How Stable Are Koryu?

 

Gekikenkai No Zu by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1873

 

I was asked recently how much I think koryu budo has changed over the generations. After staring at my drink for a while, I answered “I think it has changed a lot, and not much at all.”  This goes for most koryu that were founded during the Tokugawa Era (1604-1868). They had a relatively stable world in which to grow and develop, so radical change wasn’t required.

Why would I think that a 400 year old martial art has changed a lot and not much at all? I think they would change a lot in that successive generations would add to the arts. In Shinto Muso Ryu, for example, various fuzoku ryu (affiliated arts) were attached to the system, and new kata were created. From an art that started with just staff and sword, it grew to encompass jutte and torinawa jutsu (apprehending and binding), kusarigama, and most recently walking stick. That’s a lot of additions.

So the original arts didn’t change much, they just had more and more stuff grafted onto the original trunk.  And if people are really learning a particular art, it won’t change much. Why is that? Koryu bugei students are taught using the pedagogy of kata. In sports there is always room for change. A new way to do the high jump didn’t make it stop being high jump.  A new ski jumping form didn’t mean it wasn’t ski jumping anymore. These can easily be changed because they are defined by the activity and not how the activity is done.

However, classical martial arts systems, koryu bugei, are defined by their principles as much as their techniques. If you change the principles, you’re doing something different. Not that this didn’t happen - there were so many ryuha (schools) during the Tokugawa Era because senior practitioners had new ideas and wanted to develop them.  Generally they didn’t change the school they were in; they created a new school instead. The ryuha that lasted centuries were the ones whose principles survived the pressure testing of time and application. Not competition, but application in combative situations. Shinto Muso Ryu was practiced by samurai whose function was public security and safety. Other arts were susceptible to being used in fights and duels as well as to put down peasant revolts and otherwise maintain order. 

Ryuha survived the centuries because their teaching methodology was remarkably well suited to teaching physical principles and skills, consistently, generation after generation. The fundamental teaching pedagogy was, and is, the two person kata. (Solo iai kata are the exception that demonstrates the rule. Working with live blades is too dangerous for partner practice, but systems with iai nearly always also include paired kenjutsu kata as well). In the classical arts, one partner wins the encounter, shitachi, and the other loses the encounter laid out in the kata, the uchitachi. Unlike a sporting encounter where the more experienced player is expected to win, in classical kata training, the more experienced person is expected to take the losing side. The uchitachi’s job is to guide the junior, the shitachi, so they learn how to do the techniques embedded in the kata without leaving any openings. 

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Those who think that kata training is just repeating rote movements have never done proper kata training. For example, in weapons kata, If shitachi does the kata incorrectly and leaves an opening, uchitachi is quite likely to seize the opening and put their weapon in it. This can be a harsh way of correction, but it’s an effective one.  These lessons are rarely forgotten. Kata are only meant to be done to their completion when they are done correctly. I know if I leave an opening for my teacher, he will show me that opening in the simplest, most direct way available. He will counter my attack. You might think my teacher is breaking the kata. He isn’t. I’m the one who broke the kata by leaving the opening. He simply went with the new situation that I created by leaving the opening.

The kata that last are robust. They have to be done certain ways or openings are left and the student gets whacked. Quickly the student learns to spot their own openings and close them. The kata don’t change much because they can’t be changed much. They are structured in very particular ways for good reasons. If you deviate from the form you create openings that allow counter attacks to succeed. Just doing the kata is its own test. If you do it correctly it will work. If you deviate from the principles that are embedded in the kata you will find your situation changes from victor to vanquished in an instant.

As an incorrigibly American student, I can’t seem to stop myself from experimenting with the kata I’m taught. I always seem to think that I’ll somehow learn something new from experimenting. I do learn things. I learn how not to do the kata. I play around with the timing or the spacing or something on my own, and then my experimenting surfaces in the dojo and Sensei nails me, then yells “Who taught you that!!!”  Happens every time.

Since the kata serve as their own form of checking and correction, they are exceedingly durable.  I don’t doubt that the kata of Shinto Muso Ryu or Shinkage Ryu or Ono-ha Itto-ryu swordsmanship are close enough to the way they were done 400 years ago that a modern student who found themselves 400 years in the past could walk into one those dojo and participate without difficulty. Kata are that stable. 

This stability can also be seen at the various enbu held around Japan. Lineages that split as far back as the 17th century and had no contact with each other for hundreds of years until recent times can now be seen and compared in modern enbukai. Besides the main line of Shinkage Ryu taught by the Yagyu Family, there are numerous other lines that were founded by their students over the centuries. When you watch and compare them, it becomes clear that they haven’t drifted far from each other. The same goes for the various lines of Yagyu Shingan Ryu, and other arts that have lasted through centuries. 

The kata that comprise the core of any koryu bugei are stable and solid. Upstart students like me are always trying “what if” experiments and getting clobbered because our “what if” just isn’t effective. Even when we no longer have a culture of duels and taryu shiai (inter ryuha matches) we still have students who want to prove they are smarter than 400 years of experience. These students cheerfully challenge how kata are done and the sensei is always ready to show them that their new idea doesn’t work as well as the one that’s been passed down to them. 

This helps keep the kata alive even when we don’t have duels and challenge matches. However, just because the kata are stable doesn’t mean that they are fossilized and frozen in time. Different teachers will place more or less emphasis on particular aspects of the kata. Even the same teacher, over decades of practice, will place different emphasis on different aspects of the kata. This leads to students saying things like “But last time you said do it this way.” The teacher isn’t changing the kata. They are exploring different aspects of the kata. The teachers know where the limits of each kata are, and they don’t exceed those limits.

This stability means that bugei ryuha can travel through time and across cultures with their principles and their form essentially unchanged. Kata practice allows students to make mistakes and see why their ideas are mistaken. The students learn the techniques and principles through a small set of kata. The kata don’t need to be changed. In fact, they can’t be changed without losing the ability to teach the principles of the art. The stability of the teaching method means that the ryuha change very little over time. Ryuha may acquire new kata and new weapons, but their essence remains the same.

Grateful appreciation to Deborah Klens-Bigman, Ph.D. for editing what was a scary mess.

 

 

Do versus Jutsu; Round 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

References for further reading

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

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

Budo Isn't Natural

 

Jizo Sama on Mount Koya Photo copyright Peter Boylan 2014

 

I’ve heard proponents of various martial arts talk about how “natural” their art is. They proclaim that whatever they are doing is based on natural movements. Some are said to be based on the movements of animals. Others claim to be based on the natural movement of the human body.

I was working with one of my students this morning on some kata from Shinto Hatakage Ryu. His movement is getting good and solid. It struck me that his strong, smooth movement was efficient, effective and elegant, but not at all natural. When I began to think about it, I realized I could not think of any martial art where the movements are natural to human beings. By “natural” I mean that the movements are ones that people make without having to be trained for endless hours.

Along with Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai Heiho I teach Shinto Muso Ryu Jo and Kodokan Judo. Among the movements and principles taught in those three arts, I cannot think of a movement or technique that I would call natural.  In truth, the hallmark of good, effective budo seems to be how unnatural it is. Developing proficiency in any budo movement requires years of practice with a good teacher. It never just happens. Even with students who have a natural affinity for an art, it takes years, perhaps half as many as a natural klutz like me, but years.

I’ve written before that all I teach is how to walk and how to breath. I was exaggerating a little there, and Ellis Amdur was generous enough to call me out on that point and several others. However, walking and breathing are examples of unnatural budo movement.  There isn’t much that is more natural than walking, and breathing might be the most natural thing we do. Nonetheless, as budoka, we spend years learning to breathe properly from our guts and to stay balanced and stable when we walk.

 

 

Why does it take so much effort to learn to do something that we were born doing? Breathing is the first thing we do for ourselves when we are born. We take a breath and let the world know how unhappy we are to have been kicked out of the wonderful home where we’ve spent the last nine months. Once we do that, we never stop breathing. What else about breathing could there possibly be to learn. A great deal when you dig into it. Our natural instincts aren’t very good when it comes to breathing.  Even before we get to all the inefficient ways people have of breathing, for all that it is a natural, automatic act, put people under just a little bit of stress and they will actually forget to breathe! I spend too much of my teaching time reminding students to breathe for the first couple of years they are training.

When they do remember to breathe, they usually are doing it poorly; breathing with their shoulders or taking shallow breaths or finding some other way to do the most natural act in the world wrongly. Proper breathing must be taught and practiced until it is an unconscious act. When sparring, you don’t have sufficient mental capacity to think about breathing correctly. If your breathing skills aren’t honed so that proper breathing happens even when you’re not thinking about it, you won’t breathe well under stress.

Walking feels nearly as natural as breathing. No one had to teach you how to walk. You figured it out for yourself, and you’ve been doing it for longer than you can remember. What could there be to learn about walking? From the condition of the students who come to the dojo, or just doing some casual people watching, we can see that most people haven’t learned very much about how to walk properly.  They roll their hips. They slouch their shoulders. They slap their feet on the ground. They lean forward past the point of balance. They stand on their heels. New students spend hours hearing me correct their way of walking. Because of all the bad habits people pick up over the course of their lives, learning to walk in a solid, stable, balanced manner takes a long time to learn to do consciously. Learning to do it unconsciously when under stress takes even longer. Good walking isn’t natural at all.

When you consider the discrete movements and actions that make up any budo art, things become even more unnatural. Just about the first thing we teach in judo, and the technique that prevents more people from getting hurt outside the dojo than any other, is how to fall safely. Two year-olds fall pretty well. They are relaxed and comfortable with falling down, perhaps because they do so much of it. By the time we start school though, falling is met with stiffness and fear. There is no technique in judo that we practice as much as falling. Falling well requires coordination of the entire body and I’ve never met anyone besides trained gymnasts who took to it without hours of accumulated practice. It’s an entirely unnatural act: we don’t like to fall.

This doesn’t even begin to approach the mental aspects of what we are teaching in the dojo. Mushin. Fudoshin. Heijoshin. Everything about the mental aspects of budo is unnatural.  We strive to override all of our natural reactions under stress: to not stiffen up, to keep our breathing and heart rate calm and steady, to ignore the monkey brain’s insistence on fighting or fleeing, to retain mental control instead of panicking, to adapt to the situation fluidly instead of trying to impose a solution.  None of these things happen naturally. All of them take training and practice.

Everything we do in the dojo leads to being able to respond to stressful situations with these unnatural skills. All that physical practice has effects on our mental states. Breathing properly comes in handy when things get stressful and the monkey brain wants to start hyperventilating. Having practiced good breathing statically and in all sorts of kata and free practice that gradually increase the mental and physical pressure, over time it becomes ever easier to maintain the calm breathing and heart rate which anchor calm mental patterns.

Once you can maintain mushin while people are trying to hit you with a big stick, or choke you unconscious, it becomes less of a stretch to maintain that mental state under the stress you encounter outside the dojo. Fudoshin is even better. This is the unmovable mind that isn’t disturbed by anything, no matter how stressful. People with fudoshin don’t seem quite human. They are no more natural than a Rolex is. Both take tremendous work to create. Both demonstrate the pinnacle of human development in their own areas. For all its combined beauty, engineering and functionality, no one would call a Rolex “natural.”  

Like a Rolex, the mind developed through budo is elegant, refined and resilient. This is a mind that can make the choice to step inside an attack to evade and counter in the same movement or to slip out of the attack and then disarm the attacker.

Relaxed when the natural reaction is to be tense, calm when nature urges panic, unflinching when nature urges you to dive behind cover, and unmoved when distractions abound, the mind and body of someone well versed in budo is not natural at all. It surpasses what nature gives us by refining the natural core of our beings into something new, with all the naturalness of high grade steel. Budo isn’t natural.  It’s better.