The Most Essential Principles In Budo: Ma'ai

There is no single essential element of good budo. There are a number of elements that make up the common foundations of all good budo, whether it is empty hand, small weapons, swords, spears and naginata or even kyubado. I wrote about structure in a previous post.  Another essential principle is ma’ai 間合, often translated as spacing. This one seems simple, and turns out to be exceedingly complex and subtle.  

At it’s most basic level, spacing is the distance between you and your opponent.  That’s the most basic level.  After this it quickly gets complicated.  Ma’ai 間合 is the Japanese term, and and while it refers to distance, it also implies the proper or correct distance. The problem and complexity comes from the fact that what is the proper distance is different for every encounter.

Let’s start just with empty hand encounters to keep it simple. I’m 183 cm tall. My reach and range is longer than someone who is 160 cm tall, assuming we’re both using the same sorts of attacks. My range is longer, so I don’t need to be as close to reach out, make a connection and apply a judo technique. An opponent who is 160 cm has to come well inside my range before she can attack.   

Seems simple enough. How about this then? I’m a judoka, so I’m not big with punches and kicks.  So let’s assume my 160 cm opponent is now proficient at Tae Kwon Do. Oops! The ma’ai just changed significantly, and not in my favor. Now my opponents kicks are effective at a greater range than my grappling. On the other hand, if I get inside her effective range, my grappling is more effective than her striking.  

So good distancing,ma’ai, changes with the person’s reach and the techniques being used. It’s the combination of your effective attacking range and your opponent’s. What’s good for one is more than likely not optimal for the other.  Kendo breaks down ma’ai into several discrete ranges, which is easier in kendo because the shinai’s length is controlled to prevent major differences between kendoka.   The Kendo community has analyzed their three main ranges, toma, issoku-no-maai, chika-ma (outside of attack range, attack with one step, close enough to attack without moving).  Their analysis is focused on two very similar opponents with identical weapons.

Once we get outside the competitive arena with it’s requirement that things be “fair,” whatever that might be, ma’ai becomes a very fluid distance. In both gendai and koryu arts, kata are designed to teach the fluidity of ma’ai by setting up the student to practice against a variety of weapons and partners.  This is true in Judo in the Kime No Kata where the student must deal with everything from grabs to strikes to knife attacks to swords.  It’s true in most Aikido training as well, with a variety of tanto and sword disarms.  

Many classical bujutsu systems cover the entire gamut of weapons combinations, from both persons unarmed to one person armed, to both armed with the same weapon to asymmetrically armed training. 　Many weapons arts mostly emphasize asymmetrical training scenarios.  In Shinto Muso Ryu, the only time both partners are armed alike is in a few of the okuden forms, and seven of the Shinto Ryu kenjutsu kata.  In JIkishinkage Ryu the combination is usually sword versus naginata.  Most koryu arts include a variety of weapons in their curriculum.

Once we get to this variety of combinations the terms for ma’ai become much more interesting and challenging.  If I’m holding a kodachi facing an opponent with a tachi, her issoku-no-maai is longer than mine.

 If I switch to jo, mine is now longer than hers.  If she’s got one of those giant naginata or a yari, hers is longer than mine.  And then we have the variability of some types of kusarigama, but I’m not going to go there today.  

The continually changing combination of an individual’s range and her weapon’s range makes ma’ai exceptionally difficult to master (and even more complicated to write about). By practicing with a variety of partners and in a variety of weapon combinations you can develop a good sense of maai.  I’m starting to understand some aspects of it, but I have a long way to go.  

One thing that is critical for learning learning ma’ai is that attacks have to be effective. I hear a lot about “sincere” and “committed” attacks in some arts.  I’ll be honest, I really don’t care if the attack is sincere or not, and I really don’t care if it’s committed.  I care about whether it will be effective.  A sincere, committed attack that will never reach you is worthless for training because you will never learn at what range you are vulnerable, and at what range you are effective.  The same is true for an attack that purposely misses to either side.  I can’t learn how to deal with an attack that isn’t effective.

The attack doesn’t have to be fast and hard.  It doesn’t have to be heavily overcommitted.  It does have to be on target.  That’s the key.  On any number of occasions I’ve told students to “Hit me.”  They swung their weapon and I didn’t move because I didn’t need to.  I could see they weren’t doing anything that would impact me.  I stood there and watched their weapons swing past in the breeze.  Then people asked why I didn’t move.  I didn’t move because my sense of ma’ai is strong enough that I can see when someone is attacking effectively and when he is just waving at empty air.  Waving at empty air is not effective or threatening.

Every attack, no matter how slow, has to be such that it would impact my position.  If it’s not going to do that, how am I going to learn what distance and attack is dangerous and what isn’t?  If you don’t know the difference, you will fall for every feint and false attack.  An effective attack is not one where you overcommit and throw yourself at your opponent either.  For an effective attack you move in maintaining your balance and integrity while striking or cutting so that you will impact your partner if she doesn’t move.  

As you practice kata and randori with a variety of partners and weapons combinations, you will develop a more and more sensitive understanding of ma’ai.  With an understanding of ma’ai comes awareness of the difference between an empty threat, and a position that is vulnerable to attack.  You will also be able to see  when your opponent is open to attack on the other side.  Without an understanding of ma’ai you are vulnerable to every threat and intimidating move because you won’t know the difference between an attack that will affect you and movement that cannot hurt you.

NOTE:  “Ma’ai” has 3 syllables in Japanese:  mah-ah-ee.  In English it comes out as 2 syllables “mah-eye.”

The Most Essential Principles In Budo: Structure

A question came up in a budo group I’m part of asking what the 3 most important concepts in budo are. It’s an interesting question. What ideas are most fundamental in the art you practice? These concepts undergird and direct your training. They direct the focus of your training and what sort of things you are practicing. People offered quite a few ideas, including:

Keep your body relaxed.

Always keep your center (or be centered).

Keep your elbows down, and close to your body

Always try to control the first move

Many of the ideas offered were specific to Aikido, which is the point of that group. My thoughts are more general and apply to any form of budo.  My list  is structure/stance, spacing and timing, in that order.  Each builds on where the previous concept is, and without effective use of the previous concept the next cannot be employed effectively.  All apply regardless of whether you are doing kung fu, judo, boxing, aikido, swords, staves or scary stuff like kusarigama. This my list, and I make no claim that it is definitive.  I offer it in the hope of sparking good conversation and consideration of the most important elements of practice and application.   I’d thought to do these all in one post, but it looks like it’s I’m going to have to give each one it’s own post.  

My first principle is structure/stance.  Without a solid, connected, supported structure you can’t accomplish anything.  This why I’m only partly joking when I say that the only thing I really teach is how to walk and how to breath.  Good structure is what allows the fastest, most effective, stable and strong movement.  If you are slouching and rolling your shoulders, tipping your head at the ground and not supporting yourself, you can’t breathe deeply or efficiently.  Slouching and poor posture compress the torso so it cannot hold as much air.  You will get tired more quickly just because you can’t get enough oxygen into your body fast enough.  

Slouching also robs the body of it’s natural structural integrity.  If you slouch, you’re off balance already.  Judo folks stand or fall based on their balance, but this is true for anyone in any art.  If you’re not balanced, you’re not stable in at least one direction.  

In the picture above the two diagrams on the right show what our structure looks like when we slouch.   Can you imagine trying to do any physical activity with that sort of compromised structure?

With good structure, loads and forces can easily be absorbed and handled, movement is quick, light and easy, and changes can be adapted to readily.  Without it we can’t carry or absorb loads or force, movement is difficult, slow and tiring, and it is difficult to adapt to changes in the situation.

I’ve been showing this to my sword and jo students for years with a simple exercise.  I let them hold a jo against my solar plexus whatever way they like holding the jo, and I can push the jo back into them and them across the room without any effort at all.  They can’t do a thing to slow me down and I can reach them with a weapon or my hands before they can do anything about it.  If the structure of the wrist is off it’s optimal angle even a little, it will collapse under pressure and be useless.  

With the structure of the wrist compromised like this (particularly clear in the left wrist) a push on the end of the jo will make the wrists collapse into the body and allow an attacker to easily drive in.

On the other hand, if the wrist is at the proper angle, I can stick a 140 kg goon on the other end of the stick and he can’t push into me, or even into someone half my size.  How can it be that just changing the angle of the wrist where you hold the stick can impact so much?  I’ll let the mechanical engineers and the physics boys explain the details, because I don’t have a deep enough background there to do it anything like accurate justice.

With properly aligned wrists, you can support far more than your own weight pressing into the end of the jo, and push from the hips with more energy than the arms can generate.

This split between weak structural configurations and strong ones carries over to every joint in the body, and to the way the body as whole is arranged.  If the wrist structure is good, but another joint such as the hip, knee or ankle is not aligned properly, the whole body structure is still weak and will collapse even if pressured only slightly.  

Structure gives the body the ability to move, and when that structure is taken away, there isn’t much anyone can do.  Over the weekend Howard Popkin impressed that upon me anew.  He can, by simply moving around the force and structure of the body, completely undermine the power of people bigger and stronger than I am, and throw them casually, without so much as taking a deep breath.  He simply maintained his structure and went around the lines of strength in mine.  

You can push all you want on someone who keeps their structure aligned so your force is directed into the floor.  It takes very little strength to maintain your structure under this kind of attack.  The attacker’s force actually pushes your body to maintain good structure without the addition of much energy on your part.  If you decide to push back, it’s actually easy to do because your structure is already supporting and negating their power.  When you push back, they fly.

It’s interesting that according to Kano Jigoro, founder of Kodokan Judo, one of the two great secrets of great Judo is kuzushi 崩し.  Kuzushi comes from a verb in Japanese that means tearing down, knocking down, breaking things into smaller parts.  Sometimes it implies undermining and destroying a foundation.  This is one of the great realizations of Kano’s that he put into his Judo.  If you destroy the foundation of someone’s structure, take them off their foundation and remove the support from their structure, they become incredibly weak and a small woman can throw a large man.  

This is true for whatever art you are practicing, whether it is armed or unarmed, jujutsu, karate, sword or chain, staff or rope.  You maintain your posture and then you destroy your opponents.

The first step in mastering budo is learning to properly maintain your own structure.   If you can’t do that, nothing else is possible.  Once you’ve got that you have a powerful base to work from.  Then you learn to manipulate and undermine your opponents structure.  Once you destroy the integrity of their structure, throws and joint locks are easy.  The key is that destroying the integrity of someone’s structure doesn’t involve harming them.  It just means making them slump or slouch or come away from a balanced stance.  Once you’ve done that, the actual technique isn’t terribly important because without a solid, balanced structure, it’s nearly impossible to defend oneself, even from a very poor attack.

Judoka spend an immense amount of time practicing off-balancing techniques to accomplish this.  Aikido folks work on movements to draw someone out of good physical alignment.  Daito Ryu folks work on doing it with the smallest movements possible.  It all comes down to the same thing.  Destroy the ability of the body’s structure to support it, and the person can’t resist anything.

There are the two sides of structure in budo.  Create and maintain a solid, efficient, mobile structure in yourself while undermining your opponents structure and making it unable to support him and his movements.  Mastery of structure is absolutely to everything we do in budo.  We can’t begin to move and breath properly until we learn to do so with good structure.   We can’t defend against anything without good structure.  Effective attacks are impossible with an unstable structure.  

Good structure is at the root of all good budo, whether it is a striking art, a grappling art, or a weapons art.  Without good structure, you have nothing.  That’s why it’s the first of my essential principles of budo.

On Language and Budo

A number of people sent me comments about a recent post.  They were telling me there is no reason to learn the Japanese or Chinese etiquette and terminology of their Japanese or Chinese martial art because they don’t live in Japan or China.  Let me address the idea of not learning the traitional terminology of your art.

The language used  is important if you are going to train with people beyond your immediate group. French is the language of Ballet.  A ballet dancer can go anywhere in the world and dance with others and they can communicate clearly and without giving offense because they share a common vocabulary of French terms that are recognized as the language of ballet.  The same is true for basketball.  It originated in the US and has spread around the world.  The common terms, the vocabulary of basketball, are English.  If you fence, you learn the vocabulary of fencing.  

All this is true for budo as well.  I have trained on three continents in many countries with people who speak all sorts of different languages.  We could train safely and effectively because we all shared the common vocabulary of budo.  The first time I discovered this was in the US with a Japanese guest to the dojo. He didn't speak English, but I knew the vocabulary of Judo and we communicated just fine.  When I moved to Japan, I still didn't speak Japanese yet, but I was perfectly comfortable in the dojo there because again, I already knew the common vocabulary of budo.

Budo terminology is a technical jargon and it serves much the same purpose as technical jargon on a sailing ship (to use another seemingly antiquated technology and skill for comparison).  On a sailing ship, there are no ropes. During a big storm or other emergency, there isn't time to explain which rope is needed, so there are technical terms that make that clear.  A piece of rope that doesn’t have a specific use yet is a line.  If it’s used to tie off a particular part of the boat, then it becomes a bow line or stern line or some other specific sort of line.  The lines that raise and lower the sails are not lines.  They are halyards. The lines that control the angle of the sails when they are up are called sheets.  On a sailboat there are no ropes, so don’t bother asking for one.  The same goes for right and left.  Never used.  Everything is either starboard (the right side of the boat when on the boat and ffacing the towards the bow) or port (the left side of the boat when facing the bow.).  Don’t even bother asking about right and left.  No one will use the terms. 

Why not?  Aren’t right and left perfectly good and useful for every direction that needs to be given.  Actually, no, they aren’t.  If someone on a boat needs a rope pulled in now, they don’t have time to explain that it’s the one on their right side, not your right side but their right side, and it’s the one that controls the angle of forward sail.  Nope, they have time to say “Pull in the starboard jib sheet!”   Absolutely no confusion there.

Budo terminology does the same thing, and it does it effectively across borders and languages.  I can go anywhere in the world, and say “Uchimata” and judo people will know exactly which technique I’m talking about.  The same is true in kenjutsu and iai if I say “kirioroshi” or “monouchi.” If something dangerous is happening, I can yell "Yame!" in any Judo dojo in the world and expect that everyone will understand, no matter what languages they may speak.  Everyone knows what I’m talking about immediately.  There’s no need to explain.  The terminology is common across borders, cultures and languages if you’re doing Japanese budo.

That’s the point of technical jargon.  It makes things clear without a lot of explaining.  This particular point is not a cultural issue.  It’s a communication issue.  If you are doing a Japanese martial art, you need to learn the Japanese terminology so you can communicate with other practitioners. It’s the lingua franca of the art wherever you are.  If you study a Chinese art, learning the Chinese terminology is essential for effective communication.  If you don’t know the standard terminology of your art, you won’t be able to understand books about your art because they will be using the terminology.  You won’t be able to have a discussion on a bulletin board or in the comments section of a blog about your art because you won’t know what people are talking about.

Having a common vocabulary is critical to communicating and learning about your art.  Without it you are isolated from the rest of the practitioners in the world who share a common vocabulary.  I'm not saying you have to learn a foreign language, but you do need to learn the shared vocabulary of your art if you are at all serious about it.

Insisting on your local language is fine if you plan to never train with anyone outside your immediate circle.  If you do plan to ever travel beyond your hometown, or to receive a guest there, or read a book about your art, you need to learn the vocabulary of the art you are practicing.

Etiquette: Form and Sincerity In Budo

For a lot of people outside Japan, Japanese reishiki  or etiquette seems quite heavy, stylized and empty. There is so much of it in Japanese life that people who live in a low etiquette society such as the US assume that it must be just empty motions that don’t do much other than to make the people at the  top feel feel good about being at the top. Japanese groups appear to move in scripted scenes that don’t leave any room for human feeling and individuality.

This isn’t quite true, but it does take a little while to get familiar enough with how things are done to be able to read what is being done and said through the language of etiquette. Traditionally in Japan, and by this I mean during the Tokugawa Period (roughly 1600 - 1868), much of life was strictly controlled and people worked very hard to make sure they behaved within well known and carefully ordered norms. Getting your etiquette right was critical. It could quite literally be a matter of life and death.

Lord Asano was being instructed in proper Edo court etiquette when he lost his temper, drew a dagger and attacked the instructor, Yoshinaka Kira, setting in motion Asano’s sentence to commit seppuku and his retainers on the path of vengeance that led to Asano’s death and their immortalization in the tale of the 47 Ronin.  Getting the etiquette right was that important. One version of the events holds that it was because Asano felt he was not being properly instructed that he became angry. Whether this is true or not, the fact that it was plausible enough for people to accept it as motivation shows how critical etiquette was.

Thankfully, people in Japan don’t place quite as much importance on etiquette as they did in Asano and Yoshinaka’s time, but it is still extremely important, and people watch how others practice their etiquette quite carefully. Now it is about expressing respect, giving courtesy and honoring people, places and practices.

In the dojo the formal etiquette serves several purposes beyond just the social. It provides structure, a clear understanding of proper behavior, a means of expressing respect and appreciation, and a way of maintaining a safe training environment, among others. While there can be quite a bit of variation in etiquette between various martial arts, and even between dojo that practice the same art, it’s not that difficult to understand the basics. Etiquette is really about expressing respect for people and ideas.  

We take off our shoes and bow when we enter the dojo.  This shows respect for the art that is practiced in the dojo and maintains the basic function of keeping the floor clean and minimizing the amount of time required to clean it.  The dojo is a specially designated space for practicing arts that teach horrific combat skills while also refining students minds and bodies. The bow shouldn’t be tossed off like it’s a bothersome requirement.  It’s a chance to show that you appreciate the art, the person who is teaching it to you, and your fellow travellers on the path that enable  your learning by offering themselves as training partners, as well as your respect for the seriousness of what you are learning. These are certainly things worth a second or two to express your appreciation for. Watch people who regularly just toss off a head bob and come barrelling in without a thought for what they are doing.  Do they treat their partners in the same thoughtless manner?

The bows that open and close keiko, the training itself, are similar.  They are chances to express your appreciation for what the founder of the art you do, and all the teachers down to your own, are sharing with you. You’re not just going through a moldy old Japanese ceremony. That bow is a chance for you to think briefly about what practicing the art means for you and to express it through your action. If someone is watching, they should be able to tell that you care about what you are doing. You shouldn’t look like you are only doing it because you have to do it before you’re allowed to train.

The other big piece of etiquette that is common across all Japanese arts is bowing to your teacher and training partners. I’ll be honest, it’s a lot easier not being Japanese in a dojo in Japan. For the Japanese bowing can be a carefully calibrated activity. How deeply they bow is dependent upon what their social status is relative to the person they are bowing to. This can get complicated fast, but the basics are you bow deeper the lower your status is compared to the person you are bowing to. So you bow relatively deeply for your teacher, deeply for her teacher, and very deeply for the head of your art　In Japan people pay close attention to this, and many businesses will give new employees classes to be sure they are doing it right and won’t offend any customers.  

Here’s a nice video of ladies in kimono demonstrating a variety of different bows that would be used when greeting people of varying social status, and doing so perfectly.

Not being Japanese or in Japan, we don’t have to worry about getting just the right angle and depth to our bow to express the precise degree of relative social rank. We should still bow with sincerity though. We can take the tenth of a second required to make it more than just a motion we go through and turn the bow into an expression of how much we appreciate what we are learning from our teacher. If we are bowing to a training partner, it’s a chance to show our thanks that they will let us train using their body. It is all too common for people to forget that our training partners are making a gift of their bodies. They are trusting us to train using their body and to not damage them while we are learning. That’s a huge gift and deserves a sincere expression of respect. Don’t make the bow perfunctory.

These are the major points of etiquette in all the budo dojo I’ve trained in. We bow when we enter the dojo. We bow at the beginning of practice and again at the end.  We bow to each person we practice with. Different arts will have a little more than this, but I can’t imagine any Japanese budo that will have less.

Many iaido systems include a bow to the sword at the beginning and end of training.  Considering that a genuine shinken is an extremely expensive work of art comprising the efforts of several master artisans, and that it should outlast any individual user by a thousand years or more, it seems appropriate to express respect and gratitude to the makers and to the instrument they created that we have the opportunity to train with for a short while. Some aikido dojo make a point of bowing to their bokuto and jo when they take them out and put them away. Many koryu systems have special bows for beginning and ending kata practice that show respect for the opponent and partner, but also a complete focus on them as a threat.

There are lots of variations on the basic theme of expressing respect and courtesy but the basic format of bowing into the dojo, bowing at the beginning and ending of practice, and bowing to your training partners never seems to vary. If you do this with clear and sincere intention to show respect and honor, and you sincerely strive to be courteous, I have found that people tend to overlook honest mistakes. If you are sincerely trying to be polite and follow the local etiquette, regardless of how new and different it may be, people will appreciate the sincerity and help you get the details right the next time.

It’s very easy to see when someone is not sincere about the etiquette, and people will treat you with the respect that you express in your etiquette. If showing respect in your etiquette is to much of bother for you, and you insist on slouching through it, people will take this as sign of your respect for them and what they do, and treat you accordingly.

First and always, dojo etiquette should be sincere. The formal etiquette serves serves many purposes beyond providing a way for people to show respect for each other but it is always about showing respect and appreciation. This is true even for those incredible, aggressive bows the koryu folks do. If you don’t show respect when you bow in with them, they are likely to let you know how they feel about being disrespected, and it won’t be a comfortable experience.

I only get to bow to my teacher a few times a year now, because I live 6000 miles away from him.  When I do get to spend time with him, I want everything I do to express my respect for him as a teacher, my appreciation for what he has taught me, and my love of him as a person.  There is no room for stiff, empty form with all that within my heart. Kiyama Sensei will be 90 years old this year, and I know that each visit could well be the last chance I will have to express these things to him. With all that feeling driving my etiquette there is nothing stiff or empty in the etiquette between us. Instead every bow and interaction is filled with warmth and appreciation.  I use all my actions to show my appreciation and respect.

Etiquette and reishiki isn’t about putting teachers on pedestals or for controlling students.  It’s about showing respect for the people you are learning from, the partners who are helping you to learn, and the art you are learning. There is nothing there that isn’t worth showing sincere respect for.  If you don’t sincerely respect your teacher, the people you are training with and the art you are practicing, you shouldn’t be there.  Budo etiquette is about showing everyone how much we respect, appreciate and honor what we are doing and those we are doing it with.

Sensei, Kyoshi, Hanshi, Shihan: Budo titles and how to use them, or rather, how not to use them

You see and hear a lot of different titles in Japnaese martial arts.  Unfortunately, a lot of people have little or no idea how these titles and honorifics are actually used. I’ve seen people addressed as “Smith Sensei,”  “Bob Sensei,”  “Sensei Smith,” and “Sensei Bob.”  I’ve also seen people insist on being address as “Hanshi,” “Shihan,” “Soke,” “Shidoshi” and “Shidoin.”  In Japanese budo culture, only one of these is correct.

Being introduced as Sensei is fine. Introducing yourself with a title sounds either ignorant of Japanese usage or extremely arrogant, as if you are giving yourself some sort of title. If you are introducing yourself, it's just "Peter desu" or "Lowry desu" Anything more is arrogant or foolish. Even the very senior shihan of my acquaintance just introduce themselves with their names. Their business cards will have their ranks and certificates, but that's all, no honorifics. Those are  are something other people use to talk about you, not something you use for yourself.  Certificate titles like “shihan” or “shidoin” aren’t forms of address either.

“Sensei” isn’t a title.  It’s an honorific like “Mr.” or “Mrs.”  In English it would be a little strange to introduce yourself by saying “I’m Mr. Boylan”.  It’s even stranger in Japanese where the honorific a person uses to address you depends on your age, position relative to the person addressing you, the particular situation and your relationship with them.  I have been addressed as everything from “kun” (a diminutive used to show that I’m a lot lower status than the speaker), to “san” (the general honorific used for people of relatively equal status), to “sama” (shows great respect and implies high social status).

Sensei is mildly honorific. It means teacher, and everyone who teaches gets called sensei, regardless of whether you are teaching biology or swimming or kenjutsu or skateboarding. The 80 year-old nobel prize winning physics professor and the 16 year old skateboard teacher are both sensei. As is, I should add, any doctor and any politician. Do you really think being lumped in the same category as politicians is all that wonderful?

Many people are fond of trying to find deep meaning in the characters used to write Japanese words.  I don't get too excited over how words are written in kanji. The writing was decided a thousand years ago or more, and the actual day-to-day usage has shifted since then. Much more important is how the word is actually used in Japan now than how someone decided to write it a millennium or more ago.

if you teach English in Japan "Eigo no sensei" isn't too bad a way to describe yourself. It's a job description. However, "Eigo no kyoshi" would be more in keeping with standard Japanese usage.  “Sensei” is a title used to address people.  “Kyoshi” is a title used to describe a position, like “plumber” or “teacher” in English.  Hanshi, shihan, shidoshi and shidoin are also titles to describe a position or certification.  These are not terms ever used to address someone directly.  Using them in conversation would be like walking around a university campus and addressing the instructors by their official university titles.  “Hello Professor Smith.”  “Good afternoon Assistant Professor Nakamura.”  “Good evening Adjunct Instructor Rosen.”  It’s sounds quite strange.

Another note, you don't generally say something like "I am x's sensei." You'd say "X is my student" It's one of those cultural nuances.

I can't think of anyone who puts "sensei" on their business cards, and without trying to sound pompous, I've got quite a few business cards from 8th dans, various hanshi and shihan (If you hang out in budo circles in Japan for any length of time you'll accumulate a few. It's just a normal part of the social interactions. It doesn't suggest that you actually know anyone or have any significance yourself). If you have an organizationally awarded title such as kyoshi, hanshi or shihan, you would put that title on your business card. It's like putting Ph.D. on your card. It's a title that an organization has awarded you. You aren't claiming that anyone should use it in addressing you. Usually it's added along with a listing of dan rank, such as "Nanadan, Kyoshi" or "Hachidan, Hanshi". That sort of thing. I've never seen "sensei" on a card though.

This how these honorifics and titles are used in conversation.  “Sensei” is an honorific like Mr. or Mrs., but since it’s Japanese and we’re doing Japanese arts, it has to go AFTER the person’s name.  Please show a little awareness on this and don’t tell me “This is America.”  I know it’s America, but we’re practicing Japanese arts, so get the usage right for the art you’re praticing.  If you’re doing boxing or wrestling, whatever is standard in those activities is appropriate for those activities.  If you’re doing fencing or savate, you use the forms appropriate for them.

Using honorifics and titles incorrectly is a red flag.  If someone is claiming rank or claiming to teach Japanese budo and they aren’t getting simple things like proper use of honorifics and titles right, this is a big warning sign.  It doesn’t take much to learn how these things should be used.  If someone is using them incorrectly, it suggests to me that they really don’t have any experience in Japanese budo.  

So please, show that you know as much about the etiquette of the arts as you do about the techniques, and use the titles and honorific forms of address properly.

Forging As A Training Image In Japanese

Forging is a common metaphor when talking about training, whether it is in the martial arts, the military, or anywhere else that people learn to handle stressful encounters. This is true in Japan and the West.  We speak of forging character. In English, when we speak of forging it refers to shaping something. When we forge a knife, we are hammering it into the proper shape. “Forging character” implies developing personal character in a situation of stress and pressure.

When the Japanese talk about forging,tanren 鍛錬,  they have a somewhat more complicated image non-Japanese do. It’s not just the idea of beating hot metal into shape, and hardening the steel. There is a critical step before this in the process of forging a sword. You have to hammer and fold the steel many times before the steel is ready to be shaped. This process usually takes as long or longer than the process of shaping the blade.  

The idea is that the Japanese go through this repeated folding and hammering of the steel to create a multitude of layers in the steel. These layers of hard and soft steel make a blade that is both able to endure severe impacts and hold a sharp edge. Steel that is homogenous will either be soft or hard.  Soft steel will absorb impact without cracking or breaking, but it bends easily and a sharpened edge will dull quickly.  Hard steel will hold an edge well and resist bending, but it is brittle and liable to crack if struck hard. The ancient Japanese technique of layers of hard and soft steel makes for a blade that has hard layers that will hold an edge and soft layers that will absorb impact.

This great blending of the properties of hard and soft steel was not the reason Japanese smiths started repeatedly hammering and folding their steel though. They were driven by something else that colors the Japanese concept of forging. The steel used to make Japanese swords is probably the lowest quality, most impure and contaminated stuff to pass for steel in the world. It’s called tamahagane. It’s made by collecting iron bearing sand which is then melted in a crude earthen smelter by adding charcoal directly to the material being smelted. As in any smelting process, most of the impurities and stuff that isn’t iron melts and runs off. The classical Japanese smelter isn’t very efficient or effective though, so a lot of impurities remain in the resulting steel, as well as an abundance of unburned charcoal bits. No self-respecting smith would touch this stuff.

In Japan it was all they had, so they figured out how to make it work. Their solution is slow and takes an incredible amount of effort, but the outcome not only transforms the steel into high quality material, but creates all those layers that make for a stronger, sharper blade with the incredible patterns in the steel that contribute to making Japanese swords the most beautiful in the world. The patterns on the surface are subtle and complex, giving a picture of the complexity and beauty of the internal structure of the swords.

How does heating and folding the steel get rid of all the impurities and chunks of charcoal to leave the beautiful, layered steel with a grain like wood? The smith heats the billet and hammers it out so it is long enough to be folded in half. Every time the smith strikes the metal, glowing bits are smashed off of the billet and go flying into the air. Those glowing bits aren’t steel.  They are impurities, slage that would removed in more effective modern smelter. As the smith repeatedly hammers, folds and hammers the steel, more and more of the impurities are driven out of the steel.  Occasionally splinters of unburnt charcoal rise to the surface as well.  These pieces have to be raised up with the tip of a file and pulled out with tongs.  After 10 to 20 repetitions of hammering the billet out to the proper thinness and then folding it in half, the steel is pure and the layers have been welded together by the force of the hammer.  Sometimes you will only have half as much material as what was there before you started heating and hammering.

All of this has to happen before you can begin to shape the blade.  This image of forging, where you have to heat and hammer the metal to purify before you begin shaping it into a blade is an important one when you think about training in Japanese martial arts.  The image of tanren is one whereby the student has to be purified and have all the slag and residual garbage driven out of her before she can begin to be shaped into a martial artist is an important difference.  The western image is that we take students and they are ready for forging.  The Japanese image is one where the student has to be prepared before they can even begin to take the shape of a martial artist.

This explains a lot about some of the traditional stories of teachers having students do seemingly ridiculous things for weeks or months before they begin teaching them martial arts. These stories are about how teachers prepared their students to learn the art, in the same way that a smith prepares a block of steel to be able to take the shape of a sword.  Students rarely come into the dojo perfectly ready to learn.  I know I wasn’t ready to learn in anything approaching an optimal manner when I started, and I have seen very few students who were.  This image of tanren gives us another, and more accurate, view of the role of the teacher.  

We don’t just teach students our arts.  New students come in eager to learn budo, but most of them really aren’t ready to start learning.  I know I wasn’t.  Most people who come into the dojo don’t know how to stand or even how to breathe (unless they were lucky enough to play a wind instrument or sing in choir).  Before a student can begin learning budo, they have to learn to do things that are fundamental to all of life, but which don’t seem to be considered worthy of teaching anymore.  We have to teach them how to breath and how to stand and how to walk.  

I’m one of the lucky ones.  I played trombone for 10 years before I started judo, so I had the breathing part down solid.  I only had to learn how to stand and walk.  I worked on good posture and basic walking for months before I really got it.  Learning to counteract 20 years of bad habits acquired while slumped on the couch in front of the TV, or slouching over the desk while pretending to do your homework takes time.  These kind of habits are buried deep, so learning to break them takes work.  

This is where the idea of　鍛錬 tanren starts to make sense.  We all have habits and traits, both physical and mental, that get in the way of learning good budo.  We really can’t start learning budo until we get rid of these counterproductive habits and traits. You don’t put the foundation for a building on on sand.  You don’t form a sword from ore that is still loaded with slag.  You can’t really learn budo until you get rid of the counterproductive habits and traits you’re carrying.  You can’t learn budo if you’ve got a bad slouch or you can’t breathe fully and efficiently.  The teacher’s job is to hammer and forge you to help you get rid of these traits so you can start learning.  Once you learn how stand up and breathe, then you can start learning budo.  This preparation, that’s part of the forging process.  That's tanren.

So you do budo? What does that mean?

So you do budo?  What exactly does that mean?   It’s some kind of moving zen right?   Or maybe Taoist philosophy?  After all, the character for “do” in budo is the same as the “tao” in Taoism.  Does studying budo mean you practice a system of killing people descended from ancient Japanese warrior arts? Does it mean we dress up in old-fashioned Japanese clothes and use a bunch of Japanese words that native Japanese don't understand? Does it mean your art has a sophisticated set of moral, ethical and philosophical teachings?  Does it mean that your regular practice of techniques for maiming and killing your fellow human beings are supposed to make you a better human being?  Purer? Holier maybe? 

For most of us, myself included, we’re doing something we enjoy.  Stop.  End of discussion.  We enjoy it.  Just like other people enjoy paddle-boarding, bird watching, and exclaiming over the latest super-hoppy beer they’ve discovered.  What we’re doing in the dojo is something we enjoy.  Unless you are involved in law enforcement or security of some sort, you’re probably doing this because you enjoy it.  That’s the main reason any of us keep doing this for 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 or 80 years.

As much as I love all the great, high-minded benefits and lofty ideals that budo training can potentially provide, I have to recognize that what keeps me and everyone else coming back year after year, decade after decade, is the fact that we really enjoy it.  Admitting that up front lets us get on to those high-minded benefits and lofty ideals honestly.

Martial arts training provides a lot of benefits.  People get out and get exercise.  We learn potentially useful fighting skills of various applications, self-confidence, and coordination.  These things you can get from any sort of martial art though, not just budo.  So what does it mean to say you do budo?

To start with, it means you’re doing a Japanese tradition.  Sorry guys, but I would say that arts from other cultural traditions shouldn’t be called budo (except in Japan when the term is being used in it’s broadest possible meaning of “martial art”).  If it’s not Japanese, it can’t really be budo.  This isn’t to say that budo is some sort of superior concept that only the Japanese have access to.  

Budo includes hundreds of years of philosophical development about individual and social responsibility and the responsibility to fully develop the oneself.  The majority of this comes from a combination of Neo-Confucian ideas and native Japanese ideas about self and society, but there are a few chunks of Buddhist philosophy, a liberal dose of tea ceremony theory and practice, and a dash of Taoist mysticism sprinkled on so lightly most people don’t even realize it’s there.  It is the presence and more importantly, the application of these Japanese cultural ideas that makes something budo.  Without them, you’re not doing budo.  You’re doing something else.

Not doing budo is not a bad thing.  Chinese arts like Wing Chun, Paqua and Hung Gar all have rich cultural traditions of their own, as do arts like Escrima from the Philippines or Pencak Silat from Indonesia.  To try to make any of these arts into Japanese budo would be an insult to the traditions, ideas and philosophy that have nurtured and developed those arts.  There is no reason to try to force other traditions into the mold of Japanese budo. Show those traditions real respect and let them be the Philippine or Indonesian arts that they are.  Respect them, don’t try to make them something else.

This brings up a reasonable question.  If Japanese budo is the result of Japanese culture, can non-Japanese truly learn it?  The simple answer is yes.  That’s part of the brilliance of these traditions.  They encapsulate so much of these philosophies and other ideas in their practice that if you train in a well established dojo in Japan, you’ll absorb most of them without even being aware that you are doing it.  You’ll learn about properly fulfilling your roles in society as you occupy a variety of different ones in the dojo.  You’ll be a beginner, a kohai, a sempai, an assistant, a leader and even a teacher as you stick around longer and longer.  You’ll learn about Confucian ideas of self-development for the betterment of society.  You’ll discover things about mental development and calm from the training.

This is not to say that you have to go out and specifically study about Neo-Confucianism or Buddhism or Taoism or tea ceremony or anything else outside the lessons of the dojo.  The lessons about these ideas are already built into the practice. In many cases these ideas are so deeply embedded in Japanese culture at this point that most native Japanese can’t tell you the origin of the specific ideas and practices.  They are just part of the cultural atmosphere of Japan.  In budo they are often contained in the expectations that surround how you train.  These ideas will show in the way lessons are taught and how members of the dojo are expected to act and treat each other.

Even in Japan it’s possible to just go to the dojo, train and go home without doing anything else, but then you won’t really be a member of the dojo, and you won’t really be learning budo.  You’ll just be practicing the physical techniques without getting anything else.  You probably won’t even be getting the real techniques.  If you aren’t showing any serious commitment to the dojo family, the real members of the dojo aren’t likely to make an effort to teach you anything beyond the surface movements of the art.

I can hear the people saying “OK, so you can learn budo if you go to Japan.  Fine, but what about those of us who can’t travel all the way to Japan and spend years living there? Are we doing budo?”  Well, if the dojo is a good one, with teachers and senior members who have absorbed the lessons and the way a dojo operates in order to maintain those lessons and ideals, then certainly it is possible to learn budo outside Japan.

The problem in many places outside Japan is that the dojo were not established by people with a rich understanding of all the facets of budo.  In the US, often dojo were established by people with enough understanding of the techniques to teach in a limited capacity, but without the depth of experience in the dojo to really grasp all the other things that go into making budo.  Budo is a Japanese cultural tradition, and even if we come from different cultural traditions (and hey, I’m a rustbelt America, it doesn’t get much more different) it is possible to learn and even internalize the ideas about relationships and responsibility and the responsibility to develop oneself so you can fulfill your duties to your fullest ability that is wrapped up in the concept of 武道.

Budo is a term loaded with cultural baggage Budo 武道 is a way, as is distinctly shown by it’s second character 道 (michi), meaning “way.”  This Budo concept implies a great way of self development, going back to The Great Learning of Confucius.  The first 4 characters in Chinese are (very roughly) “Way of Great Learning” 大學之道.  That fourth character is pretty familiar.  It’s this idea of learning and self-development that budo is an expression of, captured and built around the particular and almost contradictory practice of studying how to hurt, maim and kill our fellow members of society.  To be doing budo we don’t have to have mastered all aspects of the martial, philosophical or cultural portions of the particular style of budo we study, but we do have to be working at mastering them.  

Budo incorporates a lot more than just broad principles and specific techniques for fighting and killing. It’s build on traditions of thought that predate it by by nearly 2000 years.  It incorporates ideas about self-development and fulfilling your role in society (in this case the dojo society) grounded in 17th century Neo-Confucian teachings.  The pedagogy teaches fighting concepts specific to conditions in Japan at various times in history.  Some arts go back to the 14th or 15 centuries, some were founded in the 20th century.The arts teach and maintain traditions of fighting originating with their founding and some have additions or modifications to adapt to new features in society and fighting that may be only a few decades old.  They are all filled with Japanese cultural expectations about how one behaves, learns and grows, the role of the individual in the group and how one develops into various roles within the group.

That’s the path, the way of budo. Budo styles and traditions are Japanese traditions of combat that incorporate ideas and expectations for the development and actions of the individual members of the tradition. If we’re only learning the physical techniques, then we’re not doing budo. If we’re not trying to to learn and implement the ideas about personal development and responsibility in our lives, then we aren’t doing budo.  Dressing up in funny looking, archaic Japanese clothes and using some Japanese terms isn’t enough, or even necessary.  We have to be working at learning the ideas about self development and responsibility and seeing how they apply to our lives while learning to maim and kill people, then we are doing budo, whether we started yesterday or have been working at it for 80 years, or anywhere in between.  

You Thought Being Sensei Would Be Awesome

After hearing me comment about what a great day I’d had at Judo practice, a friend of mine lamented the fact that there is no one senior to her in her koryu budo dojo. At that Judo practice I enjoyed myself and learned a bunch. Because I’m not the most senior person in the room there, I can relax and absorb what is being taught. I don’t have to worry about how to teach a particular point or think about what we’re going to do for the entire practice. I get to learn. Yes, if someone junior to me seems ready to learn a particular point I’ll work with them, but it’s always within the framework of the class someone else is teaching. I can focus on learning and practicing as a happy student.

I understand my friend’s lament. Where I’m at, if I want partners to train iai and jo and kenjutsu with, I have to teach them. There is no one senior to me for quite a ways. I’ve known lots of people who wanted to be the big kahoona teaching martial arts. Having arrived at that position by the simple expediency of moving to a place where I’m the only option if you want to learn the stuff I do, I can let you in on a little secret. It’s not fun.

In fact, I don’t know of anyone who’s teaching that wouldn’t trade in their cold, windy, exposed position on the top of the heap for a nice, cozy spot somewhere down the side a ways. At the top, all the responsibility is on you.  You get to worry about what to teach and how to teach and and why the people aren’t catching the point of your carefully thought out lessons. Plus you get to worry about the dojo have space and enough money to cover expenses and that someone is there on Thursday night to lead practice because you are attending your daughter’s recital and gee, I thought I remembered how to do this kata, but now I’m not so sure….how did that entry go? When you’re on top, it all comes back around to you. This is a particular problem outside Japan where dojo don’t usually have decades and decades of history.

In Japan most of the dojo I train in are lead by people in their 70s and 80s. Many of them have more than 70 or 80 years of budo experience under whatever is left of their well-worn belts.  Imagine a dojo where the median rank on the floor most nights is 6th dan. That’s pretty common.  Training in a place like that is incredible. You absorb lessons without even realizing it because the atmosphere is so rich with experience. Your training partners as often as not started practicing decades before you were born and the head sensei started decades before that.  

You don’t have to worry about what teach or how to teach it. There are plenty of seniors doing that. You just go and absorb everything you can. Some of it you forget and other lessons you don’t realize you’ve learned until they bleed from your bones and muscles and heart when needed. Secure in the knowledge that whatever question you might have someone around you will be able to answer in more detail than you can handle, you can relax and just focus on your training, on improving your budo and yourself as much as possible.

When, for whatever reason, you find yourself at the top of the heap with people around you calling out “Sensei”, that security melts faster than ice cream in an Arizona summer. This is especially true if you’ve only got a couple of decades of experience under your still all too new belt.  I still have loads of things to learn about all of the arts I study, not just Judo. For iai and jo though, most of the year I’m the only teacher around for me to rely on. I don’t have all the details of every kata nailed into my head yet. This is a problem for my training. I can teach my students a lot, but they aren’t nearly ready to work on some of the things I’m doing, so I have no practice partners nearby.

I’ve got a pile of kata that I was introduced to at the most recent gasshuku. Anything I don’t remember and don’t have written down somewhere is lost until the next time I can get together with a senior student or teacher. Of course, the nearest senior for my Jodo practice is at least 600 miles away. For iai, it’s 6,000 miles. I don’t get those checks and memory enhancements nearly as often as I’d like. I can get together with a senior in Jodo a few times a year, but getting to Japan is a lot tougher.  

For my students, I hope our dojo is a great place with a good mix of juniors and relatively senior folks. This way they can learn and grow as quickly as possible. For me improvement is comparatively slower and takes more effort. It’s also lonelier.  

A big part of budo, especially koryu budo traditions, is all the stuff that is not techniques and kata.  There are discussions of history and traditions of the system. Koryu bugei traditions are not just collections of techniques. There are stories and anecdotes that enrich and enliven the tradition.  These are not supposed to be dead, fossilized collections of dried and desiccated memories from ages past. These are living traditions that flow on from the past into the future. These stories and memories provide an important part of the foundation and understanding of how the technical practice relates to the world outside of the dojo. Without seniors and peers, all the responsibility for sharing and remembering this part of the art is yours.

Being sensei sounds great. It’s a fabulous idea right up until the moment it becomes reality. Then you discover that it is lonely and stressful. Every buck stops with you. If you have any questions, there’s no one ask. You’re on your own.  If you don’t know or don’t remember something, you’re just out of luck. You never have the luxury of relaxing and letting someone else handle it. If you want to learn something then you’ve got to figure out how to do it right. You don’t get to ask anyone. You’re sensei, and you’re all alone.