The Emperor Has No Clothes

 

 

 

“His technique surpassed human ability.”

“This is exactly how ****** Sensei did it. We want to do it exactly as he did.”

“Nobody can ever equal ******* Sensei.”

“My karate teacher’s teacher was the best ever, that’s why our system is the best!”

“******* was unbeatable.”

“He was a living kami.”

“If he says it works, it must work.”

 

Teachers who can’t be questioned, for whatever reason, are dangerous to their students and themselves. They seem to inexorably fall into the trap of believing their own propaganda. It happens all the time, in all sorts of arts. As soon as students start going along with whatever sensei does because sensei’s technique is the ultimate, the perfect, the divinely inspired (take your pick), teachers are trapped in an ugly downward spiral.

 The problem for the teacher is that since their students always go along with sensei’s technique, the sensei stops getting honest feedback with regard to their training and teaching. As a result, the teacher’s technique inevitably begins to deteriorate. They can’t avoid it. Any time their technique wasn't right they would feel more resistance, which would tell them they need to sharpen fundamental practice and technique. When their students always go with the flow, the sensei never gets that feedback, and therefore never experiences a technique working less than perfectly. As a result, the sensei has no way to know if their skills are sharp or dull.

 The result is the teacher’s technique gradually becomes duller and duller. However, this can’t be blamed entirely on the teacher. The students are lying to themselves and their teacher about the quality of the techniques. Without opportunities to train with people who recognize a teacher’s imperfections, the only possible result is a slow deterioration of the teacher’s skills. 

 This is sad for the teachers and the students.

 There is a phenomenon in martial arts of students deifying teachers. It can happen in any art with superlative practitioners and teachers. In the world of Japanese budo I’ve seen it in both gendai and koryu arts, and it’s a sad phenomenon no matter where it happens. Budo teachers are human, maybe especially human.

 To be a martial arts teacher is to have a high degree of skill.  Being skilled at martial arts means possessing a certain type of power. Those with skill are seen as being able to subdue, control, or just plain beat into the ground anyone who threatens them. A few people with bad attitudes and/or impulse control problems are even seen as being dangerous to just about anyone because they won’t wait to be threatened. They’ll pick the fight just because they are confident they can do it without getting hurt themselves.

 As a kid growing up, the power to physically subdue someone, or pound them into the ground, was a very attractive power. I was a skinny kid with allergies and not a clue how to relate to other people, so I was picked on. A lot. I didn’t realize it then, but later I figured out that I caused a lot of the issues just by being so socially inept. That doesn’t make the schoolyard abuse any better, and while I was going through it I fantasized about having the superpower of being unbeatable. It was a wonderful daydream.

 The temptation to revel in power is strong. I understand that temptation. When I started training Kodokan Judo in college, the realization that I was becoming good at grappling was shocking, and the temptation to abuse this ability was powerful. In my case, my friends and sempai were more than happy to remind me that I was thoroughly human and quite beatable. As I moved through the kyu ranks, it was easy to idolize my teacher and attribute more than normal wisdom to him. He was very human though, and he never implied that anything he did was perfect or that we should blindly copy his technique or his life.

 When I see students of any teacher proclaim that their teacher’s way is absolutely correct and that one should not deviate from the teacher’s example even a little, I worry about those students and that teacher’s legacy. When students start idolizing a teacher and idealizing the teachings, I can only see bad things happening. A teacher who is never questioned and never challenged in any way is trapped. That teacher can’t sharpen their skills by practicing with their students.

 Teachers need challenges as much as any student. Any teacher worthy of respect looks for things and people who will challenge their technique. That’s how we all progress and improve. We try something we can’t do, and we work at it until we can. The best budoka don’t discourage students from giving them puzzles to solve and difficulties to refine their technique against - people like Kano Jigoro and Kunii Zen’ya come to mind. Most of us are not undefeated legends like Kunii Zen’ya, but I’ve seen lots of teachers challenge themselves and ask their students to help them stay challenged. 

 I remember being at a seminar with some of the top people in the art we were training, folks who could make a strong case for being the best in the world at what they did. The most senior teacher there chose me to be his uke when he wanted to demonstrate a strangle using a weapon. He reached in, placed the weapon and applied the strangle. I didn’t tap. His technique wasn’t working. It’s not that the technique was bad, just his application of it at that moment. It was a technique he demonstrated fairly regularly at seminars, and I think people had been tapping out for him just because of his status. I’m too stupid to do that, so I just sat there. Sensei stepped back, looked at me a moment, adjusted his technique and the strangle got better. He played around with it for a few seconds more, the strangle sank in and I tapped. He never said anything about my failure to immediately tap. Some of his students seemed a little horrified that I had embarrassed Sensei with my behavior. He never said a word, but after that, whenever I was present, he called on me to be his uke for that technique demonstration.

 I think he appreciated that he had to do the technique absolutely correctly on me. I didn’t give him a pass just because he was so much senior to me and in general one of the finest technicians I’ve ever seen. With me, he knew he would get an honest reaction to his technique, so he could tell how well he was doing it. People who just go with whatever technique you are trying to do will ruin your technique. Anyone who wants to stay technically sharp has to be challenged regularly. I don’t mean they have to do challenge matches. Rather, they need situations where they have to fully engage to be sure their technique will work. 

 A martial artist who isn’t open to partners who challenge their technique isn’t going to be able to maintain that technique for long and will end up relying on students to take the fall or tap out from the technique. This isn’t good for the teacher or the students. The teachers find their technique slowly degrading from the lack of a stone to sharpen it on. The students have to lose respect for their teacher as they realize that the only reason his technique works is because they let it.

 It took a child to call out the emperor when he was naked. No teacher worthy of the title deserves to be put in a situation where someone can call them out because their students haven’t been giving them honest practice.

 

 

Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman, PhD. for making this smooth and readable with her excellent editing skills. 

Who Is Your Teacher?

 

My first iaido teacher, the remarkable Takada Shigeo Sensei Photo Copyright Peter Boylan

My teachers are in Japan. These are the people I look to not only for how my budo should be, but also for how I aspire to be as a human. A true teacher is not just someone you learn technical excellence from, but human excellence as well. In the dojo we train in the rawest, most basic expressions of conflict, power, and life. I don’t think it is possible to learn raw, fundamental lessons such as how to throw, strike, choke and break a fellow human without picking up other lessons about living from the people doing the teaching.

In the dojo we study and practice under the close direction of our teachers. There is no other way to do this safely. My teachers have all earned my respect and love not just for their technical skill (which is enormous) but for the humanity with which they lead and teach. My teachers, the people I readily claim, and who, I am proud and humbled to say, freely claim me as their student, are human beings. They have flaws and weaknesses. They are also remarkable budoka who continue to work at improving their budo, their understanding and themselves.

I’ve known my teachers, trained with them, been scolded by them and gotten an occasional “OK” from them (that being the highest praise I’ve ever heard them give). In the dojo we have earned each others’ trust. I've trained with my teachers for more than 25 years. At each step along the way, I have learned that they are exemplary human beings. I know that can't be said for everyone who teaches martial arts, and I am extremely lucky to have found teachers of such high quality.

Kiyama Sensei's budo life stretches back to the 1930s with training in judo, kendo, iaido and jukendo in school during wartime Japan. He has seen just about every excess that can be committed in the name of developing a student’s spirit and technique. He can recall training in kendo bogu (armor) in the summer heat until people had to go to the side to throw up, and then come back and continue training. This was supposed to develop spirit. Instead he points out that people died all too frequently from that effects of that sort of training, so he doesn't teach that way.

Kiyama Hiroshi Sensei at home Copyright Peter Boylan

Kiyama Sensei is my second iaido teacher. My first teacher, Takada Shigeo Sensei, introduced me to Kiyama Sensei early on in my iaido journey as an excellent teacher. When Takada Sensei died, I was left without a teacher, and Kiyama Sensei accepted me into his dojo. It took a while before I was really his student though. I had to go through a keiko with him to discover what sort of person he was, if he was the sort of person I wanted to be learning from and emulating. It was clear from the way he treated everyone, from the 70, 80 and 90 year old members of the dojo down to the 7,8, and 9 year old members, that he respected his students, cared for them, and treated them well. It was also clear from the way his students treated him that they really cared for him. The bows at the end of class were not perfunctory. The school age students would approach him after class to say “Thank you” and he would offer some advice or help with their practice, and the “Arigato gozaimasu” that came from both the students and Sensei was clearly sincere. What kept the classes in order and running smoothly was the obvious respect the students had for their teacher, and the teacher had for the students. It didn't take me too many practices to realize that this was a place I wanted to be, with a teacher well worth learning from.

I respected Kiyama Sensei right away, and soon I learned to trust him as well. It’s not enough for a student to trust the teacher though. The teacher must also trust the student. This is especially true in koryu budo where transmission and the continuance of the system are always in question. Gendai budo are generally large organizations where testing and advancement are outside the control of any one teacher. In koryu budo, transmission is all about the teacher-student relationship. If the teacher doesn’t completely trust the student, the student isn’t going to learn anything much. The teacher isn’t concerned just with helping the student develop and learn the art. The teacher must think about the quality of the people who will be the next generation of teachers in the art, and who will be responsible for the art after she dies. There aren’t any dan ranks to collect, just teaching licenses. With each of these, the teacher is saying to the world around him and the teachers who have gone before him that this person is worthy to care for and extend this hundreds of years old tradition into the future. It’s not like giving out dan ranks for technical skill.

A GREAT GIFT FOR SENSEI!!

A lot more rests on the relationship between the student and teacher in koryu budo because the arts are usually small and closely held. They aren’t meant to to be spread as far and wide as possible the way modern judo, kendo, iaido or aikido are. Just as the student entering a dojo wants to be sure the teacher and the dojo are right for her, the teacher looking at students has to be sure each is right for the continuation of the art. This isn’t a concern when the art has a global structure and rank system with hundreds or thousands of dojo around the world. It’s a critical concern when the art may consist of as little as one teacher and 4 or 5 students. Even within larger koryu budo systems, which student receives a teaching license is a critical issue. Concern for how new teachers represent the art and pass on the precious teachings never leaves the mind of current teachers.

How do you earn your teacher’s trust? Start by showing up for every practice. Be sincere in your training. Be honest, helpful and genuine. Show your interest in the art through your actions. Help out with the operation of the dojo. Take care to learn the art as your teacher is presenting it. Don’t let the words “But so-and-so does it differently.” ever leave your mouth. Learning isn’t a  competitive art with people are looking for the newest variation of a technique to surprise someone with.

Once you’ve found a teacher worthy of polishing you, and you’ve done the hard work to be accepted as their student, what do you do to maintain and fortify your relationship? Now you have to work harder. Don’t fall into the trap of letting practice with Sensei become an automatic activity that you do without fail but forget to look for the treasures in every practice you attend.

I’ve known many people who are interested in techniques and physical skill but are so satisfied with who they are that they leave the bigger lessons their teacher has to offer on the dojo floor, never taking them to heart. They show up for every practice, but they somehow manage to learn nothing but technique.  The lessons on how to respect others and yourself, how to be an exceptional human being, float past them like an evening breeze that doesn’t even ruffle their hair. Go into each keiko looking to discover treasures. You’ve been lucky enough to find a good art and a good teacher. Treasures such as these do not sit on every street corner, and much like precious silver, require care and time and effort to polish and maintain. Be mindful that what you are learning is rare and don’t let treat is as an everyday affair. Show Sensei at every keiko that you are all there and you know that you are receiving a wondrous treasure.

Your teacher makes significant effort to share her art with you. For any good teacher, teaching is not transactional. Teaching is a gift and an investment in the student. Your teacher is also a person. Do you take the time to know more of your teacher than just the teaching persona they wear at the front of the dojo? Some of my most precious lessons in budo have come from my teachers outside the dojo while eating, laughing and sharing. Great teachers are exceptional people, in the dojo and out, but if you don’t make the effort to get to know them as people in addition to them being your teacher, you’ll miss out on many extraordinary aspects of their personalities. Buy them a cup of coffee. Accept graciously when they want to buy you a cup of coffee. Help out when they need it.  Ask a question and pay attention to the answer. Listen when they want to talk about something that doesn’t seem related to the dojo. You never know what Sensei might be trying to share with you.

Who is your teacher? Why did you choose them?

 
Special thanks to my editor, Deborah Klens-Bigman, Ph.D.

Visiting My Teachers

Kiyama Hiroshi Sensei

I don’t get to see my teachers nearly as much as I would like these days, but I got to visit Japan for a while in September, so of course I spent as much time as I could with my teachers and fellow students. The trip is always one of the highlights of the year for me.

Kiyama Sensei is 93 years old now, but you wouldn’t guess it. Even when I met him 25 years ago I would not have guessed at that time that he was 68. He had such a fierce and powerful demeanor that I knew him for quite some time before I realized he’s only about 5 feet (152 cm) tall.

My first iaido teacher, Takada Shigeo Sensei, introduced me to Kiyama Sensei. I vividly remember later running into Kiyama Sensei at the annual Kyoto Budosai. Dressed in formal montsuki for the enbu, he was a powerful figure. Walking around the grounds of the Butokuden with him, I was awed and very nervous because his demeanor was so very correct and commanding. I’ve encountered many powerful budoka, but very few convey the sense of power and command that he does. Many people put on their budo demeanor when they step into the dojo, and take it off when they leave, but Kiyama Sensei never completely sheds his. He moves,not with regal grace, but with solid grounded bearing that projects a stern and unflinching power.

Kiyama Sensei always has a something of that correct and commanding spirit about him. . In the dojo Sensei is one of the most powerful presences I have ever encountered. , but when he teaches kendo to elementary and junior high students he

is also a kindly, if gruff, grandfather figure who teaches his students how to behave in the dojo and how to approach difficulty with spirit and dedication. For me, visiting Kiyama Sensei is one of the highlights of any trip to Japan. Whether we get to do any training or not, I always come away from the visit having learned something and inspired to train more diligently.

This year my visit coincided with a kosshukai for training in the latest points of the Kendo Federation’s iaido kata. I had been hoping that the miserable heat and humidity that is typical of summer in the Kansai region would break before the kosshukai, but the luck wasn’t with me. The day Kiyama Sensei and one of his senior students picked me up at the train station for the drive to the gymnasium started hot and got hotter. The gymnasium is typical of gyms built during the Showa period, which means it doesn’t have any heating or cooling. The best you can do in the summer is open the few doors and windows and sweat it out.

Sweat is exactly what we did, even when standing still. I was worried about Kiyama Sensei in the heat, but he kept going, looking better at the end of the day than I did. He wasn’t teaching that day; instead he was there as the guest of honor and the senior practitioner in the area. Even though Sensei wasn’t officially teaching, don't think he didn’t do quite a lot of teaching anyway. Whenever the official instructors were busy working with other students, Kiyama Sensei would come over and make corrections to my cutting form and my movement, and I wasn’t the only one to get his attention. Sensei is always clear about what he wants all of us to improve on. In my case, he wants to see more koshi in my movement and more “sspaa!” in my cuts (don’t ask. Sensei knows what he means, and I’m pretty sure I understand him, but I haven't figured out how to describe it).

After we had spent the day training and sweating in the stifling gym, Kiyama Sensei suggested a group of us go out to dinner. There was Sensei and four of his students, two 7th dans and two 5th dans. We retired to a wonderfully air-conditioned restaurant with ice water and other delightful cold drinks. We talked about the importance of seme (sense of aggressiveness, the feel of the attack) in iaido, and how much more sppaa! I need to get into my cuts. The conversation found its way around to the fact that two of us are looking at taking rank tests in the near future, and what we need to improve to have a chance of passing. Sensei and the 7^th dans chatted back and forth while I listened and resisted the urge to start taking notes on my phone.

Christmas is coming!  Share the Budo Bum around the dojo!

This is the part of the visit that I was most looking forward to. I’ve been training with Kiyama Sensei for more than 20 years, and I still look forward to every keiko session. The informal conversations are special treasures though. Sensei will talk about his teachers and sometimes share stories about them or training when he was young. These gems fill out my understanding of budo in Sensei’s life, and help me understand how I want it to be a part of my own. With his 88 years of training, I can see in him the beauty, grace and strength that have come in part from that training. My goal is to achieve some fraction of what Sensei has become.

I can always sense Kiyama Sensei’s strength. When we get together in a relaxed setting, in a restaurant, at a coffee shop or in Sensei’s home, the feeling of strength and the grandfatherly care combine in a gentleman whose advice and insights I

treasure. He is a pleasure to talk with, especially about budo, and with the group we had, the conversation flowed along like a lively, little river. I won’t go into all the advice I got about my cuts or my posture or the dozen other areas of my iai that everyone took the time to critique. Sensei succeeded not only in giving me plenty of advice, but also in trimming my ego back to a healthy size.

While I was in Japan I also got to train with my jodo teacher, Matsuda Sensei. We trained together several times on this visit, and he worked me hard every time. Visiting Matsuda Sensei is always a compelling experience. He doesn’t keep his own dojo, but moves among dojo run by several of his senior students. Each dojo is unique. One is a karate dojo that is rented one evening a week for jodo. Another is an elementary school kendo dojo that can be borrowed on the weekend. The most beautiful one is a gorgeous dojo on the first floor of the teacher’s home. Training at any of them is thrilling. I get to work with a wide variety of Matsuda Sensei’s senior students, every one of whom pushes me in a different way. Matsuda Sensei’s senior students are 6th and 7th dan teachers in their own right, and they all can take me out to the edge of my ability.

The biggest treat for me though is being able to go out after practice with everyone. We practice specific techniques in the dojo. It’s a place of quiet respect for the seriousness of what we are studying. We’re busy practicing, which doesn’t leave room for conversation. After practice we sit down and ask those questions that we didn’t have time for in the dojo, and we deepen our understanding of things we thought we understood. Sensei is still Sensei, but he’s a lot more approachable over food and drink in the restaurant afterwards than he is during practice. This is the time to ask that question about seme or zanshin that’s been bothering me. In the dojo, with Sensei casually showing all the openings in what I was sure was a pretty good technique, I forget that he’s a truly wonderful person as well as a great martial artist. Talking with Sensei, and getting to laugh with him, is a fascinating experience.

I’ve known my teachers, trained with them, been scolded by them and gotten an occasional “OK”from them (that being the highest praise I’ve ever heard them give). And I have also gotten to know them as people over the last 25 years. They have shared their skills, their lives and their memories with me. They have shared themselves. The people you choose as teachers should represent a lot of what you want to become. You'll absorb a great deal more than just good technique from your teacher, so take your time when selecting one to make sure she is a person worthy of learning from. My teachers have shown themselves to me time and time and time again that they are gentlemen of the highest quality. Training with them is always exciting and enlightening.

Special thanks to my editor, Deborah Klens-Bigman, Ph.D.