helped people deal with the capacity for and actuality of violence for hundreds of years reassuring and fascinating.  I’ve been studying budo for more than 25 years and I still learn something new every time I step into the dojo.  The arts are that deep.  From talking with my teachers, the ryuha they train in are deep enough that even after training for 2 and 3 times as long as I have, they are still learning new things and discovering new depths.

This is what we take part in and contribute to when we train in koryu budo.  We partake of living lessons about how to deal with some of the most fundamental of interactions.  These lessons have been refined over centuries, and now they are very effective and efficient.  Our job as students and teachers of these arts is to pass on faithfully what has been given us, but just as faithfully, to refine those lessons where we see a need.

Koryu budo have survived, seen a decline for a few brief decades when nearly all interests in Japan turned to all things shiny, new and modern, and are seeing a resurgence as a more balanced view valuing both that which is modern and new and those things which have shown resilience and worth over time.  The growth of koryu budo internationally in the last 2 decades is easily as great, and possibly greater, than that of gendai budo in the first several decades after their introduction the world outside Japan.

Those of us lucky enough to be involved in these arts have the responsibility to maintain the high standards of practice that have come down to us.  We also have to help our arts adapt to the changing world, but we must not change the arts just for the sake of change or temporary popularity.  Arts that are well-maintained, well taught and well practiced, that adapt wisely, will surely survive many, many more centuries, and continue to have value.  We are part of the current of these koryu, and students in centuries to come may well look back and see us as having had some small part in continuing the flow of these arts into their future.  If my name is remembered a thousand years from now in some list of koryu teachers, I hope it is remembered as having served the ryuha well, and not for having tried some fancy new trick that lacked sustaining value.

The Most Effective Martial Art

I have to say this.  I believe that the effectiveness of a martial art should be judged not by what the most gifted practitioner of the art can do with it, but by what the least gifted practitioner can do with it.

When people talk about how great a martial art is, the reference point used is almost always what the very greatest of practitioners of the art can do.  These are inevitably fabulous and gifted martial artists. In general they can do incredible things I will never be able to dream of doing.  I’ve felt this level of skill first hand.  Judo is one of the arts I study, and it because it is an Olympic sport, who is the very best of the best among the competitors is not open to argument.  I’ve had the good fortune to train with Olympians and world champions.  I know what their skills and arts feel like (they are almost undetectable, they are generally so subtle you only realize you’ve been thrown when your back hits the floor).

The vast majority of us don’t have their gifts of speed, dexterity and sensitivity.  I’ve seen that the very finest of martial artists, whether the art in question has a competitive sport or not, exhibit these same gifts of speed, dexterity and sensitivity, whether the art is unarmed or armed.  What this gets to is, if we compare martial arts by comparing what the most gifted practitioners can do, we may well only be comparing who is the most gifted, and not which art has the most to give.

A lot of people talk about which martial art can beat another in a head-to-head match up.  To me, that’s rather pointless, because such head-to-head match ups never happen.  What I want to know, what really interests and excites me, is what can a martial art do for an average to below-average practitioner?  You know, someone like me.  This is where things get interesting, because now the foe isn’t some other highly trained martial artists, it’s our own clumsiness.

What will studying the martial art do for me? I already know it won’t make me an unbeatable fighter.  No amount of training is going to do that for me.  I don’t have the gifts.  But training will do other things for me.  Will it increase my sensitivity?  Will it improve my timing?  Will I gain a mastery of spacing?  Am I likely to collect a lot of injuries while training in this particular art?  WIll I enjoy the time I spend training and feel like it is benefiting me, not just on physical level, but also on a mental level?  Will I learn coherent principles that can be applied across the spectrum of encounters, and not just a bunch of discrete techniques that can only be used in situations very similar to the ones they are taught in?

Considering these questions one at a time, here is what I get.  “Will it improve my timing?”  This is a good one that people don’t give enough consideration to, in my opinion.  “Timing is everything” goes the old line, and that is certainly true in the martial arts.  I’ve seen over the years that the most accomplished, most effective artists, whether in a sportive art such as kendo or judo, or in kata art such as kenjutsu or jojutsu, are the ones with the best timing.  They attack when the conditions are optimum.  They don’t waste energy, when the opening occurs, they are there.  They move with their opponents and hit their targets with timing rather than speed.  I’ve seen octogenarians completely dominate people in their teens and twenties because they understood timing.  They matched their movements with their partner’s movements and timed them so they slipped naturally into place.  

This brings up the next question.  “Will it improve my sensitivity?”  Sensitivity includes awareness of a broad range of things.  From the closest, feeling and understanding your partner through their touch where they are holding you or your clothes, to your awareness of the world around you and the people in it.  At the closest level, I teach students to be aware of their partners even when their eyes are closed, so they can understand and affect their partner through touch without looking at them or the point they are targeting.  From there sensitivity stretches out to being aware of how someone is going to move and what they are going to do based on understanding the clues in their posture and movement.  This requires a visual sensitivity first focused on your partner, and later, as you improve, extending to everything in your awareness.  If all you learn to focus on it how to strike or how to see one opponent after they are declared, you aren’t learning very much.  If you are becoming sensitive to the world around you, you are really learning something worthwhile.

“Will I gain a mastery of spacing?”  This is a great one, because if you can control the spacing between you and a partner, you control the entire encounter.  By controlling the spacing, you can limit a partner’s options and even choose what options to give them.  It’s tough to learn about controlling spacing at a range of distances from just one art though.   Most arts are very strong at one or two distances.  I study Kodokan Judo, which is great at the most intimate distances, the range where you can reach out and hold someone.  If you practice some of the kata you can learn about slightly longer distances, the range of hand strikes.  It’s starts to fall down at kicking ranges and is really bad at weapons ranges.  Shinto Muso Ryu Jo is great at a variety of armed ranges, but it has little to offer at the range of touch.  You can’t learn everything at once, and I wouldn’t expect one art to teach you everything.  But whatever you are studying, it should spend a lot of time in partner practice so you can learn about spacing.  I’m not talking just about sparring, but partner practice, which includes a lot of slow, careful, thoughtful practice so you can internalize lessons about spacing without developing bad habits.

“Am I likely to collect a lot of injuries while training in this particular art?”  This should be a no brainer, but we forget about it quite often.  Is the training atmosphere a safe one?  Are these people that I want to be around?  Every physical activity has risks (know any basketball players who’ve had knee surgery?)  but the risks should not be excessive.  I have friends who have left dojo because of the way training was run.  Usually the problem is not with the art but with the way training is done.  Be aware of this.  The people you train with have a huge impact on the value you will get from your training and how much you learn.  If they don’t respect you physically, you could end up badly damaged with injuries that cause lifelong problems.  If people don’t respect you as a person, you have to deal with not just physical risks, but with the emotional wear and tear of being treated badly as an individual.  Not all injuries are physical.  Make sure the particular art in the particular place you are training is safe for you and those around you.  

“WIll I enjoy the time I spend training and feel like it is benefiting me, not just on physical level, but also on a mental level?”  Training takes effort and motivation.  If you don’t feel like you are benefiting, you’re not going to want to do it.  Good training should leave you tired, and honestly, exhilarated. The effects should enrich your body through the exercise, your skills through the technical training, and your mind through the broader application of what you are learning.  If you aren’t getting all three, you might want to rethink what you are doing.  I know that when I leave a good training session, I may be so exhausted I can hardly walk, but mentally I am much more alive and aware, and emotionally I am, exhilarated.  The training stretches my physical skills and mental awareness so that everything functions at a higher level.  This extends to my emotions as well.  This is one of the big reasons I love training.  It just feels so good at every level.

This is the difference between a coherent art and just a random collection of stuff.  “Will I learn coherent principles that can be applied across the spectrum of encounters, and not just a bunch of discrete techniques that can only be used in situations very similar to the ones they are taught in?”   A lot of people argue over whether something is a “jutsu 術” or a “Do 道”.  That’s not really a useful question, but I’ve already written about it here.  The question to ask should be, “Is this based on coherent principles that can be applied beyond the discrete techniques being taught, or it just a collection of techniques?  The best arts and teachers use techniques as pointers towards principles rather than as an end in themselves.  If you are studying throws, do you learn how off-balancing and over-extending contributes to instability in a partner and how this makes powerful throws effortless and effective?  If you are studying striking, do you learn how to move your hips and lower body to develop power that can be applied to not only strikes but other movements as well?  If you are studying joint locks, are you learning the principles behind locking the joints to prevent movement, or are you just learning to twist the wrist *this way* so it hurts?  The art should teach principles that cross all of these areas and can be applied strategically and tactically as well.  Lessons from throwing will apply to striking, while striking lessons apply to joint locks and lessons about locking the body apply to throwing.  The system should be coherent and the principles effective across the range of activity.

All of these things are essential to making a worthwhile art in my eyes.  If what you are training isn’t giving you all of these, you aren’t getting the most possible out of your art, and the art doesn’t do very much for the people studying it.  Which art is most effective is the one that does the best job of teaching you the above.  Not every art is ideally suited for every person. We each bring our own strengths and weaknesses to our training.  The best art will reinforce your strengths and help you overcome weaknesses.  It will develop your sensitivity, timing and mastery of spacing.  Your body will be strengthened and energized by your training, and your mind will be polished.  You will feel better physically, mentally and emotionally after training.  You will gain skills and understanding that apply far beyond mere physical confrontations.

If you’re not getting all of these from your training, you’re not studying the most effective martial art.

Do vs Jutsu. Again.

It seems like this issue comes up a lot.  I'm involved in a discussion about it on a LinkedIn discussion board right now, so I thought I would share some of what is going on over there.

The whole Do vs. Jutsu discussion only gets a lot of play outside Japan. It's something that Donn Draeger came up with. It was an interesting idea, but, frankly, he was wrong. There is no opposition between the two concepts. To have a way (Do 道） you must have skill (Jutsu 術） to build it from. In order for skills to be coherent, they must be organized in a way. 道 is founded on 術、while 道makes sense of 術。　　

It not either or. It is both and. Either or is something Westerners insist on. It used to make my teachers in Japan smile at my ignorance when I pressed the conversation on them.

Both together. One without the other just doesn't make sense.

When we start, we tend to focus on the skills, because we need them as a foundation to understanding what the way is.  Beginners can talk about the big picture and the fundamental principles, but these have to be explored and experienced through the practice of discrete skills and techniques.  These provide the map to understanding the way and the principles of the way.

The "Do" idea is a really old one in Japan.  Sado 茶道 or tea ceremony has been called Sado since at least the time of Sen No Rikyu (16th century), and there are martial arts being called "Do" 道 that I have seen going back to at least the 17th century.  Even the Kano Jigoro shihan recognized that the term Judo had been used by some groups long before he started using it.

Most arts though were known simply by their name (Hayashizaki Ryu, Kashima Shinryu, Shinto Muso Ryu) without adding an adjective such as jutsu or  do prior to and during the Tokugawa era.  Names and descriptions changed often, but the organizing principles did not.  Separating a technique from the principles that make it work is, to my mind, impossible.  Having a principle without any applications or techniques that express the principle is difficult to imagine.

Ideally, the principles give rise to the techniques, and the techniques point the way to the principles.  Some great master had a deep insight into the principles of their art and developed techniques that express this principle.  It’s a great circle with the master having an insight into principle  and developing techniques based on that principle, that Way 道。  Students then study the techniques as way of learning to understand the principle behind them.  The techniques serve as road markers pointing the way to the principle Way that underlies the art.  The students master the techniques and come to embody the principles and express them spontaneously.  They then being teaching these techniques to a new generation of students.  The circle continues.

In Japanese there are a lot of terms that express the concept of Way: michi 道、houhou 方法、
kata 方 (different from the “kata” meaning form 型、形）.  The goal of any art, whether it is described as jutsu or do, skill or way, 術 or 道、is that the practitioner can spontaneously express the principles of the art/school/style/system spontaneously in accordance with the situation.  If you only learn a collection of techniques, but don’t understand the principles that underly the techniques, you will only be able to use them in the exact situations in which you learned them.  If you use the techniques as tools for learning the underlying principles, the Way, then once you begin to understand the principles, you will be able to apply them to all sorts of situations, not just the specific one covered in the technique you learned.

In a fully developed martial art/martial science, the principles and the techniques cannot be separated from each other.  The techniques work because of the underlying principles, and the principles are expressed through the techniques.

Who do we train for?

When you train, do you train just for yourself?
Do you train just for the moment?
Do you remember those who brought the skills you practice down through time?
Do you consider those who may inherit the skills you are practicing?

We live in a world of fast food where everything is disposable.  But somethings aren't meant to be fast food, they aren't disposable, and they aren't meant to be on a menu with "Pick any 3" written above them.

When we train budo, we are training ourselves, but we are also contributing to a tradition, even if we are training a newly created style.  That style's creator had teachers, and hopeful he didn't create the style completely from his imagination.  Over the centuries a lot of people have contributed to the arts we train in.  Some of us are fortunate enough to train in living arts that have been around for many centuries, and we can easily look up the names of past teachers and master students.  Some of the people we owe our gratitude to are easy to identify.  Others, students and teachers whose names were not recorded, we will never know about.  We can, and should, appreciate them all the same.

I am amazed and humbled to think of all the great teachers whose lessons I am receiving when I train in my chosen budo.  And I am humbled by the thought that my teachers have decided to lavish their experience and wisdom on me.  They are some of the finest people I know.   One of the reasons I believe they have become such fine human beings is that their training is not just about themselves.  They train, they learn, and then they share what they have learned without jealousy or greed.  Their budo is much more than just a method for fighting or self-defense or to boost their ego through their own strength and power.

Budo, when practiced fully, weaves together the past and the future with the present.  I have inherited a great debt from my teachers.  In budo we should always be aware of just how much we have received from our teachers, and their teachers before them.  And it is not a debt we can repay.  It is one that can only be paid forward.  Budo lessons are not something to be learned for ourselves alone.  Budo cannot be practiced alone, and once we have learned lessons from budo, it is our responsibility to pass those lessons on to others.

This doesn't mean that everyone who studies budo has to go out and start their own dojo, or even that they have to teach classes.   But it does mean that we have to share what we have learned with those around us in the dojo without being jealous about the lady with more talent who picks it so quickly, or the boy who has lots of free time and advances rapidly because he trains a lot more than we can.  It means training with people, and sharing with them.

By training with people, and sharing what we know, we knit the next row of stitches in the fabric that is our budo.  We become some of those teachers and students who created, learned and passed on what they had learned.  If an art form can continue for hundreds of years to get to us, there is no reason not to expect it to continue for hundreds more.  We are part of it, and we owe it to those who gave the art to us, to give it to future students.  We train and learn and train with others and teach and give our art on to future students, not just those we know by name, but those who will come to the art after we have died and likely been forgotten.  Very few of us will be remembered as a master teacher or a soke.  But we are still a part of the art, and it is our duty as a part of the art to pass it on.

That's more than a little humbling, and I think that is why my teachers are so humble. They know that what they are doing is not just for themselves and their direct students.  It is for all those who will come after, their descendants in the art.  Kiyama Sensei has been doing budo for over 80 years, he can see a long way back, and I believe he can envision his budo traveling far into the future.  He would never call it "his" though.  It came to him from his teachers and he cannot keep it.  He passes it along to his students, and we cannot keep it either.  We can only ever be caretakers.  We may get to polish it a little, and perhaps, if we are something astounding, we might even be able to add a nugget to the budo treasure we have been blessed enough to receive.

Always keep in mind that "your" budo doesn't really belong to you.  It would be more accurate to say that you belong to the budo you practice.  It is a great treasure that past teachers have given you to care for so that future generations can benefit from this budo as well.  By practicing, you become a part of the fabric of the budo.

Been too long.  I've been thinking about the whole Tao, Do, Michi, Path, Way, thingy.  It may just be time for me to start learning Chinese.   I got to train with Kiyama Sensei some last week, and it is always an honor.  Seeing Sensei reminds me just how much of a journey without destination this really is.  Sensei is 87 years old this year, and coming back from shattered his femur while working in his vegetable field.  Tough doesn't begin to describe him.  The doctors said he'd be in the hospital for at least 3 months.  1 month later they kicked him out because he was going up and down the stairs unassisted!  It's the journey.  He is working to get back to training.  At 87, it is not unreasonable to ask "Why is he working to go back to training?"  The answers are first, "Why not?" and second, "Because that is who he is."  He trains and he teaches.  The journey isn't over, so there is no reason to quit.

I think about this as my own journey has slowed down because of my own injuries.  Like Sensei, I'm going to need a little surgical repair, but once that is done the journey continues.  If I'm honest, the journey continues even before the surgery.  I'm learning new lessons about what I can and can't do, and some interesting lessons about motivation and who I think I am.    I wonder what lessons Sensei took away from his journey through injury and recovery.  I do know that he is back in the dojo, and back in the vegetable field.  I had dinner at his house the other day, and 100% of the fruits and vegetables on the table were from his field.

The foundataions

A friend asked a question about the foundations of Judo that is a great one.  Are we teaching a collection of techniques, or something else.  This is my answer to him.

I believe we are teaching something else.  My old dojo had a joke, “The only thing I’m going to teach you is how to breath and how to walk” which becomes more true for me every day.  The techniques are just pointers on the way to learning Judo, they aren’t Judo themselves.

I think focusing on the foundations of moving and breathing are important and not nearly enough time is spent on them.  It’s assumed that you’ll pick them up spontaneously from your technique training.  Personally, I think this is a backward approach.  The more I train in Judo and other budo, the more I believe that drilling the fundamentals of movement, posture and correct breathing are essential to developing good Judo (I almost said “great Judo” but the only way I will ever experience great Judo is in being thrown by some of the greats). 

If you take apart any of the throws, proper use of the body is essential.  You can’t do any technique well by bending over at the waist, and if move with a bounce in your step, you’re partner will bounce you off the mat.  Learning to stand in a relaxed, upright, well-balanced manner, and to move so that you maintain that is essential to doing everything else in Judo well.  However, just practicing standing and walking would bore even the most dedicated student out of the dojo.

The trick is to find ways to practice the fundamentals in such a way that the students can see the connection between the practice of the fundamentals, the techniques, and the application in randori and kata.  In iaido, I’ve broken out some of the primary movements that are commonly done poorly and we use 10 repetitions of the isolated movements as part of our warm-ups.  The students can see how the warm-up applies to the practice and can spend a little time focusing on the fundamental action before we incorporate it into the kata practice.

I think you might have some luck teaching basic tai sabaki movements as individual actions as part of your warm-ups.  The entering tai sabaki for osotogari and the turning tai sabaki for seoinage for example.  Students can readily see where these movements are applied and will do 10 repetitions without protest because they can understand why they are doing it.  Once you get them to appreciate the obvious tai sabaki such as for osotogari and seoinage, you can start introducing movements that make less immediate sense.

When to specialize

A friend asked about when is it appropriate for a Judo student to start specializing in one technique.  He’d been talking with other instructors who emphasize that students should pick one technique and specialize in it.

I think the defining thing about this discussion is that the other instructors are building their entire discussion around competition.  For competitive judoka, there are really only a few techniques that have been proven overwhelmingly to be the strongest in the competitive arena.  I don’t remember the exact list, so I googled it. http://www.bestjudo.com/article/0924/frequency-judo-techniques

Uchimata

Seoinage

Osotogari

Ouchigari

Harai Goshi

Tai Otoshi

If you are a competitor, based on the evidence, these techniques are clearly the most effective under the rules of judo competition.  For a competitive orientation, I think it would be a fairly simple procedure to introduce these 6 techniques and then let the student discover which one best suits that student.  I don’t really think it is too early to start specializing as a green belt if competition is your goal.  I don’t think you should stop learning other techniques, but those should be part of the variety of training, while you spend some time every practice polishing your primary technique.

If you are learning Kodokan Judo, or you want a more rounded self-defense base, then you will need to learn a variety of techniques that can be used in conditions other than those of the competition mat.  Competitive judo is great at close gripping range, but it teaches nothing about techniques and timing at other ranges.  That’s what kata are for.  Kata teach a lot of things that are useless to the competitor, but vital in self-defense, such as understanding striking ranges and timing, dealing with non-competition standard attacks and assaults, and what the range and distance of a variety of weapons are.  Too much specialization may actually be detrimental to this type of training because you have to have flexibility to change your responses to suit the conditions.

Competition is a very specialized activity and it makes sense to specialize if that is where your focus/interest lies.  If your interest lies elsewhere, heavy specialization may actually interfere with applying the appropriate response.

Thanks Frank.  This was a good question.

What is Budo?

I wrote this in response to a question on an email list about "What is Budo?" and thought it was worth putting out for more public comment.


Shinto Muso Ryu, Shinto Hatakage Ryu, Judo, and Aikido all share combative function and technique as their core practices. This gets them lumped together as “bugei” (literally “martial arts”) or “bujutsu” (martial skill). “Do” or “michi” both written 道 is a much more involved idea. While bugei / bujutsu can refer to just the techniques and skills practiced, anything with the “do” 道 suffix implies a class of not just technical activity, but also a means of polishing and developing the whole self and one’s way of dealing not just with the literal techniques of combat, but with how we approach every action and non-action throughout the day. This is both an elevation of martial activity to philosophical/spiritual and a spreading it out by making it apply to everything thing we do from putting on our shoes to sitting in a chair to drinking tea.  Anything that can be done mindfully should be impacted.
       To me, the first thing that is required for something to be budo is that it must be effective at a technical level. If it’s not effective for what it is trying to teach at the most basic level, it can never hope to reach level of a michi. If you’re not practicing to be martially effective, you’re certainly not doing budo. Any michi has to
be grounded in reality.  It’s clear how ways such as sado (Way of Tea) and kado (Way of Flowers) are grounded in reality. You are making, serving and appreciating tea, or you are arranging and appreciating
flowers. I haven’t figured out a way to fake either one of those. Budo unfortunately is rather dangerous to practice, so it easy to deceive yourself about what you are doing. I do Kodokan Judo, hopefully as budo, but it is very easy to do it as nothing more than a sport by forgetting or ignoring the parts that aren’t comfortable to do or aren’t allowed in the sporting context. In iaido, since it is a solo practice, it is easy to drift away from the martial aspects of the practice and let it become just a series of beautiful movements.
With jodo, if you and your partner are not serious, and don’t practice with strong intent, it too can become a pretty, choreographed dance  sequence. Budo requires that the intent, practice, and practicality.
       Effectiveness is only a necessary component of budo though.  Just because something is effective doesn’t make it a form of budo.  Krav Maga is extremely effective, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that it
is budo.  For something to be budo, it has to have the broader application to all aspects of life, and not be limited in its practice to combative situations.  It needs to have a philosophical bent to it that allows this broader application. It must be bujutsu, but it must have an additional facet that is informed by the threads of Taoism, Confucianism and 1000 years of Japanese thought on the issue of individual development through the mindful practice of mundane activities. This is the tough part, and I suspect there is a PhD dissertation in there somewhere.  I’m not talking about religion, but a concept of what it means to be human and how to perfect one’s self. The practices that effective at a technical level for a narrowly defined practical activity have to applicable beyond that, to all aspects of life. There is in Japanese thought the idea that by developing the body to do practical things perfectly, the mind will be developed as well. This is why people revere masters of flower arranging, tea ceremony, and calligraphy. Through polishing a practical skill, they are polishing their whole being, and when they display outer mastery of a skill, it is seen as confirmation of their
inner development.  I’m not sure it always works, but that’s the idea.  The tales of simple people who have achieved true understanding of the Tao through perfection of a common task abound.  The tale of Cook Ting is a great example.  He has mastered the art of cooking and through that gained insight into the nature of the universe.
       If your art can be do that, and be effective, then it might be a form of budo.

Practice

I have a couple of students who started recently, and teaching them has me focused on fundamentals even more than I usually am.  I often say "All I'm going to do is teach you to walk and to breath."  Having new students reminds me that this is very true.  We are working on fundamentals of posture, how to move, when to inhale and exhale.

Practice seems to focus on the simplest, most common activities.  Lately we're spending a lot of time working on breathing in a sensible way for what we are doing, standing and moving properly.  Practice is like that, even when I'm working on the "advanced" stuff.  Practicing the advanced stuff mostly seems to consist of making sure I'm breathing properly, standing in a relaxed, stable manner, and moving well from my hips without messing up my breathing or my posture.  Practice is always practice.

Iaido and Jodo are both kata based arts. The number of kata is very limited.  You learn the basic patterns and then you continue  practicing them.  After a few years you've "learned" all the kata in the system.   That is to say, you've learned the pattern of movements that make up the kata.  But learning the kata isn't what practice is all about.  Practice is doing the kata, studying it, learning to apply those basic concepts of proper breathing and posture to make the movements stronger, more solid, more unstoppable.  Every time I do a kata I see things that can be improved.  That's just the stuff I become aware of as I practice the kata.  True horror awaits me every time I see a video tape of myself.  Then I'm left with a grocery list of things to address.

Practice is going about the business of addressing those issues.  It's about never being satisfied with where you are, but always trying to move yourself forward.  There is always something to practice.  Breathing seems like such a simple thing.  Even babies do it, right? But breathing properly and fully is difficult.  I think I've gotten pretty good at breathing properly and fully, at least when I'm not moving.  The trick I'm working on now is breathing properly, fully, and at the right moment for each movement.  It's amazing how easy it is to get engrossed in the action of a kata and forget to breath until it's over.  I'm still practicing breathing.

And as for walking, I don't have nearly enough time to talk about practicing walking.  That's really complicated.  I keep practicing it though.

Art, Martial Art, and Life

I'm a martial artist. I train in several different budo. What does it mean to be a martial artist? For me it means that I'm constantly training to become myself. Not that I'm training strikes or cuts or throws or joint locks, but myself. I'm polishing who I am and how I interact with the world around me, and how I am connected to the world. It is training in the art of life.

I'm working on how to move in everyday life. The iaido kata I train aren't really about how I move with a sword. They are about how I move in the world. It's about how I get out of my car and how I move down the hallway. Most importantly, it's about what sort of face and posture I present to people I deal with. In iai, we spend a lot of time focused perfecting our movement. It's very similar to dance in that there are limited number of fundamentals that we drill and drill and drill. We drill until proper movement has become ingrained in our bodies so that we express it with every movement in or out of the dojo. A dancer is graceful on and off the stage, and a martial artist should be too.

In judo and jodo and other arts that emphasize paired practice, the focus shifts from perfect movement, thought this is still critical, to perfect timing and spacing. This is where the art of living in the world is practiced. In the dojo it's all about moving in time and space to be in the right place to dominate and control an opponent. Outside the dojo life is about moving in time and space to be in the right place at the right time for whatever is happening in our lives. The awareness and understanding of when and how people will move that we cultivate in the dojo is something that should be drawn on all the time. Moving through a crowd, dealing with a customer, a coworker, a boss, or a friend, what we can read from their body, and what we can accomplish by maintaining the relaxed, ready state we train for in the dojo makes budo relevant to every encounter, even ones we don't know we've had.