Unka Kim's Martial Art
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Take a Bow

Every so often, quite often actually, I hear "budo begins and ends with etiquette". Since we bow in and bow out of every single practice, as well as bowing to the room each way through the door, I have always wondered why we get told this. We spend hours being taught exactly how to bow and we can even fail an exam for doing it wrong. As a matter of fact, in the kendo federation, wrong etiquette is almost the only way you can fail your first national exam, being dressed incorrectly being another. Oh, and don't drop your sword.

So what is it that we're being told when we're reminded about etiquette? Let's explore a bit.

What are we bowing to?

Thats a good question and the answer has had some relevance over the years. Several times we've had students come into class and say that they can't bow because of religious reasons. Presumably they can bow to nobody but their gods, and my personal response is "fine, don't bow" (I don't really have the inclination to argue religion any more). In most cases they wander back out of class and in some they have started bowing, presumably because of a combination of peer pressure and rationalizing that if there's no intention to worship the person (invisible or not) in front, bending over from the waist is just bending over from the waist.

So are we bowing to the gods of budo? There are such but I'm dinged if I know their names. I'm a lot more familiar with Ares than Hachiman, and that's just because Ares had a recurring role in Xena.

I certainly don't bow to gods when I'm bowing in, except maybe to Anoia the goddess of things that get stuck in drawers. I don't want my sword getting stuck in my scabbard since, like a knife in a drawer, it tends to jump out and cut you if you yank at it. Oh and constantly to he who won't be named, may he eat me first.

We may be bowing to the teacher. I have no problem with that, showing a bit of respect to the guy who is showing me how to do this stuff is a good idea I figure. I'm not paying him, so why not show my appreciation in that way. (Nobody I have learned from was ever a professional teacher or I'd have happily both paid and bowed). When it's me up front teaching we usually don't bow at me. I respect my students but I bow to them when I bow to my sword. I started teaching way too soon to have them bow at me separately, it was embarassing and now if we do it, it's for their own good so that they know to do it when they're somewhere else. I still bow to them when I bow to my sword. In a separate bow to me they are bowing to everyone who taught me, and so am I.

That doesn't explain the other bows, to the room on the way in, to the sword and the head of the room. When in doubt, bow to it. My iaido sensei explained to me that since I wasn't Japanese I wasn't bowing to any shinto gods at the head of the room, so it's a bow to the high place in the room. Nobody is there for me but it's a nice reminder of a place to keep in mind, an anchor as I move around doing the various kata.

I bow to the sword in an appeal not to bite me. I bow to my table saw and my band saw every time I use them... not physically but in my head as in "please let me walk away from you with ten fingers today". You think I'm kidding? Respect your tools, especially the ones that can kill you. Ritual is important, drop the bucket on the backhoe when you get out, check the kickback clutch on the chainsaw, stick the screwdriver in the socket to trip the breaker before you rewire it. Mindful ritual is good, mindless habit is not quite as good but better than thoughtless action.

So that's the high point in the room (the gods) the teacher and the sword. The room? Well the usual explanation is that it converts the room into a dojo, a place of worship. I'm good with that, or if not, how about "thanks to the administration for allowing me a warm place to practice so I don't have to be out in the woods". Anybody who practices in a public space knows you have to kowtow for it. I said the woods because I can't imagine you would be able to swing a sword in a public park any more... not even with the weird skirts that used to identify you as a harmless geek. Now there are people who are paid to re-imagine you as tour'rists. No, the deep woods it is, and change location often so as not to alarm the local dog-walkers.

What do we bow to? How about the art itself, the teachers in your lineage (ancestor worship) who have kept the thing alive and allowed it to pass along to you?

Where do you bow from?

As a teacher do you return the bow of your students from a position of authority and power, or do you bow to them from humility as a request to forgive any mistakes you pass along? Are you teaching or learning together? Are you doing them a favour by letting them know what you know or are they your legacy to the future, your only shot at immortality? You should think about that and decide which.

Students sit on the low side of the dojo, they sit in heirarchical order, they are already in a place of humility, of course they are bowing from humility, we don't need to worry about that. Do we?

Do I say "budo begins and ends with etiquette"? I may have, when looking at beginners, I may have even said it un-ironically but certainly never seriously to my experienced students. The only meaning they would draw from it was that I thought they were disrespecting me and for my own ego I would never admit I know that.

If your teacher says it to you, check back in your memory, have you disrespected him? Something you haven't done? Are you not humble enough? Are your dues paid for the month and did you sweep the floor? Maybe it's just a comment to the beginners but it's always best to check.

It's always something.. else

Trolling through Google Scholar yesterday I came across a course outline on the martial arts that aimed at disabusing students of the idea that martial arts are an ancient cultural repository of traditional wisdom. Tru-dat. (I hope that means what I assume it means).

Instead, they are things that are used, even today. I use them. I have always used them for what I can get from them on my own terms, and those never included a desire to learn 3000 year old Korean culture (from TKD) or even 500 year old Japanese culture (from the koryu).

I came across another paper which was in Japanese but had an English abstract which seemed to indicate that the Meiji police forces included martial arts for a different reason than I'd been told a couple weeks earlier in a popular bit of writing... to whit, that the Police learned sword because their main enemy, the Yakuza used swords as their preferred weapon. Which was weird because a Ninja master told me about 30 years ago all about being chased through the streets of Tokyo by gun-wielding Yakuza, but never mind.

My attention got caught by the Police budo paper because I have finished yet another manual (in proofs with my students), this one on Keshi ryu iai (the Meiji police iai set) and what is now called "Hosoda ryu". The two sets I learned from Takeshi Mitsuzuka sensei a hundred years ago. I always liked the two schools because I was taught Hosoda as Shindo Munen, and that art was taught in a Tokyo dojo where the young Edo-era bravos from the countryside used to go to "study the sword". They went to plot and plan the overthrow of the government of course, so the budo at that time was a way to collect rebels. I doubt anyone really worried about accurately transmitting the culture of the samurai of 300 years earlier. What training was done was likely concerned with that new shinai-geiko stuff... but the Shindo Munen dojo and others like it did help, however incidentally, to keep the arts going during that period.

After the Meiji restoration it was the turn of the police sword practice to help keep the old sword arts alive, and hence my delight in putting those two sets of practice into one book.

Which brings me back to the paper I found that, according to the abstract, argues the Police had another reason for getting involved in budo than fitness (undoubtably part of it) and practicality (they were armed with swords for a short time at least, before they decided a jo or a gun was more efficient), and that was to drain the best sword teachers away from those very anti-government type gangs that helped topple the previous government.

An excellent and ancient tactic as proven by dozens of samurai movies I've seen. Co-opt the best fighers from the other side, buy them or argue them onto your side. Rebels aren't usually that well off unless they are backed by a government somewhere, so they aren't likely paying their sword teachers very well. Get those teachers on the police payroll and set up the most prestigious tournament system and you've drained a lot of momentum from the rebel groups. Get rid of the extra-government tournaments and you get rid of a system of meeting places where rebel leaders can talk about anti-establishment stuff. Now you've got your own place to talk about pro-establishment stuff to young men of that dangerous dissenting age.

Brilliant.

Then a few years later you get into the whole state shinto, bushido for the peasants thing but I'm not so interested in that bit of cultural tradition even if it is a big undercurrent to the present-day ancient arts.

For my purposes, the budo being culturally detached from my own culture is a very good thing. They come with no baggage that I don't see plainly and trying to attach them to things Western isn't going to happen any time soon (although folks try). The gun is a much better symbol of all things Government and Anti-government in the West. Like the sword in Japan, the gun in the West can be snuck into the modern conscience as a symbol of things that never were because it's part of the sub-liminal awareness developed from years of cowboy movies. Western cowboys and Eastern samurai. Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune. Rugged individualists and loyal servants, all symbols that might just be serving something else.

The Star Trek Economy

We seem to be heading toward a Star Trek economy these days. That's a world of unlimited energy and free material goods. I said heading toward.

Unlimited energy: Well pretty cheap gas at the moment, and if the laser fusion guys get their process going, energy will be even cheaper. Boeing says they have a design that may work for city-sized reactors and there's someone who has just figured out how to make flexible solar cells by stripping them from a reusable silicon base. That means roofing and siding your house with solar cells instead of asphalt and vinyl.

So unlimited in the sense of not limited. Nothing is without limit of course, as many episodes of hunting for dilithium crystals have shown.

And the free material goods? Well we're somewhat distant from a replicator, although 3d printers are a start. Download a pattern from the net and print it up. No development costs, no running to the store or online ordering, just download and print.

Is there an economics department anywhere in the world trying to figure out what an economy based on flat or declining growth looks like? Can "the market" deal with anything but endless growth in the economy?

I think the Star Trek economy is going to be a lot less material and a lot more intellectual as folks get all the stuff they want (have you asked your dad what he wants for Christmas yet? Did he say "nothing"? Old Spice again for me thanks, I've got everything I want, I know because I check the flyers that arrive free at my door and there's nothing there I want.

That's was always the problem with trickle down economics, if you can't convince the rich people that they need to buy really, really expensive watches they are just going to get more and more rich. There's a limit to how much "stuff" you need and most folks feel a little foolish after about six cars.

I also think we might see a lot less people in the martial arts classes as everyone gets into a stay-at-home mentality. If you work at home, make your stuff at home, and bring in your entertainment on the broadband you don't get into the habit of going out to class. Unless of course we can promote some sort of budo benefit beyond self defence. (If you aren't outside your house much you don't have much of a worry about self defence). If that happens we need to join music education as "a way to improve thinking".

In the west here we still manufacture a lot of stuff, but less and less as the jobs move to the young (in age) countries and the lower wages that come with them. As the women in those countries get educated their population growth will peak and world population is supposed to turn down at around 9 billion. Nine Billion. It was less than 2 when I was a kid, I can't believe we've made it this far, and it's been done on constant screaming growth. Or maybe it is that growth, how do you measure growth? "Stuff per capita world-wide"? Theres more stuff but is it more stuff per capita?

I'm counting on cheap fusion energy to save our first world lifestyles rather than having the first world collapse back to the level of the third as oil becomes too expensive to use and that growth bubble of the last 50 years pops. I'm counting on the Star Trek economy to bump everyone on the planet to the same place and I'm counting on the kids who grew up swimming in the internet to figure out how it's going to work.

There will be problems. The corporations and the organizations are going to resist the individualization that will come with those 3D printers. The street to house delivery systems (the "internet providers") are going to try to crank up prices to make up for losses elsewhere. The entertainment corporations are going to step up their efforts to make money off of their copyrights. Same for the R and D departments of corporations and Universities as they try to make up on patent licensing what they are losing on sales of product or education. The solution to all of this is likely going to be government intervention, either national (elected) or trans-national (non-elected corporations) who will want to grow by acquring more and more patents and copyrights across borders.

The information economy can only run on supply and demand principles if the information supply can be limited.

I prefer the Star Trek economy, let's see what 9 billion humans free of material wants can do. Maybe they can get it back down to 2 billion without mass starvation, disease or carrying the old folk up the mountain... er putting them onto the ice floes.

Kids... start subverting my world!

Steal this book.

The Many Hats Theory of the Unverse

I do several martial arts and I have to keep them separate. In other words, I "wear many hats". I love this expression and so, apparently does Terry Pratchett whose hero Moist von Lipwig has just acquired another hat in his latest book.

When I am teaching Niten Ichiryu I tell the class that Musashi, the founder of the art, was in upwards of 60 duels and was never defeated. When I'm teaching Shindo Muso Ryu Jodo I tell the class that Muso, the founder of the art, fought Musashi and lost, but came back after he'd invented the jo and defeated Musashi. I've got no problem with that, these stories come from almost 400 years ago and were written down a generation or three after the events so it's "Shakespeare in love" and Shakespeare the Catholic. Musashi the Toyotomi loyalist.

When I was on the board of directors and an executive for the Canadian Kendo Federation I repeatedly told my fellow board members that I was not the "iaido and jodo director", there was no such position. I did that job for the entire Federation and argued more than once to the disadvantage of the minor arts while also arguing for them as the situation demanded. I wore the director hat when I was a director and the Iaido/Jodo hat when asked to argue for Iaido/Jodo. Sometimes in the same meeting. Recently I was accused of "making your students do your work". I pointed out that the people talked about were, yes, my students, but they are also now officers in the CKF and as such were actually the ones who should be doing the job I asked them to do. That's their hat now, not mine and I'm not going to step on their authority in those matters. In matters where I'm wearing the "head of section" or "sensei" hat, that's a different place and I wouldn't ask them to do the things it's my job to do. Respect the hat when it's on someone else's head.

It comes down to compartmentalization. If you are more than a one-note fellow you need to separate your life into compartments. You need to figure out which hat you're wearing and to that job. What about the inevitable places where one hat interferes with the other? Like when I'm supposed to be sitting on a grading panel while my daughter is having a birthday party. My feelings were always that the larger hat was the one further away from you personally. I sat grading panels because that's the wider bunch of people, the ones further away from my personal desires, the "less selfish" choice. Did my family see it that way? Absolutely not, to them my martial arts are the selfish choice so you can't win. Don't try, just wear the hats with as little damage as you can to each other. My other consideration in that particular instance was that my daughter really didn't miss me, she had lots of family around and dad was mostly just part of the background anyway.

Eventually you may have to give up one hat or take up another. If you can't wear the hat well, it is certainly time to pass it on, nobody is ever irreplaceable, other folks may do the job differently but that doesn't always mean worse. You may find the hat is getting a bit heavy, again it will be time to pass it along. We all get old and we all get tired, but mainly we should all pass on the hat before it's too late for someone else to grow into it.

Be the hat. The job you're doing comes with a set of rules and you ought to understand what they are. If you're teaching Aikido you don't start talking about German Longsword... unless you're comparing the two somehow, and if you are, Aikido better come out on top. If you're on the budget committee don't suggest giving your sensei a massive honourarium unless he actually deserves it. As his student you may be sure he does, but with your budget hat on you need to see things with the proper eyeballs. What's he done for the federation lately?

Folks make a lot of "conflict of interest" and stepping out of meetings when you're in one. Fair enough for financial decisions that involve you personally and suchlike, but for most of the time it's enough if you remember which hat you should be wearing. You're never not in a conflict of interest unless you're a pretty boring fellow.

Don't Presume

To speak for your elders, your sensei, your granny or anyone else if they can still speak for themselves. Or even after they are dead, unless you include the words "I think" somewhere in that speach.

I've seen much too much assumption in my life that I later checked and found was totally off base and it irritates me to no end. If you are asked to speak for someone, speak in that person's voice, not your own, not even through the filter of your own wishes and desires. You don't pick and choose when you're a spokesman or an interpreter, you speak for and you translate. Don't edit, censor or explain.

This can apply to objects and a great example is the photograph by Ruth Orkin entitled "An American Girl in Italy" 1951. Go ahead and look it up. This photo is being used right now as an example of "harassment of women by men on the street". I dunno why, easy to get hold of I suppose, assumption that it's out of copyright? Regardless, it's a great example of speaking for your granny, of putting your own agenda atop the life experience of previous generations and it shouldn't be done.

You see, this particular granny is still alive and living in Toronto Ontario right now at 87 and her name is Ninalee (Jinx) Craig. I know this because she wrote a letter to the Globe and Mail and said "... as long as I breath, I will maintain I was not being harassed in Italy. I was young, free and having the time of my life." If you're not old enough to have heard that nickname, it was usually given to someone who sounds just like Ms. Craig.

Now look at that photograph again.

I was raised by working women. Both my grandmothers worked and contributed at least half the income to their families. My paternal granny was a single mother. My mother worked her entire life and was a single mother. My girlfriends and my current wife all worked and continue to work I presume. None of them felt downtrodden or glass ceilinged or victimized any more than the men in their lives, or any less. I think you need to be at least upper middle class (able to survive as a family on one salary) before you can start talking about being oppressed as opposed to having to work for a living. The 50s were five minutes and some folks didn't have those union jobs at the car factory. My mother would have loved to stay at home and paint instead of working as an X-ray technician. I know because she told me so. Harassed? Sure, harass me right onto the sofa to watch the soaps she might have said.

I suspect there are a great many women out there who might not appreciate having their lives spoken for. I know my mother had lttle time for what my daughter now calls "first world problems". Like being looked at while walking down the street in Italy. Several years ago a Spanish grad student working in my department angrily cornered me and demanded to know why Canadian men wouldn't look at her. "She was good looking, she dressed well, she did her makeup well and these jerks wouldn't even acknowledge that, let alone appreciate just how good looking she was." It took me a while to calm her down and explain that in Canada if we did what she asked of us we might just get fired.

One woman's joy in life is another's harassment. Which has the right to speak for the other?

If you must speak, speak for yourself, not your elders, not your sensei. They have their own voices and their own life experience which is greater than yours. They know where the closets are buried and what's hidden away from the kids in the back of the skeleton. When you've been around long enough to have built the world you live in, comment on that one. Don't presume to understand the world you've been handed, you weren't there on the street having a blast in Italy. Riding a Vespa in a short dress. Flipping off the boys as you stride by on your way somewhere exciting and, if you're lucky, maybe a bit scandalous.

I bet my daughter just smiled.

Terrible Sensei

I think I must have the worst pass record of all the iaido 6 and 7dan folks in Canada. Not that I mind, personally, because I don't teach to pass tests, and we don't restrict our teaching to a single art. In fact that's most of the problem right there. We study too many arts to make for efficient learning of the things you need to pass gradings. We tend to study comparisons between arts, lines, angles, planes of attack, all the things that are more or less useless when you're trying to demonstrate a highly controlled kata which requires hours of repetition.

But I'm not interested in hours of repetition, I want to play with all the other stuff. I want to look at an overall art and ask what it means to the mindset of the guys who developed it. Then I want to teach in such a way that it is of benefit today rather than 1550 Japan.

Here are some of the things we discussed in a class recently.

In most classes of martial arts you are supposed to be alert and ready for an attack at any moment for the entire class, to be "on" concentrated, serious and full of zanshin at all times. I know that but I don't run my classes like that and I explained why. Since my way is wrong I won't explain my reasons here, you just do it the right way (the way you were taught).

But why do you teach it the way you teach it? It's OK for a few years/decades to simply do it because that's how you were taught but you're a poor student if you never go beyond copying your sensei. Thats not why he spent so long teaching you, figure out the why and wherefore of this stuff.

Iaido is the budo where I figure you will learn the most about the true samurai mindset. If, that is, you combine your analysis of your art with a bit of history. What was the true reality of life from about 1550 to now in Japan? How does that compare to the movie version? If you haven't gone over your research papers lately, try google scholar or google books and see what you can find. There's a lot of material out there that isn't behind a firewall, and some of the key modern books can be had in ebook style for reasonable prices (ie. less than the cost of a pitcher of beer).

Beyond the overall feeling of... paranoia? during a class, there are the kata themselves which I am quite strict about. Not that I yell a lot but I'm not happy looking at a sloppy performance. I want to see zanshin throughout, not as some sort of add-on to the end of the thing. I want to see a performance with no suki, no openings for attack. I want to see seme, pressure on the opponent at all times. I also want to see a very clear demonstration of why each movement and non-movement is made. I did spend some time yesterday yelling at folks to decide which of several targets they suggested as permissible, were the targets they were trying to hit. It's all well and good to hear sensei saying "you can cut to the chest and the knee or to the chest twice or to the head and the neck" and remember it. But pick a specific target, don't just wave your sword around in front of you and hope you hit something.

Now think about trying to cut that specific target in that specific way for anything but a test. What I mean is try to imagine a situation in real life where you'd need to do it exactly like you've practiced it a thousand times... literally.

Right, never mind that, let's think about doing a kata that has three imaginary opponents. You are ready, you make your move and without letting them have a chance you kill them all, they are lying on the floor making their peace in pieces. You maintain zanshin and put the sword back into the saya and keeping a watchful awareness on everyone else in the room you return to your starting point.

Wait. All the bad guys are dead right? Otherwise why would you put the sword away? So what's this zanshin stuff?

You tell me.

What does iaido teach you about the mindset of the samurai?

Would you change the teaching method to suit the modern world?

Personal Responsibility

We all see the world through our own glasses and I'm well into being an old fart who figures everything is going to heck in a handcart but...

I really feel that personal responsibility has been outsourced. I mean it's hard to get here to the cafe if we hit the "drive the kids two blocks to the school"-rush. There are certain streets in this town, which is sleepy and safe, that you don't go down because they are plugged with SUVs dropping off 8th graders. As far as I remember it, my mother walked me to school the first day of kindergarten and said "think you can find it tomorrow?" and was never seen in the school again.

Never mind the kiddies and the helicopter parents, (who I, thankfully, don't see at the University yet), the news has been full of a good deed gone south lately, a woman who died after defending a couple of girls being harassed. I just had to pause and check to see that this was in Germany, I had the impression it was just next door. Which is part of the problem.

The news is full of the Kitty Genovese syndrome, bystanders who do just that, bystand and don't do anything. It's one of the favourite themes of psych classes and a recent story was of a study with some seminary students who were told to do a presentation on either the good samaritan or their future religious career, they were then told they were late for the presentation or had lots of time and sent past a guy collapsed in a door.

Well the ones who had lots of time stopped more than the ones who were busy and the ones who had the Samaritan topic stopped more than the careers folks. Not a huge surprise I suppose, although I'd have liked to see 100% stop, as would everyone else I imagine.

And did I see myself stopping? Did you? I walk past guys in doorways a lot. Who says they need help? I also don't interfere when girls are being cat-called because I never see it happening, although my daughter assures me it does. Maybe I'm just not paying attention or maybe it's happening when I'm not there.

When I'm not there, when the police aren't there, when "someone else" isn't there, someone whose job it is to deal with stuff.

When you're alone and in trouble just whose job is it? Those parents who drove you to school? The police? "Society"? When did we outsource our own protection to someone else? Around the time the phrase "blaming the victim" became popular?

A zillion years ago a buddy and I decided the basis of self defence was a sense of personal responsibility. I haven't changed my mind, you're responsible for your own protection, not me. Don't come to me with tales of being abused by your girlfriend unless you want me to tell you to leave her. I don't do sympathy (or empathy) very well, I don't do "tsk tsk isn't that awful, I feel your pain and someone should do something", because I know it's not going to change and I know who should do something about it. I've taught self defence for way too many decades to figure couples "work it out" in the short term. Long term they figure out how to stop "communicating" (which is code for trying to change the other one because "it's them what's wrong").

Helping on the street? Why not?

Well because you're going to get killed according to the news. You don't get stories about snowy days without massive pile-ups or those times in a restaurant where an old fart gives a couple a frowny glare when they start raising their voices, and nothing else happens. You get stories from across the ocean where a girl gets killed trying to help and it seems like that's next door. It might even be next door, but the fact that it's reported at all means it's rare.

Man bites dog.

CPR on someone who collapses? Why not?

Because you don't know how of course. It's "perceived efficacy", you have taken a CPR course, you maybe give it a try. You have no idea how, why would you try? You wouldn't. I was once a CPR instructor and it was pretty simple then but we had to count. Apparently now you don't count, you just pump and blow, maybe not even blow much any more, I dunno I haven't recertified, but the point seems to be to get folks to try something, anything.

Same with my self defence classes. I did the research and statistically anything works except begging, crying and pleading. Oh and doing nothing which must be obvious but apparently is not. Any kind of resistance works, all of it works. Just do something.

And how are my classes? Dead. The course doesn't run any more. I know for a fact it has been used by those who took it because they've come back and told me, but as the percent of women went up at the school over the last 25 or 30 years, and as total numbers of students went up, the number who took the course went down. Of tens of thousands of students there aren't 10 who want to do the course. There is, apparently, an epidemic of abuse going on according to the posters, but it's someone else's problem I guess. It's been outsourced to someone. Me? No not me because I'd teach the course if anyone wanted to learn it, even though I don't like teaching it, I'm too old and it hurts but it's my.... responsibility? I know how so I have the responsibility to teach it?

Is that weird these days? Like I said, an old fart with old ideas I guess.

Well my old ideas say that kids should walk to school by themselves, and be taught things that will be useful, like self defence, martial arts (which are all about old fashioned ideas like responsibility to society, duty to protect and suchlike), science-based health, contraception that isn't "don't", defensive driving... or even just "don't tailgate".

Aargh, I sound like an old fart even to myself.

When my son was very small he got in trouble at school for fighting. His side of the story was that the upper grade kid was picking on a lower level girl. He almost got kicked out of the zero tolerance school. Later on I asked him why he didn't hit the girls back when they hit him and he said "you don't hit girls". Apparently girls can hit guys.

Sounds like school teaches girls they can abuse without consequence and boys they shouldn't protect. I say get the teachers off the playground and let them sort it themselves. What you've got now is a lot of ratting on each other to the authorities who are expected to do something about it. I remember being the new kid on the playground and as the local bullies were heading for me one of the lone wolves drifted by and told them to "leave the new kid alone". It took all of three minutes to sort and I was left to assimilate.

You want to stop the bystander syndrome? Teach a little personal responsibility and give permission to help. Listen to how many times a week you are told not to interfere and reject the advice. Get your sorry rear end out to a decent self defence class.

Says the dinosaur.

Musashi was a crap technical writer.

Looking around on the net for stuff that has disappeared, you will find a lot that has shown up. For instance, looking for an old paper on Musashi, I came across two or three translations of the Go Rin no Sho I hadn't seen before. That makes what? 15, 20?

As usual I checked first to see if they were the Victor Harris translation... there are dozens of those out there unattributed. Once it's digitized it's fair game I suppose. Then I look at the first of the five kata and see how close they get to the way that Niten Ichiryu does it today. That's always good for a laugh as the various translators try to interpret something that really shouldn't be so hard to get. There are two major lines, the Noda ha and the Santo ha and two or three variations in each of those lines that are still practicing in Japan and in some few cases, outside. They aren't hard to find and a few minutes conversation would reveal a lot of information about what Musashi was banging on about with his "kissaki gaeshi" and his "press down the sword".

So I'd think the first thing to do would be to talk with the current students of the students of the guy who wrote the book. But then you'd run into my problem... the various lines aren't in perfect agreement. They're pretty damned close if you look underneath a lot of style, but there are still some differences that add up to "still not sure" what Musashi was talking about. There's too much unsaid in his description of the style, and that means one thing to me. Musashi was crap at writing a manual that beginners could use.

Now you will say that the book wasn't intended for general consumption and that his students would know what he meant so there wasn't much reason to write it down, but in that case why write it down at all? Why not just say "the first kata" or "when doing chudan".

So I look at each of the translations and think to myself "am I doing it wrong? Are the other lines wrong too? Has the telephone tag reached it's hilarious and confusing end? Then I always come back to "what does it matter?" It's not as if I'm ever going to need to use my swords and as long as my way is the best way I don't even have to worry about the other lines. There's only a couple hundred of us in the world anyway.

But still, I keep looking at those translations and thinking about what was really being said and worrying that the more I read the more I settle on "yeah, he was actually describing what I do today". The power of picking and choosing what I want to see. I'd hate to think that I fooled myself into thinking that what I was doing was the "correct" way of doing it. That way lies self-satisfaction and smuggery.

Now I've got the bright idea to put all the translations side by side in a spreadsheet and examine them together to see if there are any patterns. Of course I'd have to get rid of those that were just repackaging Mr. Harris' version, and what do I do with those who have advanced degrees in Japanese but no martial arts experience, and those with years of martial arts training and no language certificates? I've heard that you can't translate accurately into a language other than your own and I've heard that if you aren't a native speaker you can't understand enough of the language you're trying to translate out of. So how do I figure out which translations were done by folks who were raised in ancient and modern Japanese and English all at once? Those would be the ones to give more weight wouldn't they?

Language skills, Martial arts skills or actually practicing the art now? Who's going to have the best translation? Hey, maybe a committee? Or I could call the spreadsheet the committee of committees. A meta-committee!

Of course I could just do what Musashi told me to do, go swing the swords and let them talk to me, but that would be too easy and it's usually what I end up doing anyway when I start down this road.

At least once every two years.

Budo Research

Another evening of looking around on the net for things I know damned well I got from there. And not finding them. We get the idea that everything is there but it's often not, and even more often buried under an avalanche of ads and sponsored links.

With all of 40 of us folk who are interested in martial arts research, the audience for obscure histories and analyses of nose-punching is a bit small to keep copies of interesting stuff alive in the cloud. We have to remember that the cloud is just a bunch of servers somewhere and hard-drives go offline.

So I try to remember to keep copies of anything I come across.

At least it's easy to copy things from the net. There are books I know I once owned, that I loaned to students and never came back. I want some of them now but they are out of print and not floating around in torrent-land so I'm out of luck unless one of the little beggers sees a book in the back of a closet that they don't remember buying.

Nowadays I tell students to get their phones out of their pocket and photograph the damned book and put it back on the shelf where they found it.

I'm starting to do the same thing myself, and you know, I feel not at all guilty about photographing a book that's out of print and never likely to see the underside of a printing press again... or should that be the cool side of a drum? Sure I'll buy a book that is available, but nobody in this line of business writes a history of an obscure sword school to make a living. We do it to keep the information around, to pass it down to the next generation, and I don't think there are many of us that would begrudge a fellow martial artist the chance to read our hard-written prose, even if it's from a photograph.

Books are like endangered species, they can go extinct. Scanned copies of old works are like zoological breeding populations, not really the thing in the wild but something that can still be studied and that may just make it back into the wild again one day.

So copy stuff folks, if you figure it's going to be valuable to you and you can't buy it. If the author is still alive you could send them a few dollars, that's about what you get from a mass-market book anyway. Of course if it's self-published and still being produced, buy it, in that case the author is getting a lot more than a couple bucks a copy and sales promote continued production. The flip side of the equation is an authors feeling that there's no point in printing if nobody is reading.

Now research papers, that's a whole other kettle of rotten fish. What a racket that is, academics paying to get their papers published in journals which sent the paper to unpaid reviewers and then selling that paper to libraries and charging money for reprints to other academics who need it. I still get requests for reprints from researchers who want to use my papers which were, admittedly, published at no cost to me (second tier journal of methods I guess) but cost them still. Wish I'd had digital copies to keep and send but they were written 20 years ago and who knew I'd still want a paper on how to assay fructose without a $30,000 hplc?

Copy that budo research, tuck your books away somewhere safe, your students will figure it's all on the net and won't even remember they have that borrowed first and only edition.

And fear not, all my books and videos are still in production because I did all of it myself... except that one German translation of the Niten manual that I've never even seen.

But damnit, I want that book I was looking for last night because I think I picked up a translation of the Niten chapter from the net somewhere... translated by someone or some translation program residing at a hosting company that doesn't exist any more. At least the net told me that the hosting company once existed...

Access, creativity and budo

Often with the martial arts it seems to be about access, who gets to learn with whom. There is always a discussion about which teacher is legitimate, who has the proper papers and who got them in a box of bowling trophies after the last headmaster died.

We like being members of an exclusive club and most of those who talk about "who's legitimate" are convinced that their lineage is impeccable, they're "in" and the rest are, if not out, at least no further in.

But access has never guaranteed great training or great learning, it's just the key to the front door and no matter how chic the furnishings in the club itself, your average kid off the street wearing saggy jeans and a baseball hat on backward is not going to look any sharper for it.

The flip side of this record is the need to perform the art "exactly as it is passed down". If you're "in" the exclusive club you can still climb the heirarchy if your particular table is closer to the front than anyone else's. You get to be the one who is most faithfully passing along those kata as taught by the guy who got the papers in the shoe box full of trophies. Or something like that.

In this scheme there is no room for creativity, especially in arts that have no competitive component. Let's face it, you can be creative in kendo, you can fight right up to the rules and invent better ways to convince the judges you've split your opponent's skull by using a brand new combination of fakes and blocks, but you can't test your new iaido idea with a shinken in your hand. As one of my teachers says, you can only invent a new kata on the battlefield.

So we koryu folks are looking for an exclusive club where we can stifle our creativity, learn only how to imitate correctly, and brag about how unoriginal we are.

Sounds like fun.

Why then, good muscle memorist and good note-taker that I am, do I not look like my sensei? In fact, I was just chatting with him about what a pain in the wazoo all the administrivia we have to deal with is, when he came out with "who the hell taught you to do Yae Gaki like you do?". Hunh? After trying "you did", the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment was "I read books??" As far as I know I do things the way I was taught. Of course I'm twice the size of my teacher and maybe my injuries (mostly knees) aren't the same as his (achilles tendon) so perhaps our bodies move differently. I also don't sit in front of him every class any more, so maybe he's changed the way he does things. I know he has. And just maybe (I'm not admitting anything here) I may have changed too over the last 20 years of practice.

No, with a big sigh I will have to admit that he was probably seeing something I read in a book. Since there aren't many books out there he's probably read the same one but I suspect something caught my eye that didn't catch his. So now I'm a bit embarassed that I was teaching something in his presence that he doesn't teach. I've got no business doing that, when he's in the room he's the sensei, even if he's told me to go teach. It is not my place to teach what he doesn't. Creativity is for my own dojo, not his.

Not that I should demonstrate a lack of learning, or a lack of originality, after all it's a poor student who doesn't learn and pick up new ways to do the same old kata, but damnit, don't try to teach your grandma how to suck eggs. Don't teach that variation on a theme in front of your instructor to his students. It's just rude.

Is he going to boot me out for doing something else? Not this time, but if I get too far from what he taught me he just might tell me I'm not his student. No, wait, he told me that the first day I met him and has told me that ever since so never mind. What is really likely to happen is that I'll get honest with myself and admit that I'm no longer his student. That's if what I do is not what he taught, but I'm not there yet.

I buy into two things, you pass the kata down intact, as faithfully as you can, otherwise the art drifts too far and too fast. But you also learn, you create, you figure out how to make new kata faithfully from the waza of the school. That fellow who said you can't make a new kata unless you're on the battlefield? He teaches me a koryu that requires public demonstrations of different kata from what you've learned as "the school". That's right, nothing you ever see outside of class in that art will be what you are taught in class.

No new kata? It's all new kata.

Access or create your way out of that one!

Riai, what is it good for?

Iaido is a strange activity, you're waving a sword around in the air fighting an imaginary enemy. This brings up several ways to approach the art.

The first is to dance. Take the descriptions of the movements or watch sensei and then copy it. You may not know what's going on but you can certainly memorize the dance steps and do them. This is the traditional way to learn and to teach, just copy the old texts and eventually you will learn how to recognize and read them.

In the case of the zen ken ren iai, the standard set of techniques for the kendo federation, you can even read the book and know with absolute certainty that you will now be doing the movements exactly as the best swordsmen in the organization do them. There should be no arguments anywhere with what's written in the book, and I have found none over the years. You point to something in the book and even the hanshi say "oh, good spot" and change their practice.

Reading the book you'll also find descriptions of what the opponent is doing. In the case of the first kata it starts off something like "sensing the ill intent of the man sitting in front of you, draw your sword and cut across his eyes". Is this the meaning of the kata? The meaning of iai? To defend yourself from attack by anticipating it and acting first? Is the riai of iai passed along by sensei telling you what the imaginary opponent is doing at each point in the kata? I know in the west we tend to start off with this story, giving the students a bit of a leg up to focus their rather wild sword swinging.

But no, it's just a better way of dancing. After all, it's one thing to fling your arms around in the middle of a crowded dance floor, another thing to dance with a partner and react to each other's movements. Much more complex, much more clear. Flailing your arms here and there by yourself could mean just about anything, moving your arm that same way as your partner comes around into that position beside you is quite a lot more satisfying to see.

So we do iai with the idea of an imaginary opponent in our heads, we visualize the situation and respond to it and those observing will see a different level of practice... if they have eyes to see of course. It's not the riai, it's not the underlying meaning of iai but it's important to that meaning.

It's also written into the descriptions of the movements where it's not explicitly described in the book. Many years ago we figured one of the kata was done with four opponents at the corners of a square with you in the center. The kata is done by moving to each of the corners in a certain order but we soon found that if we put people into those corners we missed the last two following what it said in the book. It says turn 90 degrees to the right and then 180 to hit the last guy. The problem is that we have moved a step forward to cut the second guy so the 90 degree turn doesn't hit the opponent.... what to do? We decided that for reality's sake we had to turn 90 degrees "plus a bit" and then 180 degrees "plus a bit" to hit the last two.

Umm, wrong reading. The book doesn't say the opponents are in a square, it might say roughly square (I haven't read it for a couple of months) and what I read is a translated version which I've been told sometimes misses the phrase "ya ya" which could be read as "around", "roughly" etc. The bottom line was the book stated 90 degrees so our opponent is at 90 degrees. There was no need to speculate and be told in "secret oral teachings" that it is 90 plus a little, ya ya 90. The description of the kata tells us who, what and where. We turn 90 and now we're square on to the opponent, he's exactly as far away from us as it takes to swing the sword after stepping toward him with the right foot. No further away, no closer. In other words our first imitation of the movements was also telling us where the bad guy is. We already know what's going on, we don't need sensei to tell us the secret and that knowledge isn't riai.

A principle isn't specific. By definition. Knowing where to cut in this kata isn't a principle of the sword and certainly not a principle of the art, it's an Arthur Murray footprint painted on the floor.

Right, so we go a step further and start to look at intentions, maybe that's riai. After all, we got told that the enemy intended us harm as we started the kata, we cut him across the face because of his intention. Maybe that's the riai, if someone intends to harm you, kill him fast and first. It's certainly a philosophy that a lot of folks hold.

Problem with this to my thinking is that I have enough trouble knowing my own intentions, let alone those of an imaginary opponent. A couple of classes ago we did the exercise where you move your sword into the path of your partner just before he starts to move toward a cut on that side (or the other, in which case you get a tap on the ribs). Is this proof that we can read the intention of our opponent? Not really, it's a bit of a confusion of the word. By starting the exercise we know the intention of our partner, it's to move to one side or the other and hit us in the ribs. What we're reading is not intention but the beginning of a movement, we're learning how to see earlier points on the motion chain we know is coming because we actually know the intention of our partner.

Think that would work while walking down the street and having someone passing suddenly swing at you? It might if you suspected everyone 100% of the time. I think my heart would explode with stress if I lived that way, better to think "you'll get the first one in but you'd better put me out because if I come back off the sidewalk you're done". I once worked for a guy who put five guys down in a bar, it was a bet and he won because they were just sitting and having a beer when some stranger started punching. One of them got back off the floor and my boss was pulped... but he won the bet.

So riai isn't reading what your opponent is about to do, that's just good reactions backed by paying attention. Not a bad combination at all, but hardly the principle of a budo. Let's go back to Mae, that first kata once more, the book says "read the intention and strike him". If we can't really read the intention of our opponent, and if governments don't accept a defence of "he was going to kill me so I killed him" (they're getting there) then does the practice of iai start with a murder?

As a beginner maybe you figured iaido was "quick draw" for the sword, that would match the get him before he gets you idea, but what did sensei say. "Slow down" maybe? Why would he want you to slow down? Surely the idea is to whip it out as fast as possible on the least excuse? OK I'm actually one of those guys who believes you ought to get to the principles on your own rather than being spoon-fed. It sticks better if you have to work a little so my question to you is to consider why sensei says make your draw slow.

In other words, riai, what is it good for? Iai, what are you practicing for?

A Good Enemy

One of my favourite photography quotes is from an old TV show where the fashion photographer was enthusing about some great shots he'd taken. Wonderful was the reply, you managed to take some nice pictures of an incredibly beautiful woman.

Despite all the Dove ads out there, neither Dove nor photoshop is the reason for amazing shots of fashion models. Fashion models are the reason for those amazing shots. They are the 1% of the population that are incredibly beautiful without makeup, expensive soap or photoshop so of course Fashion photographers start with them.

In an Aikido class recently I discussed the need for uke (the attacker) to keep attacking. If you want to look for a way to distinguish the "pure" Aikido experience from wrestling or MMA or even Judo, you need to have a willingness to stop when aiki stops. By that I mean that if you are practicing and your partner is just standing there after you have moved out of the way of his attack, just step out of range and be done with it. You can't blend with someone else's energy if you're wrenching him around. Forcing people to move into the positions you want is wrestling, not the magical "fakery" of Aikido where your partners throw themselves.

If you make an honest attack and then keep trying to attack the center of your partner, keep trying to get to grips with him hip to hip, keep moving toward his center, you will provide your nage (the guy that's throwing) with the chance to make you throw yourself. That's not fake, that's aikido. That's being a good attacker. That's being a fashion model to your photographer.

Trust me, at a certain point (as I was told by some very good photographers) you need to move to New York or Milan or Paris where the top makeup artists and the top models are if you want to be a fashion photographer. No matter how talented you are or how well you can use photoshop, you need the partners to be real about it. Otherwise call it glamour and charge the local matrons a decent penny for your work because they'll be happy with it. Just don't call it Fashion Photography. At best it's fashion photography.

If you don't have a partner that can keep attacking you, you can wrench folks around and throw them in what looks like Aikido but it's really just aikido.

Kendo isn't Kendo if you don't assume your partner has a shinken, and you both act accordingly, otherwise it's kendo.

In kata-based arts like jodo or Niten Ichiryu you also need a good attacker or you are simply going through the motions. You're lighting the girl like Avedon lit them, you're using a white sweep like Penn used but you aren't shooting Lisa Fonssagrives. Your shot will look somewhat fashion-like but your girl isn't Fashion so the shot isn't either.

Let's take the first kata of Niten, which is Sasen. You walk together and on the third step your attacker cuts down on your head, you move to the right to avoid that and stick him in the throat.

You have no idea how many people I've seen do that kata exactly as boringly as you just read it. There's no way that kata can be anything but boring without an attacker that is trying to crush your head for real, one that will track you if you move too soon and one that will leave you bleeding and unconscious if you move too late. You, on the other hand, will crush his throat with your wooden sword if you move forward four more inches, or if he trips on his hakama.

This is not boring, this is also something that few people can see from the outside. A photo of a skinny girl in a nice dress with the expected lighting on the expected seamless background is going to be called fashion by most people. Substitute skinny for sexy and the dress for some underwear and now you've got glamour. But some photographers are still being highly paid to take shots that look somewhat like those, and some people can see the difference. The model and the makeup and the stylist makes the difference, not the camera or the lighting diagram. The partner who is willing and capable of attacking at the edge of your ability to defend is going to make your technique look awfully good.

In Aikido there is a tendency to bring along your own attackers if you are a big teacher. Often this is explained by saying the art is too dangerous for working with strangers, that someone who is used to the teacher must take his falls. Eh, maybe, but personally I don't buy it. Most of the time in Aikido the attacker is lower ranked than the defender because the defender is the teacher. There's lots of reasons for this, mostly it's tradition, but I think it's also in large part that instructors can't take the falls any more. So that explains the balance of power dynamics which says you can't just pick Joe Blow from the class to throw, but again, I've got a different idea. It's because your usual lower-ranked student in a seminar isn't going to know how to attack, he's going to make you look awkward and force you to wrench him around into the throw you want to teach.

In the sword arts I practice the attacker and defender roles are reversed from the usual Aikido model. The higher rank attacks, the lower defends and wins. This means the attacker has the control, and the defender is always working hard to keep up and try to control the technique being studied.

It could be the same in Aikido, it should be the same. The problem is, few people explain this and beginners see teacher throwing student so figure that's how you learn. Teacher is demonstrating what should be learned, but should always explain that learning goes from experienced attacker to inexperienced defender. It seldom goes efficiently the other way. How many classes of Aikido have I attended where the beginners learned how to throw by being crushed into the ground by the more experienced people. None? OK I was one of the rag dolls for a lot of years in our club and yes, I learned how to do aikido "backwards and in high heels" as Ginger Rogers said, and I wouldn't have traded that for the world, but it was a tough way to learn. I never saw the technique, I felt it through my hands and had to translate it to understand the other side. Oh, and I wasn't getting crushed into the ground either, I was being thrown to the edge of my ability to handle it. First and foremost I learned how to be the best attacker I could be.

Yes, I like to have my own attacker when I'm demonstrating Niten Ichiryu from the winner's side. I like to have someone who will try to take my head off so that the students can see what a struggle it really is to stay alive. I also try to remember to switch the roles and push that student to show a good technique and I explain at least two times a year that the teaching side is the attacking side.

A good enemy makes a good budoka.

What about iaido? There it's absolutely critical that you have a good enemy. Yes you're really just waving a sword in the air, and that's all you'll ever do until you make your imaginary enemy appear, and then make him better than you. Solo practice is the one place where you can't pretend to be doing budo, you either are or you are doing calesthenics. You can pretend if you're waving sticks with a partner and you can pretend when you're wrenching your partner around in aikido. Until you get an honest attack from a good enemy you're going to continue pretending.

You're going to console yourself that you could take a photo with your point-and-shoot that looks as good as Juergen Teller's if your model only used Dove and you learned to photoshop.

Get a good enemy for your budo and a good model for your photography and you're going to look like you know what you're doing.

A New Broom Sweeps Clean

Sure as the turning of the seasons there are new faces at the gym who insist on seeing your passport and taking your fingerprints to give you a clean towel. They've been told to check because of all those naughty faculty who sneek into the place without paying to exercise, even though those same faculty have long joined a shiny new gym down the street for the same money as our old worn-out, flooded floored, crumbling sauna'd, facility.

Every few years a new supervisor shows up and I have to explain all over again what it is we do... only I don't. I've fobbed that job off with the threat that if the students can't be bothered to step up for this kind of job, it's obviously not important enough to them... and therefore to me.

New brooms.

Recently, and for the second time in four years, the student government has decided that the Photo Arts Club has too much space in the administration building. Now the PAC is in a purpose built space of two darkrooms and a studio so I'm sure all the hundreds of existing and want to be clubs are constantly wondering why we get so much room when they are doubled and tripled up in offices. The last time we had this argument it was pretty obvious that the PAC predates the building and the student administration and it was further demonstrated that the space isn't even listed under the student union documents. In other words, at some point in the past we started using the student union as a convenient administrative framework for the club, to keep our finances in order by using them as an outside check, but in no way were we created as a student union club... could not have been since the club and the space were pre-existing. Sort of obvious yes?

So of course, with a new kid in charge of clubs we get another email that says we've got too much space. And not surprising to me, after we send back a "check your notes we did this four years ago" we get an email requesting the notes.

New Broom must have swept those files right out the door.

A new broom does not sweep clean, it just stirs the dirt around until it's softened up a bit. A new broom needs to be used carefully only in places where cleaning doesn't matter much until it becomes flexible and is able to get into the corners without damaging the walls.

A newish, experienced broom sweeps clean. A new broom just stirs the dirt around and makes everyone annoyed because of all the dust in the air and the useless noise of those stiff bristles.

An old broom? Worn out and tired can usually do the job but not as fast as it once did. There's complicated, crucial places in the house where those soft, worn bristles are still useful but not the heavy traffic areas. An old broom you keep for special jobs.

Iaido is like driving a car

Insurance companies, who exist on statistics, give lower premiums to people who have been driving for 10 or 20 years. That means, that even though you know all there is to know legally when you get your license (you understand it all) you are a better driver after 10 or 20 years of experience.

In classical music or just about any artistic pursuit more years of practice means better work. Newspaper cartoons, check out the first year of any cartoonist's work and compare it with that at 15 years.

Why would there be any doubt that there are things to understand which will only become apparent after a decade or two of practicing budo?

Now, can you learn how to cut someone with a sword after three weeks training? Absolutely, I've watched people cut mats after practicing for a single swing, I've watched people cut a mat in a single swing, first they've ever taken. The military all over the world trains people in a matter of weeks or months to be able to kill other people.

But that's not what we're talking about when we talk about the budo is it? You don't start practice of the sword if you're interested in MMA and you don't practice MMA if you want to kill the enemies of your country on some foreign shore.

Bottom line, if it was easy to understand the budo, the guys at the top would find a way to make it harder.

I Don't Look Like My Sensei

A friend of mine in Japan expressed some sadness a few years ago when reporting on a national iaido championships over the sameness of everyone's iai. This wasn't really all that surprising of course, with a set of judges who have standardized idea of what they want to see, you will get a serious attempt by the competitors to show that to them. It is the same for any judged sport such as gymnastics or figure skating, a certain set of expectations that are going to be met by those who move through the rounds so that as you get closer to the finals the sameness increases.

In those western sports at least you will get kata (routines) that mix up the kihon (basic jumps and spins) but in iai there is not even this chance to innovate. The kata are selected from a small set and everyone will perform them. Closest to the ideal will win.

What does vary? When a koryu kata is requested, then it's your chance to show your individual stuff.

Maybe.

You still have to get the approval of the judges and that means compromise. My sensei is considering challenging for 8dan and has been told that he will need to modify his koryu style because most of the judges practice another koryu style and expect to see things a certain way.

If you want to win competitions or pass gradings you will perform what the judges require of you. That may irritate some but you are free not to compete or grade. It's not up to you to set the standards, you accept the judgement of those who do when you stand in front of them. Otherwise don't stand in front of them.

You think a gymnast at an international level says to herself "I've got a better way to land a dismount and it involves running three steps forward"? Maybe a diver says "I think this dive calls for a giant splash at the end"? They aren't going to go very far are they? Yet what difference does sticking a landing make?

The complication comes when you add in the martial aspect of budo, when you start thinking that iai isn't a set of ideal physical techniques to be approached. I was once compared to a very talented Japanese iaido champion who has won the nationals at just about every rank. As I started puffing out my chest my sensei, who was translating at the moment, pointed a finger at me and said "That's not a compliment! The style is robotic, you hit every key point but you haven't developed any spirit".

At higher rank gradings the judges are instructed to start looking for this spirit in the challengers. By 5dan in my organization you are supposed to be technically perfect so what else do you differentiate on? This is something that you don't see in the three meter springboard. "OH his spirit was great for that last dive, you could see the intensity in his eyes. He ought to get high marks for that one". OK you got me, think back to sticking a landing in gymnastics. Think balance and poise.

The focus in koryu iai is something a little different, it has much less to do with standards and obtaining grades and winning tournaments. At least it should. In my opinion.

You see how much trouble I have making statements about koryu? It's not monolithic, it's individual and I don't even teach my koryu the way my sensei taught it to me. Well no, that's not accurate, my koryu doesn't look like his but I certainly teach it and perform it as he taught it to me. You see, I'm a different size, I weigh more and my injuries are different than his so he taught me to do things the way he figured I should do them, not necessarily the way he does them.

This includes the little style things, the twitches and bobs that juniors figure are so very important. Some things I was taught and maintain, some things I was taught and my sensei has moved away from, or back to, but where we differ makes no difference. If we can both show how the movement allows no opening, or permits a response to an unexpected attack, we're both correct. You can tell the same story in two different ways to an adult.

Don't try that with kids, I found that out when I read mine bedtime stories and changed the words. I was instantly benched and mom put back in because they weren't interested in hearing a different story. You read it as it was written or you get out of the bedroom. So be it, different situations call for different actions. When in a grading you do what the judges want, when on your own practicing your koryu you do what makes most sense to you at the time. In one case you have the feedback of the judges. In the other you have your sensei and if he's not there you have kasso teki.

With a grading you never have to ask why you passed or failed, you were close enough or you weren't. With the koryu it comes down to "I don't look like my sensei.... why?"

Fifteen Good Years

Something my son said the other day triggered a quick calculation in my head. I figure I might have another 15 good years to do what I want to do with my life. After that I'm likely going to be doing a lot of sitting around or mouldering.

So when the "powers that be" start to do what they inevitably do, I find I'm much more inclined to just let them do it. I've done my kicking against the watzits and it's time for the youngsters to step up. The fact that they don't seem inclined isn't of much concern to me. If they've decided it's more valuable to be a victim than to fix the problem maybe they're right. We didn't fix the problems did we?

I was following a conversation on the Kendo World forum the other day and the folks were complaining about an iaido demo with anime masks involved. It was cute and why the hell not. Life is too short to be so serious about a hobby like iai. One of the posts linked to an ad for a video of opening demonstrations at the Kyoto Taikai, a few opening kata from some of the giants in the iaido world demonstrating the kendo federation standard set for the rest of the demonstrators.

As I watched all I could think was "life is too short to watch the old farts futzing around with their sageo". Giants and heroes they may have been, I suspect they'd be the first to tell you they were past their "best by" date. You've got to respect the career that allowed them to go out there and do their iai without worrying what they looked like. Who knows, maybe if I'm still breathing in 20 years I'll even do a similar demonstration to show folks I'm still breathing, but for now I've got a narrowing window to get where I want to be and I'll fast forward through demonstrations of old folks trying to get arthritic fingers to tuck string under too-tight straps.

On the other hand, I seem to have less power and respect than I did ten years ago, maybe I won't be asked to demonstrate at all, maybe I can just sit back in the audience and enjoy myself with an ice cream while I tell the unfortunate kid sitting beside me how we did it in the old days.

Where do I need to go for my personal goals? First, I need another winter like the last, full of finishing off book projects that I started 20 years ago. I'm well into one on a couple of the "other" iai schools we practice, I have one sitting with the head of style who is proofing and will likely get back to me if I poke him, and then I'm going to look at my master list to see what else needs doing. All those books are going to be left for my students so that they can read it ten years after I'm gone and wish they'd read it while I was here so they could ask me what the hell I meant.

Yeah, I've been there. You always figure sensei is going to be around forever so you don't have to write it down and ask.

Trust me, ask now, while sensei can still show you what he means.

After this coffee I'm heading for the photo studio to do some selfies. That's another thing I've got to get at, fourty or fifty years of photographs... no wait, I don't know where my old film negatives are... ten or fifteen years of digital shooting on a two terabyte drive on my desk. Would be nice to get that stuff worked into some photo books along with my writing and get them out there before that drive craps out and I lose the lot. Another project for the winter months. I need to start thinking like Nobuyoshi Araki and put out a book a month for the rest of my life. I need to go to Japan and hang out with Araki and the rest of the Japanese photographers from his generation who are still around.

Why wasn't all this digital wonder-stuff around when I was younger? The ease of video these days keeps escaping me, it's too far beyond what I'd ever imagined. If I'd had digital cameras when my budo career was at it's height.... now that my joints are shot and I'm 40 pounds heavier I'm not producing anything video that will impress anyone. Sure it's good enough for instruction but nothing whiz bang. On the other hand, what video I do have from a decade ago might indicate my amazingness was mostly in my own head.

Ah that golden age when budoka didn't have stairs to the second floor of their houses.

When you're old enough for people to want to film you, you're too old, which is why I'm not too fussed about doing more videos. I likely will, but I'm not keen to do it like the books. Now writing, that's an ability that doesn't disappear with age. I can write exactly what it should be, or what it was, but demonstrating it? Not so much as they say.

I'm already on this earth more than twice the amount of time I thought I would be, so I'm on borrowed ground. How about you? Anything you're waiting to do? What are you waiting for? Life is too short to watch old men futzing around with their sageo, or to watch re-runs of bad 80s sitcoms because you're tired from a hard day of sitting around at work.

You think 15 years is a lot of time? Trust me it's going to go by like water over a bridge. Listen to the old fart!

Less making money, more making art!

It's not always you

In most budo clubs I know sensei says, at some point or other, "even if I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to you". It's always a good idea to listen to sensei correct someone else because in all liklihood you are making the same mistake. This is especially true if you're at around the same experience level as the guy getting corrected.

But sometimes, good, advanced students who pay close attention do themselves an injury by listening to corrections to beginners. Not all corrections are suited to all students and beginners are often expected to do things differently. By correcting themselves to the beginner level an advanced student can hold themselves back until sensei notices and asks them why they are still acting like babies.

So here's a quick and dirty guide to corrections in class.

1. if you're the newest kid on the block sensei is talking to you. No matter what.
2. but some things you ought to just store in the closet until you're told to fish them out. Deal with it.
3. if you're about the same pay grade as the kid getting reamed, you're getting reamed too.
4. if you're up the ladder by a lot, you may not be the one getting corrected but it's still a good bet to listen since you may be teaching your own beginners some day
5. listen anyway, it's polite and sensei may make a joke.
6. even if you're sensei, listen to yourself, the joke may be funny

Sensei, teachers and guys you learn from

The Kendo Federation and other such multi-art organizations with standardized curricula can create some confusion in students about who is in charge, who's their teacher and who you learn from.

At a koryu seminar recently I found myself going into a bit of a rant about it all. I was standing in front of a room full of not-students, that is, a bunch of people who were not my direct students. We were all there to practice with my teacher, the fellow who taught the teachers of 99% of those who weren't his direct students.

So far so good, but in the last several years I have heard such things as "our Japanese sensei" and "Joe sensei says" so I felt compelled to try and explain things. I can get a bit hard-assed about this stuff.

Simply put, in the koryu you have one sensei and that's it. It doesn't matter who his sensei is, or who else may be around who knows stuff. You can learn from lots of people but you've got one person who is in charge of what, when and how much you know.

Never a problem when you're in the boonies with a single teacher who isn't part of a larger organization. (Almost the definition of koryu organizational structure.) It never crosses anyone's mind to think about "our French sensei". Did that sound strange? That's the first problem isn't it? A Japanese teacher trumps any amount of experience from a local teacher according to a lot of budo students (who perhaps have little experience with Japanese people). It's a sort of reverse racism where folks assume an inborn quality... well OK it's straight out racism isn't it? I know one very high ranked Japanese-born Western teacher who has decided that his mission is to get the Japanese themselves to understand the depth of knowledge that exists in his art outside of Japan. He's got an uphill battle against both the Japanese and western students. A prophet is never respected in his home town, and it's pretty easy for western students to assume that any Japanese must know more than their local teacher. Your dad never knows as much as the neighbour down the street.

One result of being in a larger organization is a mixing of authority. In the Kendo Federation there is a standard set of practice for kendo, and standard sets of kata for iai and jo. Iaido still mixes in some koryu to the grading system but jo has removed the koryu completely. Kendo is kendo, like judo is judo and aikido is aikido. These arts are all taught as parts of a larger whole, aikido somewhat less so than the two competitive arts which have to teach to a set of competition rules but all three have a larger view than just sensei and his students. In these cases it's easy to see that you have many sensei... but even here you really don't. You have one sensei (call him coach if you want) and perhaps many teachers who help train you. You fight for or practice in one club with one guy in charge and everyone else is a trainer. Having multiple trainers sort of muddies the idea of one sensei per student. In competition it's all sort of moot, we all know who won the fight so we all know what works and what doesn't, at least in the ring. In Aikido there is no real proving ground so we get seminars where half the students are saying "well in our club we do it like this"... ouch, the competition becomes who knows the most ways to ignore what the seminar leader just showed. You don't see much competition in the koryu, which is sort of good and bad. Good because it means there is still room for variation in the teaching, not so good in that the art never gets stressed, never gets tested since the era of dueling in the back streets of Edo is over. You have one teacher of koryu who, if he likes you, might pass on the secret methods of winning a fight, but how does anyone know it works? At least that trick your kendo sensei showed you can be checked your next match, and maybe one of your other trainers also showed you a trick. As I said, it can get muddy.

Jodo in the Kendo Federation is all Shindo Muso Ryu all the time. The seitei jo is taken directly from the koryu and the word from high up is that you can learn all the lessons within seitei so there is no need to include the koryu in the examinations. I suspect it's a bit more practical than that and has more to do with the difficulty of getting people to attempt 8dan with a koryu component. Regardless, there really isn't any need to include koryu for the reason I was first given for it's inclusion in the tests... to keep the koryu alive. In iai there are several koryu at the root of the standardized set and that means that students may not be inspired to go further. Putting in a requirement for a koryu kata in a test will require them to at least meet a koryu sensei to learn a couple of kata. Jodo is all one koryu and by learning the standard set you've also learned quite a large chunk of the first few levels of the koryu. In that case why not go on?

There is competition in iai and jo, but it's not open like kendo, it's closed like gymnastics with two people approaching an ideal form that is desired by the judges. Great for standardization and a really good argument for studying with multiple trainers, preferably each one of the judges so that you can learn what makes each of them crazy (don't do that) and happy (do that). Large organizations with multiple instructors teaching the same thing in a standardized way equals confusion in the student mind as to what a sensei is.

Rank also confuses the idea of a sensei. These organizations hand out ranks which are applicable to the organization and to what is tested (the standardized set of kata). Students see these ranks and see that higher ranks teach lower ranks. This leads to the idea that a higher rank trumps sensei status. In other words, your 5dan sensei teaching you koryu gets outranked by a visiting 7dan who teaches you some koryu. Not strictly relevent. Even if the 7dan is your teacher's teacher, your teacher is your sensei.

First sensei is your sensei. Never forget that. The first will always be the most important, that's your "genetic inheritance" the basis of your personal art. What you learn first can be modified and added to but it's your base and you ought to respect the guy who gave it to you for that reason alone.

Can you ever change sensei? Sure you can. If you move to a new town as a beginner you need supervision and so you can switch to another sensei. If you're a big boy and most of your training is training and not learning, maybe you stay with your original sensei and visit when you can for touch-ups.

Has your sensei died? You can change, when your sensei dies the line breaks and you can either stay on your own or connect with another sensei. There is a peculiar sort of idea in the west that if your sensei is Japanese from Japan and he dies, you have to go with his successor in Japan, even if that guy is less experienced than you are. This is rather silly from a teaching point of view, what can a junior teach you? I mean aside from the observation that you can learn from anyone, it doesn't make much sense to have a sensei who is less experienced than you are. What does make sense is if you want to stay with the same organization and a person who is less experienced than you is in the top position in that organization. What you're talking about there is administrative jobs rather than teaching positions and in many places rank does not equate with organizational position. In fact I suspect it rarely does unless you're in a place where sensei has to do it all because of few students to take over the paperwork. Chief administrator does not imply chief instructor, and a good administrator will make it clear to higher ranked instructors that he respects them as such. Nothing splits an organization faster than some "jumped up junior" telling his betters what they ought to teach.

Even in the case of a koryu lineage where your Japanese sensei has a student who takes over the dojo and that student is more experienced than you are, it is not automatic that a new sensei-student relationship is created. Sempai-kohei to sensei-deshi may not be an easy transition for either party and either side can break it at that moment.

Now do I go on and on like this to my own students? No of course not, and I don't actually care who they learn from or who they call their sensei. If they want to call me sensei, and my sensei their sensei that's fine with me. They're still my student and I'm going to worry about them.

On the other hand, if they wander off and start calling some stranger I've never seen their sensei I'm also good with that but I'm going to happily turn their extra-technical instruction over to that stranger. One less headache for me and I hope the other guy accepts them as a "student" rather than as a student so that he actually does put himself on the line for them when they need it.

See, this isn't all just an academic exercise. In a very real way I will put myself on the line for my sensei, I'll support him in his fights and follow his lead. I'll also back up my students and put myself on the line for them. This is the koryu we're talking here, rather than the standardized organizational kata. In that case the best thing to do for your students is to send them out often to learn from other judges, to spread them out so they are as standardized as the kata and they have the best chance of passing their next grade. In fact, at higher ranks in any organization the more you get your face in front of the senior ranks, the better your chances.

But never misunderstand the situation. The senior ranks in an organization like the kendo federation will have a generalized, standardized responsibility to the students and the higher ranks and the organization itself. Something like loyalty to the company you work for. That's far different from the family-like situation I'm talking about in the koryu.

I'm Becoming My Mother

My granny used to say that bad things came in threes. I used to figure that too, when I was young, and didn't know any better. Now I realize that bad things just keep coming.

As we get older we discover that we're "becoming our father" or mother. Well my mother was a rather antisocial person who was a front-line health worker for most of her life. When she got older she had less and less inclination to interact with anyone.

Me too.

It's because it seems like nobody ever learns anything, or even remembers anything. Of course what I'm dealing with is youth who haven't learned yet (but figure they know it all) and institutions which have no memory at all because they don't pay people enough to stay and remember.

The University gym where I've taught aikido, iaido, self defense and TKD for over 30 years doesn't remember who I am from one year to the next as the kids they hired move on to real jobs and the next ones figure we need another zumba-spin class. I stopped using the weight room and sauna because both are usually broken. (A weight room is broken when you are constantly scared some idiot is going to drop a weight on you and when some 70-pounder is at the deadlift station with 20 pounds on the olympic bar). Bought my own weights and built my own sauna at home and now I wonder how I spent so many years and so much money up on the hill. I used to help fix the place when something needed doing but when we went from members to clients I figured it was someone else's job. Apparently it wasn't.

Every year I have to justify myself and the club, the very club that earns the University many thousands of dollars annualy for the May seminar.

I rejoined the University Photo Arts Club after almost 40 years (I was a member in the '70s) when I got a call for support saying the student government wanted to take it's studio and turn it over to some other student club. Since the Photo Arts club predates the building, let alone the student government (there were at least three before this one while the PAC happily ignored them all) the attempt failed, but not until a lot of stress and fuss was created. Well two or three years later some bright new light in the student government has decided that we have three rooms too many... presumably the two darkrooms and the studio. These are purpose-built rooms for something that should never have been under the student government in the first place and now we have to start the whole process of justifying ourselves all over again because some new kid has a new job and figures the best thing to do is change everything that went before.

Speaking of the May seminar, I find myself justifying it once more. Next year will be the 25th edition but apparently some more new folks haven't a clue what it is or what it's for. We'll see what happens but you know, as each year goes along, as each new person has new ideas that I have to endure, I seem to have less energy to deal with it.

In the spring I plan to build a dojo beside the sauna.

Saya no Uchi

On a recent seminar Ohmi sensei mentioned saya no uchi so I thought I'd write a bit on it. Among many things, Sensei said that his secret was in the scabbard, that one should win before drawing the sword, that to draw 100 times and win 100 times was just luck, to not draw was skill. Students frowned in confusion.

So a bit of background. Saya no uchi was one of the old names for iaido, and it would perhaps have originally meant exactly what it says. Stuff you do when your sword is in the scabbard.

Kono Hyakuren said that the secret of iai is in the scabbard, it would be masterful to defeat an opponent without drawing the sword but if forced, the crucial moment is when the sword leaves the scabbard. To win 100 times in 100 encounters is not the way of mortals, to win without drawing is the secret.

Yokoyama Hiromichi, in a letter from 1996 said that his teacher, Yamamoto Harusuke made this very clear. Iaijutsu is saya no uchi, Iai exists until kenjutsu takes part. Iai exists in the saya. If you fail to kill without quick kiritsuke and nukitsuke he draws his sword and now it is kenjutsu against kenjutsu.

Ohmi sensei said that you must obtain victory while the sword is still in the saya. This is a familiar concept to kendo, hit the opponent, then swing your shinai. It means, in a very practical way, that you must put your opponent at a disadvantage before attacking or the outcome will certainly be in doubt. It can also mean having the correct attitude, you will not win if you don't see a victory in your mind. Sun Tsu stated that victorious warriors obtain the win before going to war. Losers go to war and then seek to win. Think about the past few "asian wars" to understand this. Think about Afganistan, what was the mission? What were the parameters of victory? The very mention of "mission creep" usually means a war is about to be lost, or at the least not won.

Saya no uchi no kachi is sometimes interpreted as a moral, spiritual victory by not drawing the sword and this is often contrasted with the more "battle ready" idea of winning before striking. The Kendo Federation states that those who practice iai will develop a well trained, indomitable soul where the morality and character of budo is calmly possessed and this will so overwhelm the enemy that one will win without drawing the sword. They also mention winning before drawing of course. This overwhelming of the opponent is expressed physically in iai in the concept of nuki tsuke in Omori Ryu or the first two kata of kendo federation iai, to suppress the opponent with the draw so that if he backs down before saya banari, the point where the sword leaves the scabbard, all is finished.

Up to now we have saya no uchi simply being the name for iaido. We have the idea of iaido being that stuff that happens when the sword is in the scabbard, that iaido "is" saya no uchi. Then we have the idea that iaido exists because the sword is in the saya, and that victory is already present in the saya. "The fight is yours to lose".

To extend this a bit further, the idea of saya no uchi can be considered as a metaphore. You have a sword in a saya, you have skill in the budo and can defeat any opponent, you have a strong army, a nuclear weapon. Big Dogs don't pay much attention to small dogs, so a man with skills in iaido doesn't need to draw his sword out of fear. He can withold it and thus defuse the fight. A small dog is scared and declares his willingness to fight the big dog, the big dog accepts or declines, only if he accepts will there be a fight. If you have no weakness, no openings in your kamae there can be no attacks that succeed and so no reason to attack (and thus open yourself up to a counterattack since no attack is ever without an opening).

It is fear that is the problem. Fear causes attack and there are many types of fear. There is much talk lately about the end of the American Empire and one of the main features of the end of any empire has been that series of small indecisive wars which occur as the empire tries to maintain its dominance and does nothing more than prove it no longer has the heart for a fight. The USA has a military which is stronger than the next five or six largest militaries combined, but it (thankfully) has no will to use it. I say thankfully because my country is, and has always been, a logical target for expansion. With the loss of the Soviet Union there is no challenge to the firepower of the USA and no reason to get into small proxy wars so all should be peaceful, a big, big dog sunning itself on the front steps. Yet this giant has gone into Iraq, Afganistan and who knows where else, expending old munitions, granted, but chasing whisps, bits and scraps of something called "terrorists" and creating far more of them than it has eliminated. There is nothing like a decades long war on the borders to prove that the old Roman Army hasn't got it any more. And why? Fear, fear from the leaders who won't commit to a major war of extermination and expansion (those days are over), fear that is cynically used to keep the leaders in power and distract the population with "dangerous enemies".

Better to keep the sword in the scabbard, better to simply ignore the little yapping dog nips around the heels. The little cur will run out of bravado and the fear will take over, or perhaps its owner will drag it away for fear that the sword will be drawn.

Saya no Uchi

The Right to Regret

Many years ago I was a qualified CPR instructor and it was during that period that I was sitting in the sauna and noticed I'd managed to put my heart into fibrillation. I excitedly told all the other guys about it and made them feel my pulse, and then went home to bed. Around 4am I woke in a sweat, it hadn't fixed itself (amazing) and I told my wife who phoned the hospital. Those folks said "hang up and phone the ambulance" but she figured it was fine, she'd drive me.

Three shots of digoxin later they almost hit me with the paddles but I went to the washroom first and on the walk I flipped back to sinus rhythm.

Despite being a qualified CPR guy who knew about such things, I ignored my own knowledge and carried on. I would never have regretted my decisions if the heart had stopped that night, but perhaps I learned something. I think mostly I learned that not all wives keep their husbands healthy because they insist hubby get medical attention when they need it, but I also learned (again) that I can be an idiot. I never had anybody to blame for that little episode, not even my wife since it's not her job to look after my health and well being.

I have taught self-defence for 30 years (seems it isn't needed any more so not this year). Last weekend I hooked up with a girl and we were both into some stick-play. I was really enjoying it, even when she went a bit too far, so I didn't say anything. Nothing like a good jolt of pain induced adrenalin to cloud the judgement but oh what a rush. Today though, I am regretting the giant bruise on my ribs. All my years of telling people to look after themselves, to make their intentions clear, to break away and get out of situations they don't want to be in and I end up with my lower ribs bent by a playmate. Thing is, I can't blame her really, I agreed to let her swing sticks at me and I didn't get out of the way fast enough. Maybe my regret will turn into a lesson I can use if someone comes at me with a sword instead of a stick.

The one thing I would not want to happen is for the government to decide that I can't consent to getting hit with a stick, then I wouldn't learn anything except the cost of not getting any exercise through my pseudo-dangerous hobbies.

Kata and Theory in Niten Ichiryu

I received a question about Niten Ichiryu recently which touched on kata and theory and real-life fighting (as any discussion of Musashi almost inevitably does.

The question: Can we find the principles and techniques Musashi talks about in the Go Rin no Sho in the modern kata of HNIR? Musashi describes a wild, realistic fight scenario and wrote about fundamental, universal fighting principles with a sword that give you the chance to live. There is nothing static or no "ritualized" guidelines that tell you "stop here...hold your sword here...go forward and then stop and cut now - do this and this and this...." which we can see in the kata today from HNIR.

Good question. The Go Rin no Sho contains 5 kata, the nito seiho and depending on how you translate those instructions they are actually quite specific and are read as guidelines like any other descriptions of kata. Those who study the Niten Ichiryu read (or should read) the book quite often and to us it does read like a manual.

The other chapters which contain more theory are read quite widely by students of the Japanese sword from many arts and some of what Musashi wrote is more or less the common language of the sword. Hold the sword in the last two fingers, see the opponent but also see his intention, these are now "old chestnuts" (theory) of the arts. So yes indeed, my study of Niten Ichiryu includes and is informed by what is written in the Go Rin no Sho, always has been. Most of what I know can be found in that book. I just finished a koryu iaido seminar with my sensei, Goyo Ohmi, and he is currently reading a copy of the Go Rin no Sho which he picked up at a rummage sale. He advised everyone in the school to read it as well, but to watch out for bad translations as he found one that was completely off base and he "threw it away". I hope he wasn't talking about my version, which he may not have found yet on his tablet.

Question 2: Can you give some information on which year or in which period of time and by whom these kata were founded?

The five Nito Seiho kata are contained in the Go Rin no Sho so they are "original". Can each line of Niten get their Nito kata from what is written? Perhaps with some effort. I know that the first time I read the book (after I started practicing the ryu) I only got the kamae from the descriptions, I couldn't get the technique. After many more readings and thought I can get closer but won't ever be really confident that what I was taught is exactly what Musashi taught.

Is that a problem?

There is no film, photograph or detailed manual of Musashi's techniques. This is the same with all Japanese schools of sword, there is much to be filled in from any of the writings. Things change over time. Look at all the lines of Niten, calculate generations back to the split-off of each, consider that we all start with the kamae and perhaps we could come back to a root movement. All lines and all teachers emphasize some aspects of the technique, their students take this as gospel and reinforce or damp it down as they teach their own students. This is how things change but if the core remains I figure we're good.

As for the rest of the kata, the kotachi seiho and the tachi seiho, I don't know when they came into the school. I do know that most of the lines of Niten use the same names and look roughly the same so they have existed through many splits and must be old. I know that in my line there were three Santo generations (hence my line being "santo ha") before Aoki sensei who was the seventh head. I assume Grandfather Santo knew what Grandchild Santo was being taught so I assume a conservative time there, not much change through three generations. Aoki sensei once commented that the two extra nito sets (sessa and aikuchi) were "recently created) so those must be younger than the shoto set or the single sword set. Those five sets came to Aoki sensei from the Santo generations so I have always assumed that the kodachi and tachi sets were there at least by the time of the first Santo sensei, who would have been the fourth head. My guess is that those kata came in at minimum by the third head, so Musashi's student or grand-student which would, in all probability mean that Musashi was teaching them but didn't include them in the Go Rin no Sho since they were not all that unusual at the time. The nito seiho were worth noting down and Musashi suggested they were his entire school. Not being able to read his actual words, I might suggest he meant that they were what he considered most important, or perhaps that they contained all of his wisdom in one place. Or maybe he did indeed only teach those five kata to his students. This last I doubt very much.

The two extra sets? There are photos of Aoki sensei in bogu in the nito seiho kamae with shinai, he was a kendo teacher, and the extra nito sets seem quite suited to nito kendo so perhaps they were developed by Aoki sensei himself? I'm not that much of a scholar of the school to know.

Techniques drift, theory tends to stick. Theory can be expressed in many physical forms so kata change with the generations.

Stuff my Sensei Said 1

My sensei said that some advice from Japanese Admiral Yamamoto on training went: Show them, explain it to them, make them sweat and then praise them.

My sensei said that he uses: Show them, explain it to them, make them sweat, then criticize them, tell them what's wrong.

If you praise students they think they understand it and stop improving. Just tell them "dame" (dah may) and make them do it again.

Off In the Wilderness

One of my long-time internet acquaintances is from South America and has expressed some concerns about his own zen ken ren iai (seitei) practice (is he up to date) what he's teaching his students (are they learning correctly) and his own conservatism (demanding more from his junior students) which might be mirroring the Japanese-led creep toward higher standards for higher grades (the lower pass rates as students pile up at the higher ranks).

Been there, still there. I started my iai practice in 1983 with a bit of Muso Shinden Ryu koryu and worked away at that mostly by myself for four years. In 1987 I found a teacher who was Kendo Federation but it was another four years before the CKF organized an iai section and the first gradings were held. We started with whatever we had picked up about the zen ken ren iai, which was the first seven techniques, most of the instructors here having left Japan when there were only 7 in existance. Books were our guide for the kata from 7 to 10 while we worked hard to build students and contact others in order to bring a teacher from Japan. Once we started our annual seminar in Guelph we picked up the last three kata and got the latest instruction on all 10. As we learned this we adjusted our standards to the new levels, keeping to a two year cycle. The first year we taught the "changes", then at the grading we passed students on the old standard but noted that next year they had to change. The second year we would deduct points for anyone who hadn't changed yet.

Over the years, as we have kept up through the seminar and our own skills have increased, it has been hard to resist the urge to demand instant changes from challengers, and to judge to our own skill level rather than to what is reasonable for beginners. In other words, as we get better we naturally tend to figure beginners should get better too. OK maybe if our teaching skills are increasing with our knowledge the students might learn a bit faster, but gradings are as much about reminding us what the students know as they are about meeting some sort of standard in our heads. You look at the first few students with a generous heart and you judge the rest based on what the first few know (always provided they meet the minimum standard of course). If you go in hard-assed, the pass rates are low.

But low pass rates say as much about the instructors as they do about the students don't they? How are your teaching skills if your students can't pass your standards? Or we might be talking about a bell curve here, just set the pass percent and judge on a sliding scale to make sure you meet the required standard. In that case it doesn't matter how talented your students are, the curve will ensure the result you want overall, you're not working to an objective standard any more, but against fellow students. The best of the bunch will pass, the worst, over a standard or not, will not.

What about the piling up of rank that is supposedly happening in Japan? That country won't give out anything beyond 8dan and the society is a very aged one, resulting in a lot of older folk with 8dan. Since you really don't want all that many folks at the upper level of any organization (a good recipe for a split) you wind down the pass rate which then starts to trickle down until beginners are being asked for a lot. If we're full at 8dan, then 7dan becomes the obtainable goal to shoot for. 7 starting to get plugged up?...

Is that the best way to handle the situation? There is the further level of hanshi that helps, but what about putting in a 9dan once more? not my call, so instead, what about trying to reverse the declining numbers of students overall and making more regional divisions, smaller in area but larger in numbers. That will open up more spaces for more 8dan and relieve the pressure on the beginners.

But again, not our call here in the west, and to tell the truth, not our problem, we're not hachidan heavy over here. Except that it is our problem. We take our cue from our admiration of all things Japan and we grade according to their standards for that reason. We also take our cue from Japanese teachers who come to the west and tell us our standards aren't the same as Japan. Our official standards? Not much change there in the last 15 years that I've been paying attention, the guidelines haven't been re-written, we're talking the unwritten rules here and folks outside Japan ought to consider whether we need to tighten those rules or not. Consider carefully why you are changing them and how you are cranking up the fail rates. When I was a grad student our department went through a review and they were told that if they were going to demand PhD level work from Master's students they ought to give them a PhD.

This is the situation as I see it within the Kendo Federation, but a bigger question arises. The main concern of those who are out of touch with the latest standards of kendo federation iai should be to get in touch with them. Kendo iai is just that, the iai of that federation, and it has no wider application in the world. It is what the FIK countries use to give out rank that is applicable in that organization, it isn't a worldwide standard set of iai. My friend commented that he felt he had learned a lot over the years of training but wasn't sure that applied to his Kendo Federation iai. It might, it might not. His students are passing their gradings so he's likely not too far off the path, but why is he on the path at all?

Koryu iai is really the place where those outside the centers of Kendo iai should be, as koryu is almost pathologically un-standardized. We can see arguments over where to put the thumb on the tsuba in two students of the same teacher. Now you get that sort of concern in seitei too, but there you have a "true way" so to speak, it's whatever the committee in Japan decides it is. For a koryu student the answer to the question isn't what a committee says, it's "what will work". Many things work, so there is room for individual learning through long and serious study on one's own. In other words, a student out of touch with the Kendo world is out of touch with seitei but can still advance in iaido by working honestly and critically on his own koryu.

What he learns may or may not apply to seitei, but the only way to know that is to be in front of a teacher on the committee, or one who is up on the current standards. I make no claims that this is good or bad, but it is the way of seitei. There we have an answer, there we have a standard that is applied to a rank structure. There we have standards, methods and instructional techniques that can and do change over time. Without being in touch with the federation it will be difficult to keep up. Just a fact of life in the wilderness.

So why do those in the wilds practice seitei? Supply. Supply of opportunity to learn a set of iai (there are lots of seitei semnars, they're very open to the public) and supply of instructors themselves (anyone qualified can teach seitei to anyone, it's the nature of the beast) so those in the wilderness are likely to have learned seitei, and will have more chances for instruction due to multiple teachers drifting around the planet. It's a lot less likely that someone will run across a koryu iai than seitei iai and those who wish to practice the art will practice what they can.

I have no conclusions to make here, it's hard in the wilderness. My solution was to work hard to establish a group large enough to bring in instruction which we've done for 25 years now. It happens that all this tightening up of rank has also changed the dynamics for us, and we may once again find ourselves out in the wilderness. This time we're in a much different situation, and as some have suggested, perhaps it's time to "do it for ourselves".

It's not a wilderness if a bunch of you live there.

We're Going to Talk

I see that Nigeria is in talks with Boko Harum. It's all well and good to come over all idealogue and refuse to talk to those who are in a disagreement with you, but to do that you have to be overwhelmingly more powerful than your foes. In the usual case, you have to be able to defeat them militarily and be willing to annex their territory to make sure they don't rise again to fight you. Get them down and keep them there.

If you just punch them on the nose and walk away it isn't going to do much.

Then there are the ones who have a god on their side. In this case you can't even defeat and oppress them, their power is as absolute as their god and they will be victorious after you're both dead. No amount of beating them up is going to make any difference.

No, check out the history of warfare and you'll find a very small era of kings fighting kings with professional armies to settle disputes... no wait, there were treaties afterward weren't there. Even in the age of European wars there was the talking afterward and if the talking wasn't done well there was another war just as soon as folks forgot what a horrid experience war is.

Then there was the age of the duel, "Gentlemen can we settle this amicably... no? Then take your positions". A duel was what happened if someone refused to talk, and if both men survived, there was talking afterward to make sure honour was satisfied.

So how much talking is done in your martial art? Does your budo training include life lessons in how to listen, how to reason, how to argue and make your point? Or do you just study how to punch someone in the nose?

In my local used book store (sadly now gone) there was a book titled "Logical Self Defence" in the martial art section. It was all about logic, how to tell a crap argument from a good one. I laughed when I first saw it there but later I thought it was good right where it was.

I'm tempted to write a book, maybe "Logical Budo: The Ultimate Self Defence".

Ad Hominum, an attack on the man rather than the argument. Probably the most common logic in politics today and certainly the most effective. This is the reason attack ads exist.
Example: "Your plan to redevelop the docklands is garbage because you mistreat your dog."
Application: You try to punch a man in the nose while he has a sword in his hand.

Budo as the Art of War II

A bit more on the idea that budo is training for war. Mostly I'm talking about the koryu and yes I know folks argue over budo vs koryu, I had the same argument with my brother when I was a kid. I had a little metal wheelbarrow and he said it was steel. We had a fistfight because he was just wrong.

Further to the last piece, of course one can use individual combat as an analogy for the movements on a battlefield, but a much better analogy would be chess, or go, or even better, American football since it's a team sport and deals with capturing territory. Musashi did command troops at one point, and was talking to a single reader when he wrote, so the analogy between individual swordsmanship and larger battlefield movements was natural to him. But it's a bit of a stretch to assume that one could command troops in the field by studying Hyoho Niten Ichiryu.

It's actually somewhat questionable that one can command the students in one's dojo with the skills developed in any martial art. The arts that are large enough and widespread enough to compare to armies might be kendo and judo, both are somewhat united, but with a bit of reflection one can see that's because of an external influence, the international competition. Again, a "game" seems better at getting cohesive team (ie warfare) skills out of people than an "art". I will assume we can't come up with a non-sportified martial art that's of any comparable size and united in such a way as those two.

As Karl Friday pointed out many years ago in this discussion, both Olympic and military marksmen use guns, but that doesn't mean that biathlon would be great training for desert or even mountain warfare. Sasen (the key technique of Niten Ichiryu) will certainly end a duel in a quick and decisive manner, but I think even the old British Army proved to themselves the ineffectiveness of such a direct attack (with bayonet fixed) on entrenchments and heavy gunfire by the end of the first world war. Bravery and skill with a sword would not have done much better in a frontal assault on the trenches of Kyoto in 1467.

The koryu generally don't address fundamentals like logistics and managing people. Yes the Gorin no Sho actually does have something to say about such things but that's not core to the school itself. I don't know too many koryu instructors who are also teaching small and large unit tactics and logistics, or even how to manage the front office in a similar way, so OK perhaps the closest we've got is Musashi's Gorin if you stipulate that it's the supplemental textbook for Niten Ichiryu training. Again, a stretch.

Is there a single koryu ken school out there that teaches even paired fighting, let alone fighting in units of three or four? Dueling one on one isn't warfare.

Speaking of which, and returning to the commercial comments. George Silver, c1600 was complaining about Saviolo and that snobby upper class rapier stuff taught for money, instead of good old mutton and beer English backswording.

Same time as Musashi complaining about Katori Shinto Ryu.

Commodification and the complaints about it are not new, think about the UFC and Spike TV (is that still a thing?) which led to stuffed full classes of American and Canadian jiu jutsu.

Advertising works, get a movie that features some martial art or another and you get a bunch of new students. But who stays and why? Always my question.

Here's another one, my old TKD instructor used to say that nobody stays in TKD for 10 years on the off chance that they'll get into a bar fight... how about staying in a koryu for 30 years so they can master all the great battlefield knowledge...

Oops, too danged old to hike from point A to B and then fight for 3 days without sleep. Best find some young guys and do the fast training program and send them instead.

Surface Area or Depth?

Lots of schools and kata or stick to one school and drill down deep? I listed all of the kata we do in our dojo and came up with 240 or so in six or seven different schools. How useful is that? What about sticking to 12 kata and doing them really well, is that better?

One art or many arts, one kata or many, it's the process that's the key to what you're trying to do, not the particular art.

For example, it's the concentration on what you're doing that provides the meditative benefits of practice, not the specific movement. You could be counting breaths, arranging flowers, making tea or tapping sticks together, as long as you're being mindful of what you're doing right now, in the moment, you aren't cycling through useless and destructive thoughts about the rest of your life.

So learning kata after kata of different weapons, or doing a single kata with deeper and deeper understanding would both be about equal for keeping your thoughts about the job and the wife to a minimum.

Another aspect would be to consider what the "founder" of your lineage knew... if he knew a little about a lot, he'd teach that, if he knew a lot about one thing, he might teach that. Unless you're making it up as you go, you teach what you know.

Third way of looking at big-kata-numbers schools would be as a "commercial" enterprise. Musashi made cracks about Katori Shinto Ryu being flashy "to attract students". Why wouldn't this be a simple statement of what actually happened back then, it happens now. Students like learning lots and lots of different kata and weapons, it gives the illusion of learning (stay on the steep part of the learning curve) and it's more fun that doing the same boring thing over and over again. Let's face it, those who choose martial arts for their self improvement over, say, zen sitting are probably a bit ADD to begin with, want new stuff all the time to distract them rather than just counting breaths and staring at the tip of their nose for hours, days and years.

Unemployed warrior, knows lots of moves with spear, sword, staff, and has no other job... lots of time to practice it all.... sogo bujutsu.

Later on you get a fellow with a job, wife, kids, Chamber of Commerce meetings, he may decide to concentrate on the sword since he likes that best... kenjutsu and the rest of it is "lost".

A generation or so later, a headmaster finds sword students a bit rare, and stick fighting becoming popular... hey we just decided to start teaching the ancient stick arts of our school! Battlefield tested!

In other words, why would the martial arts world of 1607 be so different than that of 2014? Students show up to learn how to be bad-butt fighters, and end up staying because.... well they're never really sure why but they do.

Along the way they may 1. become better people because martial arts make them better people or 2. become better because one becomes a better person as one gets older. Who knows?

Stick with the process, you can get the canoe across the lake with a teaspoon if you stick at it long enough.

Budo As The Art of War

Late 1500s Japan:

Trench warfare.

Volley firing in 3 ranks of 1000 guns each rank .

A battlefield with more guns on it than existed in all of Europe at the time...

Whatever would make anyone think that the koryu were to train people for war? You don't need, nor have you ever needed the kind of skills you learn in a koryu for a battlefield.

Even Musashi had to stretch it a bit more than it should ever be stretched when he suggested that an individual fight was somehow analogous to a battlefield. To see the big in the little is not a bad thing in itself, but don't confuse the little with the big. You can certainly draw lessons from individual training in a sword school and apply them to large fights, but nobody ever had to supply their sword with food and water for months at a time during fighting season. The actual battle might include feints and timing and all sorts of things you can look at in a sword school but as Musashi himself might have said, there's the timing of the accountant for getting your taxes in on time, the timing of the mechanic to change your oil before the big vacation trip. That was his point I suppose, the principles behind the kata of the sword school are a lot more important than the actual movements because the principles can be applied elsewhere. But having your sword at 45 degrees rather than 30 degrees when it's in hasso is a somewhat trivial matter if you are thinking about marching the third army onto the enemy's left flank.

The schools of sword in Europe that rose at about the same time were pretty much analogous to the ryuha I would suggest, and the fact that Japan took a couple centuries off from war had much more to do with the survival of the koryu than their inherent value as warfare training. The loss of the European schools would also be a function of those schools' usefulness on the battlefields of the west. Europe had 300 years of almost constant warfare during the Tokugawa era. Wars against each other and all the military might of the rest of the world. I'd suggest they found more efficient ways of training soldiers by 1900 than they had in 1600.

When I said no wars in Japan you might suggest I neglected to mention the many police actions against peasant revolts which were dealt with quite well by sword and spear. Organized forces with superior training facing peasants aren't going to require guns and cannon, blades will usually be enough so why break out the guns, especially if you don't want the peasants to have guns. If the peasants have guns the police are going to need cannon because superior weaponry makes up for inferior numbers. Do we learn that from the budo? No we learn that the fight is assumed to be sword on sword or close to it, and we rely on years-long skills to win, not a bigger sword or a repeating-sword-launcher. The budo are not efficient methods of coersion and killing.

Don't think war, think dueling with a weapon that you carry on your hip. As long as swords were fashionable in the west, sword schools lived. Take off the sword and the schools had better convert to sport or self-improvement classes, their use as practical tools has gone. The modern equivalent of the western dueling schools? You fill it in.

Budo creates the right mindset for the battlefield? I'm pretty sure my budo aren't anything like the training kids get at boot camp. My students seem to get more mule headed and independant with each passing year. (Years? What use is that when we need cannon fodder yesterday?) If I ordered Sei Do Kai to go charge that hill I'm pretty sure they'd flip me the bird and walk around it.

No, it's a different method of training and a different timescale altogether. Now all the good things about people that the budo are supposed to create, a sense of honour and loyalty, a sense of higher purpose than self-gratification, an ability to empathize with others, those are things that are desirable in recruits and officers because they can be bent toward the will of the politician who uses them, but they have to be modified and directed through boot camp before they can be put to military use. The Christmas truce in the trenches of 1914 was a nice story of sweetness and light and the officers on both sides made damned sure it wasn't repeated. Nobody wants to be killing large numbers of jolly good chaps, you've got to see the other guys as inhuman monsters.

The budo are not about seeing other people as inhuman monsters.

Let Praise Roll Off

Like water off a duck's back. We do this anyway don't we? Thousands of "attaboy" on the net, but they are all turned to acid in your mouth by a single jerk saying something bad. And then we decide to give up a bit more freedom, a bit more privacy to "end cyberbullying".
Thank the tigers for that. We aren't really built to weigh up the good and bad, the pros and cons of any action.... well actually yes we are, from a couple hundred generations back when we got the thinking parts of our brains, but the deeper parts, the parts we got from half-upright ancestors who shared the margins of the forest with the tigers couldn't afford to think too much. Hear a noise in the grass, jump! If there was nothing there, no big deal. If there was a tiger at least you've got a running start and you can maybe hope that your buddy wasn't so fast off the mark.

Assume the worst and you might be able to survive it. Assume the worst and you won't be disappointed if you're wrong. Assume the best and you're tiger-food.

So take on that negative stuff and 'ware the cyber-tigers in the cyber-grass.

Your sensei knows you don't listen to praise, so he doesn't give it to you. He just tells you what you're doing wrong and grunts when you get it right. You should do the same. If sensei does say "attaboy" you should just let it go over your head because the other thing we're really good at is putting things in the "done" bin. We glance at the road and make life-or-death decisions on that glance, we're already looking the other way when we pull out on a road that we just stuck into the "clear" bin.

When sensei says "good swing" we chuck that into the "got it" bin and stop working on our swing. We ought not do that. Nor ought we to assume that our opponent in a fight is going to act like we expect him to. We ought to reject the assumptions in the cause of continued existance and improvement.

Don't take on the praise, only the problems, look for the problems, assume the problems are there and keep working to overcome them. I can't tell you how many Aikido seminars I went to and watched the sensei demonstrate one thing only to have the students assume they saw something they didn't... and proceed to do whatever they had in the brain-cache under "shihonage". Same goes for any art, but I first figured it out in Aikido so special mention.

Rustle rustle... go ahead and jump, but if tiger is smart he rustled over there with his tail and now he's waiting over here with his mouth open waiting for you to land. Tigers don't plan, people do. Fake over there, trigger that assumption in your opponent and let him jump onto the point of your sword over here. Genetic inheritance be damned, instinct isn't always right. Learn to mix reactions with thought, let the reactions take care of themselves while you keep the rational brain running to make good choices as to which direction to jump.

Make your assumption that sensei's "attaboy" is a one time thing and not a certificate of completion. Make sure you look rather than assume when being taught.

Now carry that back with you, even if you get the "attaboy" and know you're doing it right, remember that you're getting older and skills drift. Make sure you look in the mirror, really look, and assume the worst. Expect to see your posture crumbling over the years, expect injury and age to slow you down a step or two and keep working at it.

You're supposed to reproduce fast, like before you're 20, then you're supposed to be Tiger bait for the youngsters so they can reproduce. Don't forget that.

Praise ought to roll right off.

Riai

Everyone who does iaido knows the meaning of riai right? Sure we do. The first kata of the kendo iai (seitei) or the znir iai or Muso Shinden or Muso Jikiden is Mae/shohatto.

Sitting in seiza you draw and cut across the opponent horizontally then cut down vertically, shake the blood off and put it away. Add appropriate fillips and foofaws for each school or teacher and there you have the movements.

The riai? Usually I'm told it's "there's a guy sitting in front of you and he starts to draw and you beat him to it". Those guys tend to draw and swing really fast. On the other hand I also hear "you sense the opponent's ill will and you forestall his attack with one of your own". Those guys tend to draw more slowly since the other guy hasn't even started moving yet.

Is that the riai? I don't think so, I think that's still part of the technique, the situation of the kata, it's just the story we're telling at the moment. The riai has to be the meaning of the story, the principles of the school you're studying. What's the principle of "senseing the bad intent of the person in front of you, you draw your sword and cut him down"? I think that principle is "preventative self defence" or whatever excuse the superpowers of the world are using these days to go into an area and bomb it back to stones... if it isn't already just stones. On a personal level I'd call that murder and I'm convinced that those who developed iai as a method of self improvement (as opposed to a really really poor way to deal with combat in a modern world of easily obtainable firearms) did not intend that their first instruction to us was "go kill someone who hasn't done anything yet".

I know we have folks who claim to be able to read minds using FMRI but really, those machines are huge and folks sitting in front of you with a sword in their belt aren't going to be thinking about killing you, they're going to be thinking about the pain in their hip as the sword mashes them into the wall of the chamber. Or so I believe after seeing guns go whipping out of hands when the fancy lab machine is turned on in the movies.

We don't "sense the start of an attack" we see it. A good swordsman won't telegraph an attack and a poor swordsman probably doesn't need to be killed, you ought to be able to prevent him from drawing.

How to do that? Well you might listen to your sensei when he says things like "saya no uchi no kachi" and rather than ignoring it (because it won't help you pass your next grade) you might think about it. Just how do you win in the scabbard? I can think of about a dozen ways you could apply the saying in various ways such as driving forward and knocking the poor fellow backward over his insteps while you drive your knee into his hands, or not being there in the first place. You come up with some other stuff in between where you don't draw your sword and kill him and you will be approaching the principle of not drawing your sword and killing him. Saya no uchi.

Does this apply to Mae? Sure it does, next time you are drawing the sword in kata think very hard in your head "Don't Draw! Don't Draw that Sword!" Right up to the point where you reach saya banari and you absolutely have to cut him. Does this change your draw? Do you look a bit more like sensei?

This is not murder, this is not preemptive self defence, or even self defence. It's giving the fellow a chance to change his mind while you demonstrate the superiority of your position.

Whip it out fast? Counter-intuitive to giving him time to back down. Sloppy movements, leaving big gaps in your defence so that your opponent thinks he can get in and cut you? "But Marshall, he drew first!"

The riai of teaching Mae is to instill the basic movement patterns, then the basic philosophical viewpoint, and finally to provide a method of continuing challenge to the student. Basic patterns? Horizontal draw and cut, vertical finishing cut (the rest is getting ready for the next kata). Basic philosophy? Be a good person not a murderer, your role as the man with the sword, (or the police badge, military grade rifle and armour), is that of the armed agent of the government toward the citizens. A duty of protection rather than conflict. You don't use iaido on the battlefield unless you're a poor soldier. You are a peacekeeper, not a "peacemaker" as the euphamism puts it. When the policeman becomes a soldier the country is already deep into civil war.

To learn this responsibility to protect we teach the beginners that their imaginary opponent is just a bit less skillful. He may also be all the bad things the student knows about himself, those bad things that have to be defeated every day just as the imaginary opponent is defeated every kata.

That is well and good while the student is learning. He can see that his opponent is a poor swordsman indeed, but with practice the imaginary fellow eventually becomes as skilled as most of the senior students around. Now what? Why would anyone continue to practice when the result is so predictable, victory after victory.

Now is the time for the teacher to reveal the secret, the opponent has been holding back, he is actually a bit better than the student and now the student must do several things. He must work harder, sweat more to keep surviving. The opponent must still be beaten so the student must watch his own movements closely. No longer can he rely on his superior ability and just watch the opponent, he must stay ahead, close the gaps, increase the pressure, struggle. He must do all this without becoming a brute, he must not forget his responsibility to forgive, to refrain from killing no matter the provocation short of being killed himself. It is this training for control that becomes the path to wisdom, this willingness to sacrifice, to take the hard way rather than the easy, to refrain from using the nuclear option when challenged by a child. Yet having that option, training to have that option, killing only on the point of being killed, this teaches an iron will and a gentle manner which seeks to avoid the conflict altogether.

This is the riai of the first kata. There are others, some not so full of sweetness and light but this is the first, the basic.

Beginners figure the kata is the art and the riai is the story. A kata is a story, there are many. Riai is the moral of the story, and all stories have a moral.

41st AJKF Jodo Tournament

Hey all you SDK folk and friends out there, here's a story on kendo-world about our very own Jeff Broderick competing in the all Japan jodo championships!

http://www.kendo-world.com/wordpress/?p=1464

Now I'm going back to read it.

Incidentally, I also just got the latest volume of Kendo-World the magazine and I'd suggest all you folks subscribe and get it too.

The things you find online

Arts and Crafts

Jutsu and Do, what do they mean? The argument has been bouncing around for decades, if you go back into the iaido-l archives you'll find the discussion there in the early 1990s but it predates the web. Now, any Japanese I've ever talked to has no worries interchanging iaido and iaijutsu or even kendo and kenjutsu. I have a video of a speach by Nobuharu Yagyu in NYC where he refers to Yagyu shinkage ryu as "kendo" or at least it was translated as that.

On the other hand, many folks have used the two terms in more specialized definitions, jujutsu and judo, kenjutsu and kendo, one being the koryu and one being the "modern sportified" form or similar. You need to know who is using the term and how they are using it, you need to know the context.

There isn't a single definition so looking for one is frustrating to say the least. Each group will use the term they figure has the correct meaning for themselves, or has the connotation they want to assume. In at least one case I was told of, when asked why he chose "iaijutsu" a lineage head said "because the other guys use iaido". It can be that simple.

So what do we mean when we make a distinction? Often "jutsu" is called the craft, the technique, the practical stuff and "do" is called the art of the thing.

Years ago I had a reprint of an article by Arthur Danto entitled "After the End of Art" and in his intro he mentions another author who proposed that western art began around 1400 when the idea of "art for art's sake" arose. (Prior to this time art was iconography, symbolic or representational but not primarily aesthetic).

Now, assuming that we can take the "jutsu vs do" thing as meaning a purely practical martial art and a martial art performed for the art of the thing, (without getting hung up on all the other stuff jutsu and do brings up) and further assuming that world culture isn't too disjointed, so that the rise of "art" in one place should be within a couple hundred years of the rise of "art" in another, can we peg the rise of martial art as art to the same period and the same developments as art as art?

3000 words before next Monday please.

If You Can't Do Seiza You Can't Do Iai

A fairly common assumption from those who are deeply into the grading thing is that if you can't do seiza you can't do the seiza kata and therefore you can't pass a grading and so you can't do iaido. An easy confusion of the meaning of grading. Your skill does not come from your rank, your rank (ideally) reflects your skill.

One can always modify the kata according to physical limitations, it's up to the sensei and the grading committees to deal with the changes, and to decide if they are "iai" or not. It's up to the students to do their iai as faithfully as they can. Between the two a balance is usually found.

Even worse than seiza tends to be tate hiza, sitting with the weight all on the left leg rather than both. If your knee is a bit wonky there's no reason not to use a position where the back foot is toes down on the ground rather than further down on the instep. Better than not doing it at all, but with any modification of the kata, keep working toward the ideal form as much as possible.

Take a closer look at the tate hiza position, the major problem is twisting the knee by cranking the left heel into the centre of your butt. This puts tremendous pressure diagonally through the knee as you rise. Couple this with a right foot that's out ahead of the left knee where it pushes you back into a seated position while you're trying to rise and you've got even more pressure on that knee.

Try swinging the left foot more into a seiza position and bringing the right foot as deeply back into your centre as you can. I used to be able to rise straight up from tate hiza while keeping the left foot tucked up against my butt. (A bit old and fat for that now). That takes the pressure off the left knee.

As for siting comfortably in seiza if you have no knee damage, that is usually a matter of practice and stretching. To stabilize the knees and also help stretch, try the following:

Sit in seiza, drop the arms directly down at the sides and relax the shoulders, keeping the back vertical, slowly rise up and flip the toes under. Now flip them back down and slowly sit back into seiza, concentrating on relaxing the quads as you hit the seated position, then tighten the quads once more and start rising for the second rep. It's those tight quads that tend to make the knees scream, but if you've got big hamstrings your knees may be pulled in strange ways by the leverage... again if you can relax the muscles and let them squish out to the sides you'll have less pressure through the knees.

As for tate hiza... I adjusted to that by using that position every time I was in a bookstore looking at books on the bottom shelf. Too bad nobody goes to bookstores any more.

Iaido is concerned with the approach to an ideal form, with that form buried deeply in effective transfer of power from the ground to the tip of the sword.

Now how you read that statement is usually related to where you are in your iai career. It's fairly common to hear "hey he passed but he can't even do seiza" from students who are only a few years in. They see the approach to an ideal form in terms of what it looks like.

Several years later and usually they understand that the approach to an ideal form has to be made in a real world, and that the art itself changes when done by different people. We don't make changes to iai, but iai becomes different when practiced by some people.

I'm not talking about muscles that need to be stretched of course, in that case you need to work on it and get there. I had a student years ago whose hand was mangled in an accident. He told me he'd never be able to hold the sword properly and I simply told him to get as close as he could. Several years later he held the sword so well you'd never suspect any problems at all.

But for those who cannot work further toward the ideal, it is incorrect for them to attempt to do iai in the "correct" way since it would put them at a disadvantage in the real world. For instance, another student had a degenerative neuromuscular condition that made him lose balance, and made it hard for him to find the hilt with his left hand. On a test he did his standing turns with a pause while he caught his balance, and he did everything one handed. He passed and the question was, of course, asked.

The answer is that for him to try and turn, find the hilt and cut in a continuous movement would put him off balance and moving into an opponent's range without control of his cut. This would be wrong, incorrect, and I'd fail him for it. He didn't change the art, the art changed around his condition and circumstances and it was up to the grading committee and his sensei to understand that.

In Japan and some other countries those who can't do seiza or tate hiza are accomodated by giving them a different set of all standing kata for their test. In Canada we don't do that, we simply have a set way to do the seated kata while standing. The thinking is that some of the folks who can't sit seiza are still going to be instructors one day and we need to see how they do their seated kata so that we know they understand the dynamics and can teach those who are still sitting.

In the last few years I have sensed a move toward a more small-minded iai, one that is looking to fail rather than looking for reasons to pass. In this climate it's easy to fail someone for a uniform fault or for not being able to get into seiza. For those caught in that system I would like to remind you that iaido is not grading.

A sword teacher in 1580 would perhaps teach kata from tate hiza or seiza because it was practical ("it's the way we sit"). Given a set of students who might have been injured in the wars, would that teacher tell an old vet that he can't learn anything because he can't sit in seiza? No of course not, the teacher would adapt his art to the soldier and the ideal of having to do seiza would not even arise. It would be stupid to teach techniques from seiza to someone who would never be in seiza.

What is different now? Is your iai a fossil to be preserved in stone forever or is it a living art? Do we sit in seiza as a matter of course these days? Is passing a grade the goal of your art?

If you are told you can't pass because you can't sit in seiza or tate hiza, the solution would seem instantly apparent. Don't bother grading. It won't affect your practice of the art. If your sensei is teaching you, you've already passed the only important test in the arts.

The real cost of things

As I write these thoughts and put them on faceplant so that they can get more advertising revenue off of my efforts (and yours) it occurs to me that these come out at about $10 apiece since I write them while I'm having my morning coffee at my morning coffee shop.

They don't get done at home so no telling me to have coffee at home.

So if I put this blog (from web-log which really isn't what it is, it's a series of columns which are not in the columns of a newspaper or magazine... essays?) into a series of books as some folks have suggested I could sell them as ebooks at $10 apiece. That means I'd have to sell 100 of them with 100 columns each in order to break even.

100 books of my columns aren't going to sell in a year, so this is yet another money losing project. Of course I write these in order to sit still long enough to have a coffee... which come to think of it doesn't do my atrial fibrillation any good... and not feel guilty about taking that much time away from grinding wood in the shop.

And then there's my illusion that these are ads for the business, that they are driving eyeballs and the search algorithms to my sales website. I wonder if the search engines pay any attention to the social media sites at all? If there's a place for link spammers it's got to be here.

Nah, everyone go to sdksupplies.com and read this blog there, that way the hits go up and the search engines are happy.

What, you figure I do this to see myself think? Well yes, OK I do.

Did you ever think about what your budo training costs you? You just flashed on the cost of your last grading didn't you? But that's chump change, even in the CKF where we have the highest grading fees in the entire kendo federation (but low, low membership fees). No your dojo fees, your lost income from the hours you could have been working on your own businesses, the gas you put into the car to drive to your dojo... all this stuff is pretty expensive. Make sure it's worth it, practice hard.

Is your sensei self employed? If so he's losing income every class he attends, and he spends money for gas and on his own equipment and... do you at least slip him mileage?

By now you're all saying to yourselves "you can't put a monetary value on everything", but you can. Economists do it all the time and so should you if you're a rational unit of consumption.

But you're not, are you? You're a story-telling unit. You practice budo for the stories, you do it for the contact with other units, for the communication of it. You can call that a currency of exchange if you like, but it isn't monetary. You can't buy a muffin with a roundhouse to the head.

You can buy an extra set of hands to work on the deck next spring with a good half hour of pounding with a shinai. Money is only useful to the point where you have enough, beyond that it's just a way of keeping score, and we all know there's better ways of keeping score.

Herding Cats

Heard a story years ago, not sure from whom, about getting a 9dan in Kendo.

So how do you get a 9dan in Kendo if there's nobody to promote you?

You get all the 8dans to agree that you're a 9dan

Who could ever get all the 8dans to agree on anything!!

...Smiles...

Martial artists are like any other creative types, they tend to have "opinions" and getting them to work together is the proverbial herding of cats, yet they do work together. Sometimes they remind themselves of the greater good (do it for the kids) and sometimes they do it because there's someone with a highest rank around to dictate when necessary.

As long as the fellow up top is someone who isn't too bad, the system works. It helps if those who are bad at the bossing job can be ignored for most of the time, and it usually works out that bad bosses either take on all the work or ignore it completely. This lets everyone else get on with it while nodding once in a while. But the guys who insist on making you do the work, then micromanaging you... those are toxic to a workplace.

So who's the best guy for the job? I can't imagine how often I've heard someone say that the head of some koryu isn't the most talented guy, that their particular sensei should have been named the head because he was so much more of a bad ass. While it's nice when the top guy is also skilled, it's obviously not necessary as the decision of the previous head would indicate. You want the guy at the top to be able to keep things together and not to run the school into the ground.

If you've got a system that installs a dictator (as a heirarchial organization like budo tends to do... soke's word is the word-o-god) you really want that fellow to dictate by consensus. Budo organizations aren't closed states, they may have their share of snitches but they don't have a secret police. They may have an enforcer or two but they don't have an army or a militia to force compliance. A budo dictator who ticks off the membership simply finds that membership fading away and soon they may be a big frog in a small pond, not making much of a splash at all. Basho wouldn't be impressed.

Make it a small organization to begin with and the new head may simply be the last man standing. Let's hope he's up to the job but there's no real point of complaining one way or the other since there's nobody else. A large organization can choose from several people, especially those which are nominally democratic and the membership actually has a say about who is in charge. In that case how do you know if the last guy did a good job and what do we ask of the new guy?

Membership numbers jump to mind. The large organizations like Kendo, Aikido, Judo and Karate usually have a pretty simple mandate. To increase their numbers and teach the art. In the case of Kendo, Judo and often Karate, you also train the competitors. So the easiest way to measure success in any leader is to look at numbers and wins. If your organization is bleeding numbers, increasing dues and dropping in the tournament rankings you might want to blame video games and helicopter parents, but you might also want to check out the guy at the top. Maybe it's time to replace Mr. Bad Ass with someone who can organize a trip to the corner store. Maybe it's time to replace Mr. Nice Guy - Agrees With Everyone - with someone who can remember what everyone else agreed to last week.

The nine dan is the guy who can convince all the 8dans that he's a 9dan. But sometimes the guy at the top is just the guy who will do the least harm. We can afford not to have a 9dan around, but there's always got to be a guy in charge.

It helps if he can herd cats.

Up the Ladder

Everyone wants to improve, it's a natural human inclination to want to rise lot in the world. I think that's why kids like grading in the martial arts, they like to get that next level because it means they're learning stuff. (Funny they don't usually get that same enthusiasm for tests in school... )

Improvement is good, mileposts are nice reminders of that improvement and maybe even incentive to work a bit harder but we should always remind ourselves that counting mileposts as they pass is not usually the reason for a trip. Whether out on a Sunday drive to enjoy the ride or trying to get to a destination, getting your attention caught by the roadsigns is counterproductive.

Think of ranks as rungs on a ladder. You go up a ladder for a reason, to fix a roof maybe or to get to a better view. In gyms full of silly exercise equipment I have in fact, seen endless ladders that are there "just for the journey" but ignore those for the moment, I want to talk about old wooden ladders with round rungs, the kind you never see any more.

Got one in mind? Now think about taking a hammer and knocking out all the rungs above the one you're standing on. Are you now on the top rung? Sure you are. Badmouth and tear down in your mind all the folks who rank above you in your martial art. Good, they are all worthless now. Does that mean you're top dog? Sure you are, there's nobody above you and if you figure that being the top rank is a good thing, you've accomplished a worthy goal.

Is the point of rank to be on top? Maybe. Is a ladder with three rungs a useful ladder? Perhaps if all we want to do is paint the kitchen ceiling it is. Lord help us if the roof starts leaking, we can patch the ceiling all we want, it won't stop the leak. Some things just have to be done from the top down and for that we need ten or fifteen rungs and a lot of work to climb them. Once we get up there we aren't done yet, we have to hump all the shingles up there too, then place them correctly so that everyone below is nice and dry. Being on the top rung of the ladder just means you're working out in the weather trying to keep it all from falling down due to the leaks.

You know, Musashi said a ryu was a house, as in being the same structure as a clan, and then he compared a ryu to the physical house, with the members of the ryu being carpenters working on the house. A ladder to the roof is not the house, just a way to build the house, and rank is not the ryu, just the way to keep track of who's working on what job. You up a few rungs working on the drywall? That's good, and it's a comfortable job because someone went all the way up to build and shingle the roof. Your job is important but you couldn't do it unless someone had gone before and got onto that top rung. Maybe you figure it's a crappy job, maybe the walls are out of square, maybe the roof is ugly. Is that any reason to rip holes in it and chop the walls down to half height? Leave them alone and do a good job on your own. If the walls will support the roof shim them out and make them square with your drywall. If the roof shingles are a bit crooked but keep the rain out don't worry about it. Very few people get all the way up that ladder to see it anyway.

Still think the roof is crappy? Don't knock out all those upper rungs (so you can't see the crooked lines of shingles), instead be content in the knowledge that all roofs need to be reshingled eventually and when you finally get up to the top of those rungs you can do a much better job than was done before.

Unless of course you figure being on the top rung is the point, and you have a hammer in your hand.

Assumptions, convictions and clairvoyance.

It occurred to me last night that one of the things that drive me crazy is someone with the conviction that they're clairvoyant. I mean the folks who won't do something because they know it won't work. Most of the time I put this down to laziness or not wanting to do it anyway but not having the ability to say no outright (a more common affliction than you might think), and I just do it myself. But occasionally it's from someone who absolutely must do whatever it is we're talking about.

And then it drives me crazy. I can't just do it myself, but the other person's conviction that it won't work, on no evidence, is standing right in the way of my work.

"Honey can you call the computer guys and ask whether a scsi driver will fit in an ati nut? I'm up to my elbows in grease".

"Oh they won't know".

"aaaargh".

What makes us humans is the ability to predict, to imagine what will happen next, given the current set of circumstances. This lets us plan for future events and allows us a longer lifespan. It prompts us to put up the wooden walls to keep the tigers out. But carry it too far and you slip into some sort of god-like ability to know and even control the future. Or at least think you do. That way lies magic and religion. Cross your eyes and spit when a black cat crosses your path or something bad will happen to you. Sacrifice a goat or your crops will fail and get a soothsayer to read the entrails of this chicken so I know what dress will be in style next Thursday.

What, if it works to predict a battle why won't it work to find out what's going to be in fashion?

By all means, extrapolate trends but don't assume you can predict the future. Make sure your trends apply to the prediction. If you call Home Depot and they say they don't have green plexiglass panels, don't assume it's a waste of time to phone Home Hardware.

I told my kids a dozen years ago that they should ask for what they want. Write that letter of application, make that phone call. Your assumption that the answer will be no may well be true, but the worst that will happen is you'll get "no". You may get "yes". If you don't ask you'll surely get "no" but you'll have no chance at all for "yes".

In other words, there's no harm in asking and hey, if all the other boys think they have no chance that Lucy will go out with them, maybe she's lonely enough to go out with you!

Every year at a lot of Universities and Colleges there are scholarships that go unawarded because nobody applied. It's too much trouble to go ask for a list of awards? It's too much trouble to fill out a form that might lead to a thousand dollars worth of beer money for the semester? It was for me, don't be an Amy Assumer, you won't find fashion trends in chicken entrails, but you may find a "yes" on the end of that application letter.

And if I ask you to phone an expert say yes or no, but don't say "oh they won't know".

You don't know that.

What do you need?

The third of the Hinterland series of thoughts I suppose this is. Ah the first taste of Grainer's Gold, my dark roast of choice. What more do I need on a Saturday morning.

What indeed do you need? In the CKF we have had a Development Fund for many years and it's own development is an interesting story. Originally budgeted at ten thousand dollars for the year for the entire federation, it had very few takers. The low response was thought originally to be the paperwork required, with a request, the grant and then a report on how the money was spent. Next came an attempt to lower the paperwork which resulted for a while in even more paperwork. I have no idea what it involves currently.

While I was involved on the board the directors decided to split the fund "so that iaido and jodo could get more money". I explained at the time that iai and jo could apply for $10,000 under the original rules, and now could only apply for less than half of that, but the perception was that we would be more likely to get more money if it was designated to "us". I put us in quotes because I always considered myself a director for the CKF not the "iaido and jodo guy". If I was for everyone the rest of the directors would be for everyone too yes? Hey, it was a thought. At any rate, the applications for the original $10,000 and for the new designated amount were about the same as ever. Almost none.

While we were discussing the reduced amounts of grant available it was decided that the funds would roll over year to year. Again I had terrible visions of the future (I'm cursed with imagination) where a surplus would build up to massive amounts and then all be asked for in one go. With no actual cash being put away in a bank account that sort of thing could destroy a budget. Of course if nobody uses the funds it won't ever be a problem and I think (I'm not involved any more so I don't know) it has an extinguishing feature now. Don't ask for it for a few years and it disappears.

Many committees have come and gone, grants were granted and adjusted and today there is still a low uptake of the fund, although it is better than it used to be.

Somewhere along the way a few folks were denied some funding that was promised and some harsh words were spoken, accusations made and apologies never given. Shocking yes? Tell me it doesn't happen in your organization and I'll call you a fibber. Regardless, a new fund, independent of the CKF was created by the senior ranks in iaido and jodo and it was called, imaginatively, the Canadian Iaido and Jodo Fund. It is run by those same senior students and is intended to cover unexpected expenses for folks who can't afford to pay them. Or anything else anyone wants to apply for. The fund has no budget or income, if it gets low a request for funds goes out and folks kick in some money.

Doesn't happen. Like the development fund, the CIJF doesn't pay out much.

So to my point. What is it that the dojo in the hinterlands need? It isn't really money or those funds would be dry every year. Let's think then about what the funds have funded. A couple of tournaments that couldn't self-fund, not unexpected given the low numbers of folks who want to compete in iai tournaments and the high rents in the big city. The rest of it would seem to be flying sensei to the hinterlands. Now there's a shock, the folks away from the centers of population and instruction are asking for help to get some of that instruction.

So the hinterland needs instructional support and some areas are getting it. I am one of those support folks and make the occasional trip out to the west coast swinging through Alberta on the way. The loop is partially paid for by the development fund and it's appreciated in a big way. A lot of good will toward the federation is generated along with the instruction.

So some money to provide instructional support is wanted, is it needed? It's appreciated but if it didn't exist the money would be found anyway so not needed, wanted.

Communication is often mentioned as a need as in "we need more communication". I've always laughed at that, having been in charge of communication in maybe a dozen organizations since my High School days as Publicity Director. I knew a fellow once who complained to me about poor communications every time he saw me. Used to call quite a lot. In fact he used to call the president of that organization about once a week and have long talks about what was going on. Yet he figured there was poor communication.

Each organization has its own communication style, and it tends to go throughout the levels. If you, in the hinterland, are in a haze about what is going on it's a very good bet that the same hazy communications are happening at the center of the federation. Groups that communicate well at the top, good meetings, good minutes, good discussions and votes amongst the committees with proper reports will find it rediculously easy to share that information with all of the membership. On the other hand groups that tend to fumble along with no structure at the top, maybe one or two folks making decisions for everyone, swaying with the influence of whoever they talked to last, will be as confusing to the guys in the home dojo as those in the furthest outpost.

In other words, if the hinterland wants better communication, so, in all likelihood, does the heartland. All is equal and fair.

Do you need to be told what's going on? What effects you might be a surprise if you aren't, so perhaps. What affects you?

Coming to the end of my second cup I'm drawn to thinking about the support I get from the caffine. Support! That's what any teacher in any organization needs, wants and appreciates. Just an occasional pat on the head and the feeling that somebody has their back.

Support isn't money, it isn't timely communication of the annual financial report. Both of those are useful, but not necessary to a dojo out on the edges of the empire. No, what is really needed at Hadrian's Wall is the feeling that someone back in Rome has your back, that you have someone who remembers you're out there facing the blue men. Someone who will try and get some reinforcements to you when you need them.

Too often this support for the remote dojo comes only from a sensei's sensei and not from the organization itself. This causes feelings of "what's the federation doing for me?" Well a federation isn't a person and it's people who have your back. Unless that federation has specific policies in place to provide that support, and those are neither hard nor expensive. Official instructional tours will show the flag around the empire. Regular reports (newsletters) that are sent to all members once every couple of months will give the feeling of being involved. Even something as simple as a chinwag with dojo leaders at seminars or tournaments will give the impression that "somone is listening".

But often the best support an organization can give to a regional dojo is what I've always called "benign neglect". The closest I've ever felt to any organization was when the guy at the top just let me get on with it, kept the meddlers at bay and "had my back".

That's what I want, out here on Hadrian's Wall, an emperor who gives me the wall, keeps the other generals from stealing my men and materials and sends reinforcements on those very rare cases when I need them. I'll work hard for that guy.

What do I need? Well, when I think about it hard, I don't need anything at all from a federation. I have my sensei, I don't need rank. I have my students who may want rank but who don't need it. I have a place to practice, I don't need money and I don't need to know anything more than to know what I don't need. Suddenly I realize I need to follow my sensei, to visit him occasionally to keep my own energy up, and for the rest of it, to do it myself. Being in the hinterland means that I automatically have the benign neglect that distance grants me.

You don't need your organization, it's the other way around, the organization needs you. Once you're at that realization the irritation falls away and you can feel better about helping that thing that needs your help. What is the organization? What does it provide to you?

The CKF provides my students with ranks for which it charges a hefty fee. We're even. Since my sensei is a member, it provides me with access to my sensei. Ah, there's the key, as long as my sensei is a member I'll support the organization. Beyond that, there's nothing I need and to tell the truth, nothing I want so I'm content.

Now, what do you need out there in your hinterland?

Sightlines

Further to the idea of the spread of a budo being like sparks scattered out from a fire, I'd like to think about viewpoints. Yes, I use these writings to do my thinking while I'm writing them, hence the messiness at times. From what I've seen there are at least three viewpoints on any of the arts, from the source, from a local organization, and from the individual dojo.

First the source, this is Japan in my case, and I'm usually talking about the Kendo Federation but I could easily be talking about Aikido or Judo. Large coherant groups with country and regional organizations. The viewpoint in Japan comes from one of being at the very top of the heap, which is obvious, and implies all the associated attitudes, the assumption of correctness, entitlement, arrogance and the other things that being on top can bring with it. These traits will be shown to various degree depending on how thoughtful the persons are at the top, but the tendencies come with the position. This goes with the territory in the lower (national and regional) levels too, with the upper level folk being prone to thoughtless assumptions of correctness, but this is counterbalanced with traits of subservience directed up the ladder. After all, the head guys might not get to stay in their head positions without the guys up the chain letting them stay. Except that's not usually the way it works.

There is a saying "Peking is far away" which applies directly to this situation, even in those organizations that have a pyramidal structure, with the folks in Japan appointing those in the rest of the world to power. The saying refers to distance, "we do things here in the provinces the way we do it here, Peking is far away". Even if the hiring and firing comes from Japan, it's likely that the local groups will be doing things their own way.

But most organizations of any size have an independent rule in the countries, where they choose their own political leaders. This is tied up with the administrative vs instructional split in any physically centered activity. We elect or anoint our own administrators and they are expected to do their best for their group. We earn or are given from above our teaching ranks and so we are responsible to those up the chain in a very direct way. This is true in the sports as in budo, baseball coaches aren't usually expected to deal with the IOC and the administrators are expected to administer, not give advice on how to win ball games. In the budo the heirarchical nature of the rank structure gets mixed up with the administrative arm of things and sometimes you'll get fearful administrators who are more concerned with their next rank than their duties as local leaders. It should always be remembered that one does the job the hat requires. If you're wearing the hat of the regional president you ought to be fighting the national organization for more resources for your area. If you've got a 5dan hat and want a 6dan hat next grading you ought not be in the faces of those above, but rather at the other end. If the grading authority is separate from the administrative authority that's usually not a problem, but in the budo the two usually get mixed. Remember which hat you're wearing at any given time.

Similar things apply to dojo who are "out of the loop", who are not in the regions of power in their country. If you're out of the loop it means that the loop is out of your hair. In our Canadian case "Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal is far away". We dojo out on the marches have as much control from those in the loop as we allow that power base to have over us. How fearful are you that you won't pass your next grade? A lot? Perhaps then, you should not be arguing for funding for your next event. Give the job to some student who has a chance of being forgotten before his next grading.

Of course none of this is relevant if everyone from the hinterlands through to Japan has the same viewpoint on how to do things. "As above, so below". But there are certain realities that slant the viewpoints in different ways and these often hinge on numbers and rank.

Japan has lots of rank and lots of students. OK I know there are hinterlands in Japan but I'm talking the administrative base, those who make the rules. In the big centers, there is no problem with getting enough students to run a dojo, the problem is crowding, not enough spaces to accomodate the numbers. The same with rank, you'll get dojo with dozens of high ranked students, rank enough to be running dojo anywhere else, but here they are just the guys who organize the new year's party. So lots of students, in fact they may need to be turned away, and lots of rank so no worries about instruction amongst the students, but perhaps a feeling of the glass ceiling for the upper ranks.

In this case the view of training can easily be one of no accomodation. With lots of students there's no real need to... well accomodate is the best word, to do anything special for any of them. They fall into the norm or someone else steps into their place as they fall by the side of the road. I don't say this happens, but the conditions are there, the nails that stick up can be hammered down or pulled out to be replaced by ones that are shiny, straight and new. This can be the view of the juniors.

What about the seniors and their glass ceiling? With no advancement available (into the highest ranks or into their own dojo to teach due to the crowding already existing) the seniors need some other way to feel they are advancing. One challenge needs to be replaced by another and this other can be healthy or not. Competition for status can mean gossip and cruelty while trying to gain the top sensei's favour or it could mean sports competition through tournaments or even competition to see who can do the most to build the dojo through helping with funding, teaching, cleaning or organizing the parties. A glass ceiling can skew the expected viewpoint (the next grade) into unexpected areas. The very top levels will of course be guarded carefully by those at the top, so admission will be very tricky. Those seeking to get in will need to make sure they don't do anything wrong. The viewpoint will be very rigid, no sticking up.

Any viewpoint tends to be personal, it's only natural that people see things through their own experience and concerns. The view of other countries from Japan, when it exists, will usually be through the lens of personal concerns such as advancement at home. There are very few individuals anywhere in any organization who will stick their necks out for the folks elsewhere. While we may think this is not the way of budo, it is the way of humans. Those with a small investment will have a small desire for risk. Only those who see beyond their own concerns will risk for strangers. If a country can find a teacher who is dedicated to the international growth of an art, they are lucky indeed, and these teachers do exist, but they need a dedication to an ideal rather than to their own status. Why you say? Simply because of some of the gossip, the backbiting for status we mentioned before. This is what we usually call "office politics" and it exists everywhere, and one of the biggest causes is jealousy. Sensei who get to travel to other countries are resented back home so they have to have thick skins or high enough status to ignore the politics if they want to advocate for their overseas students.

Is this thinking unfair of me? Perhaps but if we understand how people see what they see, we can understand and forgive what they do.

Let's leave the home ranges and move to the country levels. How do the budo get established in other places? Emigrants and foreign students mostly. Japanese who left Japan often took their budo with them, and students who went to Japan often learned the budo and brought it back with them. Curiously, these two groups can have radically different viewpoints, one being that of someone born into something and the other that of the convert. Then there's the "none so Scots as the Scots abroad" group. The attitudes of the founders will persist in national organizations for decades and sometimes generations. The Japanese who leave the home country to find jobs or a new life will usually not have a very romantic view of Japan. They will start organizations, working hard to do so, building things up slowly and will have an attitude of ownership toward their work. These organizations will tend to be rather independent-minded and slow to accept control from Japan, especially if the political structures are horizontal (independent national units under an overall international structure) rather than vertical (national organizations are directly controlled by the Japanese organization). The sports oriented budo tend to be horizontal due to international competition while the non-competitive arts can be either.

Organizations created by students tend to have a different outlook, the founders being much more tied to their instructors back in Japan, much more reliant on them to explain what is important and what is simply a cultural artifact. Japanese ex-pats will know what is simply the way things are done because they were learned in public school, but adult students won't have that background with which to separate what's important to the art and needs to be carried to the new country and what's just cultural baggage. Those organizations will be much more deferential to the originating country. A certain amount of romance will also be involved here, as students of the Japanese arts tend to be Japanophiles, at least when they go to Japan, and perhaps even when they return. These are the converts. Japanese emigrants tend not to romanticize their place of birth.

On the other hand, the "none so Scots" attitude does exist in some ex-pats that found a budo in another country, and they may genuinely miss the old country with a bit of resentment that they were forced to move to a new place for work and now feel trapped there. These folks will run a very Japanese organization indeed, often along lines that will become antique compared to those back home who have moved on. Thus the "none so Scots" reference, they are living in the country of their birth which, after 40 years is likely not the country that exists now.

Bottom line, national organizations will be more, or less, likely to defer to Japan. Those in the organizations may be more, or less, concerned with pleasing the international organization (one hopes so), the Japanese organization (good or bad depending on the political structure of the organization) or any Japanese high rank who comes along (one always hopes respect is given where it is deserved, rather than on the basis of birthplace).

The viewpoint of the national organization toward its own regional and dojo members will depend, as it does in Japan, on numbers of students in the dojo of those in charge and rank in those dojo. Lots of students and lots of rank in the dojo of the administrators will tend to give viewpoints similar to those mentioned for Japan above.

The hinterland dojo will almost always have a viewpoint coloured by their struggles on the marches. Being the front line in a new area will feel lonely indeed, and resentment can build up as the years of neglect from the organization (which may not even remember they have an outpost) pile up. The lone teacher has to build his own connections to those above, finding people who are in a position to help and appealing directly to them rather than to the organization as a whole.

Curiously, the folk on the edges may have more in common with the founders of the organization than with the folks running it who have come up with an entirely different viewpoint. The organization may say "you have to build things up and fund your own events" while the founders may say "when do you need us".

Embers

I sometimes think of the map of Canada and put little embers on the places where there are people practising the martial arts that I practice. They are embers rather than fires because this stuff is not popular at all, even the kendo clubs are small unless you look in Vancouver and Toronto.

Small sparks in most places which, inevitably, are individuals who have a love of the art. They learn in University at one of the larger places (or even Guelph, dojo population of maybe 14 at the best of times) and then move back home, or go to work elsewhere and they take their love of the arts with them. They start teaching just so they can get a space in their local squash club, or maybe a local University, a church hall, wherever they can find someone willing to take a chance on a bunch of people swinging swords. They demonstrate, they advertise, they do whatever they can to get a few folks in and pay the rent, and they teach.

They teach not because they figure it's cool, not for ego, certainly not for money. They teach because there is nobody else. They put up with comments on their qualifications, they agonize about it themselves, but they teach because the alternative is giving up their training. They keep their small ember of practice alive by constantly blowing on it, putting in much more energy than they get out. It's not fair, they should be in a big club with a high ranked sensei but they're on their own except for those few times a year that they can visit with their sensei or someone, anyone else who can give them a few pointers to work on until the next seminar. And then they get challenged about how much they can learn with lessons three months apart.

In the meantime, back in the big city where the organization inevitably gets run, the folks in the big dojo lose sight of these sparks in the wilderness. They figure it's all chatting with each other over lunch after class and driving across town for an extra practice. If the organization notices one of the sparks it's usually to ask them to do something dull, boring and tedious that nobody else wants to do. Not a problem until they turn around and reject the work they assigned. That's often the tipping point that extinguishes the spark and one more point on the map goes black, one more enthusiastic student burned out.

Another way the spark goes out is with no support. You can keep an ember alive by blowing on it, but sometimes you have to breath in, when you do that the fire dies. One person in the wilderness is at risk, even one other who can blow a little once in a while can make the difference.

Fires go out by smothering them, neglecting them or rearranging them.

Too much criticism of teaching smothers the remote club as the teacher can only resist so much criticism from up above while teaching down at the same time. You need confidence in your ability to teach correctly and that confidence gets eroded pretty fast when you're hundreds of miles from your support team. Getting told you're "doing it wrong" is a lot louder in the middle of the woods than in the city.

No contact at all with that support system can also mean the energy that started the dojo never gets renewed. Nobody can keep blowing out without breathing in. No teacher can expend the energy of keeping a dojo going for years without the occasional jolt to renew the batteries.

Fires need a certain arrangement to keep burning. Scatter the sticks and they all stop burning. Make a teacher on his own jump through too many different hoops and he will get further and further away from what really matters, the practice. Given the amount of paperwork and arguing it takes to keep a club going in the local YMCA, is it really a good idea to keep changing the rules and cranking up the paperwork in the wider budo organization? Sensei in the big clubs can just hand off the work to the juniors, who does the teacher in a club of four beginners hand things to?

Sparks are a good thing when you want a fire, but sparks aren't a fire yet. They need a gentle application of energy added to what they have in order to grow into a self-sustaining fire. But even when the fire can be left alone for a few moments, those moments need to be spent gathering more fuel. The sparks of instruction scattered from the main dojo need to be cared for by proper support from senior sensei, and once the distant dojo are established, the main organization still needs to do what it can to get new fuel to those fires. It's no good applying the recruitment methods of a big city (which often amounts to turning students away from the Japanese Cultural Centers where the big city population will naturally go to find a Japanese martial art) to the small towns. Excuses for seminars with attendant press release to the local paper, even advertising from the main organization to raise the profile of the art as a whole is how you grow those embers into fires.

Brutally Honest

It doesn't matter what budo you train in, whether it's koryu or gendai, jutsu or do, whatever you want to imagine you're doing, if you practice under false pretenses, if you fool yourself in any way, you're not going to get it.

The whole POINT of training is to open your eyes, take responsibility for your own actions and become a better person.

Illusion is dangerous, self-delusion is dangerous, hypocrisy is dangerous.

Train honestly and train with honest, GOOD instructors. Not just skillful ones.

Let's break that down a little. Let's say you are in a karate class and you practice by punching short of the target. Can we say that you are fooling yourself, that you will punch short in a fight? I suspect that in a fight you will be just fine, all you need to do is intend to hit rather than intend to stop short, if the accuracy is there you ought to be good. But what about if your partner intentionally misses you while you're training to step aside at the last moment and counterpunch? Not so good, without that "help" you might end up getting hit instead of slipping the punch. Or how about if you have never hit a bag or a makiwara? You might get a good punch in during a fight, but you might want to hope the first one is enough after your wrist folds up and your little finger breaks.

So keep it honest in your training, that doesn't mean trying to take your partners head off, but it does mean honest, accurate attacks.

What about the other aspects of your training? How about just getting your butt out to practice? If you find yourself saying "well, too much to do, I'll make the next class" or "I'm really beat, should probably have an early night or I might hurt myself" you might want to take note of your audience. It's one thing to say that to your sensei (who will probably take it at face value) but it's quite another to say it to yourself. You need to be honest with yourself and make sure you aren't really saying "I don't like training and am making an excuse to avoid it".

Make excuses and even lie if you wish, but don't fool yourself in the process. Your motivations are often not entirely clear, even to you. You need to think about every decision you make, to understand why you do what you do if you want to improve as a person. That's the caveat of course, some folks aren't interested in improving and some figure they're already there.

This sort of honesty is good for everyone, not just yourself. If you find that you are "helping the beginners learn" during a class, ask yourself whether sensei needs that help and whether he asked you to help. If he doesn't, and didn't, perhaps you're looking for an ego boost rather than being of assistance. This is good to know because teaching to boost your ego is harmless if you have the material in your bones, but fooling yourself is easy. Fooling yourself into thinking you know your stuff can get you a broken nose.

Volunteer organizations are a great place for self-questioning. Nobody wants to be in charge of the hobby if they're honest with themselves. You probably started doing kendo because you liked to play kendo. Someone has to run the paperwork and deal with the lawyers, so an organization comes along. Who runs it? Usually it's whoever has to, whoever doesn't come up with an excuse fast enough. Sometimes it's someone who is asked because they are good at a needed job. These are fine, noble reasons for being administrators. "Someone has to do it and I have the ability to do a good job so sure, I'll do it." We all want those guys running the place.

But once the heavy lifting is done and any particular organization is up and running (not specifying any particular group here, just every single one in the universe), the complainers, the needy and the "natural leaders" show up. They are the ones who want to be in charge because they have a personal agenda. They want to slide some benefits their own way (to fix the problems), they want to feel powerful and in charge in their hobby (perhaps because they aren't any such thing in their "real life") or they simply figure everyone ought to listen to them because they are obviously the best, most intelligent man around (sort of like me).

Every one of them will claim they are doing this stuff because "someone has to and of course I don't want to be in charge but if I don't do it, it won't get done". It's traditional, but if we're brutally honest we should find out what the real motivation is. Want something on your resume? Why not. Want some extra resources to slide toward your local region? Sure. Want to feel like a bigshot in at least one area of your life? Go for it. Seriously, go for it, there's a good chance you will rise to the top. Like I said, most people don't want to be in charge so those who do often end up in that position.

BUT... be honest about it with yourself. If you get to be the top dog and you simply repeat over and over how much work you're doing and how hard it is and "please praise me", you are probably not doing a good job. Get the job for whatever reason you want, but be self-honest and then do a great job. If you don't know how to delegate, how to find people who will work hard and how to manage them, learn. Pay attention to the folks obviously doing a great job and steal their techniques. Otherwise you just look like you're not suited for the job. Your incompetance may not get you removed by the way, most volunteer organizations don't need much and as long as the paperwork eventually gets done who cares. Be honest also about why you might still be in charge even while the place falls down around you. Most of the folks will not care as long as they can keep going to those semi-contact kickboxing tournaments. But do a good job anyway, otherwise you're just fooling yourself.

Rank is the same, really. If you're obsessed with it, if you figure it's really important to get that next belt, you might want to ask why. Lots of people in low-status positions are in the martial arts. Many of them are in low-status jobs because that let's them have the time to practice. Some, however, put their time into the martial arts rather than into their careers because they find the arts an easier place to gain status. This is misguided, the arts are sufficient in themselves, they are not a substitute, a replacement for your feelings of failure elsewhere. If you are brutally honest you might realize you're spending large amounts of time practicing just to pass the next test. That may be time you ought to be spending on your career. If you find yourself resenting the hours of practice, if you find yourself saying things like "It's just so hard to find the hours I need to get that next belt", you might just be telling yourself you ought to be at work making money instead. Everybody likes status, but be honest with yourself, budo is a small pond, being a big fish here isn't such a big deal so be a big fish, by all means, but be one who is nice.

Take It Like Sensei II

Finally remembered last night what I meant by this phrase. A couple of students were leading the rest of the class in a long kata when one of them went oof as she got hit in the ribs instead of the solar plexus. Of course this stopped the flow of the kata and disrupted the class and I was going to take it as a teaching moment when I realized that's what I meant by take it like sensei.

When you're teaching you don't stop because you just got smacked, it disrupts your instruction and it makes the students timid.

My iaido sensei also teaches kendo and one day showed up in class with a massive welt on his right wrist. I asked what happened and he said "we have a bunch of big new beginners and I was teaching kote. They hit really hard but I'm sensei so I have to nod and say 'good! try it again' but it HURT"

Students make mistakes all the time, in practice and out. They are eager, full of energy, and keen to do whatever they can. This can be as annoying as a new puppy but as sensei you have to take it. It does no good to react when they crack you across the head with a bokuto after you've got about half a sentence out. They aren't really paying attention to what you're saying, they are jumping to conclusions based on their assumptions and when you say swing that's all they hear. Still, it would be nice if they'd waited to hear "carefully".

They have good hearts, they mean well, and they're a pain in the arse but you have to take it because you can't teach everything all at once and if you yell at them too much they will become timid and afraid. You must teach slowly, at the speed they can take it in and often you end up with a period of taking your lumps. You don't teach control first when you're teaching someone to "get in there fast", you teach "get in there fast" and then later teach control. That's why the shinai and bogu were invented. If you start with too much emphasis on control you might create a timid student, overly concerned with technique and not bold enough to win. So you take some lumps.

Hmm, had some excitement as a woman just had an episode, fainted, eyes open and shaking, a fellow caught her head and she woke up when I got there, she had a good grip on both sides and seemed lucid so I'm back here and now there's fire, ambulance and police in almost the same time as it took to type this. Pretty massive response and damned fast.

Back to the taking it like a sensei. Students are also keen outside of practice, they want to help and they should be allowed. But of course they will take it too far, base things on their inevitably incorrect assumptions and make big mistakes. You'll have to spend as much time fixing their "help" as you would doing it yourself but they have to learn. Get too upset, correct them too much and there won't be anyone there to take over when you're gone.

Of course, your job as sensei is not only to take it, but to correct it. Spare the stick and spoil the student. Yeah I know it's out of fashion but when was budo ever something to move with the times.

Oh, and the woman seems to be fine, she's off in a flurry of oxygen tubes and monitors to the hospital to get checked out. Apparently she's a bit ticked at all the fuss but better safe than sorry. I don't begrudge the taxes that went into that sort of response, I may need it myself one of these days.

Names Dropped, Names Gifted

I seem to remember talking about name dropping by beginner instructors. The temptation to enhance one's authority by borrowing it from others through naming them, as in "so and so said this".

Then there's the attempt to demonstrate learning by saying things like "so and so said this but so and so said that".

The first is understandable and is usually grown out of with experience, the second, I'm not a fan. If you're up front of a class they already accept that you're smarter than they are, the person you're trying to convince is yourself.

But both statements have their place in a class, or rather, I find myself saying both even now after decades of teaching. The second statement, a comparison of different advice given by different instructors, is pulled out when a class needs to be told that there isn't one, single way to do anything. Of course I never bring that one out when teaching how to pass a grading, in that case there is only one true way and everyone in the world agrees on it. OK sarcasm, sorry.

"This I give to you"

The first instance of name dropping I also use in class, not to borrow authority but to attribute kindness. I will demonstrate something and say "so and so taught me that" and what I'm really saying is "This I give to you". Like everyone else, I have had my epiphanies along the way and I am immensely grateful to my teachers. I remember who gave me the gift of understanding and when I pass that understanding along I feel that it ought to be recognized as the gift that it is.

This was given to me and now this I give to you. Remember who it came from.

Seminar Topics

We were practicing Keshi Ryu last night. It's a nice school of 5 kata that are well integrated and easy to learn. Best of all they are done standing so I often use them when I'm asked to do an iai seminar for a new group, like a karate class that just wants to do something different for a bit of a change.

I used to do these sorts of seminars quite often, and they are what they are. The folks aren't looking for anything beyond a little taste of what else is out there, and they are usually quite content with their own practice. I find that if the sensei (or the student) actually wants to start practicing iai they will either just come to my class or ask me if I do private lessons. The private lessons are, I presume, so that the sensei can then go teach their own students but I can't say for sure since I don't teach privately.

Almost always I give the class a choice, do one really simple kata for two or three hours so that I can teach them something deep and meaningful, or do a set of kata so that they "know a whole school" or at least a section of one depending on which school I teach them.

As for the giant seminar/demo things, I've ended up teaching some pretty crazy things at those, once ended up teaching ZNIR Toho to a group who were in that organization... I'm in ZNKR. The head guy was supposed to teach iai but ended up double booked so I got tapped since I knew the dance steps and that's all the students needed at that time anyway.

These big seminars usually include a demo at the end with all the stuff folks have come to expect. Cutting apples on student's tummies... yeah that's happened. But at one particular demo in an arena, 3000 participants, at least that many in the stands for the demo, you got the guy cutting the apple on the tummy, you got the "muddy" jiu jitsu demos, the kata to music (actually the best kata of the day... which was kind of sad... was a girl who did TKD to music, but at least she had some sort of focus and looked at whoever she was kicking in the head). You got one JJ kata that ended, then wound backwards (that was sort of cool, watching these kids unroll and unkick each other) and through it all the crowd gabbed away and paid very little attention.

But, and finally here's my point, sensei and I did our iaido bit in the middle of the demo and the place went dead silent. No music or kiai from either of us, but we had their undivided attention for the whole time we were demonstrating.

They understood that's what it was all about, and treated it as such, it demanded quiet and attention and that's what they gave it.

So for those who think you need to cut apples or whatnot at these things, give your audience a chance, treat them with a bit more respect and they will respond. Do it pure and do it simple and they'll see it for what it is.

I've never done anything but go out and do my thing, I don't explain it, don't encourage the announcer to explain it, just walk out, do the demo, and leave. The less explanation and associated whoop-de-doo, the more the audience concentrates, and the more they appreciate what you're doing.

Gatekeepers

Despite Rick Moranis actually being the "keymaster" I can never see the gatekeepers as Sigorney Weaver. No, for the most part they are the gormless Louis in my mind. (For those of you too young to know what I'm talking about, look up the movie Ghostbusters on your search engine.)

Gatekeeper is a term for someone whose job is to pass or prevent you from seeing the person who has what you need. In some cases this is a good thing, like a triage nurse in an emergency ward whose job is to get you to the right medical help. Your family doctor is pretty much a gatekeeper to the specialists who now do those expensive tests your doctor never did. Those folks you need to pay attention to. They sit in front of services that you need and so you have to deal with them. There is another class of gatekeeper who is much different, and these are often self-appointed and self-important, the Moranis characters rather than the Weavers.

You know these folks? The office assistant who insists on scheduling five minute chats with the boss? The newly appointed "clubs commisssioner" who makes up endless rules that must be followed on pain of de-registration? Sure you do, and if you're as old as I am you are tired, years tired, of dealing with people who have no actual power over things that really don't matter to you.

It's often a very useful thing to keep in mind just how much what's beyond the gatekeeper matters to you.

After 20 years of telling the folks I'm supposed to tell about the broken sauna in the club, I built my own. The kids on the desk were the gatekeepers to the repair crew, or even to the guy who calls the repair crew and it used to drive me crazy that a lightbulb could take three weeks to replace. But last night I passed the door of the sauna and it was dark. I took my shower, went home and jumped into my own sauna which has it's light replaced within ten minutes of being discovered. Same thing with the weight rooms which have become so cluttered with equipment that you can't move. Combine that with as many kids as can be jammed into the room and you have a recipe for disaster along with the annoyance. I simply gave up my weight room membership and bought an olympic bar with some plates. Problem solved... no wait, it was never a problem, only an annoyance. A problem would have existed if I actually cared where I lifted my weights or if the club was the only place I could find a bar and some plates. Now I save money and listen to something other than dance club music at ear-splitting volume. Bonus! I don't get lifting advice from kids trained for half an hour and half the weight of what is in my hands.

I have been a member of several volunteer organizations and have often been secretary to the same. That's the exec position I like because it's the one that means something, it's the anti-gatekeeper position, the one where you communicate with the membership. Usually. I have also left several of those volunteer organizations when regime change took the guys I was happy to support out of power and brought in a bunch of people who want to be "in charge". Gatekeepers.

None of those volunteer jobs meant enough to me to keep them beyond a certain level of annoyance. I wasn't being paid, I wasn't reliant on them to do what I wanted to do and I had no need for the ego boost of "being in charge". What battering of the gates I did, I usually did on behalf of the members rather than out of any great desire on my part to get to the other side. Pretty much every hobby I have, can be done solo or in a different organization. I have no real need to deal with the gatekeepers and that takes all their authority away.

Annoy a volunteer enough and they simply disappear.

A very long time ago I practiced Tae Kwon Do. One day a new student arrived from another organization saying he just wanted to train. We asked him why he left his old group and he said that he was tired of being asked to spend money to grade every few months. Grades that kept getting more numerous as he approached his black belt. Seems that he was up to about five stripes on his red belt, and a sixth had just been added. Beyond a certain point grades stop to matter to a budo student and the training becomes the focus. Make it difficult enough to grade and the student drops off the rank ladder, if not out of the organization completely.

You would think that folks who have been involved for decades in a system would be so invested that the gatekeepers could force whatever silliness they wanted. If it's your health, maybe that is true, maybe we do sit in offices for days waiting to be sorted and ported through the right door, but a gatekeeper ought to be very careful what they are standing in front of. Anybody out there ever switch their phone provider because of some gatekeeper or worse, gatekeeper computer program giving you the big runaround? Sure you have, provided you have an alternative. Me, I just gave up the phone. Gradings for that TKD student were not enough to keep him in his club, there were other places he could train.

I tend to join hobby organizations because of who is there, rather than what that organization does. The loyalty is to the people not the supposed perks of that group. Because of that, I have no particular problem leaving a group no longer run by those I joined for. Perhaps you too should assess what's behind that annoying gatekeeper. If you do you may find that what is being witheld is something you don't care about one way or another. Maybe like the TKD student your priorities have changed from wanting the rank to wanting to train. At that point the gatekeeper starts to look more like Louis Tully than Dana Barrett.

What Does Your Grade Mean To You

One of our students is past due for a senior grade. To be honest, we've bounced him three or four times I think, yet he continues to challenge and so I suggested that he might like to try grading in the next country over since they were doing one of his rank.

He looked at me as if I had just stepped off the spaceship. (He seems to do that a lot.) When I asked what I'd said now, he explained in simple and basic words that he had no interest at all in being judged by people who were not in his organization and were not his teachers. "What I care about is what you guys think, not getting the rank". He also pointed out that grading in another country does our organization no good at all. We make most of our money off of registration fees for rank and he said he was happy to give that money to us but had no reason to donate money to anyone else.

I've done all my grades for all my arts in Canada. In the case of no grades being available, it never crossed my mind to go to another country and grade. I simply waited (or helped) until a grading system was installed in Canada and then started grading. In one case my sensei handed out club grades until a national system was established and to tell the truth I value that grade more than any other I've received.

I have been told to go to Japan for a grade level I'm trying to organize in Canada right now. "You'll pass easy" I've been told. First, I don't want to pass easy, what's the point of that? For me to go as one of the leaders of a foreign country and get handed a grade is a confusing thing. Am I getting it because I "need it" to promote the art elsewhere? Because I'm forgiven all sorts of bad technique due to courtesy to my organization or teachers? I'm not someone who figures "political" grades don't exist, and I have no problem with them, but I'd simply rather get assessed in Canada by those whose opinion I value.

Political or technical, the grade means something if it's from my teachers, it means much less to me if it's from people who are not even in my lineage, who simply share a common artform.

Whose Student Are You?

How exclusive is your art? I find a high correlation between commercial dojo and exclusiveness in the west, with instructors not wanting to send their payng customers to the competition. Makes sense to me. On the non-commercial side I also find a high correlation between ego and exclusive in some Japanese instructors, and not a few Westerners as well. But there are instructors unquestionably beyond both money and ego who just don't want the hassle involved with folks studying under two or three instructors, especially in the same organization.

The simple thing is, students can get confused by too many voices coming at them in the first few years. Yet these are the same years that students are prone to think there is "one way" to study the arts, one correct version of a technique. With a single correct way to learn something, why not study with various teachers? You can learn the calculus from any of a thousand teachers, why not how to punch or kick? This feeling is reinforced with standardized martial arts such as the kendo federation iaido or jodo kata. There is "the book" and there is a comittee who decides what's right and everyone world wide is supposed to do the same thing and be graded on the same criteria. In that case what's the point of having a single teacher? None at all really, and kendo federation students learn from multiple teachers without any problem. A single way to do the calculus, a single way to do seitei iai and multiple viewpoints to help you learn it.

So I hear things like "my Japanese teacher" and "our teachers" which always make me do a double take. I just wasn't trained to think that way. I've got a single teacher for any particular art, one each at any one time. For things like seitei I fully understand that there are multiple instructors I can learn from, and each year it's nice to get the latest word from Tokyo, but that's seitei, what we grade in, it isn't my iai, what I learn from. That's taught by my sensei.

And then there's the sensei who practically kick your butt out the door to train with someone else for a while because you've gone deaf (stopped listening to them). I've got sensei like that and I appreciate their point, but I have never, ever, confused "go study with Fred" with "Fred is now also your sensei". I may be a pretty laid back guy, and I may teach at a University where folks come and go through my class, but even I don't really mean "you've got two or three sensei" when I say "go practice with someone else". If you are my student I have responsibilities toward you, things that can't be shared with another teacher, so pick one. The fact that I don't care which of us you pick doesn't mean I'm likely to consider you my student once more if you wander back after picking some other sensei for a while. You may not notice, but I won't be overly concerned with your progress. You'll get taught on the level of seitei, this foot goes there, but I won't be pushing your ass through a wall to teach you how not to get pushed through a wall.

The simple question is "whose student are you?" It sometimes gets complicated if you can't answer that, even in such "modern and open" organizations as the kendo federation. It's pretty clear if your sensei says "don't practice with anyone else" but if they say "go practice with Fred" you better remember who your sensei is, even while Fred kicks your butt.

Where is everyone?

I look on the old internet forums and there's nobody posting on budo. I look at facebook and there's a few more people there but nothing like what we used to see. Where is everyone?

My class on campus has its usual ten or twelve bodies, same as ever, but several of the instructional clubs are in danger of being cancelled today. Time was we'd see 30 to 60 folks on the first day of the more popular arts.

Cancelling classes before the students even have their courses sorted is a bit premature in my opinion, especially since there doesn't seem to be any dance group or other thing waiting for the space, but I'm not in charge.

They're building large new facilities for athletics but I think they might be able to save a lot of money if they simply wait until the number of students wanting to work out drops to fit the existing space. It's not that far off now, except for peak times in the weight-loss rooms.

So tell me, he of the ancient habits and walked to school by himself, is it the digital age? Is everyone so attached to facebook they can't get up from their chair? Is everyone playing video games instead of real world games? Have helicopter parents created a generation of laziness that won't go away? Why are there no bodies out in the sunshine and in the dingy dark dojo? Are the students all working? Do they have no spare time?

Is it just fad behaviour? Is it Zumba for the girls and MMA for the boys? I really have no idea on this stuff at all, and I've been thinking about it for ten years now.

Someone explain it to me.

Hunting Under Rocks

As long as I've been in the martial arts (since 1980) and even earlier than that according to the old books and magazines I devoured in those early days, folks have been hunting for and exposing fakes and frauds.

Are they more common in the martial arts? Are there no frauds elsewhere? How about your local gym? The fitness industry seems to need government intervention to get rid of the fraud about once each 7-8 years.

I haven't seen anything in the martial arts world, including the guys who end up in jail for abusing their students, that's any worse than the local dance academy, the Boy Scouts or the Girl Guides. We aren't special in any way except possibly because folks expect the martial arts to be somehow more spiritual and moral than the guy next door giving guitar lessons to wannabe rock stars. (We won't talk about the problems in various religious groups but it bears thinking about if we want to compare spiritual preaching vs practice).

But I'm not talking about that sort of abuse, sure it needs to be addressed, not here, but with the police. If it's not a criminal affair, if it's simply "bad form" or "fakes" below the threshold for criminal charges, than you're into the realm of libel and slander lawsuits. Which is fine if you get worked up about that stuff and don't mind getting sued. I've watched it happen in the budo world and in the local baseball leagues, again it's not unique to martial arts.

But there's a level below the fakes and frauds. I refer to the seeming compulsion of folks to discuss the legitimacy of koryu lines they are not involved in, have no knowledge of, or any real business discussing. In fact, even more confusing to me, discussing arts they are not likely ever to get the chance to practice. There's an element of the witch hunt to this, the blind acceptance of a black and white interpretation of something that is multiple shades of grey. The branding of one side as right and the other as wrong with no actual knowlege of the history or circumstances. A simple minded acceptance of the "common" wisdom with no critical analysis or second thoughts that perhaps all sides in the dispute might have a legitimate point.

I maintain that, just as bringing up old family arguments does not help get the cousins finally re-invited to the wedding next month, bringing up "splits" and suggesting that some lines are "in" and some are "out" is not helpful to the art you're "trying to help survive". Far from it, it acts to keep the family divided. It's especially bad when junior's new girlfriend brings up the old wounds since now everyone is wondering just how much dirty laundry (and every family has it) is getting aired in public.

It's just not helpful in any way for strangers to an art to suggest that one group or another is "the legitimate" koryu group. They simply don't know. They don't get to vote on it in some external group that declares legitimacy so what's the point? Idle chatter? Witch hunting (which is always fun but leads to such things as burning at the stake of innocent people)?

My one and only desire is that people think for themselves and not accept things blindly.

I've been at the "exposure" game a lot longer than the world wide web has been in existance by the way, but I've always found a more useful way to go at it is to shine a light on what's real rather than go hunting under rocks for what's fake.

Illegal activity and abuse is for the legal system to solve. Below that, the guys that "make it up" should be exposed yes? Before doing that, have we done the research to distinguish the outright fake from someone we've never heard of? We should or we're no better than the fishwife sharing gossip over the back fence.

What about the guy who learns from his teacher in Japan and that teacher turns out to be a fraud? Where does good faith fit into all this? There's kids in the second or third generation of a local club who are having fun and getting some exercise but back at the beginning was some serious "making it up". A problem? Not really, the stuff that didn't work for them, that was harmful to the knees and dangerous to the trees, seems to have dropped out and the instruction seems no more or less harmful than the local self-certified fitness instructors. After all the fitness industry certification business has only been going for a couple of generations as well, and when it started it certainly wasn't based on scientific research or government studies was it?

Those potential students who are deeply concerned with being "legitimate" and wanting a lineage 400 years old can easily find such things on the net these days. As long as you don't look TOO closely your unbroken lineage will be there for you to practice.

Perhaps we can feel easier about the ones we doubt if we just admit to ourselves that it's not really our concern unless someone makes it so.

Which still leaves me with the most extreme form of legitimacy-doubting. The folks who say about a fellow teacher in their own art "yes he's got a rank but he really doesn't deserve it". This probably happens more than the witch-hunts in other people's arts simply because most folks are looking inward rather than out. Most folks are zealots about their own arts and ignore the rest of the world.

Do I hear those types of comment from the folks who gave out the rank? No, because those folks are usually not stupid and would not have given the rank to someone undeserving in the first place. The criticism usually comes from someone lower down or to the side of the grading system and the complaint usually amounts to "I don't like him". Which would be a much more honest statement, let's face it.

Have I ever cast doubt on someone's right to a rank? I hope not. Have I ever pushed someone whose rank seemed a bit inflated? Damned right I have, and I always got immediate and sometimes painful answers to those questions. You've got the right to physically question someone's ability in your art, within the confines of that art, and taking into account differences in rank. You can push a senior rank any way you wish but you test lower ranks to guide them.

But even if the test shows your partner to be a bit lacking in the ability you figure his rank should require, what have you proved to yourself (and this testing should always be private). I've seen kids beat the crap out of old men in competitive matches, is this a legitimate test? No, old men are teachers not fighters, go test one of their students who are closer to your physical abilities. You don't give rank back as you lose your bone and muscle mass so you don't get the right to doubt that rank.

The fun stuff is when you question rank from a distance and question it for things like "integrity" and "don't understand the secrets". That's the time when your own rank can come into question for the very same critique so you'd better be very careful about who you say such things to.

Think about it, you say about some dude in the next county "he doesn't get the inner workings and so doesn't deserve his rank". Who have you just insulted? Dude might get upset but who gave dude his rank? That's the guy who is going to be ticked off and that might just be the same guy who gave you your rank. I've seen it happen in budo and I've seen it happen in business. My advice is not to walk into someone else's house and tell him his wallpaper is the wrong colour.

I am a Hard Drive

We got into a discussion about Japanese swords the other day and one of the students said "thanks for telling us stories, even if I've heard them before I forget things and it's nice that I can just ask you again".

What am I? A hard drive? I decided that's exactly what I am. Nothing I know is a big discovery to me and it's all out there somewhere, my unique power is that I've collected it all in one spot so that my students can access it.

Of course I suggested that when the hard drive crashes they'd better have cloned it or they'll be spending as much time as I did collecting all the bits and pieces again.

Students, make copies of your own hard drives. Teachers, write those books and articles, make hard copies of what you know so that come the solar flare and giant EMP that knocks our civilization back to the stone age of pen and paper (like maybe even as far back as last century) your students can pick up the pieces and move forward once again confident that when the zombie apocalypse happens they can survive with their swords.

Steel Balls

When I was in University... well, next year will make it 40 years ago, I got an earring. Well to be precise I got two of them, and in the "wrong ear" since I wasn't gay. Funny, I never got propositioned, so maybe gay folks were, even then, a bit more sophisticated than to run after anyone with an earring in the right ear. Not that there were many of us, there were maybe three other pierced guys on campus and nobody else had two. I got the right ear done because I slept on my left ear those days, and I got two because it was the same price as one.

Eventually, well exactly at the time I saw my redneck neighbour come home with an earring, I took them out. They weren't cool any more, they were popular. Popular isn't cool, it's popular and I never wanted to be popular. Never wanted to be cool either for that matter. I do admit to a certain amount of twitting of society (that's everyone around me), not a lot, just enough that once in a while I got my ear pierced or wore a coloured uwagi to iaido practice. I was never the guy who broke the dress code just to get kicked out of school and have something to whine about. I was the jock who "forgot" that I had a t-shirt on when I went to math class.

I just ran across a statement something along the lines of "when I'm old I'll be the cool one in the home with my tatoos". Tatoos are not cool, they're popular. Bowties are cool. Fashionable is not cool unless it's straight off the runway and only 12 of you have that dress. To be cool you have to be part of a very small group. The cool group. You can't be the only one (that's me, as I come to realize it, the only guy with two earrings in one ear) because you have to be in a group or you aren't cool. After all who defines you as cool except the rest of your group.

Hey, one piercing isn't cool any more, how about a hundred? How about a tattoo on my eyelid?

Budo? OK cool is to do a koryu that a lot of people do. Karate is popular, kids do it. Not cool, was cool in the '50s. Shindo Muso Ryu jodo is cool, just enough people know what it is that those who don't know what it is have maybe heard of it. So the uncool know about the cool group. Katori Shinto Ryu is another cool koryu, many know of it, few do it. Kage Ryu is not cool, nobody knows what it is. Niten Ichiryu is cool because even if only a few people do it, lots know about it from Musashi's writings. Jodo and iaido may be becoming uncool because the kendo federation does them (they're becoming popular). So if I am doing iaido and it's becoming popular can I do twelve more koryu to stay cool?

Piercings aren't cool, tattoos aren't cool, they're popular. Your mom has one. Your great-gramps might have one but his tattoo was done in Tahiti during the war by some old native guy with a thorn on a stick. Now that was cool.

Piercings and tattoos don't make a statement any more. They don't say anything about you. They used to say something, they used to say "I'm now a man" or "I'm in this tribe". Now they say you visited the corner tattoo parlour where they use clean needles and non-toxic ink. None of this back hut, dirt ground, piercing with a dull piece of wood and tattooing with a tap-stick that never got washed.

Which brings me to steel balls on a truck. I've always had a problem trying to figure out what those said. Now the very first pair were quite likely a joke, someone twitting the world, some guy who actually used his big pickup on the job and was saying "yep, big testosterone truck". But now they're popular, you can buy them in Canadian Tire, you don't have to get a blacksmith to forge you a pair. So what do they say now? "My manhood is this giant truck that's jacked up so high it's useless as a work vehicle?" I suspect this is so because I have been getting the urge to buy a red sports car.

You gotta think a bit about what you are saying to folks with your body marks, your fuzzy dice equivalents, with your choice of martial art. You may not be giving out the message you think you are.

Musashi was Right... Again

So You Wanna be a Master

Will It Take Full Contact?

Beginning and Ending, let the middle take care of itself.

Ask him, he's the sensei

Step back and watch

Sensei is the syllabus

The Holy Writ

Just Practice.

Who Lasts, Wins.

Rivers broad and deep

Economics for Budo

Nothing to say

Alberta Again

I hate gradings

Growth

Judging Scorecards

The Judder

Profit Margins

Money is Time

Religion to Recreation

The Boss' Coffee

Serious About Koryu?

Right Down to the Floor

When the student is ready: The dojo will appear?

How Do We Do It, How Do We Do It

Could I get any more obscure?

When to leave (shu ha ri)

When to Leave

The Way It Works

To Grow a Pearl

What's the Difference?

Enzen no Metsuke

More Communication

Going Japanese

Another Day Down

Ha Ha Ha