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Budo Organization
Herding cats is what I was going to call this essay, but it occured to me that martial artists aren't any more independant-minded than any other group of people. One might think so since they are concerned with fighting, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to their relationships with their sensei or their organization.
I want to think about the makeup of an organization and then extend some ideas of how to help it grow. An organization is a group of people who are not a mob. Is that good? A group who have some sort of reason for acting together. So a company that makes widgets is an organization. Some design, some manufacture, some sell, some just buy and sell the stocks in the company. They all have an interest in widgets.
How about budo? Can we look at it as a business? The organization being in the business of selling rank?
It may be thought of that way, providing we look at it from top-down, from the administration point of view. You have a product, rank, and a customer base, the membership. You don't like where this is going do you? The rank is certainly sold, but it isn't bought. That is, it costs money but you can't buy it with money alone, you must earn it and then pay for it after you earn it. Wow that doesn't sound right at all?
How about the organization sells legitimacy? Said legitimacy being useful for the individual sensei to run their dojo. This is the franchise model and it has in fact been applied to martial arts organizations. Is it a good model? I suppose it might be if the instructors are trying to make a living, but often they are not. How does being licensed (certified) by an organization help the instructor who simply teaches what he was taught without charging for it? Unless the organization has the power to prevent said instruction (a legal licensing system with trade marks and all that), the only value of certification would seem to be whatever value said instructor gives to said certification.
The organization sells instruction? Perhaps some do, this would be the dance school model, or no, not really, dance schools tend to be one-studio one-teacher affairs. Maybe the Suzuki school model would be better. You go through standard instruction courses to learn how to teach music and then you join an existing school or start your own.
This top down search for a model isn't easy, mainly because budo organizations aren't all the same. Some are licensing systems sending money back up the chain for certification flowing down (back to selling rank). Some are not primarily about the money and so are harder to see as licensing systems.
Back in Edo period Japan you had the same definition problem I guess. Flower arranging and Tea had the iemoto system where there was franchising and licensing and money flowed up the chain to the top while the local instructors taught country-wide. The budo schools were quite sensibly not allowed the same country-wide organization, they were restricted to their prefectures. An instructor who learned in Tosa and moved to Satsuma may have had sentimental ties to his old teacher but he wasn't part of that teacher's organization.
Yeah this isn't getting me anywhere. The problem is that administrations imply business in our modern eyes. Maybe we need to go to the religious model? Since when was the church, any church, not a business?
Time to get personal. Time to go bottom up. Why am I (anyone) in the Canadian Kendo Federation (any budo organization)? That's an easy one, because my teacher is there. And my students? Because their sensei is in the organization. Am I there because of the grading? Not a chance, there was no grading when I started, and none for several years afterward, I helped set up the grading system so being a member of the CKF had nothing to do with that. It came down to access to my teacher. In that sense (if I don't care about the rank) I have no need for the organization at all, it does nothing for me. If my sensei were to leave I would have no problems about leaving.
Perhaps that's it, perhaps we need to think about budo organization as a chain of personal connections from the bottom up, student to teacher. At some point those teachers ended up in a common organization and as long as they work together for whatever reason they do, the organization will continue.
In the case of the kendo federation I have been ignoring a vital part of the situation haven't I? Tournament kendo. The CKF exists as a large, unified national body because of the World Kendo Championships. If you are Canadian and not a member of the CKF you will not be competing in those championships. Ever. Join or forget about it.
That's a pretty good reason to have the organization in the first place, and a damned good reason why it won't fly apart. Unfortunately that doesn't apply to the junior arts of iaido and jodo so we are back to the "my sensei is in so I'm in" argument.
Does instruction require loyalty? That depends on how the instruction is given. If you are in a tiny koryu art where you sign a blood oath and you can only get instruction from a single instructor it's not hard to see that loyalty pays. Don't tick off sensei if you want to keep learning, and if sensei is in a lineage you'd better not tick off those up the chain either.
The Kendo federation instruction is a slightly different thing. Seitei iai and jo are standardized, that means in theory any instructor anywhere around the world will be teaching you the same thing. You can tick your sensei off and be booted out the door to go to another dojo and pick up your training without any break. The "loyalty or quit the art" model doesn't work. To be honest, if the art you are studying is at all widespread this same mobility is available to the students. Aikido, judo, karate, tae kwon do, all these arts are more or less widespread and more or less standard. You can switch dojo and even organizations without a break in training, and lots of people do.
Right, why does an organization exist? World championships would be a good reason, and the organization ends up in a top-down configuration. Otherwise, organizations are somewhat organically grown with students attaching to sensei who are attached to other sensei in a chain with branches, the genealogical family tree model.
There.
So how to grow a family tree? More branches. Maybe more kids, but for a given family size (dojo membership) the branching system makes more sense to me if you're looking for growth. If the usual size of a club is ten or twelve for inexpensive dojo spaces, and maybe double that for more expensive space, you will grow best by encouraging more clubs.
What about the competition model? What is the best growth model for kendo or judo? Concentration I would say, larger dojo with more competition to be had within those dojo, and lots of these large dojo within a smaller geographical range to provide even more competition. Hundreds of small kendo dojo consisting mostly of beginners won't work if your goal is world champions.
Meh, three coffees and this is going nowhere. You've got to look at specifics, one size isn't going to fit all is it?
All I seem to have after all that analysis is: "Find your most suitable growth areas and encourage those."
What works? Do more of that.
Who is working? Leave them alone to get on with it.
Don't fix what isn't broken?
Top down, Bottom up
How do you grow an art? I've seen Kendo Federation iaido and jodo grow up in several places over the last three decades since my own iaido club (the Sei Do Kai) was founded in 1987. There are two basic ways for the arts to grow, from the bottom up and from the top down.
In our case the early growth was definitely bottom up, we started here in Canada with a few people who had learned iaido in some other place and brought it to Canada where they taught what they knew. These folks happened to be kendoka so there was a "sort of" connection but there was no iai or jo section of the Canadian kendo federation for many years. It was all quite informal until there was a chance to organize a grading, at which point the section began. One could argue that the section existed in theory and they would be right, but the administration of gradings (the beginnings of record-keeping by the federation on the art) is the real starting point of any section.
Bottom-up growth in a section-less environment is a matter of pure interest in the art, it is done by people who see the inherent value in the art and are willing to practice and to teach with no chance of gradings in the forseeable future. This is where I came in to the kendo federation, with Ohmi sensei and Cruise sensei doing a bit of teaching and practicing in Toronto, After an introduction to iaido in 1983 through Aikido, I began studying with them in 1987, and started teaching what I learned at the University of Guelph. At roughly the same time a group was developing around Ken Maneker sensei in Vancouver and they grew in roughly the same manner, from a few people to a few clubs.
Eventually the population got big enough for us to start the May seminar and with that, the Eastern gradings. Again, the Western gradings began at about the same time. Now, 30 years later the situation is different and often the call is for CKF assistance to start a new club or to produce a seminar. This is the top-down model, with the federation expected to provide instruction and creat clubs.
While it is possible for an established section within a federation to create more clubs and more seminars and thus growth of the art, I am of considerable doubt about the idea of a section starting from nothing from the top down. The CKF had no particular interest in iaido or jodo when those arts began, why would they? Who wants to take on the task of creating something from nothing if nobody is interested? It takes a certain nucleus of bodies to become noticed, at which point the federation will, eventually, take notice.
What that means is that a beginning art will need to have people willing to support it alone, people who seek instruction on their own and recruit or attract students to themselves with no outside help. These bottom-up types tend to be self-reliant and motivated. Another way to put that is that they are cussedly independent. When a federation finally listens to them and creates a section and "takes credit for their hard work" you can see what might happen. Yes, a certain amount of "where were you when..." might surface.
Now to be fair, this resentment isn't usually aimed at the kendo folks, who probably still don't have much of an interest in the junior arts.The best reaction of the senior kendo folk is what I've called "benign neglect", a willingness to leave the crazy people alone to get on with whatever it is they are doing over there. Unfortunately, sometimes the kendo types see these new arts as a distraction and will discourage them. This is of course, not helpful, we can define this as top-down suppression of growth rather than top-down growth. Fortunately, there are few of these kendo-centric types and they are usually kept at a safe distance by enlightened presidents or fellow kendoka.
Where the resentment we mentioned does get aimed, when it does, is at administrivial types within the junior art itself who step into a going concern and start to mess around. It's the founder-entrepreneur vs the hired-gun CEO. The guy who built it vs the guy who inherits it.
The guy who inherits will tend to be a top-down type, a guy who figures the federation (therefore HE) has always been in charge (since that's all he's ever seen) and should remain firmly in charge. These folks are highly invested in the federation that installed them in their position, and may not see the value of the bottom-up approach, yet they should. To drop a missionary into a remote region for a weekend seminar and then disappear is a very poor way to grow an art. This is top-down thinking.
Bottom-up thinking might be to encourage the clubs on the fringe of the new frontier to find sympathetic types and support their efforts. In other words, don't send in the 8dans on a pseudo-vacation junket to teach a bunch of kids. Instead support the 4 and 5dan instructors who are close and who wish to do little seminars with small groups of individuals or groups.
The big-shots might love the chance to fly to exotic places, but new recruits to the art need more regular support. Support that can be provided by locals within driving range.
Top down vs bottom up? Why the vs? There is a middle way. Perhaps the 3dan who is teaching in a remote region could use a senior instructor now that he has put a few groups of interested students together. He's done the bottom-up work, now he asks the federation for a big gun. Does the federation say "finance it yourself" or does it send in that big gun to support the junior? If the federation is smart, it sends the top gun on it's own dime. That's top-down support for bottom-up growth. By sending an instructor when asked, and not imposing before it's time, the federation supports the growth engines, the younger ranks in remote places.
Does this middle way of top-down supporting bottom-up growth exist anywhere? Not to my knowledge but perhaps we can all think about this. I've seen the beginnings of such a thing, a willingness to consider it without there being a formal policy or a formal framework expressed.
The countries of Latin America have a few iaido sections and enough bottom-up growth of the art to now start thinking about senior gradings on their own soil. This past year I have been asked twice to go and sit on a panel and it was the national federations or the CLAK that flew in the ranks to sit those panels.
What was most interesting to me about this last invitiation was that for a while the CKF, on the initiative of the President, was willing to send two panelists on CKF funding. While some CKF members might have seen that as their fees going to support some big shot's vacation junket, I saw it as a way to support iaido in our zone. It was what I have defined here as a top-down way to support bottom-up growth of the art. I doubt the CKF has discussed any such system but the president saw it intuitively. The South Americans have been traveling on their own money to Canada and Europe for years to get their training, for us to support them in turn when asked, seems a good way to grow the art in general. As it turned out eventually, the Chilean Kendo Federation paid our way, thus supporting their own bottom-up growth by bringing in some "big guns".
Junket? Every one of those senior ranks that were flown in worked their rear ends off. By the end of the tournament I was hearing the kendo sensei wondering if they would ever get out of their hotel for a meal, let alone seeing the sights. I was sneaking out with some local friends so maybe I can be accused of being a tourist on someone else's money, but trust me, these sensei were not swanning around. Airport to hotel, seminars and tournament with meals at the hotel. One evening out and a couple hours in a van to see some sights on the way back to the airport.
You think you want to be a high rank to be flown around and treated like a king? Get your own students to fly you in privately and tell them they have to treat you royally. Stay away from the top-down federation-sponsored trips. The federations treat the high ranks like employees to be sent and worked and then returned to write reports and generally justify their existence.
As they should.
From the ground up
I wonder how much we think about the floor we work on when we do our budo. At the Latin American kendo championships this year in Chile it was mentioned in passing that the floor may make the style. When you do kendo on the perfect surface it is sprung so that when you attack and stamp your foot down, the floor will flex and propel you forward. This makes for beautiful, floating movement.
If you are working on a gym that is tile on cement that stamp is going to reward you with a sore knee. As a result, you are going to soften up your legs which means you will tighten up your upper body making for a muscle-dominated, shoulder-y kendo.
The surface in Chile this year was a "sports floor" which is a sort of rubberized coating that has lots of grip and some give to it. This is fine for stamping except that it won't provide that rebound, it absorbs rather than flexes. The stickiness could also lead to picking up the feet rather than sliding them.
Then there is the floor our club works on these days. Some bright light decided that a bare wood studio would be great for dance. The problem is, it never gets washed, it simply dries and dries and dries and now the wood has gaps deep enough to cut your feet. Not only that, but bare wood is hard to clean when you finally try to do it, the result is a stuck-on layer of dust that makes it slippery. The solution, in somebody's mind, was not to varnish it, but to rough sand it. That means that you now have some grip on one direction and even less at 90 degrees to that. Just perfect for causing unexpected splits as you move on an angle.
No grip on the floor makes for the same result as no give, you never get any push from the floor for your movements. Last evening at jodo practice my partner had to pull the jo upward to avoid sliding through my face on the end movement of a kata. Then there was my own problem of getting out of the way of an attack because I didn't start moving while my attacker was still half way across the room.
I have no idea what the point of practicing seitei jo or iai on a less than perfect surface is. The requirements for 5dan and above, the movements required to pass an exam, are impossible to perform on rock or on ice. You need a clean, sprung floor with just the right amount of grip.
A friend who just spent some time in Japan mentioned the floors there, saying that he practiced in several dojo and every single one of them was spotless, he never had dirty feet. In Japan there are many sports that involve bare feet so the cleaning crews (and the practicioners themselves) would be aware of this and clean the floor accordingly. In the west I can't think of many sports except budo that don't use shoes. You can compensate for a poor floor with good shoes. If your floor is dirty you don't notice because your feet are clean inside your socks.
It's a different environment. A Japanese sensei will come from his home dojo to a gym floor in the west and be shocked at the state of people's feet. Small wonder. Also small wonder that so many Japanese instructors wear tabi when they visit the west.
Is the solution to wear tabi? Shoes? I've tried socks on the slippery floor and they actually seem to give more grip than bare feet. (I should mention that my feet don't sweat, for those who do the floor is great as the wood latches on to the moisture). Maybe I will look for some footwear, but unfortunately, anything between my foot and the floor takes away a lot of feedback. My toes tell me a lot about my balance and my weight, putting a layer of rubber or cloth between me and the floor means I'm unsure of the fine details. With bare feet on a good floor I can move just enough that the attacking sword brushes my sleeve. With a poor floor or something on my feet it is about 50-50 if my sleeve or my shoulder gets hit, so my movements end up exaggerated.
So what you say? A good budoka should be able to handle any surface? Well yes, but that's not helpful if you are practicing for your next grading in seitei. The major problem I see in most senior gradings is the connection between the floor and the upper body. If you practice on a floor that won't let you drop your strength into your legs, you will never get the strength out of your shoulders. If we are talking budo as combat, the surface must not matter, and both parties in the conflict will be dealing with the same environment. Once you go to judging on objective standards of movement, you need a standard environment to train and test in. Standards that are formed on perfect floors won't be reached on tile over cement.
Tounaments are different. Both competitors have the same problems and the judges only need to pick the one who does best. Gradings mean reaching a fixed level of performance and "everyone can fail".
If you need that properly sprung, clean wooden floor to achieve that perfect kendo attack, you won't find perfect kendo in places with a different floor. It will be a different kendo.
Aikido done on tatami over a sprung floor is different than aikido done on a double layer of wrestling foam. Tell someone on that foam to spin on the ball of their foot and you are asking them to wrench their knees. There have been times where I had to wear socks on those mats just to be able to demonstrate a technique. On the other hand, aikidoka who practice on old tatami over cement will show a different way of falling to those on the double wrestling mats. Much less tendency to fly across the room before landing.
Teachers and judges need to take the floor into account. The sticky sports floor will make iaidoka pitch forward as their front foot stops instead of slides. If they don't pitch forward, their hips will be too soft. On our ice rink of a dojo? They will be sliding out of control with the proper amount of hip, so again, hips too soft.
We talk about our hips, we talk about connecting the weapon or our technique to the floor. Do we think enough about that floor?
Seven Dan Advice
I have several students who are waiting for the chance to take their 7dan grades. The following is really not for them, I consider that they've been nanadan for years. If you know them you will probably agree that they follow the advice given here.
For the rest of my students who are just sitting on the edge of your seat, here's my list of 7dan stuff you ought to start thinking about.
Be of good will: There's really no more to be said but of course I'll say it. Be the person who cares for the improvement of others in their own way. Give them what they need rather than what you figure they should have.
You are a guest: That means that if you go to another dojo to teach, and you will, you should consider yourself a house guest. Leave the place more neat than you found it, within reason. Certainly pick up after yourself, but don't wash the walls and dust the shelves, that's a bit insulting. If you use a dresser, straighten things up that you may have been expected to be messing with. In the dojo, be very careful not to mess with the relationships, don't give advice on how to treat students unless it's needed or asked for. Of course you won't tolerate abuse of students any more than you would not unplug a stopped up toilet, but don't give advice on how to re-arrange the towels.
It's not your dojo, act like a guest, stick to what you're there for, be good company at dinner.
Etiquette is local: You should make an effort to understand the local manners, it's not up to you to show people how to greet each other, or even how to treat each other. That's not your job, no matter how much you figure bowing to an exact 15 degrees is correct while your host is trying to shake your hand and kiss you on your cheek. Save the etiquette lessons for the dojo where you can explain that bowing keeps you out of knife range and shaking hands and hugging should be reserved for people you trust.
If you trust your hosts, greet them in their own etiquette, lean in and get kissed. If you figure they invited you in order to stab you, don't go.
Go where you are asked: You are a member of an international organization, as such you take on certain responsibilities as you rise in rank. The 7dan rank means you can sit panels so you may be asked to do so in countries that don't have enough of their own rank to hold their own grades.
Do what you are told: You may be part of a group of instructors, sort yourself into the correct place and do what you're told to do. I know it's hard to shut up and assist when you have that great way to teach what the hachidan is teaching, but relax. He's likely as good at this stuff as you are. Listen and learn.
If you're the big shot, still do what you're told. You may not be there to teach some arcane part of the art, no matter how much you want to. You're there to teach what you were asked to teach. Teach that. Now, if you can't teach what you were asked because there are some basics missing, fill them in as fast as you can and get back to what you were asked to do.
Advance, don't fix: The locals may not have regular access to you. They may not ever see you again. Don't waste everyone's time by fixing small points, instead point them out and teach how to fix them. Four dans love to fix things, let them do it.
Concentrate on the seniors: You should be looking more toward the highest ranks in the room, rather than the lowest. Show them how to fix things and trust them to fix them when you're gone. In the meantime take those higher ranks further along in their studies so that they can pass that down as well.
Teach the beginners to listen to their seniors: Reinforce and support the local instructors, let their students see that their teachers know what they're doing. If you feel you absolutely must correct the highest local instructor don't pull them out on the floor and tell them they are wrong, instead suggest that perhaps there is a different way to do what they are doing. Maybe do it quietly, when everyone else is looking the other way. Even more delicate is to look at the students in general and correct them. If their teacher is listening he'll get the message. "All my students just got told to do it a different way, maybe I should fix that".
Take the hit: On the other hand, if the hanshi pulls you out in front of everyone and tears a strip off your back because you aren't doing things correctly, take it for what it is. It's a teaching moment, for you and for the students watching. "Wow, even a 7dan can get corrected, maybe there's something I can learn too". It's good for students to see seniors being corrected and taking it with delight. Why the difference? You're a 7dan, you have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to your own students. But you may be in a situation where the local instructors are quite junior grades and they will know it. They may be a bit insecure and feel that what authority they have is being undermined by your corrections. Be careful of who and how you correct and take the hit yourself to show how.
There's always a senior: The local guy who is in charge of what you're teaching is automatically a senior rank and deserves the respect of a senior rank. It doesn't matter if the local group is being taught by a shodan, you should treat that shodan with the respect of a 7dan. Unless there is an explicit agreement that you are their sensei, these are not your students, their sensei is worth your respect.
Don't let anyone defend your dignity: You may run into helpful types who will tell their fellow students how to treat you. They may even do this in front of you. Gently suggest that you can take care of your own dignity and make sure that everyone understands that you are a formal/informal person in/out of class and you will let people know if they are offending you. Never be offended.
You are there to teach, if that involves falling over on the floor as you demonstrate the wrong foot placement, so be it. If someone fails to bow correctly to you, or (horrors) uses the wrong honourific, fail to notice and make sure others don't notice for you.
Don't take sides: Unless you own your dojo, you deal constantly with the administration of your space. You deal with your local organization as well. You know the frustrations. You local hosts may also have complaints, the best way for you to deal with those is to point out that they are the same everywhere. If you haven't figured out how to fix them back home it's doubtful you can fix them elsewhere. Just nod and say "yep, same".
Stick to teaching.
Teach more than you're asked: Try to give more than was expected, ways to keep learning, the next couple of kata, something that you can leave as a gift. Always try to teach ideas rather than just angles. The students can read books and manuals to learn the angle of this or that cut, but books can't always teach what a correctly aligned hip feels like. If you can teach that you will have a lasting effect on those students.
Those are some quick ideas on what to do as a 7dan. As always, it's just my opinion but I have noticed that my 6dans follow these already, so I leave the thoughts here for consideration.
Who's your teki?
Just who is this mysterious Kasso Teki we hear about in iaido? This guy we're supposed to be fighting against, the position of whom is the riai of that kata for so many years. (Kasso Teki is the invisible enemy we are fighting with all our sword swinging in air and the riai is the principle of the kata. Just knowing what teki is supposed to be doing is considered deep knowledge for several years after we discover the fellow is in front of us).
Recently I came up with the following story that I thought I would share with you since I'm still around to share things. (Another story for another day).
First, from 1-3 dan in the kendo federation we assume you are learning the dance steps of the kata. Which foot goes where. So, as you might expect, these students don't have a lot of time to devote to seeing invisible anything, they are looking at their feet and their hands and their sword and their uniform that has somehow got tangled up with their scabbard. But toward the end of this period (roughly three years) as they get the steps memorized, they may become aware of what they are supposed to be doing, specifically, what they are supposed to be cutting. At this stage we say that teki is just like you, same size, same shape, same skill level, just a tiny bit slower than you are.
This means you can beat him every time as you work mostly inside yourself, making the kata smooth and beautiful. For a lot of people, things may never get beyond this stage of eyes mostly rolled inside their own heads as they try to make their sword move around from check-point to check-point. It is kasso teki that is supposed to pull them out of this trap.
For those who are a bit more spiritually-minded, you can make your kasso teki into yourself. Only the really nasty and horrid parts of yourself so that you are cutting down your own weakness with every kata. When these things come back into you (at noto), there will be just a little less of them each time. Practice long enough and you might become a better person.
From 4 to 5 dan the kendo federation grading guidelines say you are polishing and perfecting your technique so that 5 dan is the last time we can judge you strictly on "the book". People have asked me what this "book" is, it's the all Japan Kendo Federation iaido manual. That little bit of a thing that you read through and say "I know all that" and throw on a shelf. It's the thing that the visiting sensei refers to when he says "have you read the book?" about two minutes into the seminar. Don't read it, study it.
So what is kasso teki doing while you are perfecting all this technique? Who is he? At 4 dan he is the same old guy who is just slightly slower than you are, but you ought to consider him to be a real jerk. As you begin your first kata, (Mae), you draw with the intent to suppress your teki, to make him back down due to your superior position and your lack of openings for him to attack. If he says "gomen" you put your sword back into your saya and sit down again.
But he doesn't. He persists in attacking you so as you reach saya banari (breaking the scabbard, the point where you cut) you ought to get really, really angry that he is forcing you to kill him. "Stupid, stupid man, why are you making me do this!"
This is the start of getting out of your own head and into the world with your iai. One to four dan is six years of practice, enough time to collect a university degree and a good chunk of post grad study to boot. It's about time to get over the checkpoint dance. Injecting some emotion into the situation is one way to do this.
But emotion isn't all that useful in a fight, no matter how efficient at getting you out of your own head. At 5 dan your teki is now somewhat better than you are, so you can't afford to get angry. In fact, you are now struggling to keep up with him. You have to use all the wiles at your command, you must be picture perfect with your technique, you must be starting to use the things that aren't in the book, the small details of timing, the internal adjustments in your hips that root you to the floor, the things that you can't get from a book or from a video. He's better than you, fight, struggle, overcome. There's a lot of sweat at this stage, a lot of shaking legs, long hours of practice alone. A lot of thought and research, just to have a chance to overcome this opponent.
As there should be, you have been doing this stuff for ten years now. That's a long time and you now need a very good opponent to keep getting better.
So what about 6dan? Where do you go from a superior opponent? You go to a place where it doesn't matter how good your teki is. He is now vastly better than you but you don't care. You own the dojo, it's yours, so is his rear end. This is fifteen years of study, you are now a surgeon, a partner in the law firm, a PhD, with the ego that comes with it. Is there anything you can't handle? No. Bring it!
Wow, if that's a 6dan what's a seven? Not what you might think. At 7 dan you need to lose that ego. Not the iron core of confidence you have by 6dan, but the somewhat (somewhat?) irritating arrogance that covers you like the smell of a pig farm or a fish shanty. You don't realize it's there, you're used to the smell, but those around you certainly do. It sort of bounces people away from you. And this is what teki is feeling too, better or not he kind of bounces away.
At 7dan your teki starts to sort of fade in and out, he changes as you need him to. Instead of being an opponent he has become a training partner, working with you, someone to embrace, someone who will really try to take your head off, to challenge you at all times, never ease up. He's a partner because you can't get better without a challenge, you aren't afraid of him taking your arm off, you welcome the possibility.
The ego fades because of two things. First, after 20 plus years of practice you are starting to notice your own mortality. No more the "live forever" attitude of the 6dan, you understand that you won't be around forever, those twinges in your knees, the little nudges in the shoulders are small hints. This weakness in your own body leads you to begin caring for (noticing for the first time in some cases) the weakness of others and you become softer.
Apart from knowing your own mortality, you also have the example of the 8 dans and the hanshi up there above you. The hanshi are as far above you as a 7dan as you are above a beginner. Yet they talk to you. Heck they talk to beginners! Amazing, how can you not take their example?
In practical terms, you can see what a 7dan is if you go to enough seminars. When the 7dan is in charge of the seminar he will be in charge, no question at all, he will tell you what to do, he will run your practice and your life without hesitation, without doubt. If you have a question he'll answer it immediately and you will be satisfied. Challenge him and he will grin and explain further without taking your head off.
Yet, put that same 7dan into a room with an 8dan and he shuts up. Hard to believe but he does, he listens hard! He helps out, he teaches only what the 8dan teaches, he reinforces instructions that he might actually have told you were wrong ten minutes earlier before the 8dan showed up. In other words, he will instantly and completely subordinate himself to the teachings of an 8dan or a hanshi. Why? Remember that teki that fades in and out, that partner to learning. There are many paths to the top of the mountain and the 7dan is perfectly capable of moving from one path to another to help those coming after.
It's just not a competition at this stage. There's no room for ego here.
The 8dan and the hanshi? I dunno what their teki look like. All of us I suspect, they're in charge and we're the teki.
All this is just a story of course, you know egotistical 7dans, you know 5dans that don't try and 6dans that are gentle and kind.
It's just a story about invisible opponents. They aren't real are they?
Hit Stronger
Since it's been grading time the topic of how a woman doing iaido gets a grade or wins a tournament has come up once more. Inevitably I am asked about women being told to "hit harder" or "make a noise when you cut". Making a noise is the sound of the groove in the sword when the air moves over it. If we were allowed to kiai when we cut that wouldn't ever be a consideration. As it is, the noise tends to stop people from breathing out when they cut because they want to hear the noise. In other words, it can be distracting.
Being told to hit harder may not be a woman thing if the grade is around nidan. The distinction of nidans is that they hit really, really hard. Stone hands and if they're lucky, a wrist move to make the tip go fast means a lot of noise. High pitched, usually above the head, certainly, but lots of it.
If you're not hitting like that at nidan you'll be told. It's good for you, it gives you a basis for what comes later.
If it's not a nidan thing, there is a problem. If a tournament judge says "women/men cut like" they may already have decided that women can't cut properly, in which case, why are you bothering to compete? Go ahead, but treat it as what it is, a bit of a joke since spoilers, the end of the story has been revealed already.
Let's look at kendo, in the recent Latin American kendo championships I was watching a girls division. Without thinking much about it I turned to a kendoka and asked if there were ever mixed teams. He thought about it and said "I don't think we've ever....... " At about the same time we both realized that of course there are mixed teams, kendo doesn't deal with divisions much, except to hand out more medals to more people. Experience is what counts, being able to lay a shinai onto a target. Size, strength, and sex don't matter like they do in other sports because fast is as useful as strong, skill can overcome weight.
There is an objective reality in kendo, did you hit the target, that answers the questions about whether a woman is cutting correctly or not. Nobody speculates whether she was strong enough on that hit to chop right through her opponent, in fact most kendoka appreciate not being hit that hard. Hard is something that beginners do, not experts.
How about jodo? Again, you rarely get told to swing the jo harder or stronger. In fact, almost from day one you are told to soften up, to pay attention to the angles and forget about the strength. How does that work? Because we have that objective test of actually hitting something. If you say to a woman jodoka that she doesn't swing hard enough and you put your bokuto out there and she smacks it away, you then say "oops sorry, plenty hard enough".
Only in iai do you regularly hear about swinging harder, or faster for that matter, and I think it's because you never hit anything. You have only the observer's opinion on how effective that cut was. If that observer is a nanadan who also does kendo or jodo maybe you ought to listen. If that observer is a junior iaidoka who has never done anything but iaido, they may be right, or they may not. Maybe go ask your sensei for a second opinion.
My personal experience with shinken is that it's pretty efficient at cutting stuff. I once, due to stiff knees, ended up sitting at a bad angle to bow out. I took my left thumb off the tsuba and the sword moved, putting my thumb back on the tsuba to stop it was a mistake, and the edge cut to the bone. If anyone wants to see, the scar is still there right next to the scars from when I drove my thumb into the bandsaw.
I once watched someone pick up a shinken and saw it fall out of the saya. It dropped straight down and he tried to prevent damage to it by putting out his foot. With only gravity and a chopping motion, it opened a cut on top of his foot about three inches long and at least half an inch deep. Just from falling two feet.
Let's talk tameshigiri, cutting rolled up mats or straw bundles soaked in water. We sometimes do this in order to get people to cut less strongly, not more. The beginners inevitably grip hard and swing like they're trying to fall a tree. (If you are a tree faller you know the value of soft hands and letting the axe do the work but you get the image). After bouncing the target across the room once or twice someone comes up and says "just cut like you do in iaido". Swish, a softer cut, an accurate edge angle (that tachi kaze, the sword wind sound) and a chunk of target is falling down.
You want to try this but don't have a shinken and old tatami mats? Get some foam pool noodles and put them on end. Use your iaito and make a very tip-fast cut, you can go through them with accurate angle and speed. Strength has nothing to do with it. Speed is necessary though.
Someone said that a baby, given the right sword angle, can cut through a body. Force of gravity on sword and arms, plus rotating around a point which will cause a slicing motion.
So what about these nidans swinging so hard that they give themselves tennis elbow? Are they wrong? No they're not, you have to learn how to swing with strength at some point. Touching an opponent with the side of the sword isn't going to do any damage. Musashi said that if you miss the target try to hit anything at all and that might be with the side of the blade. Hit it hard. It's easier to move from strength to accuracy than the other way around.
Dai Kyo Soku Kei, Big, Strong, Fast, then Smooth. This is a sequence of learning, not a combination of factors in the cut. Think of it as the first four dan grades, big is shodan, strong is nidan, fast is sandan and smooth is yondan. Godan is where we assume you know how to cut.
Nidans have tennis elbow. Yondans have groin pulls as they transfer that big, strong, fast power from their shoulders to their hips in order to learn how to be smooth. Smooth means noodle arms, soft hands, flexible wrists. Can you hit properly if you have no strength to drop into your hips? Maybe, but in my experience that's a bit more difficult.
You know, back when we started this stuff we realized that if you "throw like a girl" you're a lot closer to a proper sword cut than if you throw like a guy. Being a woman was considered an advantage to us dinosaurs, less to unlearn.
Maybe we were wrong?
The Sorting Hat
We all want to know where we are, after all if we don't know where we are we can't know where we're going, or even where we've been.
So where is it we are?
Just before I disappeared for a couple of weeks worth of classes I put up a board with pegs and a set of keychain labels in the dojo. I was curious what the class would do with it. Nothing at all it turns out, they simply wondered what the crazy man was doing now.
It was a nafudakake of course, a rank board for them to sort themselves. I was curious to see how they would sort, on time in the dojo? Rank? Number of koryu they have practiced? What about double ranks, some of them have rank in two arts of the dojo and rank from organizations outside, do you add up the dans? I'd be a 13 dan from the three arts I do that have rank but I do several more that have no rank at all.
Where is it that we are? Do we do it by age? Older people came before so should be respected for being around longer. Do we do it by time in the dojo? That comes out to the same thing as age doesn't it? Just the amount of time in a more restricted place than the world in general. What about the guy who practiced for a decade then stopped to raise a family and then came back, where does his name go on the board? Do you have to start over if you leave and come back, like a queue at the bank?
Rank? Well what kind of rank? Which rank? Do we assume that rank is a level of skill? This means that the 5dans have a certain level of skill, fine, how do you rank them within that 5dan area on the board? Time in practice at 5dan? Those who are better than others within the rank? Why do we rank the 5dans above the 4dans? Skill level right? So what we have here is a ranking within the people of the dojo (we don't put up nafuda from outside the dojo, obviously), I am better at this than Joe so I go up ahead of him.
While the rank thing might make sense and seem somewhat objective, what about the guy who doesn't bother to grade? He might be really good, better than most in the dojo. Do you keep his name down at the bottom? It gets embarassing when you have those guys around. I know of a fellow or three who were at a major seminar in Japan and told that "the six dans are up there". On saying that they had a much lower rank they were not moved to the higher group but left where they were with much embarassed confusion. Just what do you do with someone who doesn't fit into the system like they are supposed to fit... why we might just have to pay attention!
I get this regularly at the May seminar. "I should be allowed to practice with the upper group" they say, implying that they are better than their fellow rankers. Really? Who says? You? How do we do that anyway, hold a grading to see which group you are sorted into? Every single seminar? Stay where your rank sits please, or move up and get kicked back down when you can't perform at that level. In a jodo class we often sort by how many kata you know, they tend to go from easier to harder, and they are sorted by rank requirements, so if you know up to 6 you go there, if you know more than 6 you stay here. That way we aren't wasting time teaching you the dance steps while the rest of the group are twiddling their thumbs. Personally, I teach according to the group and if someone wants to "sneak up" I am fine with that as long as the group as a whole isn't slowed down. The sneaker-in tends to sort himself back to the appropriate group eventually, having wasted some of their own training time. I also have little time for the seniors who rush to tell me that the sneaker-in shouldn't be there... I'm not stupid, I can see that they aren't ready but what I want to know is why it's so important to you. Are you threatened by the beginner? Do you figure I'm playing favourites?
Relax, some problems fix themselves.
Back to this sorting out. My sensei said for years, before we had a grading system, that if someone wanted to know our rank we were to get on the floor and show it to them. Something to keep in mind for those who don't get a chance to grade very often. In a place like Japan gradings are easy to do so the confusion over someone who is "out of grade" is understandable. If that unranked person were to join a dojo in Japan where would the nametag go? Not such a hard decision in that case. But what would the board mean if the lowest name there is better than half the names ahead? Not very well sorted if we're trying to sort for skill.
OK if the sorting is by rank and rank is sub-sorted by skill level, why not just sort on tournament wins and be done with it? We do, don't we? Every time we seed the matches we sort people on their win-lose percentages so we have an automatic, unbiased skill gradation right? Lovely, we just seed the board.
Those damned non-competitors! Where do you put them? Wait, do I hear you say that the nafudakake shouldn't be a ranking of skill levels within the dojo because that is just a pecking order within the chicken coop? Nor should we make an attempt to rank the folks by some objective external standard because the presence or absence of grading opportunities skews that system? Nor should we rank by age because that's just meaningless or time within the dojo because.... well hey, why not that? But no you say, you ought to be ranked by something much more meaningful, by your distance along the path that you, personally, are following.
Tell me how to do that. And doesn't that mean that we need a board for each student? There it is isn't it? The moment you have a nafudakake you are admitting that students like to compete with each other, that it's a pecking order if you don't simply use time in the dojo, sempai-kohei in other words. Two minutes earlier through the door and you're ahead on the board. Or maybe outside things leak in again, like biological age, like contributions to the dojo, like status outside, PhDs who join within a week of bricklayers get the prior place on the board? Except in those societies where bricklayers are given status above PhDs in which case it flips. Rich guys above poor? Man we're still in a mess.
Why not just let sensei sort it and we're done. How do you feel about Sensei's pet being ranked above you on the board when you know for sure you're a better croquet player?
Bless my students, who didn't know what a nafudakake was, and just don't think about comparing themselves to each other.
Rank and status are both external to who you are. They both rely on comparisons with other people, the crab bucket, the pecking order, the queue in the bank. Nothing wrong with any of that... well maybe the crab bucket means that no crab gets out of the bucket, and the pecking order means the lowest chicken may die from loss of blood, and the queue? Go to an airport and watch as they try to load people by zone. For the first time in my life I walked past the queue and boarded when they called for my zone rather than wait behind all the liners-up. Nobody shot me, nobody complained and the plane boarded that little bit more efficiently. Still, I felt bad about jumping the line to get to the very rearmost seat without having to wait for 300 other folks to get out of the aisle.
So in my internal pecking order I dropped a couple of notches down the board because I treated all those people in the line as objects in my way.
My Visit to Summer
Here's my seminar report on the trip to Chile for the Latin America Kendo Championships sponsored by CLAK and hosted by the Chilean Kendo Federation.
Along with the championships were iaido and kendo gradings, hence my involvement as the Chilean Kendo Federation asked for two panelists from Canada and paid our way.
Since we were buying the tickets I took the chance to ask the Chilean jodo group if they would like me to come a bit early so we could practice together. The result was two days of jodo seminar on the weekend of November 26-27 and a couple of evening classes for some Santiago students challenging their iaido grading.
Chilean jodo is headed by Guillermo Vargas and Julio Coloma from Santiago, both of whom received 4dan this year in Holland. They have been coming to the Guelph seminar for years so we are good friends. The rest of the group includes a new club in the southern city of Tamuko headed by Ignacio Lorca who volunteered to shepherd us around for the stay. I have to say thank you to all the members of the jodo and iaido groups in Chile for making the visit a constant delight.
Since I was originally asked to pay my own way and had set the money aside, I asked Pam Morgan to come with me to help out as my bag carrier. That's the poor student who has to make sure sensei doesn't get lost, is fed, doesn't drink too much, and generally babysits. This works for a short while until said bag carrier gets a but grumpy from lack of sleep and being tortured by stupid requests from Mr. Big Shot. More on that later.
The first day of the seminar was held in the University of the Americas and I was a bit shocked to see somewhere around 40 students waiting for us, including several people who were trying jodo for the very first time. We split into two classes and Pam transformed into The Pamurai to take the beginners while I worked with the seniors. Being almost straight from the recent jodo seminar in Mississauga I passed along what we had done there. We worked through the kihon, tidying up the skills, and then started into the kata. By the end of the two days we had gone through all the seitei jo kata except Ran Ai. As expected, the level of practice was just fine.
It was encouraging to see many groups and individuals attending to support the event, I hope everyone stays in touch and helps the art grow. The seminar was 9 to 5 for both days and I hope everyone got something to work on for the next few classes.
Monday evening saw us in a small room with some iaido challengers from Chile and an old friend from Uruguay. Since the group was quite senior, and not wanting to change things too much less than a week from the grading, we worked on grip, stance and the cut. These are things that can be studied forever, and don't really get in the way when close to a grading. Sometimes, and this has happened to me, you catch a feeling for a movement and you have it instantly. For me this is usually a way to move the hips or the grip. The cut too now that I think about it, all those things "jumped" for me at one time or another. That's what folks mean at a seminar when they say "that's it, I can go home now". I think I saw one or two of those (since I only ever pass along what I was taught, I'm not flattering myself to say this).
Tuesday saw us in a larger gym with more iai challengers from more countries. We did the same thing, taking energy from the kendo class going on beside us, and from Guillermo and Pam who were working on Ran Ai and a couple of koryu kata. It was quite an interesting evening to see all three arts of the Kendo Federation happening in the same room.
It was here that I decided I need to get my eyes checked, the lighting was a bit low and I made a comment to Pam while we were warming up. I dunno, something totally innocent like she should have known at her level that the different shaped tsuba dome would bounce the jo onto her hands if she used her normal angle to catch the attack. Next thing I knew I was "seeing if I could catch this!" and at one point she gave me "that look" and twitched and I jumped back about ten feet because I had no idea where the tip of her jo was. Don't poke the bag carrier when they've been working hard for four days and are sleep deprived. A little later I heard Guillermo's sleeve flap as he didn't move back quite fast enough for Pam's satisfaction. Bwahaha, you're welcome Memo.
Wednesday was spent in travel from Santiago to Vina del Mar where the CKF and CLAK took over the hosting duties. Since there was now an extra body hanging around (the Pamurai), Ignacio took care of her while I tried to stay out of the way and cause as little trouble as possible for the organizers while they looked after what seemed to be about a hundred kendo and iaido sensei and directors from CLAK.
Can we say "herding cats"? Anyone who has hosted one of these events will know what I mean. I think the organizers did a sparkling job, and as I said, I tried to just stay out of their hair, helping when I figured it wouldn't hurt. Be there when you're "on" and be background when you're not needed, that's the motto.
Thursday was full of seminars. I'm not sure but I think things were a bit out of kilter because the gym was double booked for the morning, so some last minute changes had to be made. This is always unfortunate but it's not unusual, and the participants seemed to take things in stride. The first "official" iaido seminar was led by Kamikokyuro sensei along with most of the iaido panel and there were at least 4 waves of students coming on and off the floor to accomodate them. After the official seminar I believe (OK I admit to sleep deprivation myself by this time) we continued on with Pam Parker sensei and Stephen Cruise sensei drilling the iai students until the senior sensei came and dragged them off the floor. This pattern repeated for the next three days (Friday to Sunday) of tournament and gradings. Cruise sensei and the other iaido panelists were assisting with the kendo tournament and Parker sensei was in a smaller room providing continual instruction in the Zen Ken Ren iai kata.
Me? I mostly stayed out of the way and helped as I could, spelling her off a couple of times. I also presented a jodo class outside each day, something I did at the Brazil Iaido seminar as well. The iaido sensei and the Chilean Kendo Federation kindly gave me permission to do this in the interests of promoting Jodo. I believe I was told the CKF has made a commitment to give equal consideration to all three arts and to provide space for an almost continuous iaido seminar plus jodo during a major kendo tournament certainly shows this intent.
All in all there were over 100 iaido students at the official seminars, another of which was presented by Kamikokyuro sensei on the Friday during the tournament lunch break. The informal seminars were never less than 10 or 12 all day and often running in waves.
As an indication of the value everyone found in this event, I believe I saw Kamikokyuro sensei tell Parker sensei to call it a day at least once more, while I know that Parker sensei in her turn told at least one student to do the same. That you have to drag teachers and students off the floor seems to me to be a sign of a successful event.
My deepest thanks to everyone involved, I had a blast and came back to Canada both exhausted and energized. What more could you ask?
Well, maybe for that visit to Summer to last a bit longer? There's snow out there!
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.
Failure
Ten hours on the plane from Santiago to Toronto means going from 20-30 degrees back to snow on the ground and a door on my van that doesn't close after taking Brenda to work. My fingers are so cold I can hardly type.
The interior lights stay on of course if the door is open, even when the car is turned off and the doors are locked, so I'm thinking it's going to be trouble. Battery failure.
While down in Chile I discovered that I had failed to find a new credit card in a letter and at midnight of the last day of November my card stopped working. The card, the only one I took with me. It being the one with the martial arts expenses on it so why would I take another? Or Canadian cash for that matter?
Did I mention I'm a terrible traveller? Thank goodness for bag carriers (the Pamurai) and men of good will. I seriously would not make it through a day without one or the other.
But never mind my failures which, to someone else would seem to be chances of a lifetime. (I mean who complains about being invited to summer to teach and sit a grading panel? Who beside me? I'm not ungrateful, I swear, I appreciate the trip and I really, really appreciate the friends I have and those I make through the arts. Thanks to all who were so kind to me on this trip!
On to other people's failures, like those who failed their gradings over the last two weekends. Failed, not my word, theirs. I don't know the meaning of the word.
Well OK I do, but I've never failed a martial arts exam. Am I that good? I didn't make the badminton team the first time I tried in High School. I started playing guys that were much better than I and after getting my arse whipped for months, made the team the next year. My sports skills were OK, it was a small town high school, around 700 students perhaps, so no big deal making the teams. I won a few elections but have been more appointed to administrivia posts than elected. I don't think I failed to win an election... I wrote lost there and changed it to failed. That's significant. I've lost lots of team and individual matches in dozens of sports. I've lost arguments and pens, I've lost sparring matches and my footing on icy roads. But I don't worry about all that. There's a difference between failing and losing. Actually I remember I lost a match in an iaido tournament now that I think about it, but failed to win? Does that make sense to anyone at all?
I mentioned I've never failed a martial arts exam. Do I feel proud of that? I appreciate it, but take no pride in it. Most of my ranks in iaido and jodo have been at the forward edge of the crowd. I was "in at the start" which means I was teaching with zero rank in both arts. When enough pressure built up behind, I was perhaps shoved forward. Or to reach for an interesting image that I was once given for my "success", squeezed up like a pimple.
Did I pass my gradings because I was good, a success, or because we needed the rank? I dunno, don't much care either. My success is not mine, or at least not mine alone, there are many who share in it, those who taught me, those who sat on the panels, those who squeezed from the bottom to force me upward.
Pass and fail or win and lose? Interesting.
What is a grading in a martial art? We hope that it is an objective assessment of our current level of skill. We ought to remember that other things come into play. Like being on the front edge of the wave.
For gradings now, after the ranks have been established, we need to understand judging and multiple judging. If you are in an art where one day your sensei simply hands you some paper, you are receiving your sensei's approval of whatever that paper means. This will usually be an overall assessment of where you are skills-wise. It could also be an assessment of how much your sensei likes you, how useful you are to his plans or the art, or how much you suck up to him. How do you know? You usually do.
How about the Right now Right here exam system? The one where you show up on exam day and perform and pass or fail depending on how you do that day? This is the exam system that happened the last two weekends.
You cover up your name and your dojo patch and there are several judges on a panel so you won't get "sensei's pet" called on you. You go out, perform and get judged for what you did "here and now" at this very moment. Are you up to the level or not? No long term assessment and no passing or failing depending on who your sensei is, that's the meaning of covering up the patch and pretending we don't know each other.
Different set of skills tested? You decide. If you are up to the line on average, for most of the time, maybe the "handed the paper" system works best for you. If you come up to a challenge, if you really want to win, you will train hard for that here and now exam, even if you're a lazy so and so for the rest of the time. That system is your system.
The here/now exam is really a match isn't it, it's win/lose more than pass/fail from my point of view. You against the judges. You are nervous? Lose. You go over time? Lose. The judges have a different set of criteria than you do? Lose. You manage to please most of a panel over the length of your test? Win.
How important is a match won or lost? To some it's self-esteem itself. To others, they barely remember winning or losing.
Have you ever seen an old fart get up there and pass a here/now grading you were sure he was going to fail? Think about what you were seeing. Could it have been the long-term good of the art, been producing good students for years, sort of assessment being grafted onto the win/lose sort of grading? I don't know, I'm asking you. Maybe he's just best buddies with the guys on the panel, maybe he bribed them. If you believe those last two points why are you participating in the system at all?
I'm asking you to think about this seriously. If you feel your system is unfair why would you participate? Or why are you not participating in the real competition and saving up that bribe money?
To those who failed in the last two weekends I'm asking you to think of your grading like a match, you against the panel, or, if you're sure what the panel is looking for, you against the standard. This is what it is supposed to be, but standards, even the most standardized, can sometimes be not-identical, maybe judge one is looking at this part of the standards and judge three is looking at that part.
If you got an automatic fail that's like falling sideways off the diving board. If you went overtime and you weren't told you were being timed, that's unfortunate but it may not be your fault, it is likely your sensei's for not preparing you for the test. Who is at fault if your coach forgets to tell you that your ice dance routine has to come in under 3 minutes and you go over? Now, if you are assigned a kata and you do another one, or you do the five you're asked in the wrong order, you can blame that one on yourself as nerves... still a loss, not really a fail, unless you get into nerves being failings... which in the martial arts we can pretend it is. Still, a pretty advanced standard for some levels. Do we really expect beginners to have nerves of steel in the testing situation? (Want to know a secret? No we don't.)
Teaching ranks? A different standard.
Think back to what I said about my gradings. You can be polite if you wish and say "oh no sensei, you really deserve(d) your rank!" If you were there to see, maybe you can say that. If you say it now, maybe I grew into the rank. Maybe I was so ashamed of the rank I tried tripley hard. The point is, I don't know personally. I really don't. So I simply respect the panels that graded me and assume they knew what they were doing. I appreciate the invitation to keep working hard to make sure that those who come behind are absolutely convinced that if they pass/win a grade they deserve it.
For those who lose a match, they are sure that they have won the next time. (The "failing is good for you" theory). More importantly, it's important for those that go before to make sure that the requirements each grade challenger is expected to work toward are clearly defined. To be asked to do a here/now test with a variable standard or one that changes on the day or one that is simply never explained is to create a meaningless test. To have a system where everyone can see that so and so lost because of this and this is to create confidence in the grade. That's the job of those who went before.
Standards can change, they can become more or less difficult. As long as they are available to those who challenge, that will not be a problem. To lose because the system changed while you weren't looking is not your fault, you ought to be looking at your coach or the judges.
You can even have confidence in a system that has a bell curve, or a maximum percentage pass, as long as that criteria is spelled out clearly. The top 15% of 6dans will pass if they meet the standard, but no more. That's fine, as long as everyone knows it's half test and half tournament.
You don't fail a grading. You lose a match. Move on, train. Gradings are supposed to be a spur to training, not a way to knock people out of the arts. Trust your organization to be providing fair gradings, or ask yourself why you are not moving to one that does.
Failure? Let me tell you about the power levels of the stupid charger I'm trying to use on this flat-battery tablet.
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.
Working myself out of a job
My plan seems to be working. The jodo seminar here in Chile was, from my point of view, a great success. I met with many friends, shared many meals, a few beers, and did some jodo.
The level of jodo here in Chile, from beginners to the seniors is as good as anywhere else I've seen. It is natural for "isolated" groups to feel they are somehow lagging behind, but this is not usually so.
We went over the 12 seitei jodo kihon and the 12 kata, working on some basic principles such as the attack line, distance, and timing. The usual things, and the only "correction" I made was to ask them to consider the seitei as a combative art rather than a dance.
Yeah I know, the same thing I always mention, but it's hard to learn a combat art when you're worried about the angle of your foot or the length of your hakama.
Wow the sun here is bright enough that I was typing without my glasses. Be jealous you Canadian friends. Today I intend to be in shorts and a t-shirt and sweating.
So what did I mean by "isolated"? Isolated from what? Most of the Chilean jodoka have been coming to the Guelph seminar for many years. There they have practiced with many Japanese hachidan and hanshi even at their junior levels (as have the Canadian jodoka). When you have been taught your kihon by the guys who run the art you are probably going to learn as well as anyone else anywhere.
For the other jodo groups in South America, their leaders have been attending and grading at seminars in Europe. Again, not isolated in any sense of the word, except that they have few dojo and are mostly practicing un-noticed. This is not even unusual in Japan where 50 out of 50 people on the street in Tokyo had no idea what jodo is.
So not isolated, not behind in skill levels, and now experienced in hosting a seminar that is self-supporting. I hasten to add this seminar was supported by the Chilean Kendo Federation through my airfare to attend an iaido grading next weekend, and the federation was thanked at the seminar. I thank them again here.
This is actually a pretty good way to begin hosting seminars in the Kendo Federation. Many of the senior kendo and iaido sensei who are on a visit to the local country may have rank in jodo as well. Keep an eye on things and use these chance meetings.
With 40 or 50 people attending this weekend, the local jodo group could have afforded the instructor's airfare as well. (You never know if you can do it until you try.) This means they can start thinking about some more regular seminar planning than waiting for a kendo or iaido event to happen. With a self-supporting group and regular seminars, gradings tend to appear and when gradings start to happen the numbers increase. I was told there may have been another 10 people attending if there had been an ikkyu grading scheduled. Students like grading. They must or they wouldn't do it.
As our French instructors said a few weeks ago at the jodo seminar in Canada, Seitei jodo is universal, it allows people from anywhere in the world to practice with each other, learn from each other, extend their friendships with each other. Gradings in the art help to bring the beginners more firmly into the art and gradings will naturally attract people from other areas to a seminar. That may be why they come, but they will return if they find friends.
Not isolated at all then. Also not behind in skill levels, the leaders of Chilean jodo graded to 3dan in Canada and then 4dan in Holland. How? Through the world-wide-web of seitei jo.
If all this is going so well why am I talking about working myself out of a job? Well I'm just a low-grade jodoka, barely at teaching level. I'm not interested in building an empire with me at the head, I'm interested in sharing the art. I'm not interested in travel to exotic places either. It's no secret that I hate travel.
No, my job, as the guy who is out there on the internet, easy to reach, easy to talk to, is to get things started. I don't like to travel but I am willing. I have slept on floors and couches and in hotel rooms. More the latter these days as I'm not a kid anymore, I can afford a hotel room if the seminar organizers can't yet.
I'm also pretty hard to offend, so it's not too scary to ask me to come and teach. I'm interested in the art, not the empires, I am not a superstar but then again, I don't have a superstar ego.
So far, helping out has been a pretty easy thing to do, I have been under the radar but that can't last much longer. Already I am hearing rumbles from distant places about "what's that guy doing teaching jodo with a 5dan in a foreign country". Fair enough, that sort of thing happens when the local federations realize that there's a group that has grown big enough to pay attention to. Time then, to support that group from within rather than ignore it. In other words, time to help bring in some real sensei instead of this loud-mouth from Canada.
Time that I've worked myself out of a job, which is my job.
Jodo groups don't spring up out of nowhere at all. They first start learning from someone, and South America is no exception. These folks have connections to Japan through their local founder. Good connections that I have asked them to exploit. They know how to do a seminar, they know it's possible, they have respectable grades, time for me to retire and applaud from the sidelines. Or maybe lend what rank I have to the inevitable gradings, until the local grades can take over.
Hey, retirement is one reason I can do this, and having retired a couple of times it's easy to do it again. I know how, I have the skills and I have never, ever thought that I was indispensible. Nobody is, things will go along quite nicely after I step out of the spotlight.
The trick is to step out while that spotlight is small, it gets harder and more addictive as it gets bigger. Any performer will tell you that it's the applause that keeps you going out on that stage.
That's bad for you.
Senior Secrets
Nobody likes senior classes. Well, maybe seniors do, but they don't need them, even if they want them. I'm talking about the 25-30 year folks who have hundreds of seminars under their obi. They think they need senior classes because they just aren't getting as much as they did as a kid.
Instruction! What were you thinking?
We all remember being filled up like a sponge as a beginner, a lovely time of being on the steep slope of the learning curve. Then the sponge starts to soak up less and less, (or sometimes starts to squeeze back, ie gets hard of hearing). The even-more-senior sensei just keep repeating the same old things because they talk toward the beginners. How can they not? You can't go on to the secret stuff if you don't know the stuff you need to know before you get to the secret stuff right?
Umm, what secret stuff? You mean the stuff like protect yourself at all times, respect the line, use your hips, fix your grip? That kind of stuff? Because I don't know any other kind of secrets and I've been doing this for heading toward 40 years. I've been practicing Seitei Iai for well over half of it's existance, (really? ouch) so if there are any secrets there that I don't know, either I'm very stupid (likely) or they are so well hidden that they can't be found.
At the last jodo seminar there were no senior classes, just a big class with an experience range of a few weeks to decades. During the event I heard more than one senior say "that's it, I can go home now". They had their lightbulb moment, that something they can latch on to and use to get a bit further in their practice.
Every class is a senior class if you are paying attention and all seniors know this. So why the fuss? Why would anyone want or offer a senior class?
Well, there are times when people need their rear ends kicked, and that can mean being yelled at or told to do something over and over again. You don't do that in front of the students any more than you should argue in front of your kids. If for no other reason than it tends to make the kids take sides. Oh that senior-senior is disrespecting my sensei, he's a bad person. Yeah whatever.
Next, seniors tend to get corrected for things that beginners can't see. Small weight shifts that mean a lot but can't be seen on video. That was one of my lightbulb moments last seminar, a tiny weight shift during a movement, something I might later demonstrate and my beginners will say "I don't see the difference". Something, incidentally, I was having trouble doing until the Pamurai said "turn your back foot" and it clicked. I got the correction instantly, I saw it, but it took a student to make it click... and I sometimes wonder why I teach.
A beginner watching that stuff won't "get it" so why waste their time. Sure, they may think they can get it, all of us figure we can get it all, now. The thing that makes a senior is that they have been around long enough to realize that they didn't, they couldn't, get it all when they were a junior. There is stuff you have to learn first before you learn the stuff that comes later.
This weekend I'm heading to Chile to teach for, I hope, about 7 days straight. I've asked them to work the dickens out of me because I'm not interested in doing any tourist stuff. I'm a terrible traveller, I dislike it so much that I can be talked out of going to my cottage easier than I can be talked into it. So why am I going? Because they asked and I am a senior, or at least as senior as we have around these parts and so I go. I deeply appreciate the invite and of course I will be happy to be there. I like those guys. I'm sure it will be interesting but the reason I'm going is that I am one of those "gone before" types who might be able to impart a few "secrets" to the local Jodo folks.
There won't be too many, they have been coming to Canada for several years and know their stuff. That's actually one of the secrets I try to teach when I go places. The locals are usually just fine as teachers. They know what they know and they pass it along well. My most useful service as the "visiting sensei" is not to teach the seniors, but to confirm to the juniors that their teachers do in fact, know their stuff. The best teachers tend to preface their instruction with "well I'm not very good at this but so and so sensei said...". Those are the ones who still have an open mind, and it's my job to reassure their students. (The ones who tell their students they know it for sure, that this is the way it is, tend not to go to seminars anyway. Waste of time.)
In other words, I try to work myself out of a job. I did mention I'm a terrible traveller didn't I? I get lost, I get confused, I can't prepare myself out of a paper bag. Packing makes my stomach hurt. When I found out that I wasn't paying for my own way on this trip I immediately invited the Pamurai to come along and be my bag carrier. She loves travel and she has taken over the planning. I'm just going to do my Christmas thing. Shut up and go where I'm told and do what I'm told to do. Yeah, I just said I don't like Christmas. It involves travelling.
In Chile I will be teaching as usual. I will be talking to everyone but only the seniors are going to hear some of what I say. The beginners are going to be asking which foot goes where and how to pass their next grading. The seniors will be hearing what I say about the maai, the line, the grip, you know, all the stuff those beginners already know.
The seniors will hear the "why" they are doing what movements they are doing. (I'll have my "in my opinion" tatoo on my forehead). The juniors will hear the "where". At least that's the usual way it goes.
The last seminar I taught at, I had the seniors and it went exactly that way. Those who were ready, who had enough time in practice, got the secrets, the rest got the "where". It was a big, open class, no restrictions so there were a lot of people there. Would I have taught differently in a more restricted senior class? Not at all, but what would have been different was that there would have been far fewer people on the floor and I would have been looking at them more individually than I could in a big class.
Just like I would be able to give more indivdual attention in a beginners class where the seniors were forbidden.
"Why can't I be in the senior class? I'm certain I would benefit and I'm afraid that you are teaching stuff that is secret, that will give those in the class a leg up on me!" They are a leg up on you, they've been around longer. Deal with it.
What if they are learning something that's secret, something that you don't know. What if they're learning an entirely new school of budo? New to you that is. What if?
Well, maybe they are. If they are it's a beginner class, not a senior class. What is different is that the people in that class will be able to pick up the new school really, really quickly. Maybe the senior-senior only has a limited time to pass along the new kata. Bang, there it is in a whole giant chunk, you got it, now go digest it for a while and then teach the beginners if they want to learn it. It will take months to teach them alongside all the other stuff they are trying to learn whereas it took you guys hours.
Oh, and eventually the ones who figured there were secrets to be had will understand that it wasn't a secret class, it was an efficient class.
Want to learn the senior secrets? Stick around and keep your ears cleaned out.
Money changes everything
The Pamurai said she was looking at the "do not disturb" sign at the hotel during the last seminar and turned it over. She read "please tidy up" and stopped for quite a while before she realized it wasn't a request to her but to the maid. "Money changes things", she said.
She explained it like this. If you're at a seminar and you're staying at someone's house, you don't make a mess and then bugger off. You tidy up. But if you're at a hotel and paying to stay there... well.
Yep. True that. The University recently insisted that we charge for our classes, so we charged the lowest fee they would let us get away with, $5. You'd think that would count as zero right? But it doesn't, it changes the dynamic entirely. Now a student who walks into the class can think to themselves "I paid for this class" which allows them to come and go without guilt. Sure, even when the class was free they could do that. I don't care if someone misses class, it's up to them. But that went both ways. I was also under no obligation to be there. I was though, unless I was at a seminar, and eventually the students saw that and responded. Properly, not by being told they were rude and disrespectful and had to have a really good reason to miss class. Etc. etc. No, they just figured it out for themselves and made a bit of an extra effort to make class.
You see, if you haven't paid for it you have no incentive to show up. Beyond the desire to show up of course, or the nagging feeling that you ought to. That's good for you.
But when you've paid for it, well, that puts you in charge. Now you don't have to show up (it's your money) but sensei does because he's been paid.
Five dollars for four months and sensei still doesn't receive that money you say? What's changed? The brain doesn't count. The brain simply says "I paid". That's the whole problem with economics 101, the assumption is that people count up the pros and cons and decide on that. When was the last time you made a pro/con list and decided anything? It's emotion and stories, and paid is paid.
Money lets the students decide what to learn. "I paid so I get to pick". We are so used to money being in the equation that volunteer organizations tend to assume they are not volunteer. Those at the top often start demanding that the "underlings" must do this or that as if penalties such as "being fired" meant anything. No money, no loss to those underlings who simply walk away. Empty threats, in other words. In the martial arts the threat is often "you'll be hamon, we'll take away your rank". Unless that underling is making a living at teaching AND their students actually require the paper on the wall, which would mean they knew what it meant, there is still no threat. Witness the thousands of karate clubs that are run by folks who simply switch organizations and have their rank recognized, or even get a bump in grade. Heckfire, witness those organizations that simply appear, paper on the wall and all, that consist of a single dojo.
When students and instructors join an organization that requires dues what's the first thing they ask? Sure, "what do I get for my dues"? The answer can't be "you get to be in the organization" because money buys stuff, you pay, you expect something back and "being in" just doesn't cut it for most folks. In the old days of my iaido organization I'd hear students complaining that they got nothing for their dues. I'd do the math for them saying "what do you want for $25 a year from 60 people?" I mean really, even if we were handed the entire amount back, that was barely enough for airfare for a teacher from Japan. What we really got was "benign neglect", we were allowed to just get on with it without interferance. We also got access to our instructors, and that is not trivial. Now the dues have gone up a bit, and the grading system (where the organization actually gets the money it needs to run) has kicked in for those students and they can legitimately say "what are we getting", and the administration has to answer.
Because money. Still, if they now want money back from the organization they need to understand that money has strings and they had better expect something more than benign neglect. They'd better expect committees and reports. Otherwise their administration is not administering properly. They might even get micromanagement if they have a particularly keen bunch handing out the money.
There's something else people don't get, really. You don't give money to get less money back. That's bad math. If you want access to a collective pool of dues, collect it directly, don't funnel it through an organization where simple friction will rub large amounts of it off. If you want to run a seminar, charge for it. Now you have the pure "user-pay" experience where all the pay goes to the experience. This is much more efficient than asking a big volunteer organization to hand you a seminar. Mind you, if you can get it, go for it.
If you pay dues to an organization you should expect to get services, you get administration of gradings and access to your sensei. If you ask for money you are now on the other end of that equation, and the organization can, and should, ask value for money. You'd better have your own administration system to deal with the reports. Money doesn't change hands for free.
I should add that in the kendo federation there is another part to this equation. You pay your dues to be part of an organization that has a world championships. You don't get to compete in the kendo tournament system if you aren't paid up. That's the value you get for your dues.
Remove the money and it puts us back on the barter system. If you stay in someone's house you, at a minimum, leave it the way you found it. If you're a budoka you look around, is there something you can clean up without disturbing things? Is there something you can fix without breaking something else? Some small gift you can give that won't just gather dust on a shelf? Some shelf you can dust?
Or just be of good will, and be willing to return the favour some time in the future. One thing that folks really don't get about organzations is that they are run by people. If you want something done, find the guys who actually do it and make friends. This works even when you're in a commercial organization. If you need your floor cleaned a bit better, do you send in a complaint to the President or do you buy the custodian a coffee and mention the problem in passing? Demanding service from someone in a volunteer organization without building up some good will ahead of time? Not a winning proposition unless you fall back on the old "you gotta buy sensei his beer because you just gotta" chestnut.
Money changes everything. That means absence of money is different.
Gorbies
If you know what those are, chances are you grew up in a tourist town. I did, I was born in Port Stanley, the fishing village and summertime beach for St. Thomas and London.
Gorbie refers generally to a tourist. If you put the most useful word in the English language in front of it (the F-word) it means one of the really loud, demanding, obnoxious tourists. The ones who figure that the locals are there to serve and worship.
They were the posers and the primpers, the rich and faux rich ("richer than you") who dropped in for a short time and assumed that our aim in life was to entertain them. Yeah, a tourist town needs gorbies but that doesn't mean the locals like it. Being in a tourist town and serving in the industry is like a farm kid working on the farm, or a logging brat. You do it because that's where you are and that's what there is to do. It's work. Curiously, I worked on farms and spent a summer in Northern Alberta working for the Simpson Timber Company, living in a logging camp but never, that I remember, served in the tourist industry. I was the kid up in the cottage attic installing that horrid paper-covered short fiberglass on a blazing hot day so that the glass stuck nicely everywhere. Everywhere.
Why am I reminded of this? Because I was just in Sauble Beach on the last nice weekend of the summer... well the last nice Friday, it was the first weekend of winter, grey, rainy and cold. But no gorbies. The bar had the free Friday chilli out, everyone in the bar knew everyone else. Luscious, the official bakery of Sei Do Kai (Tombokan division) was open Saturday for lunch, dark roast and the first good chat we had with the owners all summer.
In other words, the town was suddenly populated with people we care about. It's not that they weren't there all along but we couldn't see them for the gorbies.
The martial arts are like that. The locals are the guys who have been around for 20 or 30 years and the gorbies are all the posers and primpers who drop in for a while when the sun is out and the beach is warm, but disappear again after leaving Tim's cups, burger wrappers and assorted other garbage all over the streets.
Someone else will pick it up they think, and you know what? Someone else does, those who don't just move out of town to do something they really want to do, something that doesn't involve renting paddleboards to puddleheads, they pick up the mess.
How do the short-timers throw garbage all over the martial arts? The exact same way as any other gorbie, by coming in and ignoring those who have been there for years, by not paying attention to the way things are done in town. Maybe we always slow down in the middle of the block just across from the ice cream parlor when the kids get out of school instead of honking and tail-gateing. Maybe we don't drive up onto the lift bridge and stop when the light turns red so that the bridge can't be raised to let the sailboats out of the harbour. "Dunhhh what, who me?"
The thing is, by coming into town with your pre-existing ideas and your ever so ingrained assumptions on how things ought to be done, you miss hearing about the coffee shop around the corner from the main drag, the little beach tucked away behind the coal piles. You miss what makes the town worth living in because you only want to see the tourist sights.
What's a martial art gorbie? That's a kid who thinks that grading is the purpose and rank is the goal. A kid who figures that we ought to vote on what to practice, who jumps from teacher to teacher (restaurant to restaurant) getting a burger here and a burger there and never sticking around to find the perch fillets with lemon.
Oh lord I can taste the ones my gran used to make, just perch, butter and flour with a fresh lemon wedge. And roe, she used to get the roe from my great-uncle's shanty because the tourists didn't want them. Keep your caviar, I'll take a lightly fried perch roe sack any day.
A budo gorbie is the same as a tourist gorbie, someone who doesn't take the time to check out the local culture and behave accordingly. The "old internet" used to have discussion groups that were topic specific rather than a series of vanity pages where folks just talk to themselves. In those groups the newbies (gorbies) were told to be quiet for a couple of weeks and read the posts, find out how the place looked, and be polite, act accordingly.
I mean, if you act like a local who would ever think you were a gorbie?
Sure, we need the gorbies to pay the bills but wow, it's sure nice when they go back to the city for the winter.
Ever wonder why we hold those "secret" senior classes? It's not what gets taught, it's who gets in.
he he. Secret no more.
Too Much Stuff
It's a good thing that only two of the arts we practice have gradings. As it is, it seems like we go from grading prep to grading prep and that's not really good for the club. I'm already catching what-for from the seniors who haven't done about half of our curriculum for months. The beginners have never seen it so they don't mind.
I don't mind not practicing some of our stuff, I try to teach the same thing in all of them, and it's not really about knowing four or five arts. Not when you know them. Sure, lots of people want to learn the obscure stuff, until they realize that the obscure stuff is just the same as the more available stuff. There's a more or less horizontal draw followed by a more or less vertical cut in about four of the iai type arts we do. How many secrets would one find in one of those kata that wouldn't be in the others? Yet, it is a shame that we don't get to some of them as often as we'd like.
What concerns me more than lack of practice in some of the arts is an over-focus on grading in others. The goal of seitei may be to pass gradings (as I've said before) but the role of martial arts practice in general is not. A club that slips into thinking that gradings and tournaments are the point of practicing is really just a sports club, no different than a baseball club or a soccer club. There is nothing wrong with sports, nothing wrong with sport clubs in general, exercise is good, but the life lessons that you learn are largely incidental. They aren't the focus of the practice.
Not the focus of budo classes either to be honest, at least not those I like to be around. I've been in the spiritual dojo a few times and some of them may as well be bible classes. The focus is too far the other way and sensei tends to preach.
The middle way of budo is somewhere between sport and spout. The lessons you need to absorb to be a good martial artist are those that make you a better person. Paying attention, having a flexible mind, dealing with change in ways that don't involve panic or paranoia. As Terry Pratchett says, a budoka is someone who can see what's really there... or was that a witch?
I try not to do the grading class thing where I say "you have to stop at this height", and say instead "you need to cut the face and not lose the control of your opponent should you miss". It amounts to the same thing but one is too grading-pass oriented and the other is life-saving. In my opinion, which ought to be tatooed on my forehead in seminar season.
I say that seitei is to pass grades but that's not the whole story is it? Seitei is a way to practice with anyone, anywhere in the world. It can be an amazing force for good, a force for understanding each other, sharing ideas and knowledge. I love that part of it. What I don't love is the part where people try to carve out little empires within seitei, where people say "oh, now you have to do it my way to pass" or "oh, you have to attach yourself to my patron to get your next grade". Sure that happens, that's the stuff you get anywhere, that's the "oh it's so and so's turn to win the world figure skating championships".
The judging of this stuff is subjective. Of course that happens when grading or tournament becomes the goal. How can it not? So I try not to go too far down that road, I try not to become a goal-focused dojo. Attain goal = good, fail to attain the goal = fail. If you're not focused on passing grades you can't very well fail can you? As Watkin sensei, our shihan of one of those no-grading arts we don't practice as much as I'd like says, "your grade is surviving the battle".
So why do we practice seitei? Because it lets us engage with many teachers who all have great ideas, who all have things to say, are interesting people, and who have a generous and open world-view. (Or they wouldn't be traveling to visit the foreigners... unless they can't develop an empire back home? Sorry, unkind of me.) I practice seitei because that's where my sensei is. What other reason would there be?
Do my students complain that seitei hurts their other arts? That it trains them in ways that the koryu doesnt go? That seitei feels wrong and contrary to their other knowledge? Sure, and that's where I say that seitei is to pass exams and win tournaments. Just do the stuff like the panel wants you to do it and treat it as training in how to control the sword until you pass the grade. Then go back to trying to understand how to do your other arts with mushin.
You can't do seitei without mushin? Boyoboy you have to be good. If you are constantly trying to tweak your movements to adopt the "latest fashions" you have to pay attention to those movements which means you are not paying attention to anything else. Multi tasking is a myth for humans, we don't have quad core brains. What you usually get in seitei is not mushin but habit. When the goal is to stop at a certain height or cut at a certain angle you have to make that a habit or pay attention to it. It's not a principle, it's a reaction.
The principle says "don't lose control of your opponent" the habit says "you gotta stop at this exact height". One means you walk away from the fight, the other means you pass the grade. They may overlap, if your opponent behaves predictably, if you're lucky, if it's exactly a million to one chance.
So, do we have too much stuff? Should we drop out of the seitei-grading rat race? I don't think so, but I really do need to make time between grading practices to work on our other stuff, to teach the principles that show up best in those various places.
Not too much stuff, just not enough time.
Junior Gilbert
Every once in a while I'm reminded why I study budo. Tonight I was in the Sauble Dunes bar and two things combined to jog my memory.
I was born in a small fishing village on the north shore of Lake Erie. In my town, when I was a kid, was an old guy who was slightly scary. His name was Junior Gilbert and he had an egg-timer shaped head. This was because he was a forceps baby. That was someone who had been grabbed by a set of tongs and pulled the right way round in his mother's womb. Grab too hard and you cave in the skull and cause brain damage.
Which was what happened to Junior. He was an old man when I knew him, his parents had taken care of him until they died and then the town took over. Junior had anger issues, probably because of his paranoia. He put powder around his bed each night so he could check for footprints when he woke up. As kids we were told to leave him alone and I certainly did. The town kept an eye on him and if he started to get wound up someone was there to calm him down.
He never went to an institution, I suspect nobody even considered that. He always had some job to do, he always had people to talk to. Of course he did, what else would happen? A man needs to work and a man has a community. That was the end of it.
This evening I looked up from my phone and noticed the young man who has muscular distrophy or some similar problem. He was, as always, with his father, at least I assume it's his father, the fellow is about my age. I see them around the town riding a three wheeler, dad driving, son riding, enjoying the sun. Tonight dad had a beer and son was sleeping until some locals stopped to chat. As I left dad was on his knees in front of the wheelchair feeding his son.
While I was noticing this I got an email that warned me of a "problem" with one of my various budo. Seriously? More first world problems in the politics of a hobby?
It makes me want to cry. Thinking about Junior Gilbert, I did cry. I practice budo because it is where I can connect with and help people. I practice budo so that if, knock on wood and any other superstition that prevents this, my son has a stroke and is in a wheelchair, I have the strength to move out of the city to a small town, put the rest of my life on hold, and take care of him. Yes, move out of the multicultural, disabled-services, support-group rich realm of the city and to a small town. A place where people can't look away and say "are there no institutions? (no work houses?), tsk tsk" and walk on.
Do our budo-politics concerns compare with a lifetime spent caring for someone who needs care? Is it on that level? No? It's a hobby concern over a hobby? Let's stop talking and get on with practice instead.
If we want to talk, talk of Junior Gilbert. Talk of care for others, real care, not the sort of "somebody ought to do something but don't raise my taxes to do it". I don't want to hear about the bushido of blind loyalty (do what I say and shut up or I'll... what?) and not getting caught (do what you want but be ashamed if you're caught). I'm more interested in self sacrifice by choice and not sticking your hand in the cookie jar even if you know you won't get caught.
Call me an unsophisticated small town boy, but taking responsibility means taking the hit. It's spending your whole life caring for a disabled son. I swear if anyone comes back with "what about a daughter" I'll give your city-principled rear-end such a smack. I'm not talking principles and empathy and "really listening". I'm talking about finding a job for that crazy man who wanders around on the street. Don't feel sorry for him, hire him and pay him. Make sure he's OK if you don't see him for a couple of days. Take Personal Responsibility for those less fortunate than you. Treat them as adults, care for them first, you second. Ask them to tell you what they want and need, and then listen to that. Don't listen to the paranoia, the complaints, the crazy stuff, listen to them as equals. Fix what you can fix.
Think about what you want to learn from your budo, what you want to teach.
Think about Junior Gilbert.
Combat effective antiquities
Last night at Aikido we were working on the centerline and on maai. I found myself ranting on about "if you ever face a sword emptyhanded..." Hmm, as a visiting jodo sensei said recently, it's a miracle that a stick could defeat a sword, imagine just how much more miraculous to even survive an an encounter with a sword if you're bare handed.
Why should we care about this? Why should I specifically, after all I'm in budo for the mental and spiritual aspects, not to learn how to fight, certainly not for self defence. Why should it matter to me if someone cooperates and doesn't hit me on the head with a stick? It's an interesting question but not impossible to answer. It's because combat effectiveness is part of the deal. It's a martial art, if you're not treating it as martial you're not doing it right. It would be like dancing with a partner to your own time signature. Moving together would be largely a matter of chance. It would be like doing a cannonball at a world championships for diving. You could, personally I'd love to see it, but why would you? It's not part of the deal.
Not hitting someone with a stick can also be a bit dangerous. One of the students last evening helped the old man along by predicting that he would step right and so he cut left. I stepped left. My fault you say? Sure it was, I hadn't told the class in the last 5 minutes to hit to the target and I was trying to demonstrate something that was happening after that first movement. Nah, try to split my skull please, it's safer.
So assuming we are talking about aikido vs a sword, what do we need to do, what did we practice last class? These are the class notes once again because I didn't see any notebooks out and I'm pretty sure I haven't talked about this stuff for a while.
First, let's talk about that Aikido stance. I went on a bit of a thing about the Aikikai T stance and the Yoshinkan out-turn (T stance plus turn the front foot out as well). Yes, we are a University club so yes, we have all sorts here, and I can hear those keyboards firing up right now, but I don't care, I'm old and slow, and I'm telling you that putting both feet on the attack line means that you have to move two feet to get off that line. Try it with someone swinging a shinai. Wear shoulder pads because you're going to need them.
Don't tell me that a shinken moves slower than a shinai, try moving off a line as someone swings a shinken beside you, now try it when they cut at a random count. I get the feet on line thing, It's a narrower target, it's half way through getting off the line, it's really fast to move to the side... I get it, I really do, but beginners move their feet one at a time. They don't get fumi komi ashi. We have to teach them that.
One step per one step. One count per count, one beat per beat. If sword guy is cutting from hasso or jodan that's one beat. If you're moving two feet that's two beats unless you can twitch that second foot with your hip. Which, incidentally, you ought to be doing and we'll come to that in a moment.
My point is that you need to know what the attack line is, and you have to control it with your foot placement. If you're in migi hanmi, the right foot forward and your hips aimed at about 45 degrees to the left, you can place your feet in line or you can place them so that your left foot is just off the centerline and your right foot is on the other side of that line. I don't care how far off, it just needs to be off.
Now as your buddy tries to split your skull you can move the right foot to the left side of the attack line. Stretch your right shoulder forward as you do this and all parts of your body are off the cutting plane. Unless you've got a massive booty. Japanese men tend not to have them and so they will tell you that it's safer to avoid to the rear than to the front where you risk getting your big beeru (your magnificent hara) sliced. One move. Shift the right foot is what you tell a beginner, Reach for his right shoulder is what you tell an intermediate. Twitch your hip off the line is what you tell an advanced student. The master? Well you can't tell a master anything at all, can you?
Why not move the back foot across to the right side of the line? Try it against a kendo guy some time. He can cut really fast and you are squaring up and moving into that cut for part of that step. Personally, I kind of gave up stepping under the sword when I started swinging them around kendo guys.
But that doesn't mean you can't use the back foot, and we did the last couple of classes. We started the whole series by bringing the back foot up to the front foot, keeping it on the same side of the attack line and twitching the hip so that the front foot shifted across that attack line at the moment our front foot touched the ground.
This is Niten Ichiryu's sasen (for realsies, when uchidachi is actually trying to cleave you in half), the first kata of the first set. This is one of the first exercises we did in the recent jodo seminar. It's important.
So two ways of moving off the line, thats all we did. The second one first so let's look at that one. With a sword in our hand we can move from hasso to a cut as our partner moves down to cut us. From a migi hasso, sword at our chin, left foot forward, we move off the line by driving our right foot up beside the left foot (still on the right side of the attack line) and twitching the hip to pop the left foot over the attack line. Feet together means we have not changed the maai (remember class was about line and maai). If he can cut us, we can cut him. He's aimed at us and will hit us in the original position... we have moved our rear foot up to our front foot and so now we..... oh, we're too close to cut, really, by half a step. We can still cut but hey, thrust is better, we'll be half way down our sword through him (and there is Sasen). Put down your sword, do the same movement empty handed and see what you can reach. You can put a fist into his face (but not punch through, just out of range) and then drop down to his hands which are, surprise, almost exactly where your hips are. Grab his right hand, turn your hips out to the right and you're in nikyo.
Since you're empty handed, start with your feet switched and now drop your left hand from his face (where you still stretched out with a threat to make him blink) onto his right hand and surprise, you're in kote gaeshi. Turn your hips out to the left to throw him. He's got two hands on a stick so none of this floaty one-handed throw stuff that looks so cool. Use two hands like a beginner and move him with your hips or end up dislocating your thumb as he grins, slowly turns toward you and chops you off at the knees.
That's what that means. You try something unwise, you get chopped off at the knees.
If you step a little bit further than the front foot as you bring the back one forward... (if you're in migi hanmi, right foot forward, take the left foot forward past the right one). Stretch your left arm across his chest, elbow him in the chest if you like, and as he finishes his cut drop your right hand onto his hands. Now you are in ude kime nage and you can throw him. Works on either side. See if you can get a grip on the hilt so you can take the sword as he rolls away. Don't fight for it if he doesn't let go, that gives him his balance back, just keep it out of his way if he gives it to you.
Step a bit deeper yet and you can reach his neck with your left hand rather than move it across his chest. Again, drop the right hand onto his hilt and tenkan as he turns toward you to cut your legs (you are preventing him from raising his sword higher). Stay close to him, now, turn back toward him inside his sword range and throw in irimi nage. OK don't just stand there to get cut as he falls away from you, go down to the ground with him, circle around his right arm which will almost inevitably have the sword, and do an arm bar while keeping his head turned away from yourself with your left hand.
Harder to describe than to do. If you do this same thing on the left side you tend to end up with his free hand (his right) loose with a sword. Go behind him and drop him as you back away, or stay inside as you did and quickly control his right arm (catch it from the shoulder with your left hand that was up by his neck) by dragging it over to the left, push his shoulders together to pin him. Again, harder to describe than to demonstrate.
Three maai, three throws which turn up. The important thing is to get to one of those maai, it's not the details of the throws that count, it's avoiding the cut. After you survive the first attack, then you can see what turns up as a throw. If nothing, hip-check him or similar to send him stumbling away and reset to try again. Do not stand around inside the sword's range trying to figure out how to get a nice throw on him. It's too late. The throw is either there or you're done for.
We worked on moving the front foot across the attack line as well, so here we go with two maai. First, stand in migi hanmi, right foot forward, and as he cuts move your right foot to the left across the attack line. As the cut finishes drop your right hand (did you stretch your shoulder forward or did it get hit?) onto his wrists. Hmm, still at the danger distance, so step forward fast as he turns toward your front leg to cut it. Left hand reaches his neck and move that foot he's cutting for. You have irimi nage once more.
See how these steps change the maai? OK, OK stepping forward changes the distance, how profound! Well, maybe not exactly profound, but sort of forgotten as we fiddle around with our hands or wherever else our minds have stopped.
Finally, the second maai of this foot movement. Don't just move your right foot to the left, but drive it forward and try to stomp on the swordsman's right foot, stretch the arm and shoulder and you can plant your hand right in his face to drive his head back and drop him directly. I don't know what this one is called but you see it all the time in randori practice. Aiki fistintheface, how's that?
At any rate, there you are folks, your class notes concerning combat effective antiquities. Yes I just checked the title once more and realize I got off topic a little. Well not really, what happens when you are working at all this stuff above? What happens when you're really trying to escape from being cut rather than messing around with the little details?
Are you learning mushin? Fudoshin? Are you in the moment? Do you move on or get smacked down? Yes, that's why we work to make this "useless for modern combat" martial art stuff real. No we're not going to face a sword in an alleyway, not even a baseball bat, we're going to face a gun and this stuff doesn't work on that.
That's true. If I think that way I can just dance my aikido, I can just cooperate with everyone until it's time for beer, safe in the knowledge that these ancient arts aren't good self defence, they don't work today. Only a bigger gun works.
But if I want to get the spiritual benefit of this training, the mental benefits that make me a better person, I need to work as if I'm really trying to learn how to take a sword away from someone who knows how to use it. This antique impossible situation, this physical koan is what will get me to the "woo woo" goals.
Woo-hoo!
Woke up again
It's a bonus, every day that I open my eyes is a surprise. I'm living on borrowed time so I'm happy for any of it.
You are too of course, we all are. I feel that I've had a lot of it, so I won't be upset when it's over. Hah, be pretty hard to be upset when I'm dead. It's the people who are left that get upset. I still can't bring myself to read Terry Pratchett's last novel, it would be just too sad. Maybe on the flight to Chile next weekend.
Winter always depresses me like this, watching the leaves fall, the creeping chill seeping into the ground and into my bones. No wonder we invented religion, it's nice to have someone to shout at when we notice the frost on the grass. Damn you Hades, why did you have to kidnap that girl, surely she wasn't that good looking.
Damn you Auditors for trying to prevent the Hogfather from coming back. The rebirth, that's what we must have after the death of winter. We need to light fires, to sacrifice the King, to entice the sun back from it's journey, remind it of where it lives.
Rebirth is a metaphor of course, as is most of our thinking. We are nothing if not stories, the Hogfather isn't really reborn and neither are we. We either live through the winter or we don't, trees drop their leaves and grow new but they aren't really reborn. Seeds create new plants, we create new audiences for stories.
Rebirth is more about handing down stories than about actually living again. The king is sacrificed to bring back the sun and the next king isn't really the old king reborn. Yet, in the story, he is. The title is the thing, the metaphor, the king is dead, long live the king. We fear the winter so we invent eternity.
We are players on a stage, different actors come and go but the roles are forever.
It's a pretty delicate balance, one that can be thrown off by some bright bunny who figures he knows better. Not the big stories. If we don't put up the lights on the house, if we don't light candles or burn the yule log, the sun will still come back. The sun and the planets are pretty big, they've got a lot of momentum, a few people aren't going to prevent the seasons if they refuse to sacrifice the king on the shortest day of the year.
But the smaller stories aren't so durable. The rituals of death and rebirth may have different names today, like "succession planning" but they are the same thing. In the little stories, like, say, the family business, (or the budo organization, it's got to be budo related right?), it only takes one person in the right place to imagine that they will never die, or that they cannot be replaced, or to just not care about the future in their greed for "short term gain" and the rebirth is prevented.
We will all die. Pretending that we won't, inventing life beyond death doesn't change that fact. Even granting life beyond death, the dead don't influence the living, so dead is gone. What will you leave behind? Chaos or rebirth?
If you want rebirth, educate your children, pay taxes to replace the crumbling bridges, to maintain a health system that will ease your way into your winter. Train up the next king! It's the role that lives on, not the actor. Make sure it is played well.
Sooner or later, it all comes down to blood.
Blood to entice the sun, bloodlines to maintain the aristocracy, blood and sweat to build and repair a city to pass along to the next generation.
Don't wait too long, each day is a gift, one stutter of your heart in the middle of the night and you don't open your eyes in the morning.
Terrifying? Or motivating?
Tidying up the life.
I was worried for a moment. As I walked into the bar a woman in the impromptu celtic band that practices on Wednesday nights said "I'd love a cup of tea" beat, beat "with whiskey in it".
I breathed again.
My camera has another couple of shots of my keyboard on it. That happens whenever I get the urge to do some photography, something I have been neglecting for quite a while. So much so that I know one of the three batteries in my bag is flat and I don't much care. I gave up being in the camera club at the University, I hadn't used the studio for two years it seems. What's the point of sticking around if I'm not getting anything out of it? It also gave me one less thing to worry about, it seems that yet again the administration wants the space. You look at a floor plan and think "there's some!" without bothering to actually find out what happens there. Tens of thousands of dollars to destroy a facility you couldn't ever get back again. Not even for three times that money you just spent to convert lab space to floor space. It's so easy to destroy something if you know nothing about it and can't be bothered to look.
So very hard to keep fighting to preserve it. Well I put my years in, let someone else defend the place, or let it go if nobody will fight for it.
I seem to be on a "let it go" kick lately as I try to reduce the stress and bother in my life. None of the things I fought for made me money, none of them were vital to my self-image or my ego. All of them simply stressed me out. Still, I fought because they were things worth keeping, but I'm not the only voice yelling into the wind. Let others pick up where I left off and if I ever manage to find a source of figure models again I can always charge the batteries.
Not holding my breath, going through the interview process to explain to yet another potential muse that yes, I'm serious about this, no I don't have a market to sell the photos into, and no you shouldn't do this if you want to be a Sunday School teacher, is something I never really enjoyed. Especially the ones who came with the attitude of "prove to me you're not a pervert". I am a pervert, everyone is a pervert to someone, get over it.
Besides, their cell phones take such amazing nude selfies. Who needs me and my weird lighting and strange abstractions.
I'm becoming my mother, I just want to stay at home and nobble away in my shop and at my hobbies and the rest of the world can stay where it is. Each irritation I cut away from my life probably gives me an extra couple of years stroke-free. I certainly don't miss them when they are gone.
There are a few things that get me out of the house. These essays for one, they get me to the coffee shop in the morning and... well no, what gets me to the bar is the pint of Bass that shows up in front of me as I sit down. The attraction of "my local" is not to be underestimated. Nor is the attraction of "my dojo" (specifically, the people in it). Both are a source of anti-irritation, both are sufficient to get me past my front lawn and will be, I think, for a few years to come.
The regular "breaking-in" of a new clubs person at the University has been taken over by one of the students. After 30 years (next year) of explaining almost yearly that this is a lifetime thing for the folks that do it, that they might well be practicing Jodo or Niten Ichiryu or Iaido in 30 years while their class of hot stretchy-band zoom-zoom will be long forgotten, you get tired of the grind. If you want to extend the life of your sensei, take over dealing with the new administrators and defend your practice space from the predations of yet another aerobics fad.
Just saying.
Oh my, Johnny Cash on the speakers, can it get any better? I'm in my happy place, don't speak to me of the latest threat to whatever it is you are worried about. Old people are entitled to selfish bouts of contentment so that you young people can complain that we aren't fixing the world.
We do, we did, regularly, every time a "new broom" shows up to "sweeps clean". It's hard to "fix the world" when you're constantly having to fill out forms while running as hard as you can to stay in one place. You wonder why all us oldies resist hiring you youngsters so you can come in and tell us what we taught you in school? It's because we're tired of re-educating you. It's you and your "new ideas" that we spent all our time on. We would have fixed it all if we hadn't had to go through the Groundhog Day loop until now, when we're ready to chuck it in.
The Band! Yes! Robbie Robertson wailing it! While a couple guys behind me are complaining about some guy in their workplace who is just messing things up without bothering to learn how things work, and have been working, for years. Are they reading over my shoulder or am I right about this?
The celtic band packed it up a while ago. Too many pints makes music messy. Time for me to do the same. There's a sauna waiting and tomorrow I get to figure out how to get the damned squirrel out of my soffits before I board up the hole he chewed in the siding, so he's not living in there for the winter or worse, smelling up the house with his decomposing little tree-rat body.
It's always something.
Line, determination, precision, a seminar report.
We must be terrible students here, us Ancients. The last two jodo seminars with senior instructors from Japan and France featured kihon, kihon and kihon.
You'd think we would have learned kihon as debutantes but apparently we just didn't get it.
Or maybe there's value in the basics? That's why us ancients (seniors, as our French guests would put it in translation) were working hard on things that the beginners probably figured they already knew.
We should perhaps back up a bit and outline the seminar which featured Daniel Chabaud sensei and Corinne Marie Dit Moisson sensei from Dojo Shinfukan in Marseille. Both are 7dan jodo and they kindly agreed to come teach us for a weekend.
Teach they did, they arrived Thursday, did the obligatory visit to Niagara Falls Friday morning and then taught for several hours Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 2pm without a break until they returned to the airport to fly home. Pretty boring report yes? Hard working is certainly the word for these sensei.
And hard work was the byword of the seminar. Did I mention we must be awful? Why else would we have to work so hard on our basics?
That's OK, I like being awful if it gets us such wonderful instruction. The three words to remember from this seminar would be line, determination and precision. Seitei jo is precise. It requires precise movements and precise distancing and precise timing. To do that well you have to understand the line, the attack line between you and the swordsman. The plane of movement of the jo. The connection between your body position and the line of the jo.
Tieing all this together to make a combative martial art, instead of a dance with sticks, you need determination, you need ki musubi, a connection with the swordsman. You need to hold him with the stick and your intent, your determination because it's a miracle that a jo can ever defeat a sword.
So we received some tuition in the western style. We were given tools and exercises to understand the bits within the art, we worked on the kihon and were shown how to move the lessons of the kihon into the kata. As Chabaud sensei said, the Japanese teach us the kata and we are left to fill in the details. We in the west like to work from the other way, to build up the kata from the details. We were given hints and tools and suggestions on how to fill in the gaps in the kihon and the kata and asked to go and think. "The book" describes the seitei kata but it has gaps. How do you get from here to there? These gaps were left on purpose for us to find our own way. Seitei is standardized and so everyone, all over the world, can practice together. We can open our minds and consider the words of many sensei and try different ways to do our jodo. From that we can come to an understanding. If we think.
Hard work that, thinking, but we'll give it a try. Last evening we spent our two hour class on the first four kihon and the first kata and I still felt pressed for time. To review the whole seminar is going to take most of the rest of the winter I fear.
No, I'm delighted. Many thanks to the sensei, the organizers of the seminar, and those who attended.
Peterborough Koryu Seminar
My sensei says...
Before that, I'd like to say many thanks to Jim Wilson and his crew in Peterborough for their work with yet another lovely Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu seminar. I think this is the fourth, may there be many more. I'm impressed that so many students will attend a koryu seminar with an instructor who is not their direct teacher. It's nice to see that they have faith that they will be made welcome and their particular lineage will be respected.
I'm not, however, surprised. My sensei said, during his introductory comments, that you follow your sensei, even if you're here in front of him, you follow your sensei because that's the way of koryu. He has always been welcoming and has always given his best for the students in front of him. That's the arrangement we made when our group started way back when, that it would be about the students and not about us. So if you're in front of my sensei he will do his best to teach you. He's not interested in being a big shot, and he leads reluctantly to say the least, but we won't let him quit. The result is that there were students from at least a dozen different instructors at the seminar. I heard not one word of disagreement with anything he said, not one sigh of frustration that he "was doing it wrong". Sure it was a self-selecting group but I'd like to believe that we are perhaps growing up out of the attitude that we have nothing to learn from anyone except our own sensei who has all the secrets in his head.
I happened to be passing one of my own students who said "I'm waiting to see which section Ohmi sensei is teaching and I'm going there". Good. That's as it should be, even if I'm teaching on the other side of the room. Go where it's going to do you the most good.
My sensei also said, and I quote, "If you're 7dan seitei you better show me 7dan koryu". I'm pretty sure I know who that was aimed at, I'm going to take it that way regardless. I need those boots to the butt in order to keep my ego in check. (OK don't spray your coffee all over.) If you don't have a little pounding down once in a while your head can get all pointy so thanks sensei.
His meaning is pretty clear, you can concentrate on the technical movements of iaido and get to a pretty high grade without learning much about the mindly aspects of budo. From my point of view, seitei is amazing for learning body control. It's a defined (standard) practice that you can be taught by dozens and hundreds of instructors. One mountain, may viewpoints. Those same instructors, and this is my sensei's point, can also give you insights to the mental aspects of the art if you are willing to listen.
That can be good and bad. It can be a great breadth of understanding or it can be a confusing jabber of voices. That's where you need a pure stream of knowledge, a steady frame to contain all that other information. You need your koryu teacher, the one who has a unified understanding, a straight line, a single path up the mountain for you to follow.
You can't climb two paths at the same time, but it can be a tremendous help if someone on the path beside yours can look ahead and tell you about that cliff to the left. Seitei is the "Grouse Grind" a stairway up a mountain in Vancouver that has dozens of people on it at any one time, climbing all day long. Koryu is the pathway around the other side with you and your guide. Both are ways up. On your sensei's path you see his backside and not much else, on the Grind it's wider (I imagine, my daughter told me about it, I've never been), there's room for you, your sensei, his buddies and their sensei so you can listen in on the gossip as you learn how to put one foot in front of the other.
To further bend the metaphor, there can be cross-linking paths between the two of them and now I've told you that you can't climb two paths at the same time but that you can climb two paths. When I first started my iai practice my sensei had to tell us to at least go through seitei once every practice. Thirty years later he has to remind us to work on koryu as much as on seitei.
Thanks for the reminder sensei. And thanks for the chance to get the reminder Peterborough Iaido.
Who's gonna love ya when I'm gone.
My students often wonder why I get so worked up over things like senior gradings, they've watched me negotiate and beg and plan trips abroad only to change direction on hopes that we can arrange something, maybe, finally at home. This goes on, has been going on, for years at a time. My plans don't get made a couple months ahead, they operate over decades. Because it takes decades to make a teacher.
I took 11 years to make the teaching rank in Aikido (I was 35?). In the Kendo federation it takes a minimum of ten years (plus however long it takes to reach shodan) to reach the official teaching rank. It takes another 11 years minimum to reach a rank where you can sit a panel that gives that teaching rank. I was 50 when I passed nanadan.
So yes, I get worked up when my multi-decades long plans get derailed. I don't have that much longer to shepherd this stuff along, and I don't intend to be the one to watch it all fade away. I fear I may have to do just that.
For those who read these essays regularly, you may have suspicions that I believe in the practice of budo. I believe in the good it can bring to people. I have watched more than one person overcome difficulties and grow to be wonderful people and real benefits to their society. Unfortunately, I've also seen a lot of people screw things up through selfishness, pride and ego. People who started small and, shockingly, became smaller. Maybe one of those is me, maybe not, but overall I claim a vision that moves past my own life and that makes me think I'm not in it for myself.
Why am I going on about this? In the last couple weeks I've had three people contact me about the jodo seminar this weekend, telling me they have had injuries that will take them out of the practice. That's ten percent of those signed up. Not all of these folks are "old", but they ain't kids.
In these last few weeks I've been talking to many people with the same concerns I have, friends of course, who have come up in the same system I have. At a recent godan grading one recently retired friend told me that he was just about the youngest challenger of the lot.
Amongst the iaido nanadan in Canada I believe I am the youngest. At 60. I passed nanadan ten years ago here, under the CKF at that time, but we have not had a nanadan exam since then. This worries me. In fact, at last year's spring seminar one of the hachidan jodo sensei was two years younger than I. I am godan in jodo, I'm not the oldest godan we have. I have been godan for... is it ten years now? That might be right, and I have not been able to arrange a test for anything above sandan in jodo for what, 5 years? Half of our jodo population has hit the ceiling. Where are the kids? Where are our growing dojo? Yes we are growing, but in a bell jar, that glass ceiling is forever over our heads.
This is on me, as head of the section, but I can see light, perhaps, my decades long plans with charts and spreadsheets of grading times might, a few years delayed, yield an organization that can grow instead of fade away after us ancients who started it have faded away ourselves. Frankly, when two of us die that glass ceiling goes to 2dan, then to zero.
I don't sleep at night sometimes. Yet it should not be this difficult. Everyone ought to be on the same page, everyone ought to want the arts to grow and prosper, the kids to grow up strong and independent.
At drinks recently where we were discussing various budo foibles, the Pamurai said "aren't the arts supposed to make you a better person, someone who works for the good of the group and the future?" We old people laughed at her and she grinned at her own youthful optimism.
But damnit, why do these people show up in the budo? Why would anyone have so little "life" (as in "get a life") that they would try to be a "big fish in a small pond" with my budo! Big fish? Damnit, this is like being a minnow in a raindrop. It's beyond pathetic to watch the office politics of budo. Nobody cares. Nobody is paying attention. There's no money, no fame, no glory in budo. It is a little thing, a tiny hobby.
In Tokyo an obscure TV show asked 50 people if they knew what jodo was. In Tokyo, 50 out of 50 had no clue what jodo was. And yet, the great mystery to the Pamurai, there are people who are playing silly-buggers with these meaningless, unknown arts. These arts that I believe have some good to do, if only they are allowed to survive, if only "men of good will" are allowed to do their work. If only those who really, really need to get a life would stop trying to be king of the dust in the "empire of dirt".
I fear. I know sandans who are old enough that their life-long plan is to make godan. I know many people who have told me flat out that yondan is the end, that they are too old to even consider their next test. Are there no kids? Certainly there are, but those kids are going to need sensei when they are, themselves, godan. It won't be me, I would love to believe I have another ten years but there's no way I will be teaching when I am 80. If the jodo section that I currently lead is to grow, if these kids are to have a chance to move through the next 20 years and make nanadan I must get the current crop of godan to rokudan. Me. It's my job.
So yes, students, sensei is grumpy, and he yells at you in class because you don't think that etiquette is important and you tell me you don't care about grades and you only care about learning the art as budo rather than the art as cultural artifact but damnit! Can't you see that you need that next rank so that my life's efforts are not wasted?
EWwww, is that the stink of zen I smell, is that the egotism of someone who feels they need to impose their will on the world? Is that a minnow looking for a raindrop.
Yeah, probably. If enough of my students figure this stuff is worth continuing, they will. I should just drink my Bass and, oh, I dunno, watch the football game on the tube. I'm in charge of a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of a tiny raindrop.
50 out of 50 in Tokyo have no clue what we do.
Get a life.
My sensei is: Fudoshin 3
My sensei is the guy I chose to practice with. He wants good people to do good iaido and that's what I'm interested in as well. He isn't much interested in pretty, in fact, if you were to tell him that his iaido is pretty he'd be hurt. Mechanics who do perfect technical sword dance don't much interest him.
He's interested in the philosophy of budo, and so am I.
He was my second iaido instructor, the first being Mitsuzuka Takeshi sensei who I met in 1983 or so. My sensei was one of the only people around at the time (the later 1980s) who was practicing iaido. He wasn't teaching, A fellow student and I had to do the "sit at the gate in the rain" thing for a while before he sort of got sucked back into teaching. It was worth the sit which, to be honest, wasn't all that long.
Lest you think that because he was the only game in town I settled for him, I assure you that I have had plenty of chances to go with "high powered" Japanese sensei, even had some sincere requests to practice other koryu. I have never, ever said "my Japanese sensei". Maybe "the Japanese sensei", because you can learn from many people but I have a single iaido maestro that I consider myself apprenticed to.
You pick your sensei and that choice tells a lot about your mindset and your intentions.
If you are in a large organization you can also pick your grading panel. You can go here or there and chose the panel that you figure will like your iaido. If one doesn't pass you, perhaps another will.
It used to be pretty easy when I was in the grading stream for Aikido, you would go to the big seminar on the pass year and get your dan grade. This was many decades ago and I'm sure it has changed, but the pattern then was everyone passes for two years and then on the third year everyone would fail and the shihan would give us a speach about how standards were not being maintained and we all sucked and we ought to work harder. I say we in a limited sense, I never graded at the seminar. In fact I waited about six extra years before grading for shodan at a seminar in my home dojo because the opinions of strangers were never a thing for me.
My gradings have always been local because I'm interested in the opinions of my teachers and my peers. I'm proud of the people in the local aikido dojo, all of them, of all organizations. I am also proud of the Canadian Kendo Federation and the grading systems of the three arts that we have built over many decades. I support that system and I grade under that system. I graded to 7dan iaido under the CKF and would not wish to go elsewhere. I could have graded anywhere but I am not interested in "anywhere". Does that mean that I haven't been vetted by anyone but my own sensei? Not in the least. My gradings were done here, in front of my peers, by panels that included senior sensei from other countries. My sensei happens to be the head of the iaido section in Canada and he always insisted that those foreign panels grade Canadian students to the same standards as in their home countries.
He wanted no part of "polite" gradings where the panel passes a student "for the good of the art", for the "spread of the art". Did this happen? I haven't a clue, the panels made their decisions for their own reasons and that is the end of it.
I have been told "MY grades were done in Japan, your grade isn't as good as mine because you invited sensei to come and visit and so they felt obligated to pass you". Or "your panel is local and therefore not as good as the panels in Japan".
Maybe, but even if that is so, I am uninterested because as I said, I'm interested in the opinion of my own sensei and of my peers. I have no plans to move to Japan or elsewhere and make a living teaching budo, so they are safe from my "poor skills". I value my reputation with regard to my sensei and my students. Anyone else is none of my business. If that brands me as a bit of a traditionalist, a bit of a lineage hound, so be it. Iaido reputations are either seen on the floor, seen in one's students, or are a matter of gossip. We are not going to go out behind the barn and "put it out there once and for all".
I have listened to those who have gone to Japan or elsewhere and then come back with a pass "to prove to their sensei and the local folks that they were wrong" about something or other. I give those folks the respect they deserve, especially those who go away, grade, and return to the same club to tell their sensei what's what.
Wow, every time I think about that my mind boggles. Why would anyone stay in a dojo where they believe they know better than their sensei? Oh wait, space to practice and somebody else is doing the work. No, the mind-boggle is why that sensei doesn't just open the door and help that student pack up their keikogi.
Or the other way around. I know a sensei who left his well-established dojo to the students who knew more than he, rather than boot out 80 percent of the club. He simply moved to another dojo. Now that's my kind of sensei, one who looks out for his students even if they don't deserve it.
You know, grading in front of a panel that isn't your local is a crap shoot at the best of times if you're interested in a true assessment of your skills. Your panel will assess according to their own opinions. I have heard it said of those who go to Japan to grade that the Japanese panel won't have to deal with their decision after the grading, so they may just be inclined to pass a marginal student "for the good of the foreigners". You know the airport promotion that puts you on the plane at 3rd kyu in Japan and off back home at shodan or better? Well there's also the promotion that gets conferred just before you get on the plane. "Sensei I need an 8dan because the foreigners don't respect anything less". Sure kid, here it is, bye bye.
If going elsewhere to be graded by strangers is problematical, disrespectful, prone to create ego problems, prone to promote cultural snobbery or otherwise, why would any organization allow it? The internationally-minded ones do it to allow the local branches to obtain the rank they need to do their local gradings. The business-minded ones, the ones who make money off the gradings, may create a system to collect fees by not allowing enough local rank to be independent. The students must "come to the source" to be ranked. The self-centric ones will do it to maintain control, often through arbitrary changes to the rules to prevent the foreigners from getting too independent. This, as I have seen many times in the last 30 years never works for long, the locals eventually figure out the scam and leave to form their own organization. If there is no external reason to be in an organization what is the incentive to stay? An external reason? World and Olympic championships come to mind.
This is why I stick with my local panel. It's my peers, it's my organization that the grading fees go to, and that's not trivial. Others may choose to grade at other panels for entirely good reasons and I'm fine with that. If you are living abroad, if you spend time in another country and it's convenient (and your sensei is good with that), or if you have no other choice. No problem.
Personally, my sensei is a single person and my gradings are in front of a local panel. Just my preference. One can argue for picking and choosing both sensei and panels. I just have little time for those who argue from prejudice or egotism or similar, in an art where one can't really "put it on the floor out behind the barn".
Ultimately, one needs to be honest with oneself and my greatest respect is for my sensei and for my local gradings.
That's just me. To you, it's just an opinion.
Fudoshin
Now let me explain my reason for being a lineage hound, for sticking with my local sensei rather than latching on to the coat-tails that can get me to my next rank. Even assuming that next rank is useful.
Remember I said my sensei is interested in the philosophy of budo. I started my budo career in search of philosophy, not because I needed to know how to fight, not because I wanted to be a samurai, not even because I liked anime. In 1980 I'd never seen anime, I might have seen a Kurosawa movie or two but my favourite was Dodeskaden rather than Seven Samurai.
Back to the paper I'm working through on Takuan Soho. Back to his thoughts on mushin in relation to fushin and fudoshin.
A sword fight (or a kata in our case, an aikido technique, a judo or kendo match) requires concentration on our opponent. It requires us to focus our attention on the details, his breathing, his hands, his eyes, all the things we are taught to concentrate on. But that's a frozen mind isn't it? That's not the free-flowing process of consciousness that we must have in order to deal with the sudden unknown changes of combat and life in general. Takuan suggests that the solution to that koan, that juxtaposition of two seemingly exclusive things is mushin. Mushin being the state of no-mind, the state of spontaneous response to challenge.
- Master, please teach me
Have you eaten your breakfast
- Yes
Go wash your bowl
Upon which the student attained enlightenment. Clever yes? What is enlightenment? It is the spontaneous realization of the nature of the world. You can get it spontaneously, that's sort of the meaning of Zen. I once experienced the one-ness of the universe while riding the city bus. We went around the corner and suddenly the entirety of existance flowed through me and I through it.
I recovered.
Which is the problem. Realization isn't a one-time thing... well it can be and that's the problem. Experience it once and ignore it and it will cease to bother you. It will go away.
How do you keep it? (Assuming you would want to keep it.) By continuous effort, by daily training, by careful preparation in some practice or other (why not budo?) under a master, a sensei. You may experience satori at a seminar with some other teacher, but you are unlikely to do that if you have not been prepared beforehand. Yes, your teacher will sometimes send you elsewhere for a good smack on the head with a stick, but only when he sees that you are "stuck".
This is why I have one teacher. That teacher is in charge of my progress, and only by having one teacher looking after your one path up the mountain are you likely to get to the top. Switching teachers means sliding down to the bottom and starting again.
Before satori, chop wood, carry water.
After satori, chop wood, carry water.
So what we need is a process, not a single event. You need many koan, you need a practice, which is where zen latches onto the arts. You've heard of the zen of tea, the zen of flower arrangeing, the zen of running, the zen of sworsmanship and you have been told to laugh at such things. The samurai were confucians, they were esoteric buddhists, zen is a later imagination by westerners. Zennists supported the ultranationalists every bit as much as did State Shinto.
Sure. All that is true. It is also true that Takuan wrote to Yagyu, that Takuan used swordsmanship as a vehicle to teach Zen. It is true that Takuan explained mushin in terms of fudoshin and fushin, frozen mind and immovable mind using the koan of a real, an actual life and death practice. The monk on the hill is supposed to eventually get to the point where his koan feels like it is life and death. The swordsman faces life and death every time he grasps the hilt.
Takuan was lazy.
His students were already at life and death. He pointed to the functioning of mushin, something a swordsman understands, Musashi's "strike from the void". Takuan pointed to it and said "here's the name for it".
Lazy, lazy.
So now you know why I'm a lineage hound, why I follow my sensei and why I don't much care about such things as reputation and opinion and gossip. Why I don't chase after powerful people.
Is my sensei a zen master? I doubt anyone, including my sensei would say so. But he is a caring man, a man of good will who tries to do the best for his students. He teaches me that budo is not a dance, a set of movements that you learn (and then get a gold star for learning), but instead that it is a process.
A process through which you can learn.
Fudoshin 2: the koan of kata
Someone just noted on the net that instructors who don't attend seminars of zen ken ren iai regularly will end up teaching the wrong etiquette to their students. This, for those who don't do zen ken ren iai means what you just thought it meant. That etiquette changes, that each half year or so you should get someone from Tokyo to tell you what is correct. Why Tokyo? A hanshi from Tokyo once told us that teachers outside Tokyo, even if they are hanshi, could be wrong because they don't attend seminars in Tokyo regularly so they will be "behind", their teaching will be "old".
If this sounds like the "latest fashions from Paris", that's what I call it. And it is just as serious. If you don't think the latest fashions from Paris are important, look up the monetary value of the fashion industry, try making a living as a fashion photographer who ignores the latest fashions. Heckfire, go to your local thrift shop and look around. Are those miles of aisles of clothing worn out? New fashions three or four times a year mean someone is making money, vast numbers of people are making a living out of changing the shape of a pair of trousers, the colour of a blouse.
Zen Ken Ren iai has 12 kata. The longest one can be done in well under one minute. The number of moves per kata ranges from four (Mae: nuki tsuke, kiri tsuke, chiburi, noto) to I dunno, seven? (Shihogiri: tsuka ate, thrust, cut, cut, cut, chiburi, noto). Depends on what you call a move. Suffice to say that you can learn the moves of all 12 kata in a single afternoon. Then you've got 40 years of practice left to perfect them.
So what are you working on for 40 years? Well, partly you're not "working on", you're changing (correcting it's called) your etiquette and other things that are not written down in the manual, so you can include the "latest fashions from Paris" in your kata or your embu. Or, if you invite more than one sensei to your seminars, you will get a different viewpoint which will become the latest "correct" way to do things. Yes you can have more than one sensei for Zen Ken Ren iai, it's standardized so any sensei can teach it to you. Provided of course they have attended the latest high level seminar in Tokyo.
So for 40 years you change this, tweek that, concentrate on your little finger here, on your shoulder angle there, on stopping the sword at exactly this height.
If I sound like I'm making fun of seitei iai I assure you I am not. I practice it quite seriously. I consider seitei to be the place where I learn how to control the sword very precisely. Each sensei that says "the angle is this" gives me a chance to change my angle instantly and consistently so that I become a better swordsman instead of a conservative old fart who never wants things to change because I'm comfortable. I like the latest fashions from Paris.
No, I'm not making fun, I put things as above to point out a very important problem of iaido in general. The koan of kata, specifically the koan of solo kata.
In solo kata you learn the dance steps very quickly and then you tweek it for decades. It's why I started iaido, as a place where I could work on my posture without the annoyance of somebody hanging off my neck. But that very concentration on the details absolutely assures that you will not learn the critical principles of budo, one of which is fudoshin. How can you learn how to do your iai, or karate, or aiki-jo kata with an immovable mind when you are attaching that mind to each and every twitch.
This is your koan. This is, I have been screaming at the 5dans, the difference between 5 and 6dan. At least it is for me. If you are 5dan and asking me to show you the latest fashion from Paris, or even to show my preferred method of moving the sageo in the initial to-rei (assuming as you do so that I'll be on the grading panel), you are not 6dan.
(Parenthetically, also, if you're not willing to start working for the benefit of your organization, you're not ready. Lots of folks are happy to work for their own benefit, or their own ego but that's not the 6dans I want hanging around, I want people who will sacrifice their own "budo career" for the students who come behind them).
In other words, for 6dan you need to solve the koan of kata. You need to roll your eyes from inside your own skull to look outside instead. In your kata, and for the good of your ego.
Fudoshin
Fudoshin, or frozen mind, and fushin, immovable mind. A recent paper concerning this has been my sauna reading for a few days. It is an analysis of Takuan Soho's letters to Yagyu. I have been struck with similarities to things that Musashi said in his writings. These men were contemporaries and given our "surprising discoveries" that people and things in the old days were more widely connected than we thought, it might be that these men, or at least their ideas, were familiar to a wider audience. Make a good post grad thesis for someone perhaps. As a hint, Musashi wrote his 35 articles for Lord Hosokawa, who already had menkyo kaiden and the Heiho Kadensho from Yagyu. Might Musashi have seen this document? Musashi said that he wrote the Go Rin no Sho with no references from the classics or other military books. This would seem to imply that he had read such things.
Thinking about the frozen mind, the mind that gets dragged about by being caught on ideas, or on things, it occured to me that aikido practice was a good place to study the concept. A metaphor? Takuan used the sword cutting toward the swordsman, if you become caught on that object it will go badly for you. I used the Canadian example last evening, if you stick your tongue on an ice cream truck in winter, you will be dragged around when that truck drives off.
Good eh?
My point for the class was to demonstrate that named techniques are just place holders. That they are convenient jargon for movements or positions that arise when doing the real work of budo, which is to place balance against balance. We spent the evening doing uncomfortable things, we moved straight back from a punch to the face and tried to see how many ways we could touch that punch with our hand. Two hands, both sides with fingertips up, either hand placed on top (palm down), either hand placed below (palm up). Remembering that the other fist would be coming, we moved the hand across the body, inside or outside to block the punch or to unbalance the attacker.
Out of those simple actions we discovered the techniques we have named ikkyo, nikyo, sankyo, yonkyo, kote gaeshi, shiho nage, sumi otoshi and many others. When we were not naming them the less experienced students had no trouble making their partner fall down. Once we named them however, there seemed to be something for the mind to latch onto and confusion ensued as they tried to do things "the right way".
Move, don't get hit, move, don't get hit, move.... oh, technique, don't get hit.
I say Aikido is a good place to study fudoshin because of this fluidity of technique to technique to... or is that the wrong way to think of it? From this fundamental idea (don't get hit, don't be there) arise ways to unbalance and throw our opponent. We name these techniques but that very naming can cause us to focus on them, to become frozen on them. We should not focus on the technique, on the named form, but instead on responding to our opponent in appropriate ways which will allow techniques to arise "from the void" as Musashi says, without excess rationalization. If you are not trying to "do kotegaeshi" your resisting partner will simply be falling to the ground from sumi otoshi, or find himself in sankyo, or...
Can we start with fudoshin and cut out all these decades of study? Not even Musashi thought so, he spent a lifetime teaching from kata, as did many others of his time, but he eventually pared all that down to five kata, his nito seiho. Start with the swords high, middle or low, left or right according to circumstance, and then find the techiques as they appear from the void.
This is the result of fourty years of practice, not four so why am I bothering to tell it to beginners? Part of the answer is that I'm a selfish barnyard and I'm not really teaching, I'm learning. But the nice side of it is that I don't want my students to spend too much time looking too closely at the kata (the named or demonstrated sequence of attack and defence that is invented every time an aikido sensei says "do this"). Sure, the students want to learn techniques and they do. We look closely at the "leaves" of the pins and the throws, but I want the students to step back and look at the forest at the same time. Not the exact same time, alongside, alternatively, in the same class, as they look at the leaves. Sometimes focus on a little finger, other times on the big movement of the body to avoid being punched while looking at that little finger.
That's the very nub of the problem. You can't focus on the little picture and the big picture at the same time. We do not multitask, if we could you would be able to text and drive safely. You may think you can do that but you can not. The brain concentrates, it focuses, "becomes frozen" on one thing at a time. If you are concentrating on getting the perfect angle on your opponent's wrist to do nikkyo you are not seeing his other hand coming around to clap you on the earhole. You can't see the forest for the trees, you can't look at a leaf and see the landscape.
Mostly when I am working on fudoshin I like moving a couple of inches and turning a couple of degrees so that the opponent has missed and now I am facing the short side of his stability box and can tap him on the chest and watch him fall down. Want to do that? OK Uke is striking down with a beer bottle in his right hand and has stepped forward with his right foot to do so... no? He's holding a sword, your kendo guy will be in that position. As the sword is coming down he is committed to the attack, very hard to change direction, so now you slide very slightly to your right front. Put your shoulder width left foot in front of his left foot and your left shoulder will be offline from the descending sword. This is a twitch, it ought to be faster than lifting your own sword (which you don't have) to block. Now that our body is in the right place, let your left foot drift slightly further so that your hips now line up facing your attacker. Look at his feet, do you see the box between his toes and heels? It's pretty narrow in the direction you are now facing. All you have to do to unbalance him is push his center of mass outside that box. If you can do that just as his right foot is coming down onto the ground so much the better, he will not only unbalance but twist away from you as you tap him. Chances are, in his rush to re-establish his balance he will catch the outside of his right foot and trip. He certainly won't have much power in that sword cut once he is off balance.
Pretty boring isn't it? You can do it, so let's go on to a fancy technique with a cool name.
Sure, let's do that.
If it isn't fun, go for a run
This is the advice I gave my students yesterday as some of them prepared for their upcoming iaido test. I was told that at the last grading 10 out of 12 of the nidans were failed, for etiquette.
For those who think nidan is a high rank, let me enlighten you, it's less than 2 years practice. It's the third test ever for most of them. 10 out of 12.
So we practiced proper etiquette for a while as I got more and more angry that a misplaced finger could cause you to fail. I yelled at every "incorrect etiquette" I saw. I yelled a lot, I can see a lot.
I then put 4 people around one of the challengers (beyond 2dan) and asked them to look while he did Ushiro. Three of four of them would have failed him for such things as moving his knee koryu style. This is the world of the junior panel, of the petit bourgeois if you will. This is judging without experience, looking for reasons to fail rather than reasons to pass. This is lazy judging, it is mean spirited, it is, in a nutshell, no fun at all. One of my fellow judges says that when looking at someone he asks himself "will this fix itself in the next month or year" if it will, he goes with a pass, if not, if it just won't get fixed without a slap to the face, he votes for fail.
At that point I went around the class and failed about half of them for uniform violations.
We did a bit of practice with me explaining every detail and pointing out every poor movement. The class became more and more sullen, their iai more and more wooden. Finally I turned them around from the mirror and faced them backward. They did one more kata the "correct" way before I told them to forget everything I had said, I told them to do "their iai" to do iaido as they had been taught by me and by my sensei for many years.
They came alive. I asked them to face the mirrors and do it again, they did. I asked which of the two kata, the one before turning around or the one after, that they preferred. You can guess the vote.
Iaido is a hobby, if it's no fun, go for a run. But I don't like running said one of them. My point exactly, if you aren't enjoying your iaido you're simply doing it for exercise, and running is much better for that. Cheaper too.
I talked with one student last night over beers and he told me how much money he had spent in the last couple months. It's seminar season, we carpool and pile our students into shared hotel rooms but it is still damned expensive to go to seminars. Running costs the price of a pair of running shoes.
That nidan grading that 83% of the nidans failed? Sixty dollars just to try, another $90 if you pass for a total of $150 for a certificate that says you passed your third level test. Running costs nothing.
So my advice to my students was quite simple. If you're going to test, show the panel your iaido, certainly don't give them an easy way to fail you (proper etiquette as per the day, proper uniform, don't go over time) but if you do fail, consider that it may be that you misplaced a finger on your sword. It may be that your juban slipped a bit under your uwagi. It may be that the judges were simply grumpy that morning.
Or it may be that your iaido is truly crap.
It doesn't matter, if you are having fun, if you enjoy doing what you're doing, it matters not if you pass or fail that exam. I don't want my guys to set their self esteem to the whims of a panel of judges. I am proud of them no matter what. Just like a father is proud of his kids.
One of my guys told me he's grading because I said a while ago that it was ridiculous he was still a sandan. That's unfortunate, I didn't mean he should have been grading, I meant that he was beyond that grade, that I thought of him as maybe yondan, maybe godan.
So listen up panel, if you read down your list of challengers and you see that there is a student from my dojo in front of you, feel free to pass or fail them as you see fit, for etiquette or because they missed the opponent completely. They won't take it personally and they might just thank you for saving them a couple hundred dollars.
Just don't expect them to put on the pie-face, they're not there to be miserable, they're there because they are having fun and when it stops being fun, they will be gone. They'll probably take up running.
I leave my students with the CKF grading policy
"Objectives of Examination Procedure for Dan and Shogo
Examinations for Dan (Degrees) and Shogo (Titles) are set for the purpose of encouraging advancement and improvement in Kendo.
It should be noted that the purpose of examination is not to screen or eliminate, but to encourage candidates to achieve a higher level of the art of Kendo."
Sounds like "have fun by working hard to improve your iaido" to me. Sounds like "we won't judge by looking for reasons to fail you"
But I may be reading that wrong.
My Sensei Said in October 2016
We have finished the fifth annual Peterborough Koryu seminar with Goyo Ohmi sensei, who taught a wonderful seminar. What follows are my notes of his comments during the two days of class. They are not particularly well organized, just what I wrote down when I got the chance so the usual warning that all confusion is my fault applies. I am simply going to repeat the notes in chronological order.
Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu is a relatively old school of iai. Muso Shinden Ryu is younger, but they are brother schools. You must understand the lineage.
A Tamiya Ryu sensei once wrote that in Iai we should not cut deep, we should cut shallow. Kendo cuts can be deep but in iaido we are facing multiple enemies and we should not cut deeply.
Don’t look at bad iaido! You can look at many different people who are doing iaido of many different skill levels, make sure you look at those with good skill. If you look at bad iaido you may begin to copy that.
In iaido we cut with one hand, this gives us a one inch advantage in reach.
Compared to Zen Ken Ren iai, the vertical cuts of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu are slightly deeper. Where ZKR iai stops at the belly button, MJER stops at the tanden, about two inches lower.
Once in a class, Yamamoto Harusuke (a MJER sensei) saw Kamimoto Eichi (a Muso Shinden Ryu sensei) doing saya biki and told him not to do that. Kamimoto Eichi became a very famous sensei and later said that saya biki is necessary as it gives a strong cut. The point is not whether or not to do saya biki, but to make a strong cut. Don’t lose sight of the goal, which is to have strong iai.
Make sure your thumbs are aimed at the floor when you grip the sword, not aimed out to the sides. My grip is, from the little finger to the thumb 10, 8, 6, 4, 4. The root of the thumb has a strength of 8. The same distribution of power exists in my left hand as well, but the 10 of the little finger of the left hand is a bit more firm than the 10 of the little finger of my right hand.
When you finish your nuki tsuke your right hand should be at the same height as your right armpit. The sword should be horizontal, but because the sword is thinner at the tip than at the tsuba, a drop of water would run down the sword from tsuba to tip. Do not angle the sword down or up, it should be horizontal. Additionally, Matsuo Haruna sensei taught that the lower surface of the sword should be parallel with the floor during the nuki tsuke. If your blade has the edge parallel with the mune, in other words if it is a wedge shape instead of a chisel shape as you cut, the blade can deflect upward when you hit a target.
Win first, then cut. This is done by having a very strong foundation in the art. Your fundamentals must be solid or you will have weak iai.
The practice of iai from seiza allows us to practice indoors. For this reason we take our long swords into the house.
You must learn and demonstrate strong basics. This reveals your depth of training, the number of years you have practised correctly. If you do not show strong basics throughout your career, when you reach 4 or 5 dan you may have become skillful but nobody will look at you. Nobody will watch you to learn iai.
Kendo people say that iaido is just playing with a sword, just waving it around because we like to swing it.
Iaido people say that kendo is just hitting each other with bamboo sticks because it is fun.
Both arts are serious, both have good sensei and we in iai must strive to show that our sword practice is more than just swinging a sword around in a pretty way.
Matsuo Haruna sensei once told me “don’t be happy if someone tells you your iaido is good” He said “be happy if they say ‘wow'”. I want people to say “wow”, not tell me that my iaido is beautiful.
Your wrist must be gentle as you move your sword, then squeeze your grip. When doing the matawari exercise you should imagine that your sword meets an attacking blade squarely just as it moves above your head. Don’t just lift the sword and cut in a sloppy manner. There should be tenouchi as you receive the strike, then cut down the center. You must make your sword live, it is dead if there is no tenouchi.
Reiho
Why does reiho exist? It is part of your mind training. All parts of your etiquette practice with the sword have meaning.
A large part of our iai training is to spend time with our friends. This is true. Iaido is also expensive, a sword is not just a large knife, and what we do is not just an artform, not just a pretty dance with a sword. I remember watching Alan Ladd in the movie Shane and he said “a gun is just a tool, like a shovel or a hoe”. It is the person using the tool that makes your sword what it is. If a bad person uses a sword it is a weapon.
Reiho is part of your mindset, how are you using that tool in your hand, that sword? What is your mindset? Recently I was told that Canadian ikkyu student’s etiquette was not good enough because it lacked the proper external form that was expected. I do not agree with this. Canadians have their own culture, their own etiquette, reiho must reflect the situation, the people, the culture. It will change depending on the circumstances. Canadians stand up straight and shake hands. Japanese bow. Neither of these are better, both are reiho.
Omori Ryu
The original way to teach is for sensei to demonstrate and then the students copy this. There was little talking.
But a student must put into their mind what is happening in the kata and use that to make the kata come alive. I have an old book here from Yamamoto Harusuke which has very little text and just a few pencil drawings. There is almost no explanation. Now books are much more detailed and we have pictures. This gives you students a big advantage.
When I first started iaido I went out and bought a book from the store. I was lucky because that book was my school. I used that book to learn faster than the other students in class who just watched sensei and copied him. Use the books and videos available to you.
Testing and koryu
I was told that if I challenge 8dan in Japan I must change my koryu because most of the judges are Muso Shinden Ryu. I must move my tsuba to the center and similar things to make them comfortable. This is fine for a test, but when you are doing your koryu in practice, do it properly.
There are many differences between Muso Jikiden and Zen Ken Ren iai. Our nuki tsuke is to a different target, our cuts are BIG. You must know these differences and show them.
As a beginner I was taught to aim my tsuka kashira at my opponent’s right shoulder so that my nuki tsuke was big. Now I aim at his center.
Our two hands go onto the tsuka left-right, not both at the same time.
We use jo ha kyu, so does Zen Ken Ren iai, but in our Oku iai that jo ha kyu is very short. In other words, some things are done differently for different kata.
Our draw and noto are done with tate ha, with the edge “standing up”. They are also done with the tsuka kashira inside our body line. Iwata sensei said that Oe Masamichi taught the noto with the tsuke kashira on the body’s centerline with no shaking of the hips. Mori Shigeki was a student of Oe and he returned to Tosa for a visit when he borrowed Oe sensei’s sword. It is from Mori Shigeki that we know Oe’s sword was quite short. So he could do his noto in this way. Kim Taylor once turned his hips quite a lot when he did noto. Haruna sensei told him “don’t do that”.
We follow Oe sensei in this school. Oe fixed the kata into their order and numbers. He got rid of many duplicated kata. Once the school contained kata for shoto and for things like assassination. Now we only know the names for many of these.
Our noto should be flat, the tsuka kashira should not rise upward as we move the mune across the left hand.
The sageo used to just hang down over the saya but it was decided that this was sloppy, that you would lose face if the sageo came loose and hung down on either side of the saya, even if you did a wonderful noto. So we now tuck it up under the himo. But do not tie a knot like is done in Zen Ken Ren iai.
Your uniform and your etiquette should be good so that students ask you for help when you are 5dan.
When you are in seiza your knees should be 2 fist widths apart, not closer but not further apart either.
Speaking of etiquette once more, your etiquette should fit the place, the time and the occasion correctly. There are different manners for different situations. There is an etiquette for Muso Jikiden, there is a different etiquette for Zen Ken Ren iai, and again different for tea. On the inside all of these are the same, on the outside there are different forms.
When standing up from chiburi for MJER keep iai goshi. You should not stand up high and then drop down again when you step back after the foot switch. On the other hand, in Zen Ken Ren I rise up as I bring my feet together and then keep my head at that height as I step back. This is because I am short and I must make an effort to look bigger.
For MJER, iai goshi means to keep the knees flexed, some people say this looks like the position for a “washroom break”.
Seme
Yes, seme involves your shoulder, your eyes, your tsuka kashira but most important is to use your hips. You must understand this, don’t exaggerate any movements in an attempt to show seme.
Haruna sensei once commented that at chiburi we should not slide the back foot up to the front, but instead pick up the foot and hit the ground with our heel as it reaches the other foot.
Don’t mix up what your sensei is telling you, or do a little bit of what you understand from each sensei, follow one and do things one way. It is important not to try to go in too many directions at once.
Tsuki Kage
The story is that you are indoors near a doorway which is open to the moonlight. An enemy steps through the door and so casts a shadow on the floor.
This kata has four ways to cut, the most usual is to cut across both wrists. One can use the same movement to meet one wrist, then fold the sword into an uke nagashi position so that the edge cuts into the wrists as you keep them from dropping. One can cut downward into the opponent’s right wrist only, or cut upward into the left wrist only. Practice all these ways.
Is that iai?
In the 1960s the 8dan iaido demonstration in Kyoto prompted a watching sensei to say “Is that iai? There is nobody under the sword!” Beware of “acting”, of making your iai just a kabuki performance. Know where your opponent is, cut him, demonstrate zanshin.
When you cut, make sure you use the tip of the sword correctly.
Your noto is to your stomach, not to your hip. This means that your koiguchi should meet your habaki when both hands are in front of your hips.
In the past there was a stamp on the nuki tsuke of Mae. This was not to just make a noise, the noise came as a result of you moving forward forcefully to reach your opponent. Now we tend to tell beginners to stamp but we don’t stamp once we are more experienced. In the past, 100 years ago they stamped all the time. Why? If you had a choice to make a big noise on a stamp or to cut with the tip, which would you choose? Cut! Reach the target!
When you do noto for Omori Ryu, it is from the habaki, for Eishin Ryu the mune touches the left hand half way down the blade and for Oku iai haya noto it is the last third of the blade. Do not make noise in the saya when doing haya noto.
The blade moves above the ear when taking the blade overhead for kiri tsuke. Near the ear, further upward or almost vertical is fine.
On noto, the blade may be taken back to the koiguchi on a flat trajectory, parallel to the floor, or it may be taken back on an angle parallel to the left forearm.
When standing up from chiburi move the rear foot so that the heel touches the floor, rather than slide it along on the toes.
Timing
If you are young, your timing should be faster than those who are older. There is no single timing, it depends on the kata, the age, the situation.
Goto Miki sensei said that the kata Yoko Gumo is the most basic practice of Muso Jikiden. Most of the fundamental movements of the school are in this kata. Therefore practice it often and put lots of focus on the hara.
A kendo sensei said that his personal practice involved sleeping with a bokuto beside the bed. As soon as you wake up do nuki tsuke and kiri tsuke 200 times, then go for breakfast.
To improve your grip you can squeeze a tennis ball. You should also do pushups, run, lift weights and other exercises. You should build your physical self up.
The kata which feature cutting the wrists of an attacking enemy should be done from a low position. Tsuki Kage is low, but it is a bit higher than Ina Zuma which should be done with the back knee barely off the floor.
Haya Nuki
When doing this practice there is haya noto and no zanshin between the kata but you must not perform the kata quickly. This practice is not for exercise, it is for when you have little time to practice. Practice at the correct speed for each kata.
One way to practice is to have sensei do a kata, the students copy it, then the students do a kata and sensei shows it, then sensei does the next and the students copy. This pattern goes through the set. Practising in this way is to demonstrate and learn, to attempt and be corrected through watching. Today we tend to talk too much and don’t know how to watch.
Iaido is not acting, do not just watch the movements, understand the spirit underneath a kata. The kata should be performed with three parts. First, you detect the intent to attack in the mind of your attacker, using this anticipation, stop the attack. Second, your attack is like a spark from a flint (sekka no kurai). Then third, after the attack you must pay attention, your attitude must be bon no kurai, like the reverberations of a bell after it has been struck.
There is a person in front of you. You must win with your mind, your spirit first, you must be ready before you sit down. Your techniques must not be kosei kosei, fidgety like a chipmunk, but they must not be too slow either. You should demonstrate strong and soft, slow and quick where these are appropriate.
Yae gaki
Do not just pull out your sword as you begin, cut! Finish it! But the second attack happens, show the power of the block in the tip of your blade.
You have an opponent! So you must control your mind, your footwork, control him with your mind and your footwork, don’t just act! Don’t stand up any old way! Show no openings in your movements, show perfect posture.
Ushiro
With a teki in front of you, see him with your eyes. For an opponent behind you, see him with your mind. If you are a fifth dan you must show power from your tsuka kashira on the turn. If you are a second dan you can’t do this yet.
Sei and Do
Iai is sei and do, just like the name I gave to the Guelph school, Sei Do Kai. Sei is quiet, Do is action.
Ma and Maai
Maai is timing and space. You and your opponent are ready, how can you get close enough to cut him? Between the two of us, when we are tip to tip, one step from cutting distance, we have energy. If we both understand this I can apply pressure through this energy. But if an opponent doesn’t know about this energy, if a young student is facing me and I apply this seme he just jumps in and hits me on the head.
Zaemi was a Noh sensei. He wrote that you should make the space around you full of energy. I thought he was speaking of the relationship between the actor and the audience so I am using this idea in my own practice. It turns out he was speaking of the relationship between the small drum and the actor, where the drum amplifies the feeling as the actor makes an action. Nevertheless, I use my interpretation, to create an energy between me and those watching, between me and my opponent.
If you face an 8dan kendoka you may feel no energy from him, but if you try to attack, he is there before you are.
Maai, how do you get in to the distance without being stabbed? That is your problem. You must manipulate time and distance to get in. Sen Dan Zan, anticipate, attack, zanshin.
Don’t just act with your iai, make it look real. Make it real. Know what’s happening and act like you know it!
Later in the seminar Ohmi sensei asked the class to tell him how they made their initial strike in Morote Zuki (Zen Ken Ren iai) real.
How do you make your nuki tsuke real? Let him know in your comments.
Sport builds character
So it is said. By competing in sports you learn teamwork (if it's a team sport), sportsmanship (fair play), and, umm, other stuff. Except when you don't. Like when you play for money (then it's a job, not something you do to build character), or when you play to win because winning feels good. But playing to win is the object of the exercise, to play to participate is called practice, it's not sport. "It's not whether you win or lose it's how you play the game", what is that? Is that ribbons for participation?
I'm all for participation, I'm all for character building, I'm all for sport too. But let's not simply assume sport is character building. By itself it is not anything, really. If you play sport to participate, the practices ought to be your focus, not the competition. If you want to win stuff, have at it. If you figure winning is character building, or losing is character building.... have you paid attention to sports? It's how you handle winning or losing, not the act of winning or losing.
The WADA (world anti doping agency) has just released its report on the Rio Olympics and found that on some days over 50% of the drug tests could not be done. It's character building to take banned drugs and then avoid being tested for them? I'm sure all the athletes taking those drugs are entirely innocent, it must be their coaches right? Remember the old chestnut about asking athletes to push a button that would make them win the olympics but kill them a year later and most of them said they'd push it? Yes it's a stupid question, kids don't understand death, not really, but the fact that someone asked it indicates that some people see problems with sport.
Budo is the same as sport, learning how to beat people up isn't character building any more than getting beat up. It's how you handle it that builds character.
What character?
What are we talking about here? Teamwork, fair play, getting along with others, not whining that you lost, not bragging that you won? Or the opposite of all those, that is character too. One can have many different kinds of character, some defined as good, some not, but all subject to arbitrary definition as good or bad.
What's in the bible? That's a very popular answer as to what defines a "good man". Religions love to write that stuff down, but what do we do with the contradictory definitions? If you havent found any in your religion you aren't reading the source materials, you're listening to your local interpreter (your preacher).
What about philosophy? Did you know that philosophers used to think a lot about how to live "a good life"? They came up with a lot of ideas through the ages, but again, you find contradictions.
The golden rule? Do unto others before they do unto you? That's Robert Heinlein's definition in "The cat that walked through walls". Man I had forgotten just how much in need of an editor that man was, and how sociopathic his heroes. By the way, in case you've never heard of it, the usual interpretation is Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You use "unto" to make it sound profound. Let's face it, most religious advice, indeed most character-defining advice usually comes down to this rule.
Be nice. You know what nice is. It's old men giving you stuff.
So what is it about sport that will build whatever sort of character we are looking for? I think, no matter what you look at, it's going to come down to getting up at 6 in the morning, every morning, and into a cold pool to do your laps. It's the discipline of practice rather than the excitement of the competition.
Let's look at kendo. I mean kendo, the "sport" side of our sword arts. Do tournaments build character? For as long as I've been in the federation I've heard from those who are outside the tournament area that they are a problem. You spend a lot of money and time to get there and then get knocked out in the first round, usually because the trees have been seeded and everyone wants to see the top guys meet in the final match.
Look, I'm not taking a swipe, substitute tennis for kendo. When was the last tennis tournament tree filled by picking names out of a hat? No, doesn't happen. But why not? Because randomness isn't part of sport?
I say it's entertainment. The folks watching want some drama. The organizers want people to stick around. If the top two meet in round one then the winner of the tournament is pretty much set, the rest of the tournament is just practice... for those left playing of course. "Tournaments are just another practice"... a really short, expensive practice that proves that you are supportive of your organization certainly, but perhaps not much else.
What about when tournaments are used to pick competitors for the next tournament? Then you must seed, you can't have randomness there, you want the strongest players to meet later so that the very strongest comes out on top.
Because winning is important.
Yet "how you play the game" is the character building thing, so losing is the important part? I mean if you win the tournament why would anyone say "how you play the game" to you? Well they would if you were playing kendo and you did the fist-punching, running around the court pointing at the loser stuff.
OK one more image. KId's baseball / football / hockey / soccer, and the monster parents who attend the games.
Sport doesn't build character any more than budo does. Character building builds character. If you use sport for character building then you will build character. If you use sport as some sort of ego-boosting, obsessional, adrenalin-rush-seeking thing, it isn't going to build much of anything except maybe stress damage to your internal organs. What is sport competition when it's good? It's more or less a practical demonstation that you practiced more than the guy you just beat. Unless you're one of those people who figure innate talent is a thing, Or that your god takes an interest in whether your team wins a match. Or that "trying really really hard" works.
I'm OK with sport, I played a lot of sports all through high school and University. Won some stuff, lost some stuff, have some trophies, my daughter has my school jacket with both sleeves covered in badges. I know about sports. Sometimes I played for the team, sometimes for the school, sometimes for myself. The real benefits of all that time spent? A baseline of fitness that I am coasting on now. I was fortunate enough to play my sports in an era where it was ignored as meaningless, where toxic parents didn't exist yet to live through their kids successes, so sports didn't make me a worse person at least. But make me better? Form my character?
That was getting my arse out to practice every single day. And to do that I don't need the spur of competition, never did, I liked running and I liked badminton and I liked basketball.
Was better than sitting at home doing nothing. Still is.
That's cheating
Last jodo class our kendo sensei was practicing hiki otoshi uchi and made a couple of corrections to angle of strike and hips and suddenly his partner's bokuto was across the room. "That's cheating" he said.
Yep, that's the whole of budo in a nutshell. In Jodo you've got a stick against a sword, so cheat. In any other martial art you're looking to win a fight, not to practice your fair play.
Remember the English Empire was founded on the playing fields of Eton or some such thing, even the guys who invented fair play didn't figure it was sweetness and light. OK I don't know maybe they did. I know that the Americans of that time didn't go in for much in the way of rules in their sporting fights. Look up Kick and Gouge on EJMAS.com. I dunno what my point here is, maybe that even sports can be brutal and look like cheating. Gouging an eye out isn't cheating if it's allowed though. Picking up the soccer ball and running with it is. Maybe my point about "Eton's playing fields" was that sport can create the "us vs them" attitude that will allow cheating whole chunks of the earth out of their land and wealth? Too subtle for me to deal with today.
You've got a stick, he's got a sword, cheat.
Kata practice is also cheating. Both sides are supposed to be making the other look good. There are videos of the recent Jodo championships in Japan out there on youtube, check them out. Look specifically at the small differences in timing from what the actual technique would be (cut the jodoka on the head) and what it is (tiny hesitation in the strike to make sure that jo is ready to respond). The competition is between pairs, not between partners, both partners "cheat" to make a good looking kata and catch the flag.
Fake it until you make it. Even in regular practice you ought to be cheating, not actually trying to hit your kata partner with your bokuto or your jo, just get really close to doing that but not quite. The fun is in the little look you give your partner that says "I totally got you there". Or that little eye-widening that they get when you come in really hard and stop exactly a millimeter before it hurts on a thrust.
Sword is cheating by letting themselves be open to that thrust, you cheat because you pull it. Cheating is the whole point during practice, and cheating is what you're learning during the kata. The reason for the secrets and blood oaths and whatnot that we all figure were the way of life in the old schools was to to create cheating.
It's a sport when both sides know what they are about to do, and what they are not allowed to do. That way it's the fastest guy or the strongest guy or whatever, who wins. Rules mean the equipment is the same (theoretically) for both sides, and it's just the strongest, highest, fastest that wins. Cheating is when you go outside the rules.
In budo, you cheat, you use a technique your opponent has never seen before to win a fight. There may be rules, there are always rules (no vendettas without permission, no swordplay in the palace), but the point isn't to prove you're faster, stronger or higher, it's to make sure the other guy is on the ground. Of course you cheat, the whole point is to cheat. Without cheating it's just sports.
Iaido and jodo competitions are judged sports, that's why all the competitors look the same, they have to do what the judges want to see. The sport is to get closer to the "ideal" that the judges declare. If a competitor were to come in with a technique no judge had ever seen before they would not win the match. They might win a the fight.
Cheating is the point. Learn the little cheats within a kata so that you can make your partner look good. That's training for the big cheats where you fake your enemy into making a really bad move and then you knock him down from behind. A sport may be brutal and violent, knife fighting can be a sport, but both sides know what's going on. A sporting knife fight may end in death but each side knows what the other is doing. To be in a back alleyway and to suddenly have a knife in your guts, one you didn't see appear, is budo.
Budo isn't sport. Cheating not only counts, it's required.
That guy thing
When my peeps are depressed and upset I go into this guy thing of wanting to fix it rather than just listen and sympathize.
A fault, but it's what I've always done, see a problem, try to fix it. I just can't seem to get the hang of this modern way of supporting folks. See a problem, take a picture for instagram and post something on faceplant.
Well here goes.
There's a problem and somebody ought to do something about it.
There, I feel so much better, and I'm certain someone will get on it right away.
In the meantime, maybe I'll ask my peeps to email me their concerns and their suggestions for how to fix things, then if "someone" gets in touch with me I can pass those along.
Or maybe I'll make a chart. A nice pie diagram.
Heavy Duty
Yesterday I tried a new wood, new to me at least. It's Cumaru or Brazilian Teak. Often used as a Lignum Vitae subtitute, it's light brown and HEAVY. It's also stiff. So stiff that I feel like I have been working with cactus, cut it and it lifts small splinters all around the edges of the cut. I've got one of those in my left index finger that I'm afraid is going to be there forever, I dug at it with a needle until the blood flowed and still couldn't get it out.
Hi Nate, yes still doing minor surgery on myself.
Man this stuff is also itchy, I'm reacting to it even though it's supposed to be no worse than any other wood for toxicity. But, but, but, I suspect a bunch of my customers are going to love it. As I get older I am starting to look for lighter weapons (Canarywood is my latest favourite, about the same as Oak but pretty colours, like a canary... hey...) but there will remain a core of folks who want that heavy weapon.
I'm OK with heavy too. Our last class started with a tanrenbo workout just because I've been thinking about them and have made a six footer to take to Peterborough on the weekend.
Sign up and get yourself there!
It's a brute, also ugly, someone is going to love it. I've also got a few made that have Kage Ryu hilts on them. For looking at what a realistic weight would do to your technique while waving your choken around.
Speaking of weight, we did Seitei Iai with shoto once more just after the tanrenbo workout. One of our members missed the earlier class so I said we'd repeat it but it turned out to be a better idea than I thought. The comment from the class was "it's really hard to cut straight with a weapon so light". Yep.
A preference for heavy iaito can be a sign of stone hands. If you can't lighten up your grip enough to get feedback from the weapon, you can use a heavier one that will prevent you from jittering around. A light weapon needs a light touch or it will be off target most of the time.
Musashi said that you ought to make a heavy weapon look light. It is a more recent thing to say that you must make a light weapon look heavy, but no less true for the solo kata arts. Making a light weapon look light looks terrible.
Sometimes light, sometimes heavy. It's best not to have preferences says you know who. Of course if you want to get that last tiny bit of performance out of your iaido skills you will fiddle with the length and the weight until you can be sharp, sharp, sharp. Why not? You think elite cyclists are using the same bike you ride around town on?
If you're amazing you will need top level equipment to show that off. Unfortunately, top level equipment won't help you if you're just a weekend athlete, but hey, it usually looks good so why not? For myself I'm one of those guys who grabs whatever is at hand in the box, as long as it's light and not too warped and not too splintery. I really do believe in Musashi I guess.
See you all in Peterborough, I'll have the Cumaru monsters along with me. You could always call them suburito...
Why we Fight
Why do we do what we do? Why practice Budo? That's sort of like asking why you read books or why you watch movies. There are as many reasons as there are people who read, watch or practice. Specifics would be useless to hunt for, but can we step back and find a meta-explanation?
You find what you're looking for.
What do we find in our budo? I suggest we find what we are looking for. That's not really surprising, it's just the way the world works. Science supporters say that we must do basic science because that's where the unexpected results are, that's where we find the stuff we're not looking for. Maybe, but having worked in science all my life I can say with pretty good confidence that most scientists don't find anything at all except what they're looking for. It's an unusual situation where you get an unexpected result and you follow that result instead of just setting up your experiment once again. That takes the freedom to do that of course, which is the value of basic research. Applied research (also called engineering) more or less dictates ignoring surprises. Because funding.
So you find what you're looking for. If you're looking for self defence, you'll find it. Enlightenment, exercise, body control, kick-ass outfits? Sure why not.
Can you look for surprises? Can you go into something looking for everything? Nothing? I can't see it, really, you have to have a reason to start or it's not likely you'll start. Even if that reason is "my dad insisted I do kendo because he did kendo" it's a reason. Can you be surprised? Absolutely. Experience tells me that many people start their martial arts journey looking for self defence or exercise and stick around because they've found a way of life, a family, a meditation practice. Surprise!
You get out what you put in.
You get out of it exactly what you put into it. You get out of school what you bring to it, if you want to learn you'll learn. If you want to become a fitness monster through martial arts you'll do every situp, every pushup and every high kick you're given, and then some. If you go to every single class you'll get more training than if you don't. This isn't any great insight, budo is a physical artform, if you're not there physically it's hard to imagine how you'd learn.
Do we really need to know why we do this?
I don't suppose we do, on a personal level. I've often said that I have no idea why I still go to every class. It's just "what I do". Somewhere along the line I went from practicing to teaching, which was a mistake, my fitness level is way down but then again, I suspect my career length is up.
On the other hand, knowing why students show up for that first class is of use if we want to attract students to the class. Targeted advertising? Maybe, but a better reason to know why people start would be to recognize that people start for all sorts of reasons. That will make you a more tolerant instructor. Not all your students will be looking for what you're looking for. Not all of them will put in the effort you want them to put in.
That student that has been in class for six years and hasn't learned a damned thing? Maybe he's there for the company rather than for the medieval sword skills. Do you mind? If so he's in the wrong place, but he would have left long ago if he felt unwanted, maybe your irritation is more about you than him right now.
Why do we fight? My suggestion, over the time I've been practicing and thinking about this, is that we're fighting to get along with our budo family. Humans look for community, people play pick-up volleyball for community. Rarely do you see a varsity athlete in the co-ed pick-up time trying to improve their spike speed. Wrong place, wrong reason.
We fight to get along.
Squint your eyes
The book vs the book
There is a technique in visual art, in painting and photography, where you squint until all the detail is gone and you see the main blocks of light, dark and colour. This is composition, the core of the image, what you select with photography, what you build with painting. It takes years to understand but once you do it's useful.
There are two books in my life... well OK there are hundreds of books that are important to me but there are two that I'm thinking about right now. One is the Go Rin no Sho of Musashi and the other is the ZNKR iaido manual.
Musashi tells us how to read the Go Rin no Sho, you have to squint your eyes, don't worry so much about the detail, there isn't a lot of detail there, just read an article, understand enough to see it, then squint. In fact, squint in the first place so that you can see it. See the forest, don't look at the trees, now use that understanding of where the forest is. If he attacks fast, you attack slow. Squint. See what that means, now practice it until you are your own detail.
Musashi did not say step back six inches to avoid the strike then step forward six inches to cut your opponent vertically from his forehead to his chin, next bring your back foot up to just behind your front heel and assume seigan kamae, then thrust his solar plexus.... He said, if he attacks first, protect your body and then strike the opponent, but always remember that the goal is to strike the opponent.
The ZenKenRen iai manual, on the other hand, is different. As Dave Green says, you have to read it like a lawyer. Periods count. Inches count, Angles count. They count because people have decided they count. They count because of gradings and tournaments. They count because students know how to pass tests, you give the answers that your teachers expect and you pass. I knew that in public school, it wasn't a secret. On the Jodo test questions for this November's grading there is one that reads "name the five kamae of jodo". I read that and thought to myself five? I can think of maybe seven or eight right now. But then I remembered that the questions aren't to promote reflection, they are to promote reading the manual. In the manual it says "the five kamae of jodo are..." Give us that answer which really says to us "yes, I read the book carefully".
Did you pass your test? Show everyone how well you can follow directions? How well you can control your sword? Good, now squint and figure out what lies beyond the pattern in the bark on that tree your nose is pressed up against. Back up and squint and see the pattern of forest and sky and river. Then tell us why that's a pleasing image. Someone said a while ago that all pleasing paintings reflect a certain paleolithic image of a fertile valley as seen from the hill. Maybe, there are indeed certain "rules of composition". Use them or don't use them as you see fit, but until you know they are there and how to find them, you can't really have that choice.
To get 6dan you have to stop reading the manual and squint. To start practicing the Niten Ichiryu of Miyamoto Musashi you have to stop comparing translations and squint.
Add the squint to your samurai face, yeah, that will work.
It's Academic
Be told!
It seems my research into Musashi is beginning to become differences of opinion. The new information is slowing down, the papers and books I'm reading are beginning to agree on the facts and what is left is opinion. This fellow thinks this manuscript is mostly story, that one thinks it is likely true. Academics, arguments about balances of evidence and in the absence of evidence, opinion.
What shall I do? I want to keep learning from the Niten Ichiryu, what will I do if I can't learn more about Musashi? From, and about. They are not the same are they?
What I know about Musashi is that he was pretty serious about his swordwork, and just as serious about passing it along. He had no secret teachings, no secret scrolls, by his own statement. I don't expect any great discovery in an archive of an Oku set of kata. He rejected the whole idea of an Oku, a hidden level of teaching, yet it was becoming popular in his day. There may be some interesting family archives revealing his day to day life, but that's pretty well documented already. Better than most actually.
Through most of the Edo period he was a famous fellow with books and plays about his exploits, yet the Go Rin no Sho, his famous book, wasn't published until 1909. Is it any wonder that there's a lot of "social media news" about him? (Read "stupid falsehoods endlessly repeated" for that quote please). I'm pretty sure a lot of these social media photos of some samurai-looking dude with a new-age quote attributed to him are as reliable as a manga. Which is unfortunate, Musashi had a lot of important things to say.
One thing he had to say was that on the battlefield there is no Oku and no Omote. He said that there were not many ways to cut or thrust with a sword. He said that he would write down everything that he knew, minus a few things he didn't have time to write or may have forgotten to write, but that there were no secrets.
Mostly though, he said that the best way to learn his sword is to practice what he says. Try it out, learn it for yourself. In other words, learn from what he has written, don't worry about learning about some secret, there isn't one. Practice and learn from.
As for teaching, again, there is no curriculum to be used, no Omote and Oku levels, no paper to be had after learning 10 or 12 kata. No grades to practice toward and judges to suck up to. Instead there is the teacher and the student. The student is looked at, his skills assessed and then he is taught according to what he can learn fastest. After that the deeper meanings can be taught.
Deeper meanings? But Musashi had none right, I just said so. Deeper for one is not deeper for another. Deeper learning is simply something that you don't pick up fast. Something you have to work at. Some boards are straight and clear and strong and you use them for the walls. Some are straight and strong but knotty and you use them for the structure. Some carpenters are just starting and you make them sharpen the tools and sweep up the jobsite.
In other words, there are no unsuitable students. Everyone can learn something.
So to summarize, there are no secrets, no levels of practice to achieve and be graded on, and no unsuitable students. Makes for a pretty tough job for the teacher.
Being told is learning about. It runs out. It is academic argument about which authority trumps which, and then it becomes opinion. It becomes bite-sized chapters of rote learning to be tested along the way. It becomes secrets to be bought on installment.
Practice and learn from Musashi's teaching. He said so. I believe him.
Cracking the shell
I ran across the iaido as olympic sport discussion yesterday and thought "never happen". At least not as currently practiced in the kendo federation. Twelve kata seen over and over for the length of the tournament. Not a chance. Where are the figures of figure skating? Gone I think. The only way you'd see iai in the oympics is if it looked like the jumpy spinny stuff of the karate tournaments, the stuff iaido people laugh at but watch anyway.... because it's entertaining.
The problem with iai is that it's not. It's not entertaining. The kendo federation iai is 12 kata practiced often, in some dojo exclusively. That could be three practices of two hours each, every week. Twelve short kata done say ten times every class, 30 times a week, 1500 times a year.
That can become a pretty tough eggshell. One that is hard to crack open and examine. It's like driving your car, you have habits. You can drive, what's the incentive to change the way you drive? More driving makes you a better driver.
I have had a few classes with 5dans recently who were working toward their 6dan grading challenge. At the start of the class I would say something like "I don't want to hear you ask me which angle this or that cut is, and I don't want to hear you ask me how to pass". I wanted them to show me their iaido, something I know my sensei (their sensei and the head of the iaido section here in Canada) has asked them to do almost from the day they started practicing. What did I hear? I heard them telling me that after their 15 or 20 years of doing the 12 kata they would test on, they are still chasing the wind, following this or that scent, trying to figure out which angle for that cut would get them a 6 dan.
Let's face it, 6dan isn't a grade you get from a panel, it's a grade you deny yourself by not changing your iai from technical to... OK spiritual, mental, you name it. It isn't good enough to fiddle with the details any more. Now you have to move past the red paint-job on your sporty car and start to understand what sort of torque the engine has, what sort of suspension it has for the curves ahead.
You've got to start thinking about iaido instead of doing it like a robot.
How do you crack that egg? Last night I handed out the wooden shoto and the class went through seitei iai. No demonstrations past the first one, I left the class to work it out themselves. My class is allowed to mutter, and they did. This is what I heard.
But the shoto seems to call for hips that aren't square.
Should I take an extra step to get to the opponent because this sword is shorter?
I want to use two hands.
The kata are a lot faster.
Do I throw away my saya after tsuka ate or do I keep it in my left hand and put it back in my belt after noto?
There were more, but the key point was that they were thinking. We only went through once and then got the daito out, where all heck broke loose. The brains were in gear. "So what's the defence after he does uke nagashi, how do I avoid getting hit?" These guys were thinking from the invisible opponent's side of the equation.
They felt they had permission to think about the kata. Why do we pull the knee all the way up to the heel on Mae, doesn't that mean we're cutting with the wrong part of our sword? But maybe he's moving backward. From seiza? Leaning backward. Do you hit him?
How do you crack an eggshell? Not by squeezing it harder, you need to hit it sideways with something sharp. Like a shoto.
You may already be a winner
Or at least you may already know "how to do that".
It was a strange mix of things last evening, I watched a couple of videos from some group in Europe that films Street Aikido and Street Wing Chun. Not a lot of plot, but not badly done, the old guy with grey hair must be getting tired of being beaten up. I got looking at the Wing Chun since I haven't done any Chinese stuff for years. That must have set a mood.
Later in the evening I met a couple of students and one of them talked about learning some Naginata (don't ask why). I remarked that he already knew how to use a long weapon, extend the jo by a foot or so, or use the bo work we've done. It's not so much the weapon as the timing of that weapon.
Musashi tells us that each weapon has it's own rhythm and we must use that rhythm. A bo or a naginata are not so different in their length or weight, use one and you should be able to use the other.
What was curious was that the very same comment came out of my mouth earlier at Aikido class. We were reviewing the first couple of weeks of class where we did the five basic pins, this time from a punch to the face rather than just putting our wrists together or from a wrist grab as previous. Talking about the punch and how to stop it somehow got into "keep your elbows down, jam his distance and move from your center" which somehow got me onto the inside of that punch instead of the outside, where I ended up saying that "you guys already know Wing Chun, you know that you're supposed to move from the inside and open up the other guy, just throw in a punch or two".
It's probably just me noodling around in my head, but I figure it's a good idea to get the Aikido guys (and the sword guys too) thinking about different ranges. You can't always keep your opponent at the end of your arm or your sword, when he gets inside that, like when you don't move into the start of his punch but wait for it instead, you end up working pretty close. Not that I'm ever going to be seen rolling around on the floor wrestling, I'll let the kids do that, I'm too old and breakable, but a few minutes of slap and tickle, er, trap and stick, it is fun sometimes.
Regardless, I tried to get across that the principles of Aikido will carry into punch-kick if you apply them and, of course, learn how to throw a punch or a kick. That last often isn't so obvious. At my very first Aikido summer camp in Amherst Mass. I snuck into the room to watch the black belt class with Kanai sensei. The first technique was... well it remains a mystery because sensei asked for a punch and spent the rest of that 3 hour class teaching a roomfull of senior students how to throw a punch. I think that was the beginning of my Tae Kwon Do training.
It's not a huge leap to add punching or even kicking into Aikido. My sensei would occasionally work against kicks (he probably watched a karate movie the night before). Kata based sword practice is another thing. Who would ever think about hitting someone with your hand if you have a sword, and where is the kata for that? The kata does exist, there is an iai kata that begins with your partner grabbing your hilt while you face each other in tate hiza. You put your left hand on your sword, drop it at the same time you punch him in the face. That one is a bit obscure, how about the one from an earlier set of kata where he reaches from the right side and you circle the hilt away from his grip while moving in to thump him with a backfist as you smash his right hand (he's drawing his own sword now) with that hilt.
I call that permission to think about punching and kicking in your sword work. (Ever thought about extending your right foot, during the draw in Mae, to the opponent's chest instead of the floor?) The principle? You need a bit of room to get your weapon out, make it, then use your weapon.
My point, and I seem to be skirting it, is that you probably have, in your kata based weapon art, the principles of movement that will let you do close-in "empty hand" stuff. Quotes because you're armed, and that is your primary stuff, hit them in the face to get them off balance, then use that weapon in your hand.
Other weapons? Do you worry that you can't use a naginata because you only use a sword? Why worry, pick up a naginata and see if you can use it. You don't have to learn super fancy moves, look at it. It's long, there's a clue as to how to use it. What's the grip? Who cares, use your own two-handed sword grip and modify if necessary. There's a tip and an edge so some cut and thrust. Got it? Now think about that sword of yours, how would you fight you if you were facing you sword to naginata? Get inside the range right? Now you're working on the defensive side of the Naginata. Best defence? Keep him the heck outside his range, but if he's inside can you choke up on the shaft? Can you reverse the shaft fast and thump him one in the face with the butt end? Smack his shin then cut him?
You get the picture. Just because it's called Aikido, or just because it's a kata based art doesn't mean you have to shut down your brain. Stop working form "what it isn't" and consider "what it might be". You may already know how to trap and punch from inside his arms. You may already know how to use a weapon that's longer than your sword.
Most of that weird stuff that you won't know how to do? It was probably put there to amuse the students. The core will be what you can teach a farmer in a week or less. How long should it take someone like you who already knows how to connect hips to tips?
Musashi figured if you learned sword you could apply it to painting for heaven's sake. Seemed to work for him.
A warning to the iaido class, we're going to be doing our kata with shoto. Just because. Don't complain or I'll make you do it with jutte, there's probably enough of them in the box.
Posture
What is correct posture in sword? Upright, square forward, ready to attack? Dignified yes? What you would imagine a nobleman would stand like, a Hatamoto or a policeman.
A batch of photographs just appeared on fb showing Donn Draeger and a Japanese teacher of Katori Shintoryu practicing / demonstrating for some visitors. (I wonder just how many photographs of Draeger there are out there?) Some of them show quite interesting postures, basically the opposite of what I described above, very low, bent back knee almost touching the ground.
It's one you can see in old photographs, along with another which is essentially the same as a Western fencing lunge.
Makes you wonder what the correct posture is doesn't it? Having done a couple of arts that have different postures I would say that a functional definition might be the best approach, a posture is good if it delivers your weapon to the opponent in such a way that he is damaged and you are not. With that one can have room for difference, perhaps one posture does not fit all, perhaps one posture might overcome another, perhaps a single posture does not fit every circumstance.
I practice Kage Ryu which is the art of drawing and cutting with swords that are north of 2.8 shaku. I might be able to draw a 2.8 shaku iaito in proper Zen Ken Ren style, probably could since I use a 2.7, but when I get to 3.0 I'd likely have to plead Koryu and turn my hips. The Kage ryu sword we use? The total length is 5 shaku... the hilt is... one third? So 2/3 is 3.4 shaku? Something like that, about one shaku, a foot, 30cm longer than the usual iaido sword. To draw that length blade I need to go into that fencing lunge position in order to turn my hips enough to get the tip out of the scabbard. To handle the weight of a weapon that long I also need a long stance and a lot of hip work. Compared to my usual iai the posture isn't what I'd call elegant, yet it is. It is elegant because it fits the weapon and the way it is used.
My Niten Ichiryu stance is also not that upright, straight leg, square forward style either. At least not at the decisive cut, instead the hips are turned and legs are bent. This works, although most people who see it don't believe that, but there are ways to use this posture that might not be obvious just from looking at it. Suffice to say that when I started practicing Jodo the postures and how to use them were not new to me. I was amazed at the parallels between Niten Ichiryu and Shindo Muso Ryu but then again, there are stories that Muso and Musashi were buddies who hung out together. More reliably (when looking for reasons for similarity), both arts came from the same area of Japan. Not far from where Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu resided actually. It's a fascination to me, thinking about who might have been having beers together at that time. MJER was not, perhaps, fully embedded in Tosa yet when Musashi and Muso were on the prowl.
At any rate, posture is one of my things. I drop into Niten's Koshimi and twist the hips this way and that, look at what it does to the sword and speculate on what the posture implies, especially to such things as the uke nagashi in Seitei Iai. I look at the massive lunge of Kage and, noting the length of the sword, mark points on the floor, then approach "normally" from the other direction and see just how many steps I can steal on an attacker, how much I can crowd him with my choken as he is still closing the distance. In Muso Jikiden I turn right, toward my standing attacker as I sit in seiza. By stretching my leg forward and simply planting my left foot (the knee coming off the ground barely an inch) I can strike the attacker's wrists as his legs are together on the cross-step, just as he's beginning to cut.
No, one posture does not fit all. Best not to look down our noses at any of them until we have tried them for ourselves. I like them, I have many of them stored away in my wee head. I have "opinions". One of those opinions is that a posture better be something more than "statuesque". That Heroic Pose better have some deeper function than looking good in tomorrow's papers.
Semeru
Want some fun? Go to Google Translate (a pretty handy translator actually) and look up some budo terms. See what you can find.
I got asked what Semeru was, and automatically said "the pressure you put on an opponent to cause him to doubt or hesitate so that you have an opening to attack". Google says it means "attack".
OK, yesss, but not really the way we use it.
Mushin means innocent.
Fukaku is deeply.
Hinkaku is dignity.
Shoshin is first visit.
Fudoshin is non-whop oh wait, that's from Albanian, and mobile translate won't do Japanese for me.
Fushin is distrust.
You get the idea, sometimes close, sometimes not so much. Non-whop?
So semeru, how do you do it? Type in "how do you apply seme" to google. Not at work. Add "in kendo" and you will get some links.
To attack, but to attack at all times (continuously). How do you do this, you must understand san satsu, (three kills). Kill his sword, kill his technique, kill his ki.
1. Take center and deny it to him. Have good posture and good position.
2. Anticipate your opponent's move and destroy his timing, frustrate his attempts to attack you.
3. Discourage him, look strong, become big in his eyes.
All good advice for the kendoka, but how does an iaidoka display seme? If it's all about putting pressure on your opponent, how do you do it to an absent opponent?
A simple example of seme is to move forward in a convincing way to cause your opponent to retreat or to attack before he is ready. So for iaido can we use this? How about no retrograde motion? If you move your hips forward to do nuki tsuke in Mae/Shohatto don't sag backward as you lift the sword overhead to do kiri tsuke. More subtle? How about move the sword forward about half an inch as you begin to do chiburi and again as you begin to do noto?
That's the form. The function? Again, hard to do in iaido since there's nobody to "function against" but use your imagination, your creative visualization, and imagine someone in front of you. Hard to do? Sure, until you can do it then, imagine someone has a stick shoved into your tanden and is pressing against you continuously. Know what? Get a bokuto out and have a partner shove a jo into your tanden and do the kata, make them slide backward as you do Mae and don't get shoved right back onto your heels while you try to do that. Now you can feel it.
Let's go back to number one up above. Take the center, deny it to the opponent, have good posture and position. In iai we can find center. In Mae it's directly in front of us, our opponent is square to where we are sitting. We draw directly down the centerline and cut down the centerline. In between times we are aiming one of three things at our invisible opponent, the tip of the sword (stab him), the monouchi with the ha aligned (cut him), or the tsuka gashira (pommel, thump him). When none of these are aimed at the opponent we have lost center.
Personal feeling here, in recent years it's become popular to go into hasso (from kesa giri for instance) with the hips square. It "looks bigger" is "more kendo" (hips square) and it sets up a bigger chiburi. It makes my teeth hurt because it takes the sword off of the opponent. Our local kendo instructor agreed with me saying "that's not kendo" when I showed the position to the class. Which shows the greatest seme if you have to choose one? Hips square or weapon ready to cut in a single move?
On the other hand, hips square is another way to show seme in the Zen Ken Ren iai. It's one of those default moves, as in what a hanshi once told me "all cuts and thrusts in iai are done from hips square, except those that aren't". Some of them can't be done with square hips, ushiro tsuki from Tsuka Ate for example. But the final cut of kesa giri? Hips square. Seme there? From the judges table I look at the hips. That is where the challenger has put the opponent, it's not up to me to shift that opponent for him, he is at the point of seme, of attack, in front of the hips. Now I look at the finish point of the sword. Did he cut the opponent? Is the tip of the sword in front of his left hip and is the left hand in the center of his body. If so he is out of the attacker's body. Did he enter the opponent's body directly in front of his own right shoulder, as defined by where his hips are pointing? If so, its a successful cut... provided correct edge angle and grip and etc.
You have no idea how tired I am of beginners saying "but he's over there so what do you mean I missed him completely?" Read the book, the sword tip is "pointing toward the left", lower than horizontal and the fist in front of the navel. What do you suppose this looks like?
I was going to go on to moving the sword while turning 180 degrees but get to class, this isn't a manual.
Number 2 is impossible for iai isn't it? How do you frustrate your opponent, anticipate his movements, frustrate his attacks? Meri hari and jo ha kyu and kime and metsuke... see your kasso teki attacking. Now show your sensei how well you are controlling him. This is where all the teaching goes after you lean the dance steps and the heroic poses.
Number 3, Discourage him by looking big and strong. Hey, that's where we start right? All those heroic poses. Only to look big and strong you have to have a strong, rooted posture. And you've got to be in the right position to apply that power. In other words looking good isn't enough, you have to fit all the pieces together.
It's the "correct hit" of kendo isn't it? It's why electric scoring just isn't considered to be enough. "But I smacked him, why isn't it a hit just because I didn't look pretty when I hit him?" Because seme.
Who says you have seme or not when you do iai? Your sensei or your grading panel. Those guys have probably done kendo or some other art where seme is obvious. If not they have been around long enough to know what seme looks like. You can see it from a distance. One of my favourite images is the guys shoving a car out of the snow. This being Canada, land of "stop and push the stuck guys out of your way", we know how to see who is actually pushing and who is dogging it. Can you see it in your mind? Can you see the guy with his hips directly over his feet leaning on the hood, as opposed to the guy who has the bent lower back with an almost straight line from hands to back foot? No? OK imagine the car suddenly breaks free of the snowbank, who falls down? Yep that's the guy pushing.
A hanshi once told me that iaido has a large component of embu. It is partly story. That means that if you're doing it right anyone ought to be able to see what you're doing. Let me put it a different way. My mother once saw an Aikido demonstration at a seminar I attended. Kanai sensei (my teacher's teacher) demonstrated iaido and later she said "I could see the blood fly". That's the embu of iaido. If you can't show the audience that you are pressing, dominating your imaginary opponent, you are not demonstrating seme.
Be Yourself
My iaido sensei was asked what the one piece of advice he had for anyone at any grade level. His answer was be yourself first, then try to understand Japanese culture.
I remember a plane trip to England back at the beginning of my iaido career where sensei kept me up for the entire flight talking about this very thing. "I'm Japanese so I have to walk around on my knees doing tea ceremony but why would you want to do that?" It's a good question, and if I was trying to be Japanese, or trying to understand Japanese culture I would have a very hard time answering it.
There's no way I'm ever going to be Japanese. I'm not Japanese. Even if I were to marry a Japanese girl and live in Japan I'm not going to be Japanese, ever. It's not that kind of place, it's not that kind of culture.
That doesn't mean I will never understand the Japanese, I'm Canadian, I figure we're pretty well set up to understand the Japanese. Canadians have been under the shadow of two of the greatest empires ever known, the British and then the American. Japan has been under the shadow of a third, the Chinese. This mouse beside an elephant situation gives a certain world outlook and a certain tendency toward bellybutton gazing in a search of "what makes us Canapanese?"
Usually when we are not simply defining ourselves as "not them", we look to superficial things, to signs, like you have to like hockey to be Canadian. This can be used to create a certain "us verses them" attitude, where we no longer look for signs of "our tribe" but for shibboliths to identify "them". We've all heard of the Japanese kids who go overseas for a couple years and come back only to be called gaijin because they haven't kept up with the latest slang.
Hockey = Canadian? Stupid isn't it? Correct etiquette (as per this month in Tokyo) = iaido? Or you're a gaijin like those poor kids who follow their parents to the overseas job? Thing is, you can fake a liking for hockey but that won't make you Canadian, the signs and symbols are just so much kneeling and standing in the Latin Mass I used to watch with Granny from the organ loft. You know when, you have no idea why.
I don't like hockey, I don't dislike it, I'm just not interested, never had the money to play it. But I know I had family who were hung just down the road as rebels in the Rebellion of 1837 against the Family Compact in Toronto. (Which rebellion is the reason nobody likes Toronto by the way.) I know I have family of a generation earlier who were shot or hung as British spies during the American rebellion (they weren't spies, they were just Quakers who had some nice farmland) which is why they were in Canada in time for the Rebellion. The youngest part of my ancesters was my Granny's grandfather who left Saxony for Canada in 1863 because he didn't like the "damned Prussians" trying to unify the Germanys. Does that background make me Canadian? No. I was born here and grew up here, that makes me Canadian.
One thing that is different between Canada and Japan has been identified by my sensei. Canada is a multicultural society and has that mindset. The USA is a "melting pot" which means you'd better turn into an American within a generation or else, and Japan is, well, unicultural. My sensei has been told that he is no longer Japanese, "good" he says. He really isn't, he is one of the most multicultural people I know. I very much doubt he'd be happy back in Japan.
What's the difference between Multicultural, Melting pot and Unicultural? One way to think about it is to look at the way we define our tribe. If you look for signs of inclusion, and those signs can expand, you're multicultural. If you look for signs of exclusion, for "the other" but you will accept strangers into the tribe as long as they assimilate, you are a melting put, and if you simply look for signs of exclusion you're unicultural. OK that's pretty digital, nothing is black and white, but it might provide a starting point for thinking about culture. (By the way, for those who have trouble with "melting pot" think of Donald Trump, a kid of immigrants who is basing his campaign on banning immigration and whipping up fears of "the other".)
How strong is a culture that depends on up to the minute symbols for inclusion? How strong is a culture that relies on you being the arse-end of a family tree that has been in one spot for seven generations?
Be yourself.
Then try to understand another culture.
You cannot flip from one culture to another, that's like trying to go from air-breathing to water-breathing. Culture is the medium through which you walk or swim. Do you notice air? Culture is what you don't notice.
Be yourself, be who you are, be comfortable in that. If you grew up in one place, you're part of that culture. If you grew up split between two places, that is you. Your culture is one foot in one place, one in another. Be comfortable with that.
The very strongest cultures are ones that are accepting of others. Look at the greatest empires that ever existed, the ones that lasted more than a few years. Look at China, it is not unicultural. To have a big empire is to be multicultural by definition. Unicultural urges tear empires apart.
If you want to make an empire of the mind, be accepting of many cultures, starting with your own, and then go on to accept others. To try to switch from one to another is a bit disfunctional, wishful thinking at best.
If you want to understand Japanese culture through iaido, start from being yourself and then you have a place to stand. This project will be more likely to succeed if you have a sensei like mine, who will allow you to be both yourself and a samurai of the Edo period (the root culture of iaido). If your sensei is a Japanese who believes that you will never be a Japanese, that you can't understand iaido without being Japanese.... wait, you wouldn't have a sensei who thinks that, would you? Umm, maybe? "There's none so Scots as the Scots abroad."
I almost wrote "so why would you stay with such a sensei" but then I remembered my answer to my sensei on that plane flight 30 years ago. "I'm not interested in being Japanese or even learning Japanese culture, I do iaido because the practice of iaido is useful to me personally. The practice is the thing, not the culture of the Edo period or the culture of Japan today. Iaido is my meditation practice and it is the place where I study posture and the transfer of power from the floor to the tip of the sword." If you are not trying to be Japanese you can comfortably agree with the comments of a sensei who says "you're not Japanese" as being a true, if irrelevant statement.
First, be yourself.
Prove it
One of my students was lamenting her iaido training. With her first art, aikido, she could tell if what she was doing was correct. He attacked, he fell down. There was a good chance it worked. If it didn't, she knew right away it was "wrong". More than one way to do it right maybe, but wrong is wrong.
This is a good point. Iaido is a solo art, how does one tell if one is right? How do you figure out if your cuts are correct, your posture strong? Are those even important? If iaido is your only art it isn't hard to fool oneself. Waving a sword seems pretty cool no matter how you do it, so how do you prove what you're doing is correct?
This never used to be a problem. Iaido was never taught as a solo art until quite recently, so the suspicion that you might be doing it wrong is a new one. Really, if you know how to cut and when your opponent is in range and that other stuff, it's obvious that your solo cut in iaido will also be correct. It's the same movement. But if you have never hit anyone, never felt what happens when you miss by a centimeter while his sword is...
For the majority of iaido-only students, the answer is "you're doing it right if sensei says you are". And what's wrong with that? Nothing at all unless you somehow twist being "sensei's pet" into "my iaido is amazing". Oh come on, you've met those types I'm sure. More needy than nerdy, more craving of praise than of knowledge.
Of course, once you get past the sensei-groupie thing you might go right to having your doubts whether sensei is right. Love often goes to hate, adoration to aggravation. How do you prove it?
Gradings come to mind. You're doing your iaido (the stuff that gets graded that is) correctly if you pass your grading. There, problem solved. Seriously, what else do you want? Or tournaments, win a tournament and you have to be doing good iaido don't you? Can we make a syllogism of that?
Winning a tournament requires good iaido.
I won a tournament.
Therefore I have good iaido.
Yep, nothing wrong with that logic is there? (You tell me).
Still worried about your cut? Go chop up some stuff, if you can chop up stuff you can cut. Now you're done?
Still? Look if you're doubting this much you probably need to go do kendo or at least do some partner sword work. Or any partner work at all, unarmed or armed.
When I started my iai there were few people around who did only iaido. The reason was quite simple, there were few people around doing iaido. I think I knew all of them by name, drank with most of them, and to a man they did something else beside iaido. Kendo, Aikido, maybe judo or karate but nobody did only iaido. In fact, it was decades before I met a Japanese sensei who did nothing but iaido.
The result of that training (and my own prior practice of a partner budo) was that the keyword was "real". Don Harvey, one of my critical early trainers even named his books "Real Iaido" which was something that Haruna sensei said constantly. If we weren't sure, in our bones (literally, if you have done partner practice you know when the bones are aligned to take the stress) that what we were doing was correct, we worked on it until it was.
There was no question of following some sort of instruction set, of simply putting the sword from one grading checkpoint to the next. We started from the concept of no suki (opening, weakness), that was point zero, not something annoying that sensei yapped on about when we hit 4th dan.
Grip was more important to us than angles. Posture more important than posing. The movements between the checkpoints were more important than the checkpoints themselves. Every couple of years I get so tired of looking at models walking down the catwalk (models don't "wear" the stuff they have on, they just "put it on and walk it up and down") that I take a beat up bokuto from the box and break it. I don't do it in anger, I simply show the steps from their lousy grip to one that doesn't look like it should work. I go from lots of muscle that doesn't have much effect to simply dropping my arm. An arm drop and a pinch of the thumb and two fingers, and half the bokuto is flying across the room. How? Because that's how I was trained, because I know how to transfer my weight from the floor into the tip of the sword, and I've got lots of weight.
None of my contemporaries are impressed with this, in fact they always tell me to stop messing around. But it's the closest I can get to "proving it" to the kids who only do iaido. For those who do the partner arts too... the issue doesn't come up.
Form follows function in most budo. Only in a solo art can form dominate. Artistic gymnastics, pairs figure skating, dance, all these are form-first. It has to look good before.... no, it just has to look good. Degrees of difficulty, sure, but if you don't rip that entry on your massive difficulty dive you're screwed. If you don't get the etiquette right in your iaido test...
On the other hand, partner practice isnt immune to the form before function thing. I've seen some aikido folk who have uke that fall over at the wave of a hand. They look great, their posture is really pretty, but even those without "eyes to see" have a problem with that. The greater skill resides with the uke who is throwing himself.
Now, it is possible to do great aikido with an uke who is actually attacking. It's not, in fact, that much harder to do and you can look good doing it. In fact, a real attack demands a wonderful posture. It's the form following function that dictates great aikido. Start with the form and chide your attackers for not doing what they're supposed to do and you get form before function.
Pretty, but not a lot going on behind the baby blues.
Erm, I had blue eyes and once heard that from a woman much more clever than I. I was quite chuffed I'm afraid (yes I'm shallow), and to this day I have been known to say "I once was a good looking fellow".
So yes, I get the attraction to flowery iaido, unfortunately I wasn't socialized to appreciate it. You think that works?
Prove it.
Teacheritis
Last night I swung my sword about eight times. Normally that might not bother me because I am still learning and thinking, but we've got some people who are going for grading so we were doing the grading stuff. In fact, we were mostly doing the etiquette stuff for the grading stuff because these days, that's what people are failing for, or so I am told, etiquette and going over time. This irritates me, etiquette is mindless stuff, I have been assured it hasn't changed in the last six months, which would mean it hasn't changed in the last several years, yet people seem not to have heard of it.
If you do not move the sword in your left hand from your hip to your thigh as you sit down in seiza it is a fail point. If you swing your hips around or open your right knee as you sit down it is a fail point. If your sword is rocking as you take your hands away from it before you bow to it, it is an automatic fail point. If your sword has come partly out of the saya it is an automatic fail point.
And dress, if your hakama does not touch the instep and the anklebone while being up off the heel it is a fail point. If you are wearing a juban and it is not 1/8 inch above your collar all around it is a fail point. If you show too much skin in the front or at the side it is a fail point. If you don't tie your hakama himo in the regulation square knot it is a fail point.
You can see how I might get a bit irritated at teaching that stuff, especially when people start to argue about it. My comment on the arguments was "I'm not going to be sitting on your panel, do what you want, but here, in front of me, do what I tell you to do". Or some variation on that. The end result was an irritated teacher who spent too much time on his knees which don't work very well anyway demonstrating how NOT to do the etiquette if you want to pass because I can't demonstrate how to do it correctly. If your knees can't relax enough to drop your butt onto your heel you can't bow with a straight back and your elbows touching the floor. Fail point
As I have explained before, if the panel wants to fail you they can find a reason to do so. They will have lots. Most of a good judge's time is spent deciding what NOT to see during a grading, especially in a cycle where etiquette is more important than the techniques. It does go in cycles, sometimes one thing, sometimes another. The key is to stay plugged into the zeitgeist and know what the panel is looking at this year. My read is it's going to be etiquette.
So teacheritis last evening prevented me from getting in much practice. I have a slightly sore throat to show for it and to top it all off, the switch on the sauna heater has broken so now I have to rewire it for the third time this season. OK the thing is as old as I am but still, it's in good shape otherwise. Come to think of it, my dust extractors could use new switches too, they are on-off by the "plug it in" method, which means I sometimes have to replace the plug or the socket. Get old enough and you watch entropy at work. How many folks out there get to watch their smart phones fail because the on-off button has worn out? It's a rare treat these days.
I mentioned some argument from the class. Students argue, it's their nature, especially when they get to the equivalent of adolescence in their studies, but also the "terrible twos". I heard a story in the bar about an iaido brat (the equivalent of an army brat, a kid that is dragged along with the parents) who, at two, blasted out onto a dojo floor and had a tantrum while swords were being swung. Nidans are sort of like this "terrible twos" thing, they can get really set in their ways and become upset if you ask them to do what they don't want to do.
As a teacher, I'm the one guy in class that's supposed to be set in my ways (read tell the nidan how to do their budo in clear, simple and consistent terms), the rest of the class is supposed to do what I say. It's for their own good and often for their own safety. "Spend the next four years shoving your shoulder out like that and you're going to have rotator cuff problems kid, but hey, it's your shoulder and if you think you know better or you just really, really want to do that, be my guest".
Just don't turn to the next guy and tell him that "in my dojo we do it this way" or "Bob sensei says we should do it like this". Two year olds will tell you how to drive, that doesn't mean you ought to swing into the oncoming lane because it's clear right now. This is the teacheritis of the terrible twos.
By adolescence, let's say 4 or 5dan, the tantrums have subsided and you don't get the open arguments in class but you do get some wandering of attention. "Oh yeah, he's going to talk about pivot points in the swing now, I heard that speach last month. I'll think about what I'm goint to teach my class tomorrow night." Because many of the adolescent stage students are also teachers on their own, either in the same dojo as assistant teachers or outside in other classes. By definition, a teacher knows stuff and passes correct information on to the students. I mean, consider a teacher who passes along stuff that he doesn't believe in, doesn't think works. Sort of unthinkable right? So when the knowledge of the adolescent (often learned from peers because adolescence is that time of life when you are pulling away from your parents) conflicts with the knowledge of the head teacher, a conflict appears.
It's polite, from my side of the room I don't hear "but that's not the way I was taught" or, my personal favourite, "that's not the way you told me to do that". What I see is a certain glassiness in the eyes, a certain shutting down of the attention. What I am hoping for is a spark of "aha" and what I get is the dull splat of "awwwa".
Sullen teenagers.
What our adolescents have learned is the ego, the hubris that goes along with teaching. You need a large amount of "I know this stuff kid, shut up and listen". For the school teachers it's "learn this or fail your next test", for the budo teachers it's "learn this or fail your next test", but they are similar.
What our adolescents are suffereing is their own version of teacheritis and it's more serious than the childhood version. This form of the disease can be permanent. It takes the student's own ego-immune system to convert the "I know" to "I know but I'm willing to know more", we don't have any medicine that can do it from outside. Now, like the immune system, the ego-immune system can go into overdrive and damage the teaching ability. That's when the "I know" goes through the "I know but I'm willing to know more" and into the "I'm pretty sure" or even "I was told". Yes you start with those, you go through those to finally reach "I know" but if you've reached teacherhood, to be thrown back into that state by your own over-thinking and self-doubt is a bad thing.
Teacheritis is a syndrome, not a single disease. Different forms can create the same effect, no learning. The "I know" of the terrible twos (I know IT, the ONE thing that this is), the "I know" of adolescence (the beginning teacher, full of book learnin') and the "I know" of the old teacher ("I know I could be learning something right now but I've got to teach this other stuff to you because there's a test coming up... and I resent that").
Be of good cheer, none of these are fatal.
Not Dead Yet
It's not that I plan to drop dead next week, but I am thinking about what happens when I'm gone. I suppose I could do what most people do, not think about it at all, but that's not the way the top guy is supposed to act.
In the budo world the top guys are supposed to have certain skills other than being voted in. I'm talking about the instructional side here, not the administrative side where skills are also needed, but a different set, which can be brought in from "outside", accounting, taking of minutes, maintainance of websites that sort of thing.
The instructional side needs some more budo specific skills, and it can take several years to learn them so the top guy ought to be working on the next couple of generations long before he retires. Most obviously, the top instructional fellow ought to know the martial art, that means having some rank one assumes. I'm talking a kendo federation here, and as always about myself, so the jodo chief examinar (my title) probably isn't going to be running the organization too. Smaller organizations that combine administration and instruction would require two sets of skill as I've mentioned before in the case of koryu headmasters.
So skills and rank for the top guy and therefore for his replacement. Why those? It's for grading. Kendo federation grading is done nationally, not internationally. This is poorly understood by most people, who tend to assume their grades come from Japan. Instead what we have is a set of standard guidelines from the International Kendo Federation (FIK) that are agreed upon by the FIK board, and a set of rules that allow "borrowing" panelists from other countries.
That means that the head of a jodo section in a country might have quite a low rank as the section begins and starts to grow. The grading panels can come from outside the country or students can go abroad to grade. This has been happening for a few decades now. So while rank and skill isn't absolutely required for the head of a jodo section, it is a responsibility for that head to develop that rank and skill within the section. The purpose ulitmately being to provide the national organization with homegrown grading panels. Most kendo sections in most countries will have their own panels by now, as Canada does.
Since we are talking about grading, the chief examiner and any regional examiners must know the current grading rules for their country. These rules are outlined in the Standard Guidelines from the FIK but can be supplemented with additional rules within each country. For instance, Japanese requirements for grading panels are much more restrictive than those from most other countries. They can be, Japan has much more rank available to sit panels than any other country. The chief examiner of a country will have a great deal of input on the extra requirements his country has for the examinations. Just how much can one ask before the grading requirements become too restrictive? Is one looking to expand the rank or restrict it? How does one know which the country needs?
It is the chief examiner's responsibility to make sure that gradings happen in his country. This is not as simple as one might assume should panelists be required from outside. It is not as simple as inviting someone to visit and throwing them on the panel. Negotiations must take place at the president to president level and so the examiner must have some minimal people skills, as well as knowing the various rules to assemble a panel. For those from more hierarchical organizations where the senior guy can hand out gradings at any time, this sort of extended planning can be a mystery.
Since there is a world-wide grading system under the Kendo federation with a set of standard guidelines, there can be international recognition of a grade. This implies that judges on a panel know what to look for and it is the responsibility of the chief examiner to provide this instruction. Beyond "The book" for jodo there are also documents that outline what judges should know to sit a panel. There are rule books for competition and books that outline the duties of the instructional side people. Curiously, there are no rule books outlining the administrative side beyond the FIK bylaws that indicate there ought to be a President within a country.
A further requirement for the chief examiner is, as one would expect, to provide training for the membership. There are as many skills needed to organize a seminar as there are a grading, but many of them can be learned in other places. If you've organized a gaming tournament you probably know how to book a room and send out invitations. One thing that isn't so obvious is the top down nature of martial arts. To organize a seminar with instructors one ought to start from getting the instructor and then worrying about the venue and getting enough students to cover the costs. Mind you, this is no different than any conference where you have a specific speaker in mind.
Finally, although I'm sure I've forgotten six things, one of the hardest things to teach a successor is how to delegate. No one person can do everything that is needed as an organization gets bigger in numbers or in geography. Regional examiners may be needed, as well as grading officers, seminar organizers and all the various instructors of the art who will fall under the responsibility of the head guy. Just how does one let go and trust someone else?
Well, that gets to the root of the retirement question doesn't it? If you can't believe anyone else can do the job, you're going to be stuck in your position until you die.
Space and time (Meri Hari)
Last year my daughter did her graduation recital and confounded me. I had almost no idea what she was doing and had it explained later that she was "playing to the room". Not the audience, but the room itself. She was giving time for the room to breathe with her. She was using the space.
A good iai kata has to be like this, you have to give the space to be able to appreciate the movement. There has to be stillness.
The simplest way to think about this is that you need slowness in order to have speed. Meri hari. Think about the latest blockbuster movie or a music video with cuts every half second. It doesn't seem to be fast after a couple of minutes, and so your usual hack director will move to cuts every quarter second. Nope, you can't have light without dark, black without white, movement without stillness.
In a kata you can end up with "chipmunk style", busy busy, if you don't put in some space, if you don't have some stillness. How much? That depends, how fast was your movement just before, just after? More speed requires more slowness or more stop in order to achieve a balance. You can do this by counting beats, you can do it by measuring out time (you must stop for exactly 3/4 of a second between nuki tsuke and kiri tsuke).
One way we used to do it in the beginning (a sei do kai secret!) was to let the hakama settle. If you are doing jodan chiburi how long do you wait with the sword over your head before you shake the blood off? Step back and raise sword, let the hakama become still, drop the sword again. Can you feel that? How long was that? Exactly long enough should be your answer.
Eventually you will be able to feel the correct time, the proper space and you will start to use this.
In fighting? There is rhythm there as well says Musashi, just as there is rhythm for a musician, just as there is the rhythm of making and losing money for a businessman, there is rhythm in fighting. There is space and time. Think about stopping with the sword above your head, just long enough that the guy in front of you can't stand it any more and has to move out of his defensive position. You hit him.
Want to shock your opponent with the explosiveness of your movement? Start from absolute stillness, no drifting into it, no winding up, no settling into your spring just dead still and suddenly the strike. Watch an old movie, one that's black and white, chances are you'll be feeling a it anxious after ten minutes. Count the time between cuts, you're not used to a camera holding a scene for that length of time. You want to make something happen, you'll open up.
For a photographer (old school) what is necessary to make a print? A piece of white paper that the silver can sit on. The more white the paper the more contrast you can create with the blacks. Contrast, fast/slow, movement/stillness.
One of the differences between the beginner and the expert in sword is how fast the kata are done in demonstration. Too fast for the beginner, or much too slow if he's "clever". The correct space, the correct time, the correct distance for the expert. This is why I'm not a fan of timing for gradings. We spend months trying to slow down the beginners and then we fail them for going too slow. If we don't have 300 challengers there's not a lot of need to put them on a clock. If you know you will, absolutely, automatically fail for going overtime what's the single easiest way to prevent failing?
Put away the stopwatch, concentrate on the space within the kata instead and steal the time you need from the etiquette, from the space between the kata. You figure you need to take three breaths between kata? You'd better be panting or your kata will be compressed instead of your hara.
When grading, play the game, beat the clock if you must, but when you're in the dojo by yourself, play to the room. Let the echos of your motion die away before starting the next.
Different Paths
Everyone has a different path through life. That's what Guido told me this weekend, Guido is a Belgian fellow who owns "The Patch" in Sauble Beach. They had their bag sale on, and I am "the roller". You roll stuff up and you get much more in the bag. Strong fingers from budo. See, useful!
Different paths indeed, in my own family we have mom and dad who were trained in Biology, both worked as technicians at a University. No surprise there, you often find your mate at work, despite all efforts to prevent such things. But along the way I drifted toward working with my hands, making stuff in my shop. Mom has gone back to being a tech. The kids? One has a degree in Music and the other is studying software engineering.
Different paths but actually not so different, everyone has gone on to post secondary education, so a general drift on the same currents.
There is, in fact, room for all sorts of variation in the world. There are many ways to get along, yet there are those who fight against the idea.
It never works.
The Guardian just did a story about the new racists or some such, where some of the young American ultra-nationalists who are to the right of the tea party were interviewed. A couple of them expressed their admiration for Japan, a country that "got it right" that has managed to resist immigration and maintain a "pure" society.
Yeah, we'll see how that goes as the population gets older. They are already working on care-giver robots but it's going to be a lot cheaper to hire youngsters from SE Asia and that is going to lead to emotional attachment and that sort of thing leads to... well to diversity.
Unity of purpose or action or culture can be imposed for a while. Think Yugoslavia, but smaller unities arise to rip the bigger ones apart. The Catholic church had its Protestant splits after Luther, Islam has its splits, Buddhism, any religion splits and splits again. Funny that. One god or set of gods, yet many paths develop. You wouldn't think that could happen.
Why can't we all just get along? Why do we have to go different ways? There's always someone who wants to reunite the split. The problem is, it gets quickly into conflict rather than merging because, well, because people. Because most people's idea of getting along is a single, re-unified movement under "me". Each and every person out there in religion, or national politics, or martial arts has "the answer", they have "the right".
The right to fight. And once those fights start the drift apart while drifting together becomes an active paddling away from each other. All the little paper lanterns moving in their brownian motions down the stream start to set fire to each other and push each other under the waves and onto the sand bars and into the branches.
It doesn't have to be that way. As Guido says, everyone goes through life on their own path, if we can just understand that (and it takes years) we can work together in a different way than the way of the iron fist, the armed dictator who forces us into a common standard, his, standard.
One of the hardest learned lessons in anyone's life is to understand that everyone has their own path. Those that do, those that can resist saying "my way or the highway", "my" country right or wrong, can "just get along". Those that can't get their heads around the concept write laws and create customs and fill jails with those who don't agree.
Think about those in your budo organization, the guys up near the top. Now think about replacing the Big Kahuna. Who do you want in there? I bet you picked the guy who can get along with the greatest numbers of the membership rather than the iron-fisted disciplinarian who would tear the place apart in his search for heresy. Unless of course you are that guy, or figure you can ride his coat-tails.
In budo I have heard many times that the guy who got the headmastership wasn't actually the best martial artist. Inevitably it's a student of the guy who "really was the best" who is saying that. Fine, but what does that prove? That the previous headmaster was blind? Stupid?
Call me crazy but perhaps being very, very good at beating people up is, perhaps, not very well, not necessarily, correlated with getting along with people. I'm not saying it can't be that someone with good skills at fighting might also have good people skills, I'm just saying that being able to beat everyone else up might not be the ideal requirement for leading those people through the next generation.
We're all drifting along in the stream. Random forces will tend to cause us to drift apart and back together again but we're all heading in the same direction and, with the occasional bit of help from each other to get unsnagged from the branches and off the sandbars and maybe a bit of help to prevent getting waterlogged and going under, we will all arrive at the ocean sooner or later. If you take the collected experiences of all of us at the end of the trip, you might find that they are much greater than the experience of a single one of us.
Now, if you tie us all together tightly in single file so that the best we see (except for the guy in front) is the hind end of the guy in front of us, what do we know at the end beyond what that guy in front has seen and passed down the line? We certainly "all got along", and we certainly all know the same thing, but is that better than getting along and all knowing different things?
You tell me. Your answer will depend largely on how you were raised. It may even be correlated to which political party you vote for.
There are examples in the budo world, of tolerance and more than tolerance of other ideas, other streams. In Shindo Muso ryu Jodo there was a time when there were three lines of instruction. When one of them failed, the headmaster of one of the other lines trained someone to take over the line. This is a surprise? Look at the lineage charts, there is cross-instruction and cross-leadership all over the place. Oe Masamichi, of the tanimura-ha Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu was once headmaster of the "other line" if I remember my history correctly.
Three blind men and an elephant. Roshamon. Evolution. Compare and contrast these with reference to the main ideas presented above.
Or not.
Me and My Shadow
Over on the Sei Do Kai fb page is a discussion of how to learn iaido. Good work, keep it up. It's hard to learn something if you don't know how to learn it.
Iaido is a strange bird, it's a martial art with no way to test things out, it's solo, you and your shadow, so you don't have the physical feedback that you do in most martial arts.
Weeellll. That's the way many people practice it today, but the origins were somewhat different. I'd put both iaido and aikido into the categories of "grad school" or at least "post secondary" training. Consider, what samurai of 1550 would practice iaido only? Or Aizu Han jujutsu? Ellis Amdur says he doesn't think Daito Ryu goes much further back than Sokaku Takeda but let's stretch the roots back to our time frame. Or let's just say jujutsu in general. The samurai fought with weapons, fought other people, on the battlefield. Iaido would be for more specialized things, like say, self defence on the street, otherwise you'd have your sword out, or a spear in your hand. Jujutsu might be useful on the battlefield, but when things were broken, spear lines shattered and when you're fighting hand to hand with those swords and someone gets inside that range.
So a certain amount of understanding of how weapons work is assumed when you get to the specialist stuff, you don't expect to have to throw someone but things don't always go well, so learn. Got to get your sword out fast because it's all going pear-shaped? Don't cut your hand! Now slash at the other guy as you get it out, then fight like you were taught. Could be as simple as that.
Then hello to 300 years of peace more or less, when you samurai are in charge but your traditional weaponry becomes obsolete. Practice anyway, it's good for you, it builds character. The common folk may want to pick up a bit of jujutsu same as us ruling types, for the same reason us modern folk do, fitness and self defence mostly. Maybe some of the samurai do it for the same reasons, maybe because it's tradition, maybe because they can pick up a few dollars teaching it to the commoners. Iaido? What's that? Something those farmers down in Tosa do? Something a few of the compound schools do?
Because with peace and with time you get specialists. People that are better and better at less and less, sort of the definition of specialist. You like that iaido stuff we do? You ought to go visit Joe down in Tosa, he's REALLY good at it.
But Joe is going to be able to rely on you already knowing how to use the sword, you're going to know about distance and timing and posture. He's going to refine that, not teach it. Wrong place to teach maai, really. Right place to talk about destroying it, about sneaking past it, about messing up your opponent because he thinks he has caught you flat-footed.
Back to the modern day, the arts have survived by the skin of their blades and a very, very few people. Now iaido is a thing in and of itself. Except that it really isn't, there are partner practices to teach maai, just as there were back in 1600. In Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu we still have tachi uchi no kurai and tsumi ai no kurai easily available to us. A generation or two ago we had a few more sets ready to hand to teach the basics of sword. But even faster than the old kata based schools? Even better and more popular and where most of our students are coming from because they start there as kids? Yes, kendo. Most of the giants of iaido, the modern founders, the guys who brought it from Edo to Tokyo, Tosa to Kochi, did kendo.
Today? You start with Seitei Gata because there is grading in iaido. Or perhaps with Toho for the same reason. Then if you are good, we will teach you the beginner set for "koryu", and then after ten years you might get to the rest of the koryu iai sets and finally, way off in the future, maybe you get to do the partner sets.
What does that mean? It means we think the riai of iaido is "where the other guy, where kasso teki, is". Well, a kendo guy wouldn't figure that was a big deal to discover through years of training. The other guy is right over there, where he is in tachi uchi no kurai. You START from where the other guy is.
OK so that's how we got to "iaido is hard". Start any education with a topic that requires, or should require some background education and you're going to find it hard. The calculus is hard if you don't learn the prerequisites. Voting is hard if you don't learn civics.
Ah, you see the flaw in my reasoning, you can start at the calculus can't you? You just suck at it. Anyone can vote, it's their right to vote, they just suck at it. Sure you can start with iaido, the class description says you can start with iaido, it doesn't say ten years of kendo required anywhere on the poster. So start, and depending on your teacher's ability to teach you things like distance and timing and creative visualization (nods to Watkin sensei) you can get really good at it.
But it would have been easier with that background of kendo. Or aikido. Provided the aikido was taught a bit stiffly, with some attention to posture. Now I don't mean the sensei doesn't talk about posture, they yell about it all the time, I mean the students don't pay any attention to posture. It's hard to work on getting power from the foot up into the little finger of the hand when some dingdong is hanging off your wrist like a flopping salmon.
Why did I start doing iaido? Because I found a place where I could work on my posture without that dead fish on my arm. A place where I could work on my own to refine the concepts taught to my by my sensei. Along the way I learned a think or two about sword, from iaido and from Niten Ichiryu and from jodo, and that went back to my aikido. Too late in life to do much more than teach a class once a week but it went back firmly enough for me to say that aikido benefits from knowing how to swing a sword.
Horses for courses. Aikido gets a lot less "lean over and stumble" when you've felt the wind off a sword moving past your nose. Iaido gets a lot less "wave a sword around stylishly" when you've felt your balance disappear because you leaned an inch too far when grabbing someone's wrist. These things talk to each other.
Yet you hear sensei say "don't bring your karate into iaido". You know what? I agree, don't bring crappy karate into iaido, but what you know about connecting the hips to the fist? That stuff is pretty useful if you can get past your fist into the tip of your sword. What sensei means is don't do the swoopy in and out Tae Kwon Do stepping. Also don't do the aikido duck feet. Don't look like you're sneaking along a wall ninja style either. But what you know about keeping your elbows down. What you know about breathing. What you know about looking. We can work with that.
Those who were at the recent Kage Ryu seminars here in Canada may have heard Watkin sensei say "don't bring in your this or that" yet he also says that his sensei asked about his background and that it helps to have a background in kendo or iaido or Niten. What is it that crosses over from art to art? Think hard about that. It's what makes all of them powerful and effective and beautiful.
It's the stuff sensei wangs on about endlessly as you're doing the kihon, the basics until you feel like throwing up when do we get to the next set of kata damnit. Do Not waste your kihon time. Just don't. You do multiple arts so that you can get more kihon time with different sensei who will come at the same fundamentals from different directions and you will learn more-faster.
You and your shadow? Not really.
I'm not comfortable with that
There are scary clowns in the woods. Well not clowns, as an interview with Princesss Petunia, head of some clown organization, assured us. She said "these are not clowns, clowns are..." and I changed the radio station back to classical music because I wasn't comfortable with hearing just what clowns were.
There are scary teenagers in clown masks and outfits in the woods. I'm not comfortable with that because it isn't what I'm used to. I'm not used to shark models on people's roofs, I'm glad someone got that one in Toronto taken down. There's a bomb halfway through a roof in Shallow Lake, a little town on the way up to the cabin. Also an old motorcycle on the side of a building two stories up. Not comfortable, well the motorcycle is a leftover shop sign so maybe I'm OK with that. As long as it's commercial signage I can understand that but strange sculptures? Who knows what sort of weird cult that might create. Not comfortable at all. Take them down and put out some pink flamingoes or some garden gnomes, I'm OK with those, I'm used to them.
New stuff is upsetting, I like to walk into the bar and have a pint of Bass put down in front of me. Don't ask me to go to strange places or do something new in my job. I'm not comfortable with that.
In Aikido last evening I made the class do Gokyo from a cross wrist sort of thing. One of the class asked if we could do it from Yokomenuchi (about the only way you ever see that technique done) because he wasn't comfortable doing it the new way.
Not my job to make the class comfortable. Quite the opposite in fact, a teacher should be giving his students new things to think about. With new things comes thinking about them and that's a teacher's job.
The whole problem of course, with teachers and learning and things like that, it leads to thinking. That's why so many people tell us teachers aren't doing it right. That's why we say things like "my high school football team, right or wrong!" Thinking is uncomfortable.
I mean really, what does a bomb in the garage roof mean? Is this guy some leftie softie who is protesting the drone program dropping explosives on civilians? In Grey County? I mean this is the place where the Friday night Legion supper is in full swing at 4:30 in the afternoon. This is no citified 8pm "dinner"-eating area. Un Com For Ta Ble.
Or, with some more thinking, and looking at that bomb, I think maybe this guy had a leftover boiler and said "hey, that looks kind of a bomb, why don't I weld on some fins and stick it on my garage". Never thinking how uncomfortable he might be making me as I drive by. Or maybe some war refugee who might suffer PTSD as they drive by.
Unintended consequences are no excuse, everyone should think of every consequence before they do anything at all. So as not to make others uncomfortable.
Or not. Be hard to get anything done if we all did that, so maybe just people I don't like should do that. Yeah... no, just people I notice. Yeah. Do what you want if I don't notice it.
Anyway, back to the real topic, which is budo of course, and specifically, learning stuff that makes us uncomfortable, that is, new stuff. If you give it a try, if you think a bit, you might see that (as I was trying to demonstrate) this new thing is pretty much the same as the stuff you are comfortable with. We went through ikkyo to gokyo from the same starting point, wrists crossed at about face height in the old Bruce Lee "I'm faster than you" pose. Little shift of the feet off the partner's attack line and our new attack line goes through his elbow to his head.
Or as we began last evening, he starts with ikkyo, driving our arm across our front, and we shift our hip onto our wrist before he gets us trapped by separating our arm from our hip with his leg, and then we take up the slack in the rope (move along our arm rather than across it with our poor old rotator cuffs) and unbalance him and reverse the move to put ikkyo on him. That's the start, then we went into sankyo, yonkyo and gokyo. Hmm, ikkyo to sankyo by dropping our elbow hand to his hand, ikkyo to yonkyo by pulling our elbow hand down toward our wrist hand and lining up to swing the elbow like a sword, ikkyo to nikyo by flipping our wrist-hand thumb onto the other side of his wrist and onto his hand, ikkyo to gokyo by flipping the thumb the very same way but staying on the wrist... or flip it right away at the cross by dropping it and lifting again, fingers on the other side of the wrist and hey, we can do the same sort of switch right away to go into sankyo and.... it's all the same.
Look at that, a little thought, a little open-mindedness and discussion and now something that is uncomfortable has become comfortable. Isn't that interesting. OK yes, interesting is uncomfortable.
Maybe uncomfortable is our brain's way of saying "this is new, be careful, pay attention" instead of the world being mean. The world is always mean, our feelings don't come into it. Trees fall over, cliffs are high, tigers in the bushes.
Sensei is mean.
Sometimes you're not wrong
Last essay I meant to respond to a friend who commented on another essay where I said that a student is always wrong. I think I was working on it because I ended up mentioning that there are different roads to the same place and some of them are more pleasant than others. Some teachers and some dojo may be nicer places to hear that you are wrong than other places.
The subject was Zen Ken Ren iai, a seitei gata, a practice of a representative form. This ought to be remembered and contrasted to the practice of koryu.
So how do I get off saying that a student is always wrong? With a koryu, this is because you have one (1) sensei who, in any dispute, will be correct by definition. Or at least that's the usual story. If we're talking about seitei gata, again, your sensei is correct by definition. You ought not to disagree with your sensei or he isn't your sensei.
On the other hand, your sensei has, if not an obligation, at least an incentive, not to be too dogmatic about things. First, you want students to think, you don't want to get into "right and wrong" with koryu, and you don't want students leaving because you're unreasonable, one of those crowded, irritating roads as compared to the more sedate byways.
Curiously, the very fact that Zen Ken Ren iai and jo are "standardized" and well described, means the idea of "right and wrong" often comes up. If you can look in the book and see that this cut is an angled cut, it's an angled cut.
Thing is, your sensei gets to decide what is correct within the standard. (What angle?) You do what your sensei says and so you look like him which means you are "his". Now, in the kendo federation there is little emphasis on koryu beyond the local dojo (and sometimes a few foreign students) so how does one "spread one's wings" shall we say. How does senior sensei X extend his influence beyond his 12 students in his dojo? By spreading his interpretation of the kata, by having more students do it "his way".
This is not the standard story of course, but it is human nature. People tend to say something as simple as "this is (my way which is) the correct way" but with no absolute authority to appeal to (the ZNKR iai or jo section chair perhaps? The Book?) there can be competing "correct" versions. And there are.
Deal with it.
There are also students who have the same desire to "be correct" who will defend their sensei's way as "the way". This is loyalty, but it can also be a power play. "I know the secret new way to do that movement and you don't".
Sure you do.
It's hard to say that there are multiple roads to the same place, especially if you don't own the roads. Most especially if you do own one of them. It's hard for that selfish reason for senior sensei, and for beginners, it's hard because they only know one road, they have been taught (if their sensei is a good teacher) ONE way to do something, therefore that way is correct. If you only know one door into the bar, there's only one door. Experience is always hard to acquire because it takes time. One day you're sitting with your drink and someone comes into the bar through that door beside you that you have never noticed before.
Can it be? Are there two ways to a beer?
We've all had that experience of a beginner telling us that we are wrong. In their world-view they are indeed correct and we are indeed wrong. As an instructor how do you deal with the student who has gone away and got "the word" from a more senior sensei, or the visitor to the dojo who knows more than you do? While I have been known to say things like "is there a tatoo on my forehead that says 'argue with me'?" I might instead be nasty and allow the expert to go into the corner with a beginner and teach them. The obvious desire is to teach, so let them teach. Makes them happy, gets them out of my face, won't hurt the beginner. If and when they want to learn they can once more stand quietly in front of me and listen to me tell them what's right and what's wrong.
That word from me? It's wrong to say something is wrong. Even if you read it in the book it may be open to interpretation. We sometimes see what we expect to see, and if we think we see "grab the saya as the foot goes back" what we might actually see, on careful reading is ...grab the saya. As the foot goes back..."
At the last seminar with a senior sensei that I attended we discovered that there is a place in "the book" where it says angled cut in the English translation and "vertical" in Japanese. Lord knows what it says in other languages and other places. Translations are as good as the translators, who are human and bring in their own assumptions and practices.
Which one is "right", does Japanese trump English? You say so? Yet several years ago a hanshi told us that for that particular cut "originally it read vertical cut but you can't do a vertical cut from the saya at that point so now it's an angled cut". Who trumps? Hanshi or Book? One hanshi or another? I once had a hanshi say that "even if a teacher is a hanshi he might not be coming regularly enough to Tokyo to know what the current requirements of seitei are so you should be careful if you study with him." I've also been told "the version of the official video of seitei you should watch is the one three editions ago, that's the closest to what seitei should be".
Seitei is standard so you can have multiple people teaching you. Standardized means you can have "correct and incorrect". Multiple teachers means you get multiple versions of correct. How do you reconcile that?
Back to the koryu. That's a simple situation right? No question about student always wrong, sensei always right because only one sensei. Except.... except.... do you know any senior koryu teachers who had multiple sensei? Most of the ones I know did. Most of those in the history books did. So which of those teachers did that teacher follow? Some of each? What about two students of the same sensei? Ever see differences there? What about a student when sensei is 40 compared to one when sensei is 80?
It's the same art, the same lineage, which is right and which is wrong?
Really? You just had an opinion on that? You've been doing this for 6 years and you can decide between two people at 60 years experience who do it two different ways? Wow, is that talent or ego?
I think that maybe we ought to be respectful of all ways of doing things, and respectful of our sensei (that's the guy you stand in front of every week not the guy you see once a year... but that's another essay), and not say things like "that's wrong".
I may be wrong.
A different road
There are four main north-south roads through Guelph, because there are four large bridges. The furthest west is an expressway and yesterday I took that over to the coffee shop. True desperation, the road was moving at perhaps 20kph and you could smell the impatience.
My usual road is a four-lane which moves a bit faster, but has more lights so you don't get "there" any faster but you are closer to it, so folks aren't quite as jittery as they drive. Not so much lane jumping as trying to keep others from merging by closing that gap.
Today I decided to avoid that one too and went through the middle of town. Lots of lights but also lots of good looking students walking with coffee, bike lanes, single lanes just an entirely different feel. Nobody honked at me for leaving my "old man driving" blinker on.
Dojo can be like that, all teaching the same art but very different in their feel. I've been in Canadian dojo that were zen-decorated to the hilt, with members who were more Japanese than the Japanese. I've been in Japanese dojo that were basketball gyms and had about as much formality as my own public space... er space.
I don't really mind either style, or any of the ones between, but I do have a reaction according to the atmosphere. Today I drove at an un-frenzied space and feel quite well disposed to the world. Yesterday I was as frantic as the rest of the crowd, yet I was heading to the same place both times.
For the formal dojo with agonies of correct bowing and lining up in rank order and strict use of titles and all the other things that one might do to be "traditional" I'm happy enough to ignore everyone else and concentrate on my training. When class is over I feel very little urge to go have a beer with anyone else, mostly because, I suspect, I have been ignoring them for the last couple of hours, why stop now?
In less formal dojo there's often no question at all about going out after class. It's just a natural movement from final bow to changeroom to the bar. It's not bed-time yet, of course we're going out to spend more time with each other.
As my skills become weaker and my need to learn how to chop people up with hand weapons (in case I fall through the alternate universe interface) becomes less likely, I find I'm more attracted by the company and so keep coming to the dojo. In other words, I suppose I'm more fond of the informal dojo than the formal.
Is that just a bit pathetic? That I'm looking for family in a dojo? I suppose it is, my own family has drifted away to school or back to work so I turn to community elsewhere. I'm not the only one, I've noticed people drop out of the arts for 10 or 20 years, only to come back after the kids have grown up. Beats sitting on a park bench and mouldering.
You find the road that suits you as much as you use the one you have to. Four roads get me from dropping off the wife at work to my wee window on the world where I drink my coffee and write this stuff. The three that are convenient to the trip all take about the same amount of time to drive, but they each have a different feel.
Many ways up the mountain. I kind of prefer the one that lets me pass cyclists safely.
Reading what isn't there
The question is how to get deeper meanings out of a kata. How to see the "hidden moves" that sensei shows you once in a while.
Good question, one I've asked myself, myself. My answer is more or less, I dunno, but I have some hints.
First, you have to believe that the hidden stuff is there, that movements that aren't made, exist, that timings that aren't taught, exist. Then you have to believe that you can find them yourself, should you want to, rather than wait for someone to point them out to you.
Because that's one way to find them, to have them pointed out by a sensei. Once you have had a few pointed out it gets easier to find them, they tend to have the same general shape, like a syllogism. If a then b, a, therefore b.
Second is to go through more kata from the same school. As you go through a couple of dozen kata you start to see where this movement could easily be put into that kata. More creatively, you start to see the principles underlying the school as a whole, and that means you can see where a kata "goes next".
Then there is creative visualization, to look at your opponent and say "what if he does this instead of that, what do I do then?" Close to this, and something that I tend to do a lot, is to watch a pair do the kata and see where it goes off the rails. Every kata goes off the rails, mostly we hop back on and pretend nothing happened, but what if you let it go? What if that mis-step was carried on? Students, if you wonder where I get these extensions to kata it's often from your screw-ups.
Mostly though, I think the solution is experience, to bring in your life lessons and the lessons of other budo. Not to change your school, but to inform it. How would Aikido do against Kendo? How does the spiral stuff work against the straight down the middle stuff?
There are negative methods as well. For instance, in your kata you might think "there is NO WAY that works in the real world, why is it here?" I do that a lot, and the answer is, according to me at least, safety and/or precision. We do this movement with a stop and a couple of beats because it is just way too dangerous to try it at real speed. Someone ends up with a stick in the eye. We do this movement really, really slowly, not to give the other guy a minute or two to walk to the store and back, but because we are making the movement very precise.
So what does it look like at speed? What if we have a partner that's good enough to take care of themself while we "go for it". Ooooh, that's scary but now I know the technique works at normal speed. If only I could set it up.
Dangerous at speed? Hiki Otoshi Uchi in jodo. The sword cuts and stops at a certain place, the jo counts to two and then smashes the sword off to one side. Know how easy it is to avoid the jo strike? To twitch the tip and then take kote? So what's the deal?
Try it instead by taking the sword out of the air just as it reaches the cutting position rather than when it is stopped. Now take it out of the air and continue to the face with the tip of the jo.
Yeah, me too, I'd rather wait for that two count. But now we know something "hidden". Turns out it's up there in the fourth or fifth set of koryu kata, something I may not have known when I worked it out for myself.
And the sloooooowww stuff? How about Noda ha Niten Ichiryu? That slow motion lift and drop of the swords followed by a tiny bit of power at the end as you kiai? What's that all about? How does that come to anything at all say us Santo ha guys who swing hard and try to hit the other guy? Well have a look at the shape of that cut, you can because it's really slow. See the turn of the blade and the re-turn and the cut? I did, and it is what I was taught a couple of decades ago, it's kissaki gaeshi and it's really, really hard to understand at full speed.
If it seems like that part of a kata isn't very realistic, maybe it isn't. Maybe if you speed it up, slow it down, or change the angle it will make a lot more sense. Give it a try if you feel like there's stuff beyond what appears to be there.
If not, hang on, sensei may get around to telling you about it in a couple of years.
Walk a mile in their shoes
Nope. I just drove to Ottawa and back and I can't empathize or even sympathize with the little shites that buried their headlights below my back window at 120kph. In no world are they not a menace to my life and limb that ought to be taken off the road.
Same with the wee intersection here in front of me. I came a different way so that I turned left and I see why people honk at people who do that on the red. There is a very short left turn light. Sure, I get it, but being the guy who just stopped on the orange rather than run the red, I've got no more sympathy for someone who can't get their arse out of the door in time to make it to work without risking an accident than I did fifteen minutes ago.
There is only so far that understanding will stretch and it doesn't stretch as far as "yes I understand why you might be acting like an idiot" especially when that understanding simply reinforces the proof that you are in fact, an idiot.
You must understand, of course, that I am a grumpy old fart.
"An armed society is a polite society" Anyone ever heard that one? The theory is that if everyone is armed then people are super polite to avoid giving reasons for ending up in a duel. It's a stupid statement of course, can we name a well-armed society that is polite? Anyone?
"An old society is a polite society" would be the more accurate statement I suspect.
When you get older you start to see the value of getting along with people. The idea that you are a lone wolf who can make it by hard work and skill starts to look like what it is, a way to keep youngsters from voting out the old rich folks. This is not news to you I'm sure, on the other side of the "anyone can make it" coin is the statement "if you don't make it it's your own fault".
Well it is, because you, lone wolf guy, could actually link up with lots of other wolves and become a nice big pack.
Ever stop to think what happens to a lone wolf?
Where is this going? Ah yes, seminars and lone wolves and micromanagers and how things really get done. Lone wolf running a seminar? Not likely, there's just too much work involved. There may be a figurehead but without those who are doing the gruntwork there is no figurehead. So what does "the name" do? Catches the flack and let's others get along with their jobs if he's smart. He usually has a list of stuff that needs to get done and asks whether it is done (manages).
Second guesses and criticizes at every chance if he's very stupid (micromanages). Especially if he isn't paying those doing the work. Volunteers are unpaid and therefore quite free to walk away, and they do. You say you have a micromanager lone wolf in your budo organization? The guy who ends up in charge and takes credit for everything? Sure you do, they are all over the road, usually young, usually got "ideas", have a better way of doing it than that old way that's been done forever. Why is he still there? Mostly because he hasn't burned through everyone in the organization yet. Volunteers volunteer because they believe in the cause. That's often a more powerful incentive than money, but unlike money, one doesn't need belief in a cause to buy bread for the kids. One also doesn't need the stress of working for the micromanager, especially if one has skills and knows it. So once bitten, twice shy until the micro-guy works through everyone. Then he's gone, often leaving behind an organization that is now full of people who don't want to work for the organization, wreckage in other words. Since he hasn't learned, he might simply move on to another organization.
It takes a lot of years to learn these lessons. That's the real reason old people tend to be in charge. It's why so many companies run by hotshots who are going to "disrupt the industry" end up bankrupt. Management is really the art of getting along, of being the grease that gets between two squeaky wheels, of standing between the micromanagers and those doing the work.
Micromanagers? That's the art of "do it yourself if you don't like the way I do it". Sometimes it takes a while to get there. Like the guys who bury their headlights under my back window on the highway, they will eventually take themselves out, it's just too bad they so often take others with them. Don't be that other guy, just move over and get out of their way, it isn't worth the duel with two ton weapons.
That's old guy self defence, don't be there when the crash happens.
The Real Fun
They say I need to tell folks how much fun we're having here in Ottawa at the seminar. One more day of jodo to go but iaido yesterday was matched by at least as much time afterward in the bar. With a short break for all you can eat sushi between.
Why so long? Because we were catching up with old friends from Eastern Canada. That is, apparently, Ottawa and Montreal east to Fredrickton. I wonder, is Western Canada Guelph, Kitchener and everything west to Vancouver?
Yes we made a lot of fun of the center of the Universe. Sorry, we're only human and a target that big...
Met some new folks as well, but I really do worry about the organization. Yes iaido is a grown-up art but there are far too many folks at 4 and 5dan that are on the downside of their careers with failing bodies and I don't see the youngsters that are going to replace us.
Well, old complaint about an even older problem. Hey, see what I did there?
So, a seminar report from a rainy Starbucks day.
The day started with seitei gata because, well because grading and because we had many folks from the Shinden side of things as well as the Jikiden side. After a brief introduction to my take on seitei for those who have lived under a rock for the last ten years, we dove in to a group-coordinated run through the kata. Since everyone seemed to know all the kata there wasn't really any reason to teach them something they knew, so we went on to talk about how to improve what they were doing in general.
The theme was "just because seitei is described up the wazoo and seems to be an exercise in hitting the grading checkpoints, there is no reason not to do good iai at the same time." OK it's a pretty clunky theme I admit. Honest, it took less time to say than to write.
So instead of having the class try to guess what bits and pieces of the kata they should do to get my vote should they see me on a panel, I showed them the final cut position of Uke Nagashi and we moved on. We talked about the sei do kai rope sword, we talked about pivot points, we talked about knees, the grip, creative visualization and post hoc rationalization of kata, the difference between riai and those two concepts, and the value of positive statements while teaching. Along the way we talked about self-description of actions (vertical cut vs diagonal cut) and the way that words get in the way when learning a physical art.
The usual stuff.
And that was the morning. A lot of listening, a little bit of questioning (baffled with BS they were?) and, I hope, about half the time spent swinging the sword. Seminars aren't practice but still, they aren't lectures either. The concepts go into the body better than they go into the memory storage in the head.
After lunch we decided to risk a religious war and went through Omori ryu / Shoden together. The two schools were mixed in with each other and there was the occasional wide eye as one side discovered that the other guys moved (or didn't move) in a different time or a different direction. We didn't spend much time on the contrasts, but instead worked to figure out the underlying similarities between the schools. I hope the students got the message that there isn't "right or wrong" involved here, but different approaches to the same problem. Variation rather than difference.
Not kids, they got it, and there was a noticeable easing off of trying to put the sword into place and a much greater use of the feedback from the weapon itself. More smooth.
After that run-through the entire class went back to beginner mode and we learned Keshi Ryu. This is a set of 5 kata created in the Meiji period for the police. For the students who couldn't get to their notebooks it is:
Mae Goshi: Asayama Ichiden Ryu (diagonal cut upward to the front)
Muso Gaeshi: Shindo Munen Ryu (strike to face, turn and cut hara behind)
Migi no Teki: Kyoshin Meichi Ryu (diagonal cut downward to head, opponent on right)
Mawari Gake: Tamiya Ryu (cut to hara on left, right foot to rear on turn)
Shiho: Tatsumi Ryu (four sides, lots of uke nagashi)
The whole process of learning the set took 20 minutes, that included repeating the set as 1, 1-2, 1-2-3, etc as we went along. Do the previous kata and learn the next until you have all of them. It's a great teaching method and I didn't actually point that out at the time. What I did point out was that kata don't really need massive amounts of description to learn, provided you have a base set of skills to fill in the blanks.
Oh my, really? He said that? Fill in from some other school?
Yep. Look at the sources of the five kata. You worry about filling in?
How do you get entire books full of kata description? By trying to be helpful, look at shiho above, you can't learn the kata from that description, it could use a lot more words. Aaaand "that's how you get lawyers".
Once things are written down they start getting read and that leads to arguments and religious fundamentalism and "do we grip the saya before we step back or as we step back?" The agreed upon answer to that one yesterday was "do what everyone else is doing".
So after noting that we all learned five new kata in 20 minutes by relying on what we already knew, we took the last 15 to go through seitei a last time. Mostly for my own amusement it seems, as the class kept going into Keshi Ryu. Teaching moment, if sensei can trigger you into doing Mawari Gake instead of Soete Zuki by saying "Not Mawari Gake", think about how a smart opponent could trigger one of your kata moments by moving in a certain way and then watching you open up.
By the end of the day I suspect nobody wanted to hear my voice any more, very few questions anyway. Time to start the real discussions in the bar.
And time to go to day 2, the jodo seminar.
Thief of time
Having just finished rereading Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett (yes his books are in continuous rotation for me these days) it's not surprising I'm thinking of chaos and rebuilding the universe tick by tick.
I have mentioned before how much I dislike having to re-build things I have already built, OK sometimes decades before, but still, once built why doesn't it stay built? Now it seems to be my mouth, I lost a tooth a while ago and now half the filling of another has fallen out just as I'm headed out of town. I don't actually believe in Murphy's law, but that law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong) grows out of what I'm thinking about.
Which is entropy of course, the tendency of all things that are organized to fall into disorganization. It's why we eat, it takes energy to maintain organization. Things fall apart. So I re-paint the decks and watch the sun blast them to pieces, I rebuild garage windows, re-roof the house, get the car serviced over and over.
We are like the Red Queen, literally, running to stay in the same place.
If we live, we must rebuild moment by moment in order to keep living.
This is true of our budo skills as well. It is not "once learned always owned" not by a long shot. The things that came easily as a youth must be fought for as old man. Last night my heels touched my ass for the first time in about four years. Very exciting. Those who are 18 will be puzzled by that. Because my knees are a problem, because I don't trust them, I must re-learn how to do an iaido kata that I have done for three decades. Each and every class is a re-learning in the body of something that is in my mind. It is a constant re-building of pathways around sore shoulders, stiff necks, hurt ankles and hands that ache from hours in the shop.
Some things stay longer than others. I am as strong in certain directions as I've ever been, but, as I find out each and every Aikido class or every time I demonstrate how not to swing the sword in iaido class, things fall apart.
So why, oh why, in this constant fight against the slide down the energy cascade, would one waste time changing things that one can do? In Aikido class last night I asked the students to ignore all the grading stuff, the "you must do this technique in three steps" sort of thing in favour of paying attention to balance and timing and continuous movement while waiting for a technique to show up. They had asked earlier how long I'd been doing Aikido and I said "30 years". Actually we two instructors of the class have been doing it since 1980 (I took a decade or so off, lazy fellow that I am) so I guess that's actually getting on for 40 years, making it close to 80 between us. (Hey, kids in the aerobics class next door, compare that to the four hours training your instructor had.... )
"So that's why you can do this stuff so well". Actually, no. It wasn't 30 years of applying one skill on top of another, it was a very few years of getting the feel of my balance and the balance of my partner and learning a surprisingly few actual throws and pins and then a very long time re-learning it over and over again. Fighting against, not so much my partner/opponents but against time and the disintegration that time brings.
One of the hardest things to get rid of was the idea that by 30 years of practice I'd know lots and lots of techniques. I don't. I know as many as I did at five years, and a lot of those I can't do any more. Or perhaps I could, but I'd need a partner who could take care of himself on the landing and then take care of me, there, on the mat with my legs at a strange angle.
The grading mindset says I learn something exactly and I'm done (I've got the paper), but that doesn't jive with the thief of time which says you have to keep rebuilding because the edges fall away, fillings fall out of your mouth, shingles dry up, curl and blow away in the wind. The organization of living fungi and moss gets between the dead joints of your deck boards and rots them away so that you, owner of said deck, have to spend your own life, time and energy to rebuild it.
I suppose I do know more now, after 30 years, than I did at 5. I know 30 years worth of hunting around once again, for the technique I thought I knew. I have 30 years worth of re-learning how to take someone else's balance while trying to keep my own. (Makes it easy for me to figure out what you're doing wrong, been there, got the dogi).
Because time is tricky, it attacks in multiple places. Walls you thought were strong suddenly turn out to be full of carpenter ants. Joints you figured were bulletproof turn out to be brittle as glass after years of hitting them with a hammer.
But what alternative is there? Look around you, look at the people sitting next to you who haven't spent the last 30 years "injuring themselves" through exercise, who haven't "beat themselves up trying to be something they are not". How do they look?
You don't accept time, you fight it, you steal from it. You need to be a thief of time or time will steal you.
Seminar what and why.
I'm heading up to Ottawa tomorrow, for a seminar. I haven't been there for a couple of years but I'm wondering what I will teach. I mean, I don't think that I've got much to teach those guys at all, Dave Green sensei has been practicing and teaching Seitei Gata for 20 years at least, he taught at the last big spring seminar, what have I got to say to him?
There's koryu I suppose, but again, he's been doing koryu with me and with our sensei maybe for longer than he's been practicing Seitei. We certainly concentrated on koryu in those days. So again, what have I got to teach him?
Well, I suppose there's an angle on this or that which I have come up with in the last couple years that he hasn't yet, but those aren't going to be many, and he will get them as fast as I say them. He may have come up with stuff that I will want to steal too, but again, we're riffing the same tune.
No, I suppose the reason I'm heading to Ottawa is because I get to look at Dave and tell him he needs to "keep the tip up" or some such. We all need looking at but it's hard for students to look at their sensei and correct them. Even if sensei doesn't get annoyed (by habit) when a student says "you didn't square your hip when you turned" "I wasn't showing you how to square your hip, I was showing you how not to drop your tip, why were you looking at my feet you horrible little man! err, OK thanks"
Nobody likes to get snapped at, so it takes a hard-nosed student to correct sensei, even if sensei told him to do it. But one's own sensei gets to criticize forever. Longer even, like from the grave. I still hear voices of sensei who have departed, ringing in my ear from about four inches over my right shoulder. "More left hand"!
So we'll have a regular little Seitei practice if they want it, "Here are the check points, do this, do this, don't do that". Ooooh dear, please no. Or maybe someone will do something strange and trigger a bunch of exercises to show how to unify a kata, or how to feel the rhythm, or how to drive from the floor or... I dunno, they happen and then we hardly get past Mae so everyone feels like we didn't do anything because we didn't mention that you have to move the left foot back as you aim your sword at the second attacker in shiho giri. Like they don't know that alreadyyyy.
Years ago I revealed to the attendees of the spring seminar that the event was not about them. It was about them paying for air tickets so that their sensei could get some instruction. I think that's true for any seminar, sensei pretends it's all about the students but it's really all about sensei getting a bit of feedback.
So how is it that one tears sensei a new one without breaking him down in the eyes of the students? Pah, I don't worry about that for my own former students, I know for a fact they don't rely on the "aura of sensei-ness", their students won't have any stars in their eyes. But for those folks who aren't "mine"? It's a bit of correcting some senior student and glancing in sensei's direction, or maybe mentioning that "it's OK to do it this way or that, I see in your club you do it this way but perhaps try it that way". It's usually best to avoid the direct approach of "get up here, do that again, WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT!" Not unless it's accompanied by "oh, I did, did I? Well let's fix it now".
I once watched a student drop another sensei right into it when asked that question by his main sensei. If you get asked that question you answer "you did sir" or "I don't know, I must have made it up sir", or best of all, say nothing at all. You do not drop someone else into the stew, the question is formal, the answer is also formal. Just saying, so that now all of you guys know that. I mean seriously, you're doing something wrong. Do not try to blame it on someone else, not if you want to keep being a student. If it's not your fault you are unteachable.
To get back to the topic, Dave says seminars are so that some other teacher can come and tell his students exactly what he's been saying for the last 8 months so that they don't think he's just making it all up. That's a good one too, actually. Students go deaf, so hearing the same thing from some other mouth makes it interesting enough to listen to.
Mostly though, and maybe I shouldn't be saying this, but mostly a seminar is so that old friends can get together and have a beer.
Maai in the spotlight
Colin Watkin sensei had a great image for us at the recent Kage and Niten seminar. He asked us to define the area around ourselves that we could reach with our sword and imagine that was a spotlight on the floor. Very nice indeed. Now, look to your spotlight, if anyone comes into that light you cut them down. Don't go trying to jump into someone else's spotlight like some frog trying to hop from lillypad to lillipad, it isn't a good idea at all. Just be patient.
During kata, we need to understand when our spotlight will intersect with someone else's spot. In fact, we need to think about whether or not it should intersect at all. For instance, in Sasen of Niten Ichiryu the attacker swings for the head, the defender steps to the side and thrusts to the throat. If you have intersected the defender's spotlight to cut him on the head what has just happened with his thrust? In an ideal world he has stopped short and is now standing in an awkward position, otherwise you'd better be wearing a kevlar scarf. You don't "miss" your target, you must cut short in order for shidachi to do a proper thrust. Thinking about intersecting spotlights helps a lot.
In fact, if you cut within your spot and he responds within his, it doesn't matter how far away the spots are, or how close. As long as they do not touch, you are safe.
We call the distance between ourselves maai. It has the connotation of distance and time, if we are approaching each other we do this in a certain timing, we can look at when the spotlights will touch as well as if they are touching. The moment they touch we are in kiri ma, cutting distance.
Is this so? It is certainly the place where our sword tips cross, but we need one more step to make our spot cross the target. Maai isn't quite the radius of our spot, it's the radius of our spot plus the radius of our opponent's spot. Kendoka are quite sensitive to this distance, the local instructor said last evening that he goes "by feel" during the jodo kata, he moves when he feels like he is in danger. He's quite good at it, accurate to an inch or less actually, as he should be if he wants to be good at kendo. For most people the work is to find that distance where you can actually hit the target, for him it's convincing himself to react or to attack in situations where the distance is beyond the striking range. As when we're doing Sasen.
We were working on hasso and the crossing of the feet and the lifting of the sword overhead combined to create some worry about the distances and the suki (opening) as we prepare to cut. The specific movements were as follows (this for the class, who weren't all diving for their notebooks when we did this).
Hasso is with the sword above the right shoulder, left foot forward, right foot slightly facing outward because the body is opened somewhat to the right. Left hand in front of the suigetsu (solar plexus), more importantly on the centerline of the body, both hands in correct grip on the sword, tsuba by the mouth, or the chin, or higher... wherever you're supposed to put it, as long as the tsuka gashira (pommel) and the ha (edge) are threatening your opponent.
Now, step forward and make a big cut. Hah, OK says I to the class, that was awful, let's be a bit more precise. We want to cut from a position where the left hand is above the forehead, in other words, we want to go through the same position we cut from if we're cutting from chudan with a "big men". To do this we do NOT lift the sword to jodan then step in and cut. That's the two part cut that those who do not practice seitei jodo say is done in seitei jodo. Well OK a but snide, it's not the way I do that cut. Instead of pulling the left hand back to go over the head, lift it along the center of the body, directly vertical relative to the room as you move forward so that when your right foot is passing your left you are in the exact position to cut, which you do as your right foot continues to move forward.
Remember the definition of furi kaburi from Oda hanshi? The exact moment we start to attack from the sword overhead? This is it.
So our right foot starts to move toward the left, shortening our stance and thus making us weaker, as our feet come to the same distance from the opponent we are at our most unbalanced state. The hips are square and our butts are right above our heels. A little push and we fall over. This is the time we're using to get the sword overhead. Opening much?
But from here on we get stronger and stronger as our right foot moves away from the left, as the stance lengthens and we can drive off the left foot. Our swords are now descending like lightning from Zeus.
OK so what about that opening? Back to the spotlights, what if we don't start this attack from hasso at the point where our spotlight intersects with our opponent. What if we start from that distance plus the distance our bodies move forward as our right foot moves up to our left? If you've got a feel for your spotlight (you should have) and for his spotlight (ah, there's the tricky bit, how big is his?) then this is easy stuff.
Yeah, easy, but that's what kata is for isn't it? To teach this distance stuff in a precise and careful way so that we don't get distracted by being hit on the head with bamboo. After we learn about the spotlights in kata we can then go on to find out just how they can expand and contract during combat. In other words we can then go do kendo. This was the old way wasn't it? Learn the koryu and then go out and try your techniques against other schools in shiai. Today of course we're above all that preparation stuff and jump right in with the kendo, saving the kata for the gradings. Saves time right?
Snide again.
See if the spotlight helps you think about maai at your next class.
I Vant to Be Alone
So said, supposedly, Greta Garbo. And so too say a lot of other people in a study reported by the BBC. Reading, being in nature, being on your own, listening to music and doing nothing in particular were the top categories reported as rest.
We may well be the most successful, most social species on the planet yet we find each other not-restful. The Neanderthal genes in our makeup might be pulling against the cultural evolution of the more recent millennia to make that conflict. As far as I know the current thinking was that the Neanderthal were pretty small family units that kept well away from each other unless they were kidnapping women from other groups to keep the genes mixing. The cultural evolution? It started with that switch in our brains somewhere that allowed language and allowed us to "get along" and has been accelerating ever since to the point that we have covered the earth and become the top predator in every niche. Amazing.
Like rats (also social) we do tend to get a little violent, a little fighty when we get too crowded together with limited resources, but we're stranger than rats. Instead of killing each other we seem to be able to create resources out of thin air and rock. That would be nitrogen fertilizer by the way, to power the Green Revolution in genetically modified cereal grains that is feeding us now. Go look it up, GMO has been around for what, 5000 years? GMO is what has allowed us to dominate the earth. I was born in 1956 at the start of the revolution, there were under three billion people on the earth. In my lifetime that will triple. That's two people younger than me for everyone who is the same age or older. Two Irritating Kids each.
And yet, and yet, we would like to be alone because all this making nice to each other is tiresome. It really is. We may not be dropping bombs on each other here in relatively spacious Canada, and our gun count hasn't reached the levels of our neighbour to the south yet (it's climbing) so we may not be shooting up malls, but we find ways to fight with each other anyway. On a university campus it takes the form of accusation. Trigger warnings, microaggression and a dozen other things I haven't a clue about either, are used to throw at other people. If you look for things to be injured by, you will find them and so can throw them back as accusations of aggression. Thus, self defence! Justification for marching in and taking over that prime farmland next door. They insulted us, they attacked first!
What is the single most effective way to avoid giving someone else offence? It's not to be polite, polite gets used as a weapon in my world (you don't understand Japanese etiquette therefore you are a crap martial artist). No, the way to avoid conflict is to stop being around people. I rarely go into ptsd over a trigger word I used on myself. Not because I never think of those triggers, but because it's my own damn fault when I do. The words in and of themselves are meaningless, the topic, in and of itself is meaningless, unless it's from someone else and I'm primed to be triggered.
It's not me, it's you.
All well and good for you, you say, with your cottage you can go to and your own house you can hole up in to get away. What about us poor folk who have roommates and jobs where we can't get away from people.
I used to go hide in the bathroom for five minutes, but eww. How about we find some sort of activity that allows us to be alone in our heads for a little while. What we have to do is cut off awareness of most of the stuff that's happening around us, and cut things down to maybe one or two other people rather than the hoards.
It's called meditation, not the sort that gets you to a higher plane of existance, but the sort that lets you disconnect from the constant bombardment of sensation that goes along with people. I look out the window here and am bombarded by colour from all the cars going by, not just any colour either, there's not a subtle colour out there. It's all loud and in my face. How about signage, I can see, well, at a quick glance, 20 fixed advertising signs right now, and I'm facing an empty lot on a non-commercial street.
No wonder the kids nowadays wander around with headphones on and their eyes down. We need to train to shut this stuff out... except that would be anti-selective, like the headphone-wearing bicyclist who meets the texting driver. We have to pay attention when we're around other people, especially when we're in our two-ton war machines.
The solution is not to shut things out but to have a quiet space to escape to regularly. I say that space is well served in a martial arts dojo. One that is what we call "traditional", that is, one that has limited decoration, no music, a bit of externally controlled discipline to keep everyone on focus without becoming a (stressful) boot camp, and provides a single topic to concentrate our minds upon. A place where we are taught to control that adrenalin dump rather than a place that triggers it.
Contrast this to the room next door with the exercycles showing you 12 different things a minute (mileage, heartrate, calories expended... ) directly in front of a TV that is showing six different things (weather, a talking head, two news-crawls across the bottom, the time, traffic cameras... ) right under a speaker blasting the latest garbage-pop at ear splitting levels and 50 people around you all moving in different directions wearing very loudly-coloured strrrrretchy-pants.
Don't get me started on fitness classes with "boot camp" in the name. "But you feel better after the class". Yep, I feel better after I stop hitting my hand with a hammer too.
Find a place to be alone once in a while, it's good for you.
My Definition
Yesterday we had no beginners in class so we did Seitei Iai for most of the class. I'm afraid I was a bit stern with the folks, I asked them three times or more to move at the same time, yet they insisted on "doing their own thing".
Moving at the same time as everyone else does a few things.
1. It is the only way you can practice to catch someone else's timing while practicing iaido. Partner kata arts and kendo have the timing thing built in, here comes your opponent, now he's swinging his sword, look, you have this much time to move out of the way. Iaido, not so much, you've got an invisible opponent who quite often doesn't show up for work. What that means is that you have to cheat, you have to look at the other students in class and steal their timing.
2. It gets you out of your own head. Metsuke, ever hear that term thrown around? It means you should be looking somewhere other than up and to the right as you search through your brain for the next move or while you're trying to stop your cut at exactly the right height. You know, after four or five years you'd figure you should know how to swing the sword, so it's time to get on with swinging it. You're not a newly created zombie who has to re-learn how to control his body are you? What's the spleen for anyway? You don't think about the exact length of your pace when you're walking to the water cooler do you? So why do you think it's good, after five years, to worry about how you're swinging the sword. We do want you to go on from there you know. Eventually.
One way to do that is to GET OUT OF YOUR OWN HEAD and get into someone else's. By giving you the project of paying attention to everything around you (enzan no metsuke) so that you're doing it like a cheerleading routine it distracts you from trying to correct stuff that doesn't need correcting. Strange as it may seem, counter to what you may have been told, you're probably moving the sword OK so get on with the next step which is making a kata that makes sense.
They probably didn't believe me, but I told the class that their iaido improved drastically when they stopped trying to fix things and started concentrating on something outside themselves. (Which is the real job of kasso teki should he ever show up for class.)
3. It lets the more junior folk in class learn the proper way, with their bodies, as they are being dragged along by the mass movement of the class. This is the old way of doing things, to watch and do. It helps to learn how to put things from the eyes to the body with no interferance from the brain (mushin). You know, if you can get this you can learn seven or eight things at once, and most everyone can get this. I know very, very few people who actually need to have words in their heads to be able to do something. Golems come to mind. Absolutely, pretty much everything can be written down with words, I have done an experiment with made-up kata, written descriptions and people videoing their interpretation of the kata. It works, but it's a hellishly slow way to learn a physical movement. We're actually set up to watch and do so why not?
I have been throwing beginners into the class without "teaching them" for a couple of weeks now and they are far ahead of where they would be if I'd assigned them each a teacher (which I also have been doing). The moment they start getting words stuffed into their heads their knowledge of how to move starts to fall apart. Us "experts" want to make it all perfect all at once and so we get in their way by making them doubt. Kind of what we are doing to ourselves with our constant trying to tweak our kata to fit the latest fashions from Tokyo.
But even with the very best teacher in the world, you can only hold one thing in your head at a time, you can only fix/learn one thing at once, once the talking starts. The tip of the sword has to finish at this height when you cut AND you must aim your front foot at the opponent AND you must have square hips AND you must breath out when you cut AND you must make your stance straight AND... Not a chance anyone is going to be able to do all that, yet if they watch and move along with the rest of the class they hammer down their own nails that are sticking up.
4. It infects everyone with the dojo timing. Now, having just implied that having your eyes go inside your head is bad, and that trying to correct this and that is counter-productive, this is seitei gata and there are "wrong" ways to do it. One thing I like to remember is that one of the rules for seitei is that it should make sense combatively, that means you get to work on power and accuracy and other such stuff, and to do that it helps to look inside your own body and brain to see if you can put the power of the dojo floor into the tip of your sword. If there are problems along that chain you can fix them by solo practice and self-examination. That's why I started practicing iaido in the first place, to learn about posture (kamae).
But some things are better done by cheerleading practice, and one of those is to catch the dojo timing. There is a timing that gets you 5dan in seitei gata and you aren't likely to find that on your own. Your sensei has 5dan or better, so he caught it. He can't talk you into it by saying slower, faster, stop, don't stop too long... well he can I suppose, but why not just watch him and catch it all at once.
I'm pretty sure I had another reason as well but any one of those above is good enough reason (in my opinion) to use that training method. The class eventually gave in because I just wouldn't stop nagging and we moved on.
After an hour or better of just going through the motions together (sounds weak doesn't it? It's the "together" that makes it not so) we did work on other things. Here, finally, is the definition thing.
Several years ago I practiced with Oda hanshi. His training background was almost exactly the same as my own teacher's so I was paying close attention to what he had to say. A lot of things stuck but two of the most important were what we worked on next. The first is that every cut and thrust in seitei gata is done with the hips square to the opponent (except for those that aren't). It is Kendo after all. You could spend months working on the implications of this.
Then there was his definition of furi kaburi. Mostly I hear it as "lifting the sword over your head" which has caused years of argument about a bit of scripture, er a sentence in the manual which says the tip of the sword should be above the hilt at furi kaburi. Keep that tip up! It becomes a religious proscription, "thou shalt not drop the tip". And so we live that way for decades until a small heresy starts to be heard. It begins with a few random comments but over the years it somehow grows until we are told that Hiki Nuki is a thing. When we thrust into someone and then turn to cut someone else we can, we should, during that turn, have the tip below the hilt.
Yowser. I'm not kidding when I say that there were religious wars about that. It is still going on. Giving up a rule is a difficult thing, you live your life according to a rule and then someone comes along and says the rule doesn't make any sense and suddenly you feel all that time you invested in it was wasted. Of course you feel resentful.
The process of lifting the sword over your head.
Now, Oda hanshi had a different definition, one that I adopted instantly. I am an easy convert, I will believe absolutely the complete opposite of what I have believed my whole life and defend that new thing as if it was "always that way".
Sorry, trained as a scientist.
The different definition you say? (I'm getting a bumper sticker that says "retired, if you honk at me I'll wave at you".) Furi kaburi is the moment when 1. your hips square up with the opponent, 2. your sword begins to attack said opponent and 3. your tip is above your hilt.
Done.
What happens before furi kaburi is whatever needs to happen. So what then, do we call the process of lifting the sword above our head? How about furi kaburi? Japanese, as I'm told, is a contextual language so when we say furi kaburi we can explain the context, right? Or we can say "lifting the sword up over your head" and contrast this with "the sword over your head".
Why does the book say the tip above the hilt? Because seitei gata is kendo. Do kendo people teach dropping the tip below the hilt when they strike? That would be a bad thing right? It would be slow and it would get you scored on.
I will leave you with a small thought. Does a kendo match include more than one opponent?
Video Gradings
I was just asked by messenger (folks I don't do messenger, so only see those things occasionally, email me please) about video gradings.
Yes they have been discussed.
To make a video grading the same as a judges decision you need to keep the judge's view in mind, so here it is.
Set up a camera on the judges table, just one camera. The video judge watches the grading once and makes his decision. Once only and then pronounces.
The video should be high definition, 720p ought to be enough, and it must show a wide enough view to see all the challengers but not from a wide angle lens which will distort the people at the edges. Nothing like seeing a sword curve the wrong way to make you think the hasuji is off.
If you want to be redundant set up two cameras but only watch one of them, the other is just there in case of problems.
Four absent judges so four cameras? Only if they are identical and the videos have been checked to see if they are pretty much the same quality. Me I'd settle for one camera at head judge position, yes several judges have slightly different angles of view but it's not that different and it varies on each grading setup. Far enough back from the challengers and the angles are quite small.
This is pretty much it. If you want to teach from the tape, I advise not to. If you want multiple views of the grading, I again advise not to do this and certainly do not watch multiple views from multiple angles when judging. The reason many panels do not allow videos (not such a thing any more now that phones are videos) is that it encourages second guessing of the decisions.
Just remember that watching a video will benefit the challengers, I consider this fine, but if your panel is looking to pass only a certain percent, or to bell curve it or some other thing, remember that you will see more in person than on a tape. This I hope, would apply only to 5dan and up if at all.
Fudoshin
Just wait until you have kids of your own
Well I have, and they were lovely, still are but now they're adults. Still got students though, and they're sort of like kids aren't they?
One of the things we go on about in the martial arts is Takuan Soho's Fudoshin. As in do not have a frozen mind. This is a bad thing, to dwell on an action, or a thought, or to be caught in anything but the moment, is to have your mind frozen and dragged about by external events. Much better to have an immovable mind, (fushin) one at a still center that can deal with the things that need dealing with now and in the immediate future. Like the sword descending on your head.
We also look for detachment, for freedom from desire and regret. Hakuin being handed a baby and told it was his replying "is that so?". (Look it up.)
Ever wonder what that looks like?
It looks entirely unlike the emotive, touchy-feely, cry or you're a toxic masculinist, society we seem to see on Television these days.
It looks like a sociopath if not a psychopath.
Student: Why don't you correct me?
Sensei: Every time I do you jump down my throat.
Student: No I don't
Sensei: Oh, then I guess I'm becoming allergic to you or have some other fault in myself.
Student: ................. so why don't you correct me?
Sensei just wanders away heading to the next student because to a mind that is centered and not attached to things, there is no argument to be had about who's to blame. No tears to be shed over missing students or missed opportunities. Either this student is busting my chops or they are irritating me or I am misinterpreting their "yes" for "no". In any case, there is no work to be done here so move on.
From the outside it looks like someone who cares nothing, who is emotionless. But that's not true, the emotion is there and gone, sensei is pissed off and then moves on. It's not emotionless but in our "never get over it" culture it sure appears so. Let it go. To do that there has to be something to let go in the first place.
A sociopath or whatever they're called would be confused that you are talking about anger or emotion at all. They would miss the emotional cues altogether. A brain damaged person might not be able to feel anger or emotion. Whatever those things are, they are not fushin.
Stiff upper lip? No, it's not that either. Your WASP male stiff upper lip thing is to suffer in silence. I know all about that one, it's partly etiquette (who the blazes wants to hear you whine about your problems) and it's partly acknowledgement that the world is not, in fact, fair, and that complaining about it won't do any good. Who would you complain to anyway? Mostly though, it's training. I used to tell my kids that crying is to attract attention, so now I'm paying attention, shut up. Not long ago my son reminded me of that and said "but you know what? Crying also made it hurt less". Oops.
Yeah I guess a good healthy bitch does help but what helps even more is to move on. It's when you can't move on that things get irritating for everyone as you bitch and bitch and bitch. When that is the result of not being able to detach from the emotions (as in you keep getting poked by that stick... or poke yourself with it) or you can't physically leave the situation (like maybe you need the job) then it's hard to avoid fudoshin-like responses (you leave it behind but there it is again and again in front of you). In this case, stiff upper lip, please.
And then you have the helpful people who figure the solution to everything is to vent, reminding you about the problem, positively inviting you to unload... aaargh. Move along Oprah, move along. Like Sam Vimes there are some things you really want to leave in your unconscious. Thankyouverymuch.
I said I have students, but they aren't really kids. I don't teach kids, I teach adults and so I figure they are grown-ups. They make decisions, they should make decisions, and if anything, it's maybe my job to point out that decisions have consequences. It's not my job to make their decisions for them. That was their parent's job. I don't tell them they have to come to every class. If they're not there I don't actually miss them. I really don't, unless what I'm teaching suddenly reminds me that they would like to hear what I'm saying. Momentary annoyance that they aren't there and that I'm not likely to remember to show them next time I see them. Joy when I see an old student return after an absence. But beyond that? I'm not emailing or calling to find out why anything. I'm not likely to be thinking about anyone who is not in front of me right now.
Bad life choices? Poor business decisions? Sure I'll offer my advice and yes I'll get pissed off if they don't follow it, especially if I am tempted to say "told you so". I mostly warn them "don't make me say I told you so" and let it go. I may point out consequences but that's not the same as making their decisions, even if it seems like that to the students. They are big people, I'm just older and maybe have been there but everyone needs to learn some lessons the hard way. Some students need a broken nose to learn how to duck no matter how many times sensei says "duck". "Why should I? What does he know, stupid old man anyway, I want to spend my summer earnings on a flash bicycle, they're mine so I'm going to". Aaaand yes it gets stolen and now there's no bike and no money for snacks at school. Maybe dad did the same thing when he was a lad?
Sometimes they just want to be correct not corrected. Sometimes they just want the world to bend itself around their wishes. You get your head bitten off and so you simply move on. If it's your kids you pick up the pieces later because they are your kids. Your students? I think the operative phrase is "I'm not your mother". Or in certain cases where that isn't appropriate, as when you are handed a baby you might say "is that so?"
Move on, put down that girl by the river. No reason to carry her along. Have I told you that story? Go look it up, it's about fudoshin.
Moving on.
The Ceiling
Someone recently mentioned hitting an interest and skill ceiling. Now I can see hitting an interest ceiling, I have been bouncing off of that part of the dojo for years as I seem to fight the same battles every year and deal with uppity students and whatnot. Mostly though, I find some other part of my life to drop and that increases my tolerance levels and I'm still here plugging away. I even find ways to disconnect from the budo stuff that doesn't interest me, the administration stuff, the promotional stuff, that has little to do with practice (once a space and a time has been allocated that is).
Skill limits?
Yes, the knees are shot, I tried demonstrating iai last evening and the knees combined with a slight hamstring pull from earlier in the class combined to make me feel terrible about what I was doing. I do NOT have the skills I had ten years ago and it angers me. Enough that I briefly thought about throwing my iaito through the mirrors.
Talking later about "proving this works" over beer, brought up how much more dangerous that was for me these days. Not what you think, I suspect I can still prove this stuff works to a beginner without getting hurt myself, but I don't know if I can still do that without injuring the other person. At a certain point you just stop demonstrating stuff to the reluctant types because you don't have the shoulders any more to save them from breaking their neck. This can lead to doubt on my part, since I am not proving it works, does it still work?
Limits indeed, of several types, on the skills, but does that mean there's a ceiling on my skills yet? I am going to argue the no side.
It has become a rather tedious observation that in the budo we consider that there is no split between the mind and the body. I've known this since I was a teenager, I came from that hippy era. Hell I started the martial arts because I couldn't find a zen temple at University. I never had much use for the fighting techniques, I'm a big guy with big guy attitudes. Not looking for a fight and seldom finding one.
Mind-body unity, what that means is that we are not limited by a lack of physical ability alone. We should also not reach "the end of the curriculum" in any art since there is a way to move beyond the techniques. We know this from the kendo hanshi that slowly hits us where we move to.
As we get older and as the rising physical skills line on the graph starts to intersect with the falling physical health line, we can often forget about the mental line which can continue pushing the skills upward long after the knees start to give way to pain or metal or both.
This is partly why I write this stuff. (The other part is that internet address down at the bottom there.) It's why I read and research. I just listened to an artsnight (BBC) episode on "how to connect with the unconscious". Yes, not only a mind body split but a mind mind body split as we assume there are two brains, one we know about and one that is doing stuff we aren't aware of. Umm, like keeping the food moving through the guts? Who wants conscious control over that? Leave it alone back there in the closet.
"We know we have a creative unconscious because we have such dramatic dreams". Really? Mine are dead boring, I don't fly, I don't run the world, I don't even bed one of the internet queens. The best I've managed in the last several years is to talk to my father. Small talk I hasten to add. But that, I think, is because I don't have much of an unconscious. I look constantly inward, I am rarely surprised at how I'm feeling, if I'm angry I know it (and stop the impulse to throw the iaito through the mirror). If I'm sad or regretful I know it.
I also work from "the flow" a lot. I'm doing it now, but I never called it "the flow" that's some new term for a very old concept, I call it mushin. It comes from long practice of a skill, followed by a conscious decision to let things happen and to trust that I can do that and still have things turn out well. I do and they do, at least as often as when I am doing it the old dualistic way of thinking over every step before I take the first. Artists say clever things like "I studied for 30 years to be able to do that drawing in 30 seconds" when the client complains about paying for 30 seconds work. It takes time and therefore money to develop mushin. You aren't born with talent, sorry, you're not.
I don't get writer's block because there's nothing to block if I'm not standing in the middle of the flow. I don't get knocked over in Aikido class because I just let the body, the unconscious, the flow, mushin take care of finding a response to the attack. Would it work "on the street"? Don't know, big guy, not looking to test that but consider that on the street I might face compound, multiple attacks in a distracting atmosphere. That is, I might start to try to pay attention to what I'm doing rather than just doing or as we used to say "being done". I am not writing, "it" is writing me. Woooeeeeoooo.
All this means that if you think you have hit a skills ceiling, take a good look to see if you haven't just hit a physical limit and forgotten that there's a mental aspect to this stuff that you can tap into to keep going through that bit of glass you're bruising your forehead on.
Let me give you a project. This BBC program ended with a cellist talking about connecting with long dead composers and trying to understand their mental state, their intentions for the music they wrote. Get into their head, as it were, and figure out why they wrote what they wrote.
Now think of a kata as a vessel for an idea which is thereby transmitted through hundreds of years. What did the author of the kata you're doing right now mean when he invented it? What lesson did he want to pass on? Can you find it?
In this all-about-me age where you get to interpret anything any way you like, it might be a little bit hard to force yourself to imagine what the author wanted you to see, but try anyway. You may need context. I was just reading the rules contained in a Takenouchi Ryu densho, one given to beginners in the school and one of the rules was "do not compete". So tournaments are a no no right? Well one might read it like that today if one doesn't like tournaments, but when this was written an age of taryu jidai had finished on government order. Too many kids wandering around the country making trouble by fighting with other kids from different dojo and maybe having a beer and fomenting rebellion or at least not paying taxes. So maybe the rule is sort of like "pay your taxes, wink wink nudge nudge, unless you have a good accountant"?
That kata you're doing? When was it created, who created it, what was its context (the culture THEN, not the culture of Japan or China now), who was its intended audience? NOW look at it and see what you can pull out of it, can you see what the creator was seeing?
Skills ceiling? Start the brain and add that engine to your little train(ing), you're coming to the mountains but keep saying "I think I can".
I think you can.
Ninety-ten
Probably more like 99-1 would be the ratio of students who become competant and those who are amazing. So which do you cater to? Which students do you focus on?
I don't know. I suppose it depends on what you want, is it a legacy? So which group will give you a better legacy? A large bunch who will go on to teach students of their own or someone who will take on your entire skill set and build on it?
It's a question isn't it, and I suppose each group will remember you as something different. The large group will carry on stories of what an amazing martial artist you are. The elite group, the one or three people who get everything from you, will remember you as a great teacher. The closer a student gets to your skill level the less amazing you become. Let's face it, "if I can do it, it isn't very amazing". Well OK that's what sensei said all those years ago but the long hard work that got you to his level just showed you that any old clown can do it. Provided they spend the hours at it.
What if a legacy isn't all that important to you but the art is? Which group do you work on then? Again, I can see both sides here, the maximum students of teaching quality produced will ensure the largest school, but perhaps they produce merely competent students themselves, does that mean the art declines? It probably doesn't advance. It's those elite types who push the art upward by their genius so perhaps those one or two a generation are the ones you want to spend your time with.
We seem to be assuming that we, as the instructor thinking about this, are also that genius level. Of course we are! But if, by a small chance, we aren't, we can still produce a genius if we know how to push them and then let go as they accelerate beyond our reach.
How about if we don't care about our legacy and we also don't care about the survival of the art. We just enjoy this stuff and like watching others enjoy it. This is not so unusual, most teachers don't worry about the art much, why should they, that sort of thing is way up the pay grade. In that case I think the choice of which group you focus on is largely up to that group. Those who want to teach will achieve a certain level and then go off to teach. Those who want to become masters of the art will stick to it and not worry about teaching others.
Those choices don't really imply those who physically stick around in the dojo are those who become elite. I've seen lots of folks hang around in a dojo but focus on teaching. In a sense, they have already left. They are often those who seem annoyed if you correct them during class in front of "their" students who are also in the class.
Then there are the elite types who aren't often in the class due to having moved away or for some other reason, yet still show up once in a while and grab those gems you have produced in the meantime. They become fellow travellers along the more difficult to make out pathways up ahead of the other folks. They never really leave you.
I'm pretty sure I'm in that third set of instructors, the ones who don't much mind about legacy or the survival of the art. Even though I write this stuff, have produced a dozen or more books, videos, and do seminars it's mostly for my own amusement, not for a legacy. What use do I have for a legacy, I don't really care what others think of me now, and why... how would I care what, or if, people think about me after I'm gone.
As for the arts, even though I have worked to establish the "mainstream" arts in this area, and even though I practice a couple of quite rare arts, keeping them going for another generation, I don't much worry about that. My students will pass it along if they wish and it will go another generation, or they won't. I won't be around to find out which.
Terry Pratchett suggested that one way to look at death is to look at the ripples of a life. A person isn't truely dead until the things he set in motion in life are finished. Crops planted are harvested, that sort of thing. So being concerned with legacy and the survival of an art and "your name remembered" will happen willy or nilly. Why worry about it.
Now, what do I do in my teaching? Do I concentrate on the masses and make them as good as I can in a short time? Or do I favour the special ones who show the potential to become great?
From what I've been able to figure out for myself over the years I ignore both groups. I teach because that's the way I practice so it doesn't really matter who's in front of me, I teach those who stand in front of me. In that way I suppose I let them self-select and self-sort. In that atmosphere I suspect the self-motivated are favoured. I had a student the other day say to me "I've been doing this technique the other way around". It was quite an injured tone, as if I was to blame for that. OK I showed it the right way around and wandered away, if it was my fault I just fixed it, if it was the student's fault I still just fixed it and who cares if I was accused of not handing that student the answer. I don't. The student obviously does but that's not my problem unless I assume that students are blank slates upon which I must write everything.
"You must never do any more than what you are taught!" Oh how I dislike the taste of that in my mouth. It smacks of religious fundamentalism. I'm not a preacher, not even an Abrahamist, If I'm speaking in class it's to give you my opinion only, not to command. I don't hand out rank so you don't have to listen to me at all.
I guess I like senior students a bit more than beginners because they give me more advanced questions to think about. Physically it's good to be challenged, too much messing about with beginners can dull the edge. On the other hand, beginners don't have much of an ego so they can ask some pretty fundamental questions, things that seniors are embarassed to ask, which cause re-thinking about the art.
So teach whoever is in front of you and forget about the stupid ratios.
I'm too old for this
Just what it is I'm too old for I'm not actually quite sure, but it has to do with people. It's always to do with people. Can't I just say "it's my fault, sorry" and be done with it? I mean, whatever it is, you don't have to bite my head off or explain why it's my fault, it just is, OK I agree.
Well, the beauty of being retired and self-employed is that I don't have to put up with the shite if I don't want to.
Just a general gripe to get it out of the way before I get into the class notes of the Aikido class last evening. It was all about finding a still point, something I wish I could maintain for the rest of the day. Something the clown in the truck doesn't know exists as he honks three cars back from the stopped bus. Yes, cars no move. Yes someone else's fault you are now hanging out into the intersection.
Sorry, back to still point. We started with some discussion of where the front of the new dojo is. Gigantic new athletics complex, a good 40 to 50% of which is hallways and other wasted space, but hey, we have an architect pimple on the front of this rather boring, mundane box. Well, the way it's constructed it can be carved up for bags of office space when the time comes.
The aikido room is the wrestling room and is glass-walled on the two long sides. On one side is the hallway which is fine, but the other is the exercise machine room. Lots of people moving which is not conducive to creating a still point. We humans and most other animals are attracted to movement, it's a survival thing. The only thing worse would be for them to turn on the televisions and start piping music through all the speakers. Yes, there are two televisions in the room and speakers through all the hallways. Bad enough that the aerobics room is right next door, at least there is a storage room between to deaden the sound a bit.
I'm talking here about distraction, the visual and auditory distraction of our age that prevents silence. The silence, the stillness of attention that allows us to think. This is something that has been taken away by ubiquitous advertising, and given away by us through the constant connection to smart phones and mp3 players.
My mother could never figure out why I went to sleep with a radio on. Neither could I until I realized, well into my teens, that I suffer from quite severe tinnitis. The noise masked the roar in my ears and let me sleep. These days I never notice that roar, living in a small city means that the roar (which is about the same volume as someone speaking to you) is crushed by all the other noise around.
Stop and listen now.
Amazing isn't it? Now combine that with the visual screaming for attention from all the advertising and imagine trying to figure out how the universe works. No wonder all we can hold in our heads are idiotic sound bites. If we ever had ten minutes to ourselves to think, the political operators would all be out of a job and politicians would have to have actual plans.
None of us really believe that thinking is scary but we live in an era where we act as if it is. Apparently this is "good for the economy" because advertising works. Why does it work? Because our self control is a limited resource. It really is, we can only refuse for so long before we accept whatever it is we're being hounded about. Terrorism? Are you kidding? It's the underarm deodorant of our age, it's the tragedy of halitosis, it's restless leg syndrome. A solution in search of a problem.
How do we fight back? Well through creating a space where our minds can settle on one thing. It's hellishly hard to settle a mind on nothing at all, but a manual skill will do nicely. I'm talking now about the difference between the monk sitting and breathing and the budoka working on a form. There is a reason most monks live outside society, to go from what you have around you now to a still mind is a huge jump. Easier to go from a quiet environment, one where you weed the garden in silence before heading into the zendo to sit.
And easier to move from where we are now to that garden, or to the budo dojo where we can focus on one thing rather than be pulled apart by 100.
Hence my concern about the bodies swaying around through the window, but we decided on the blankest wall as the front and we faced that way. It's a bit clunky but you deal with what you get.
This year I want to get people connected throughout their bodies so we started with a simple exercise to move ourselves around a wrist grab to a place where we could use our whole bodies to move the weight hanging from that wrist. Mechanically that was to have your partner grab your right wrist with their left. Move your right foot to the right and forward, then turn on your toes to face the same direction as your partner. (irimi kaiten) now step forward with the right foot to drive your partner along with you. The idea was not to start with moving your arm around which is pretty much useless as you can't drag a body with your shoulder, and moving the partner's hand around triggers reactions. So keep the contact point still and move yourself into a position where you can use your whole body to drag the other body.
That's pretty much it, we kept using that still contact point to move around for the rest of the class, we did shihogiri by spiraling down onto our knees instead of lifting the arms overhead. We did kotegaeshi right there, where the contact point happened, in a tiny movement of the hips to break the grip and then re-grip for the throw (irimi kaiten kaiten). We used the still point and leverage to break that grip (yes after the technique where we used it to prepare for kotegaeshi, sometimes you back up) then we used the same principles of body movement to break the grip at shoulder height (a gentle lifting past the body, not a wrenching around using the arm muscles) to go into irimi nage. Finally we used the same wrist crossing to finish with juji nage in seiza.
Other stuff between, but essentially, we were working toward understanding that still point and how we could use it to move into a position of great strength before we tried to do amazing stuff.
Because amazing stuff comes from stillness, not from chaos.
Oh, and it's all my fault if that will settle you down into your still place, I don't mind, I've got big shoulders and can still lift a fair amount of weight. Just don't go on and on about it OK?
Poopy-pants kata
That's what one of the jodo kata got called last class. A scary movement... hmm, stop groaning you know what I mean. I agreed, it is a bit scary, it's Monomi and the movement is a double one, you need to stand under the sword while stepping slightly back with the left then back with the right foot. This double swing of the hips happens during the single swing of the sword.
Yes it is scary and to the kendo guy who identified it, doubly so since he knows how fast you can swing a sword.
I've got two things to say about kata like that, first, you have to have patience, sometimes it takes a long time to understand a movement. Does it make sense to be standing with the jo grounded on your left side hanging from your hand while someone comes toward you with a sword in hasso position? Do you do nothing while he stops and measures you up? Does he stop?
Is this really a two part movement on your part? Do you "get ready and jump" when he swings? That works for most movements, like in Suigetsu or Shamen where you slip to the right, or Tsuki zue where you fade to the right rear corner. One push of the leg that can be as fast as uchidachi can step and swing, but turning the hips two different directions? It had better be a single movement and it had better be smooth because there isn't a lot of time to rock back and forth shifting your weight from one foot to the other.
It sometimes pays to look a bit further than the kata you're practicing. The Fukuoka version of this kata has the initial turn move the body completely off line as the cut is made, all in one timing. But it means the back is turned to the blade. Still, it works, if a bit poopy-pants in itself as you move the right shoulder closer to the swing during the turn.
It's that right shoulder, that's the problem. So how to solve it? I mean without letting that shoulder be amputated the first time you do the kata.
Well, one of my iaido default rules is "no retrograde movement" so once your shoulder is part way to the left, don't move it back to the right again on the next hip turn. That means a sort of subtle lifting up and forward to put it to the side of the sword swing as you move the jo over to hit the swordsman's wrist. This is kind of what I do when, in Aikido, when I go "through" the sword cut.
Oh you say, but none of that works if the cut is really really fast.
I hate to mention guys, but nothing works if the cut is really really fast, which is pretty much defined as too fast for you to avoid. That's a tautology. "What if the cut is too fast?" The answer is "yes".
Why wouldn't the cut be too fast? In every kata out there?
Which brings me to my second point. The kata is poopy-pants to shidachi because he has given the control to uchidachi. All the initiative is on the sword side, the jo reacts. But that's not what happens "on the street" where an encounter could go either way.
Have you ever been sparring with someone and seen that light go on in their eyes that says "suddenly it's for real". What did that do to you? That feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you a bit hesitant is doubt and fear. It's fight or flight (no you weren't fighting before, you were sparring or playing a match and that's something else). There's a story of a couple of Nakayama Hakudo's students who went out "behind the barn" with a couple of shinken. They wanted to see "if this stuff works". Two sharp swords and no protection, the general agreement was that it was really really hard to swing that sword.
When it comes down to it, the solution is not fastest twitch muscles wins, it's who can get their body to move. This is where you hear the "throw your life away" stuff that we all read about and few of us really understand. "You've got to throw your life away to survive" is not some crazy zen koan, it's practical fighting advice for a battlefield where you aren't lobbing artillery over hills. Today you say "push the button, you're safe" and the only reluctance to be overcome is the very real reluctance to kill other people, hence PTSD for drone drivers. But that other bit, the bit that says "when I swing my sword I'm open to his attack" is missing. It's not missing in sword vs sword or even sword vs stick.
I begin to swing my sword, the guy with the stick, who seems suspiciously calm with the end of it resting on the ground there, twitches and now, half way through my swing I maybe hesitate because he seems to be moving aside. No he's still there in front of me, just in a different posture. Damn I'm thinking, hit him.
How did I miss?
Can you do your kata like this? Can you pretend it's life or death? Sensei says you should do that but we know we're safe, or at least as safe as we can be with a senior person swinging the sword at us. We know he can stop if he has to, and the beginners? They cut off to one side anyway because they're more afraid of hitting us than not hitting us.
Does it make you mad when sensei changes the kata on you, when he moves the other way and pokes you hard in the side? Does it make you, as sword side, hesitate and so not look good to the rest of the class when you do the kata?
Ever wonder why he is so mean? It's because he's a jerk and wants you to look bad, I'm sure of it.
Don't dance.
Fear and Fun
I was asked by a student to repeat my speach to the class about laughter and concentration in the dojo. Since I just wrote something on this a couple of days ago I wonder if my class is reading this stuff. They're supposed to, it's their class notes.
I usually say that my classes are unusual in that there is a lot of noise, wandering around and laughter. Sort of like a good kindergarten. The difference between the two is that unlike a good kindergarten, our fun is punctuated by bouts of fear. Intense concentration and attempts to avoid being hit with a stick alternating with intense relaxation.
Thing is, it's not really all that unusual, most of the teachers I've had are like me and most of the classes I've taken were like that. It's not that hard to understand either. Nobody can be "on" for two or three hours straight, and you certainly are not on in real life. You can go from worrying about what to make for supper to fighting for your life in less than a second. Just think about stepping in front of a bus, or having someone run a red as you race the green. If you can't switch from fun to fear quick enough you may just be dead.
So all the messing about in my class is tolerated just as long as the students can switch to being totally concentrated on the kata. If the messing around extends into hitting each other accidentally because they're chatting, I go a bit Librarian.
It's a training method and it's also better for a hobby than the "strictly discipline" boot camp model. After all, why would anyone be in a budo class that isn't enjoyable? It's not like we're going to need to know how to do 50 pushups for speaking out of turn right? Of course if you like pushups...
Fixing Old Machinery
Recently I had to rebuild my band saw. The thing is quite likely older than most of my students, it is certainly twice the age of my kids. I rebuilt it because a $30 dollar part wore out and I could replace it. Simple as that.
I hate repairing my machinery, it's like that sick feeling I get looking down at the brand new floor in the cabin and seeing a streak of black mold running up a couple of boards because the drains on the coolers were left open. Once I buy a power tool, once I put down a floor I want to die before it breaks. Sorry, I want it to last until after I'm gone, there that's a more optimistic way to phrase it. Today I spent the morning modifying a new belt sander to replace the old one that finally wore through the bearings (not worth spending the time trying to find new ones) and repairing, for the third time, the sauna heater which burned itself out last night because I left it on full for a complete cycle. OK that last one is on me, I left it on and I also didn't rewire it correctly the first two times. Not sure about the heat resistance of the marrette I used this time either.
Still, this opening up of stuff and seeing if I can repair it seems a far cry from my kid's generation. My boy remarked not long ago that his phone was getting sluggish and so he probably had to replace it.
Hunh? In my day I guess the equivalent was "you have to buy a new car every 2 years or the depreciation gets ahead of you". Yeah, or you buy some idiot's used car and drive it into the ground because it isn't worth trying to sell into a market with 200 million new cars produced every year. I mean seriously, drive it off the lot and it's worth 30% less? Seriously? Who believes that? Everyone?
OK back to the smart phone, I'm not stupid enough to figure I can do anything about the hardwear on electronics these days, the stuff I repair will survive the Sun's EMP pulse in the next... umm... whatever that last pulse was called that fried the telegraphs. (There it is, 1859, the Carrington event) My tools are dumb-tech. But really, one can't reformat a phone? One can't delete half the music files? One can't remove all the useless apps? I mean, back in the day I built computers, yes, but more importantly, I used operating systems where I knew what was happening. I could see the memory filling up with redundant files if there was a slowdown.
The stuff that's around today is too smart to allow intelligent users. I swear it is. My email system keeps making it harder and harder to see that "JOE" who is emailing me has an email address that reads "imphishingyou.schmuck"
How is that smart?
Smart? We don't need no steenking smarts!
Smart people are dangerous, they may not do what you want them to do. It's much easier to get stupid people to fall into line. But sometimes even smart people can't stop the mob. I just finished watching a bit on Alexandria from the BBC, and the end of that great idea (to create a city with all the books in the world and a whole bunch of really smart people and let them go at it).
How did it fail? Well Bishop Cyril decided the mob should burn the libraries and kill the intellectuals. Now, are we beyond that today? I doubt it. Look at what is happening to the internet. It's being carved up into silos and those silos are being censored. What was supposed to be the entire knowledge of the planet shared with everyone was, yes, turned into a bunch of idiot kids trolling each other, but that very easily dealt with irritation is being used to shut down the idea by the very people who are making money off the idea. Because it might offend someone the most iconic photo of the Vietnam War was booted out of this particular silo...
How did I get here? I wanted to point out that nobody likes phones that go slow, but the immediate impulse to buy a new one rather than repair the old one seems to be the sign of the age. Me, I own t-shirts older than your Dad, and I've been known to darn them. I have power equipment that is made out of metal, real metal, rather than recycled shopping bags.
Beware, my mindset may not be compatible with yours. My thought processes may be completely opaque to the buy it and toss it generation.
Maybe that's my problem with the budo thing. At the gym I asked the guys who ripped out the German Gymnastics bars why they did that. They said nobody used them (I did). Now they are buying stuff that looks just like those old bars because some aerobabunny has reinvented the wheel. (OK difference is that I'd have to pay to take the class that let's me use the equipment, as opposed to just using the equipment like we did back when dinosaurs ate our homework.)
That's how you keep the money going around, not by teaching stuff that has worked for aeons, not by teaching it for free because you were taught for free. Nope, new and improved is the way to contribute to the growth economy. Budo is back in the repair-it economy I think. 400 year old ways to swing a sword. Not very smart tech sounding is it?
Tomorrow I'm hoping my repaired equipment will hold up long enough to grind a bunch of bokuto for an order. Then a baby's toy box, then maybe some yari if I've got the blanks.
Assertive vs Rude
My dear cousin has asked me to riff on these terms. I suspect he's trying to get me in trouble, he's spent a lot of years in rural Alberta and I suspect it's rubbing off on him.
Oh dear, was that rude of me, to assert that rural Albertans might be a bit conservative? Hey I have a cottage in Grey/Bruce dudes.
What I mean is that the cous' may have been thinking of the second generation feminists (our generation) who, in being assertive, in making a virtue of assertiveness, were perhaps also being, most of the time, a little bit rude. Of course it may have just been me, as a man, taking their assertiveness as rudeness.
Because rude is really more or less impolite. You're polite or you're rude. Rude being, what, uncultured? Let's see.
Well there you go, top o' the page when you type in "definition of rude" is:
1. offensively impolite or ill-mannered.
"she had been rude to her boss"
synonyms: ill-mannered, bad-mannered, impolite, discourteous, uncivil, ill-behaved, unmannerly, mannerless; More
2. roughly made or done; lacking subtlety or sophistication.
"a rude coffin"
synonyms: primitive, crude, rudimentary, rough, simple, basic, makeshift
"a rude cabin"
You see that, what those men who run the internet just did there, "she" had been rude to her boss. HAH
So rude is essentially uncivilized, crude.
Assertive? It's not "speaking up" as some victimologists would put it. To speak up, to speak your mind is communication. If you are afraid to speak up because you are intimidated you are not being assertive when you finally do, you are joining the regular folks. OK let's go to the net once more.
Once more we take the first definition and I'm not happy with it but fair is fair:
having or showing a confident and forceful personality.
"patients should be more assertive with their doctors"
synonyms: confident, self-confident, bold, decisive, assured, self-assured, self-possessed, forthright, firm, emphatic;
"a confident and forceful personality". Why are these two things slapped together? Self-confident does not imply forceful and the rest of the synonyms don't really imply forceful either.
Yet, I would argue that assertive does in fact imply forceful. One is assertive not when one is self-confident, not when one is asking the doctor questions, but when one argues with said doctor. You assert something, you put it forward not as information, not as a request for clarification, not as communication in general, but as part of an attempt to convince someone else, as an argument.
And that is where rude and assertive come together. Let's face it, arguing is impolite. You can argue politely, but the act of arguing is to oppose your view to someone else's view, and that will almost always be seen as rude by the recipient.
To be a little more subtle about this, and to reinforce my original assertion, one is usually intimidated by one's doctor who knows ever so much more than you. So one is reluctant to speak up. When one does, it feels like an argument, it feels a bit impolite, therefore one calls it being assertive. Questions are not assertions.
She has argued with her boss, of course her boss thinks she is being rude. Her boss is paying her to do what she is told to do, so where's this argument coming from? Yet "she" will say she is being assertive, not rude.
Why did I put quotes on "she"? Because her boss might also be female but you weren't reading it that way were you? You see what you just did there? See how you're going to get me in trouble cous'?
Most people will "give" assertive and those receiving it are likely to be "receiving" rude. Very few people will deliberately be rude, yet folks are fast to receive it.
To shoehorn this into a budo context, I think we can use these terms in a somewhat more specialized way. If you're a student and you say to sensei "no way that works" you're being rude. Sensei ought to slap you on the ear to teach you some manners. If you say to sensei "I don't think that works, show me" you are being assertive and sensei ought to slap you on the ear to show you it works.
See how different those concepts are? No? OK "no way that works" is simply denying what sensei said will work. You are not arguing, you are not communicating (well not very intelligently at any rate). You're simply denying the wisdom of your sensei. You can even say "I can't do that" and be just as rude. Your sensei isn't in the business of telling you lies, yet you just accused him of being a liar. Ever wonder what that flash in his eyes is when you say things like that? It's the physical manifestation of rudeness, your rudeness.
If you say "I don't think that works, show me" you can even drop the "show me", it's implied in the two words "I think". The essence of education, the essence of communication is to change "I don't think" to "I think". On many, many different levels. "I believe" is a statement of non-communication, it shuts down discussion, it is rude, it is "no way that works" but "I think..." means you are open to persuasion, you are open to learning something.
This is your teacup running over dudes. If your cup is full you can't have any more. There, that's the free market take on it. More tea is the goal, not having room to learn as a metaphor but having more stuff. More Stuff!
Is arguing with your sensei rude? You're kidding right? I live for students who argue with me, they're called teaching moments. Just don't argue to be cute, that's a waste of class time. If you want to do that you buy me beer. (I don't indulge youthful hijinx for free). Now, if your sensei doesn't think he can rip your head off if he needs to, perhaps he will tell you that arguing is rude, impolite and bad etiquette. Does that mean I think I can rip my student's heads off? Well mostly yes, but not all of them. What I do think is that I can control my class when I need to do it, and I do think that I can then show this stuff works, in a controlled manner, without ripping someone's head off, so I can permit arguments in my class.
Like when I tell a big strong guy to get a bokuto and smash me on the head, "OK do it" then "Oh, wait, let me see that bokuto" at which point I take it from him and smack him on the ear. I used to do the same thing to women's self defence classes. I'd say "OK everyone attack me at once, full force, don't hold back for anything". Then I'd say something like "oh wait a minute I've got to get something" and walk out of the class. End of class. Bwahahaha
Jaw jaw beats war war every time. If you don't believe that you are an idiot and yes I'm being rude to entire countries now. Can you be? Yes. You can go to jail for things like burning flags which is being impolite, er rude, er disrespectful. To what? To the people in power of course. And the people in power in this case are those who can be most insulted by the rudeness. It often becomes a contest to see who can be most insulted.
Sorry rude again.
Respect
Let me begin by saying I'm not very respectful, nor am I very respectable. That's because I have a fairly restricted definition of the word. Us budo types are supposedly all about respect but what we're really about is politeness. There is a difference.
You ought to be polite to everyone, especially armed people. You should be polite to the police, they can shoot you dead. That is entirely different from being respectful toward them. Anyone who resorts to a gun out of prejudice, fear, or a sense of entitlement rooted in gang-like rank-closing deserves no respect at all.... yet ought to get polited all over the place.
Be polite to hornet nests. Be polite to the invaders who have destroyed your country. Right up until you get the poison out.
You should respect me because I've got a high rank in some art or other, or because I've been doing this stuff for 37 years? Why? You should be no more respectful than you would be to some other old guy. Which is to say, you should be polite. I MAY know something, up until then be polite. If I know nothing and am no threat to you at all, then you don't have to be polite.
Respect is reserved for those you know, those you have met. Respect goes between teachers and students, between those who work together. It is earned, not bestowed. Politeness is bestowed upon strangers (and those you know of course) but you can't respect a stranger.
Politeness is an outward form, it's what others can see in the actions between two people. Respect is something that is underneath that form. One can be impolite with someone you respect and no offence is taken. One can "polite" people you don't respect... this is possible but dangerous, I've been polited at by people who have no respect for me at all and it simply results in contempt on my part. I've done it myself, often toward those who polite me first.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a polite fellow. If I'm impolite in speaking to you it's quite likely that I respect you enough to give you a direct opinion, I trust you enough to bestow my true thoughts on you. Of course, this may not seem like respect to someone else, but that's becuse respect isn't the form, it's an internal state, an attitude. Polite is a form which can be connected to respect but is not necessarily so.
In the budo arts respect can be tied quite closely to trust. I will be polite (read careful and attentive) to those I don't know and don't trust but I will be impolite to my students, I will turn my back on them while teaching, to address the class, that sort of thing. I will tolerate a large amount of impoliteness in my classes, so much so that other teachers have warned their students about it, because I don't care about the form. My students call me Kim in class, it's my name, I don't care what they call me unless I figure they need to be reminded to pay attention. You pay attention to sensei, you "ought" to pay attention to Kim and if you do that's fine, I respect that. If I ask you to try to take my head off and you do, I respect that too. If you're too polite (I almost wrote respectful) you will have a hard time swinging away at me. If you don't respect my ability to avoid your attack, you will also have a hard time swinging away. And I will consider that impolite because you should do what old people tell you to do, out of politeness.
If you don't know me, be polite and I'll be polite back. When you get to know me you can make up your mind whether you respect me or not.
Mushin
All us budo types know there's a bunch of things that we're supposed to eventually get, like Mushin, no-mind. So we read about what that is. It's no excess rationalization, there we're sorted. Except, what's that? How much is too much thinking. Can you think your way to no thinking?
So is it stuff that we do without thinking? Like most of driving? We decide that we need to turn left at the next corner and then we do, we don't think about putting on the blinker, reducing speed, turning the wheel, checking for traffic and pedestrians, we "just do it" without thinking about it.
Yet we must be using our brains because we adapt to changes, like when we look up from the text we're sending and see a bicycle we hit the brakes. Seemingly without thought but certainly with the involvement of the brain.
Is that all there is to mushin? Do we simply practice our kata and expect mushin to show up when we've got the habits ingrained?
Or is mushin the result of long preparation? If we know enough different kata to take care of any situation do we then automatically apply the correct one when we are triggered by the correct attack. Like we brake before we turn, that's a habit, no doubt about it. Or the foot to the brake when we're startled, another habit, well perhaps that's an automatic reaction. Like when we flinch away from a hot surface, a nerve reaction that doesn't even get as far as the brain, but bounces from hand to spine to hand again. No brain involved, so no thought therefore Mushin as reflex?
Does habit work for combat? After all that ball bouncing across the road isn't there to intentionally trigger a habit, while an opposing swordsman is perfectly capable of triggering a habitual kata and then killing us when we react as expected. Habitually, reflexively.
So if habit isn't reliable, is freestyle practice (kendo) the way to develop mushin? Do we need random, or perhaps a better term is unpredictable, stimuli to give us the chance to develop mushin? Certainly there is habit in kendo, lifting the shinai in a certain way to defend against an attack is quite predictable in most kendoka, just watch them. They have habits that take care of certain situations.
They also plan ahead if they want to win in the way Musashi called a strike as compared to a hit. A strike is intentional, it is the called kendo point, and a hit is more or less accidental. It's a swing and a hit should something be in the way of the swing, and a miss if not. Is the accidental hit mushin? It was certainly not planned. Not rationalized. Can we call an accidental hit, even if it kills the opponent, mushin?
Perhaps not. No excess rationalization could mean some rationalization. It could mean enough thought to react in an intentional way and strike with an intentional strike rather than just twitch and hit. So not quite no-mind but certainly no-overthinking.
We can peck away at this all day, thinking about this and that, considering whether ten-finger typing is mushin or just habit (if those are two different things). I think of the word and it appears on the screen, if my fingers are tired there may be typos but I see them and automatically backspace and correct them. Mushin?
What about the open house demonstration last week when one of the audience asked if the stuff we were showing was spontaneous or practiced, was it freestyle? The usual answer is no, freestyle with bokuto is too dangerous, so it must be done in kata. Freestyle is done with bogu and shinai. I say the usual answer because this time I didn't give it. I picked up a shoto (easier to control) and asked the Pamurai to come hit me. She did so several times and each time I avoided her attack and swung to her head.
Was that mushin? Is that the way to practice mushin? I'm asking, because I've never been given an exercise to develop mushin and I'd like to find one. (Or is kata the actual exercise and I never realized?) The things I was doing with the shoto were, some of them, from kata, but sticking my left hand out for the Pamurai to swing at and taking it away while I hit her was certainly not from any kata I do. Yet the principle, the riai, is in many kata, the riai is to use the long sword to threaten, take it away when it is struck at, and then to reply. The principle was there for me to choose and use.
I decided to stick my hand out as I did it, it was intended but not planned. It wasn't an accident. I knew she'd swing at it because it was a juicy target and I also knew she would know I wanted her to swing at it. I did it because I knew it would look spectacular to the audience. I know there was that amount of thinking involved because I thought it. Yet it was done "at speed", thought but not excess thought?
I have done this sort of no-thinking, no-planning stuff for years in Aikido. When I'm teaching I sometimes have a theme for a class but rarely a plan. I call for an attack and then I find out what I'm doing at the same time the class sees it. I wasn't taught how to do this, it just happened. At some time in the past I stopped thinking and planning what technique I would use against the attack. Out of laziness as much as anything else I simply stopped thinking about it. Someone attacks, a technique appears as I do it.
Mushin? Or habit. I know that when I do this there are some techniques that don't appear. Those are usually techniques I never liked much (which probably means I never learned them well) or techniques that I can't physically do, or can't rely on any more. Anything that requires a deep bend in my knees for instance, or a sudden change of direction that could twist the knee. Those don't show up.
But because the techniques that I can't do don't show up, is this actually a sign of mushin? It would be a stupid brain that came up with techniques that got me injured, surely mushin would result in just this selection of technique to maximize survival while minimizing injury. Mushin is supposed to be a smart no-mind, not a mindless no-mind.
Did I create/invent this no-mind reaction to an attack? Of course not, I watched my sensei do it for years. I have no doubt at all that I learned it by watching him do it. I knew it could be done, at some point I could do it. Is this watching practice the way to learn mushin? If so the more restricted, structured kata of my sword koryu may not be the way to learn mushin. The very kata that Musashi invented could be useless for teaching mushin.
No, I refuse to believe this, not the Niten Ichiryu kata, at least not the tachi seiho and the kodachi seiho, they are stupidly simple kata, mostly of a single movement, more a hip twitch than a movement. They are simple enough that uchidachi can challenge shidachi through his timing. They can be done with mindless repetition but this would be a waste of time, instead they ought to be used to provide the same sort of environment as a freestyle practice.
Not so for more complex kata, where trying to remember what the next movement is, takes over the brain and thinking abounds. No space for mushin to appear.
Is mindless repetition mushin? It's no-thought but it's not mushin, I'm certain of that. It's mindless, not no-mind. To challenge shidachi with different timings, different attack strength, different distance (within an inch or two) requires thought. To react to these different timings requires attention. Not thought, certainly not planning, but attention and a certain relaxed openness, a flexibility of response that allows instant reaction to the attack when it comes.
If your shidachi is wound up tight like a clock-spring and held there until you, uchidachi, attack, you may be training the fast-twitch reactions of a sprinter to the sound of the gun, but you aren't teaching mushin. After all, uchidachi can simply wait until that pent-up stress overwhelms shidachi's muscles and he collapses, or uchidachi could simply twitch and watch shidachi's reaction waft harmlessly past then complete the strike. This sort of slow, large strike was actually taught by Musashi.
Mushin? You tell me.
That was interesting
We had a healthy crowd of new people at class last evening. I haven't had to teach a crowd for quite a while, I hope they all signed up to the club and paid their $5 fee. Yes we are no longer free, the powers that be insist that we charge "something" and $5 was the lowest they'd accept. It's supposedly our money so we can use it and they have to keep track of it and we don't want it but... But the program they use to keep track of registrations probably has a space for money, after all who would ever have a club and not charge? Who would ever teach for free?
We dropped any sort of fees years ago because it wasn't worth it to try and keep track of who paid. Two different ways to look at it I guess, one being not to charge to save the paperwork (users as "members") and those who work from the paperwork and fees down to the folks doing whatever they are doing (users as "clients").
So we had about 10 clients and 10 seniors which was nice, everyone paired up with a study buddy and went back and forth across the floor in waves, watch your buddy, do what he does, now your turn. Later the beginners learned Mae and Ushiro, standing, from Seitei gata and toward the end of the class they added Migi and Hidari on their own. Somehow we switched to koryu, mostly because it's easier to teach beginners. (Have I mentioned that lately?) By the time we did the fourth one they were turning in the right direction without being told. Properly clever university types they are.
I hope they come back.
For those waiting for a cabin report, nothing very exciting happened yesterday, finished putting the primer on the dojo walls (there's a LOT of wall in there) and did up the upper deck, leaving a trail of red across the wood, on a field of white. Someone suggested it should have left the spill as a circle and added the rays of the Imperial Japanese Battle Flag. Umm, no. I like my wandering red morning sun on grey lake theme better. I left the lower deck as it was, lighter grey with a red blast, that way some of the splashes are still there and yes, some of the grey from upstairs dripped onto the red downstairs.
By next year it will probably all be peeled off again. Never, Never use Thompson's water seal on a deck. No UV resistance and crap water repelling but good stain repelling yields.... well never mind, just don't.
The dojo walls and deck took me past lunch (was up at 6am) so a quick clean-up and pack and away I went to make the class. And that's my vacation at the cottage.
To the advice for today. If you have a large class and beginners to throw into the mix, do the "musical iaido" thing. Mix the beginners into the middle of the seniors and tell everyone to do the kata together. Exactly together. You'd be amazed at how fast the beginners learn by being pulled along. Humans are really good at "monkey see, monkey do" and this is the traditional way to learn budo anyway. Just do what you see and figure out what's happening later.
Sometimes waaaay later.
Biography vs kata
I'm re-reading William de Lange's "The Real Musashi, The Bushu Denraiki" (isbn 98-1-891640-56-8 for those who want to read it), which is a translation of one of the first biographies of Miyamoto Musashi.
It just may delay my painting of the dojo walls, yet a few years ago I didn't give a damn about Musashi's biography. I practice the school, I practice his kata, what use would I have for learning about his life? I still feel that way, I feel (what I want to believe is) a healthy disrespect for the man. By that I mean that I would meet him with bokuto rather than fawn over him like, as they say, a moon-eyed calf. "Show me".
So why read it again? Mostly I'm getting caught up in the parts where his personality shows through, the parts that agree with the kata. Musashi was a pretty direct fellow it seems. Smacks his opponents on the head before they are ready to fight, disrupts their calm, takes advantage of them. The thing is, they don't seem to mind, those who survive the fight that is, they seem to be impressed that he hits them on the head with a short bokuto as they poke their head into a palaquin to see if he's sick. They seem to accept that he goes at them sideways as he arrives on the scene instead of politely heading around to their front side, then hits them as they are trying to readjust.
These guys weren't polite. They were working warriors and weren't into following sporting rules. They learned by trying and getting beat. They taught by hitting people with bokuto. Those that were good at fighting that is. I'm sure there was a great deal of sucking up as well, after all, you got a job by getting hired, just as you do now. But Musashi wasn't so concerned about finding what he called "government work". He worked for the higher-ups, several of them actually. He was a bit of a polymath and designed castles, gardens and tea-houses. He carved and painted and fought in several battles. But of government work he stated that he could wash his whole body with a bucket of water but didn't have the time to wash his soul of the impurities such work would bring.
So yes, while his kata have guided my thoughts for quite a while, it's nice to see that he's the sort of a jerk I like. The sort who doesn't get moon-eyed and suck up for favour, but does what seems right because it seems right.
Get the job done.
The best of intentions.
I have had what some people call an interesting day. With the best of intentions I have done nothing but screw things up.
It started out fine, oatmeal and coffee, then some work on the hallway and bathroom trim while I waited for the dew to get off the decks and the paint from yesterday to finish drying. Not thinking about the cold damp night I just tromped out on the paint with my bare feet and only discovered the brown wasn't dry when I noticed I was tracking it over the white.
Should have taken the clue. The trim went on fine, it's always full of little adjustments anyway so I expect a lot of fiddling. I bought a new battery powered miter saw to save the batteries and it worked well. Finishing that job I did a couple more art installations in the woods, managed not to staple myself to a tree, and called it a morning.
Lunch came and went with nothing more than regret at making too much food. But then it came time to put that crimson paint on the upper deck. I was starting there to avoid dripping on the new paint I intended to put on the deck below, the new paint will cover the drips you see... can you guess where this is heading? Further intending to solve any streaking problems by mixing the paint well I flipped the can over and shook it good to get the goop off the bottom of the can.
Of course the can slipped, I've been using my forearms a lot and the grip isn't very strong. As the plastic can (the old metal ones never did this) hit the deck the can flexed and popped the lid off. A BIG instant puddle of red paint and the sound of dripping. That dripping I had prepared for by starting on the top deck.
Grabbing the roller I spread the paint out on the upper deck as best I could then want downstairs (I did remember to take my paint-soaked shoes and socks off and I wiped the foot well before tracking paint across the dojo floor.
Downstairs I rollered the spill out fast but it is still, I suspect, dripping a bit so we'll see dots in the end.
Did I mention crimson red?
Meaning to let the paint dry I went down the driveway to gather stones and gravel to fill in a hole I've been meaning to fill for two years. Amazingly I did not break the shovel, nor did a rock flip up and puncture my oil pan twenty minutes ago as I drove over the patch. (I drove very slowly).
Going back up the driveway I scraped some dirt and pine needles that had drifted into waves and put a wheelbarrow-full of that stuff at the corner of the foundation where the fill is washing away.
In for supper where I tried to avoid making a mess by shaking a can close to the pan I was heating. Close enough that I bounced the lid off my thumb. More crimson red.
Did I mention splashing paint into my eye when slapping the brush against the side of the can to avoid drips?
I'm sure there was other stuff that I've put out of my mind, but the point is made. Sometimes, with the best of intentions, things screw up big time.
I find that happens a lot when a "fresh breath of air" shows up in the administration. We have seen, in the last couple of years, a tripling of paperwork and a quadrupling of meetings as the new boy and his even newer assistant work hard to make-work with their new ideas that are really old, discarded ideas. Discarded because they accomplish less than nothing in that they are a waste of time on top of useless.
Best of intentions, their hearts are in the right place, they mean well, they're just doing their job. Too bad they don't ever take a month or two to find out what the job is before they jump in and improve things.
So now I'm in the pub down the road doing the Kage notes rather than trying to do a bit more work around the cabin. I built a fire before I left so that it wouldn't be as cold as it was last night when I got back. Best of intentions, what do you want to bet the place is on fire when I get back?
One of the curses of Budo is the ability to predict. Unfortunately it's not the ability to predict the winning horse in the third race, it's the ability to predict what to do during the riot that happens after the horse wins but is declared ineligible due to the jockey using an illegal whip or some such.
Only bad stuff ever happens in my future.
Sundown at Sauble
I watched the sun go down at Sauble Beach, alone in my car. Mostly I watched the photographers, one woman was quite excited, she shot the sun but it was not a good shot, very few clouds and they were well away from the sun so all she had was a big bright ball and a beach. She turned around and shot the almost full moon, good for her, and she climbed up onto a pickup truck camper roof. She was obviously scared but she did it anyway.
This is how you take photographs, not by aiming your phone at yourself and poking the screen.
Just saying.
I am sitting in the Sauble Dunes bar trying the local brews and ordering off the seniors' menu. Did I mention I am alone? I KNEW that there wasn't a lot of time. When I had kids I KNEW it was going to be over in a flash, I tried, I really did try to spend as much time doing family things as I could but with us two parents working and kids who very quickly found friends and hobbies, it was damned hard to do. You get tired of yelling and demanding and becoming angry trying to get everyone somewhere you are supposed to be enjoying yourself.
The grandparents (my parents) have dropped away so no more visits and the kids have gone to college and university so now I'm reduced to hoping they run out of money and come visit. In the meantime I'm at the cabin doing the fall painting of the decks.
Three of six decks painted this afternoon, two of them with some sort of devil's concoction that is supposed to fix up wrecked decks. OMG imagine trying to apply melted toffee with a roller that rejects toffee. What a frustrating experience. On top of that, the more or less white stuff looks good on one deck and crap on another. I'm looking at a second coat of something darker I think, after I paint one more deck Shocking Fingernail Polish Red. Yes I'm going to do it.
Did I mention I check hardware stores for mis-tints? See: alone at the cottage. Also see: nobody around any more to express an opinion on colour.
It's the country music I was listening to on the way into town, I'm not sad but holy cow I'm nostalgic. I miss the things we could have done with the kids.
They're only kids for ten minutes.
I spent eight of those ten doing something else, even when I knew I shouldn't, even though I resented it and knew I'd regret it later. I missed a lot of birthday parties while sitting on grading panels. I shouldn't have done that but we weren't where we are now and I was needed. Still shouldn't have done it, not because it did me no good (I never expected it to do me any good) but because it seems to have done no good anyway. I missed the birthdays and we are more or less where we were, even though we're now in the place where we were supposed to be now.
Because moving goalposts apparently. Yes I'm being obscure, too bad. You don't need to know the specifics of my life, you will be doing your own "important stuff" and missing your kids lives. You will also know you ought to be spending time with them and yet, somehow, aren't.
It's life. It happens even if you know it will but should not. There isn't enough time. Get your face out of faceplant. Get your priorities together, the bus is coming down the street and you may just step out in front of it. Life is too short to do everything you ought to be doing, and this is a first world problem.
Only someone who is incredibly priviledged will have the free time and money to worry about spending time in more than one place. If you can ask the question "should I spend time with my kids or on my hobby" you have a first world problem. If your choice is trying to feed your family or your family starves to death, you protect them or they die, then you have the choices our (and every other species on the planet) have had for most of the history of the earth.
Next time you see one of those internet memes about how to become a better person or taking care of mother earth or cherishing your children who are the future, just remember what a rich, priviledged, expensive life you have, to be reading such trite, time wasting drivel.
Like this.
Seitei for beginners
What would it take to make the Zen Ken Ren seitei iai good for a starting set? Not that I'm suggesting the set be changed in any way, not mine to change but as an exercise in education lets see what it would take to make a good beginner set.
Seitei is used to teach beginners but my argument is that it was never meant for that job. I realize that in many cases seitei is the only choice if students want to study iai (and their sensei want to teach it) so I'm speaking as someone who actually has a choice as to what he starts his students with. Wow, clunky. I have several iai sets I can choose from when teaching beginners, without a choice, one teaches what one has, so I suppose what I'm saying is kind of like suggesting that one put off buying that second Beemer if one wants to go to Cancun this year. Some folks would be happy to have vacation time, period. So the advice is a bit patronizing. But that has never stopped me before.
To it, and I apologize for typos, I'm glasses-less today. Seitei iai was never intended as a beginner set, it was created to teach kendo players how to hold a real sword. The usefulness of this is questionable if one treats kendo as a competitive sport, one should practice with shinai and use it according to the rules of the game. But if one wants to do kendo that reflects the use of shinken ("real swords") one ought to know how a real sword works. This means paying close attention to the edge, to the grip, sure, but you can do that with a shinai. More than those, one needs to understand the weight and balance of a sword. There are things you can do with the weight and leverage of a shinai that you cannot do with a sword.
This became apparent as we reviewed the Kage and Niten seminar we held recently. We began with some Kage suburi and as our bokuto whizzed around our heads, changing direction randomly and stop-starting, I called for the tanren bo. These are long-handled wooden clubs, basically. Lots of weight out toward the tip. In other words, they are heavy and act as an aide to understanding the momentum of a heavier weapon. A five foot long sword is a heavier weapon. The result of using the tanren bo to do Kage suburi is an instant appreciation for the use of the hips and the body and a sway in these to get the weapon to move. Bad posture, trying to cut with your arms instead of your legs, all those things you never quite managed to pay attention to, come into focus.
So Seitei in particular for kendo players, and iai in general is to allow practice with the shinken. To understand how the weapon feels, how it moves, If you accept this, you will see why Iai and Kendo are called two wheels of the same cart. Without iaido your lessons from kendo can become skewed toward a game of tag with bamboo. Without kendo your iai can become an empty game of posing and preening. with no understanding of the reality of combat.
The theory was that by studying how to use the actual weapon in solo forms while also studying how to hit an opponent who is trying to hit you, the complete picture will emerge. It's not a bad theory, quite practical in fact.
But remember that iai was added to kendo for the benefit of kendo players. It was not intended to teach the fundamentals of sword, that was done with the shinai. Iai was added to the shinai teaching to refine it. What that meant was that Seitei could be "representative" rather than "fundamental". It could be a set of practice drawn from several koryu and it could represent the range of actions possible in those several schools.
It was never intended to be simple, or to teach the basics of the sword. The men who created the set were all senior members of their iai koryu as well as kendoka. It would not have occured to them that Seitei iai would become a ryu in and of itself. If one wanted to learn iai one would have joined a koryu, the seitei set was to give some extra information to the kendo folks. In other words, it was like the tanren bo for our Kage practice, a tool to give a deeper understanding rather than something in and of itself.
You know, while we were swinging the clubs around it did occur to me that I could probably set up an exercise class and invent a certification system and make some serious money from the things (especially considering I would also be making the equipment as well as taking money for paper).
The point? Seitei ended up with gradings attached. Once this happened it was almost inevitable that it would begin to replace the koryu themselves. Kendoka are competitive. Humans are competitive and so will focus on goals rather than the process. If there are grades to be had in seitei and none in koryu, the focus will fall on the grades. If seitei can be taught by anyone to anyone it will, as the easiest to access, begin to outstrip the koryu which are more restrictive. Seitei has even moved beyond the kendo federration (which "owns" it) to be described as "The Standard Set of Iaido". It isn't of course but impressions count.
It becomes the only set for some, and the beginner set for others. Even with a koryu available in a club, the fact that gradings happen in seitei will push the training of beginners toward seitei. In fact many clubs reserve koryu training for those who "have learned iaido basics" through seitei. This will inevitably tilt the style of whichever koryu is being practiced toward the style of seitei. I'm not saying this is wrong, if one starts in koryu the fundamental style of that koryu will leak into seitei and this will make passing the grades more difficult.
It depends on your focus.
So far I haven't got to my exercise have I? Let's say I have at least half-way justified an attempt to make a "seitei for beginners" and move on.
Seitei for beginners-design
Before we design a beginner set for the kendo federation iai we ought to decide what we wish to teach. What will be the characteristics of the set? It's style?
The style of iai ought to fit with the style of kendo, so here is my list.
Square hips:
The set ought to make full use of the kendo kamae, that means square hips, square feet. Every strike or thrust ought to be done with the hips square to the opponent (kasso teki, our invisible iai foe).
I have been taught that this is actually so in Seitei Gata, with the exception of those cuts or thrusts that cannot be done with the hips square, the first cut of Sanpogiri, the rear thrust of Tsuka Ate, for instance.
Vertical cuts:
This square on hip and foot position lends itself to powerful dropping cuts from overhead so the dominant kendo strike (men) onto the top of the head will be given the most attention.
This is also being done, and being more and more emphasized in Seitei Gata with even the angled cuts being shifted to a more vertical plane.
Kendo targets:
If we're designing a set of kata for kendo, we ought to use the kendo targets.
The main finishing strike in Seitei iai is the vertical cut to the head, but there are other cuts and thrusts which are definitely "off target". One could argue that this is of benefit to experienced kendoka, who will not develop habits of missing the scoring areas, but perhaps our beginners should be restricted to the targets as they learn. Thus Men, Do, Kote and Tsuki. Men is fine. Do should perhaps be reflected in an angle more horizontal than kesa giri. Kote is largely absent from Seitei except as a tsuka ate, and Tsuki could be raised from the solar plexus to the neck.
Short stance:
The kendo ready stance is quite short compared to many koryu sword styles. This shorter stance should be used in the new set as well.
Again, Seitei Gata iai has shorter, more upright stances than many koryu iai schools, this is a natural development from the square stance and it leads to the next style point.
High mobility:
Kendo is fast, powerful and subtle. (Yes it is subtle, just because you do kendo like a caveman with a club doesn't mean it's not.) The stance is designed to allow this and so our iai should reflect this as well. Kata should be explosive, they ought to feature a continuous connection with the ground, a powerful expression of pressure toward the opponent. The movements should also be small, with a quick shift off line rather than a large circular movement. The drive forward should be well expressed in the kata.
As a long time aikido guy I often explain kendo to aikido types as "what we're working against". Aikido is big giant circular movements, kendo is straight down that line you're trying to avoid with the big giant moves.
Large cuts:
One thing that must be included is the use of large cuts in the beginner iai set. While outsiders might think that kendo is a matter of tiny snapping touches to the head with the hands hardly rising to chin height, there will be very few instructors who will agree that this is so. Most teachers will insist that beginners should learn large cuts.
This does not mean that the cuts of our beginner set should be overly large. The Seitei Gata instructions insist that the sword position at furi kaburi should be tip above hilt. This is to ensure that the cut is not too large and therefore too slow. A cut doesn't need more than about 180 degrees of arc to reach full speed, so a horizontal to horizontal sword movement is fine. If the opponent is on one knee while we are standing, the sword can be almost vertical at furi kaburi and still move almost 180 degrees to accelerate.
While this applies to cuts done while facing the opponent (chudan to furi kaburi to cut) it may not be possible to apply this motion if we have thrust into an opponent in another direction. We are still speaking of the movements of Seitei Gata here, in such things as Moretezuki, where we move from the thrust to a cut of an opponent behind. In this case pulling the sword out then turning to cut is inefficient, the most efficient way to turn is to simply lift the sword as we turn, leaving the tip to cut its way out as it shortens (moves toward our body) because we are lifting the hilt overhead. Still, if the tip of the sword is not above the head as we square to the opponent and begin to cut (furi kaburi) the cut will be too slow. Try to do a "small men" kendo style while turning toward an opponent who is behind you. What? Doesn't work? Hmm.
I think that will be enough to describe the style we are trying to promote. You can add your own points based on your understanding of kendo which is probably much better than mine.
Seitei Gata is "kendo iai", the style points are taught as those of kendo. If you are just beginning, or your sensei doesn't discuss the roots of your iai (which we are assuming is ZKR iai) you can look to Kendo or if you don't practice Kendo, any writing on the kendo no kata, in order to discover the riai of Seitei.
No the riai isn't "where your opponent is", your opponent is where the cut goes. Read the book, if it says turn 90 degrees and cut, your opponent is at 90 degrees. This is not a secret. You don't get 8dan for knowing that. Sorry.
The Specifics:
So now that we know the style, what are the kata? I'm not going to actually make up a set of kata here, you can all do that yourselves if you want to. I simply want to discuss what should be in a beginner set of iai.
I have a model, it's Omori Ryu, the Shoden set of Muso Shinden Ryu.
First, we ought to have a touchstone kata as the very first technique learned. This kata should embody the very most basic, the most fundamental characteristics of our style. You're thinking of Seitei Mae right now and you're not wrong to think of it. We do not draw the sword in kendo (except as etiquette as we begin a match) but we do in iai. Iaido is defined as the cut from the scabbard, kendo is the stuff that happens after that first movement. So Mae isn't a bad choice for the kendo iai beginner set. A horizontal cut from the draw is pretty solid, then as we get to the kendo part of the kata we drop a vertical cut onto Men. The only problem I have is that we do it on our knees. Maybe our beginner kendo iai set should be done from standing.
Aw suck it up buttercup, drop onto the knees and use your beginner iai set to strengthen those thighs and calves, you're going to need them when you do kendo, they're the things that propel you into your strike.
Whether you stand or sit in seiza, whether you draw with a horizontal strike or draw into chudan to threaten your opponent's face (more like the draw while going into sonkyo in your etiquette), this first kata ought to contain the elements you are going to reinforce over and over again.
Chiburi and noto? I don't care, do whatever you want, they are not all that important since they are just the things you have to do to get ready to do another kata. Make it ONE chiburi and ONE noto. Who needs to be distracted with six different ways to get ready for the next kata.
But........ zanshin. I don't care how you put your sword away to get ready to do the next kata. I do care that you do it in a way that you will not open yourself to attack and in such a way that you can attack once more at need. In kendo you may give a perfect strike, it will be refused if you don't display zanshin after that strike. Chiburi and noto are your "go through and turn ready to fight". They are your zanshin.
Now we have our style points, our characteristics to include, and we have our first kata. We're basically done.
Keep it progressive for the rest of the set. Build on skills introduced in the first kata, reinforce the most important parts of the kata and introduce new skills gradually while keeping the unimportant parts static. Same chiburi, same noto, add new skills (different targets, different angles of strike) with each new kata but make it easy to apply what you learned before to what you're learning next.
We're talking beginners and we're talking kendo. Keep the beginner set to one opponent per kata. Seitei Gata moves to the highest level of practice, to Okuden, to multiple opponents at the fourth kata. Why? Because it's not a beginner set, it's a representative set. We're after a beginner set.
From standing, from seiza or from sonkyo but please, where is tate hiza in Kendo? Leave it in the single kata in Seitei Gata by all means but drop it from any beginner set you develop for yourself. If you want to mess around with tate hiza go study a koryu and find out what it is.
OK the justification this morning over coffee on one machine, the adult learning principles applied to a kendo iai beginner set over beer at my local. I'll put them together tomorrow (today) after emailing the parts to myself.
What a life.
Inclusive or Exclusive
Today was supposed to be note-making day for Kage Ryu but once more I've been distracted by a question. Is your martial art inclusive or exclusive. Are you, as a teacher, inclusive or exclusive.
Lest we become confused I'm going to start with the following definition. Inclusive means to welcome anyone into your art and to want your art to grow. Exclusive means to want only those who are like you, and to want your art to stay small and elite.
This is, I suppose the old Koryu is elitist discussion but I hope to go beyond that quickly. To put it to rest here, a budo can be exclusive because it is considered to be a martial art, a tool of war. The techniques are to be kept secret from potential enemies, students are to study the art and keep their mouths shut.
Whether this is desirable or even possible these days is an open question. Such a school today would never demonstrate, never allow video or textual recording within the shuttered (lest somone peek) dojo, and would have to figure out how to prevent former students from talking about the art. The school would also not be a member of any larger organization, due to the risk of fellow members learning the secrets just by watching how they move. This would be especially risky when young members of the secret art are performing the more general art. I am thinking here of Jodo where one of our senior instructors has a koryu he's not inclined to teach outside his own group. Fair Dinkum as is said, but I can see the elements of his style in his students as they practice seitei gata. If he were really worried about this on an existential level he would not be in the Kendo Federation.
But the situation brings up the more general discussion of inclusion / exclusion. He is in an... what am I supposed to use instead of hinterland? Outland? An area that is far away from all the rest of the senior jodo people in the federation. That means that when a bunch of judges come "from away" they are presented with a set of students whose default movements are not the same as those of the majority of the judges. I happen to know what the chief judge at these gradings says in his pre-grading chat. He says that it is important to be inclusive, to be men of good will, to grade strictly, according to the book, but to understand that there are more ways than one to swing a stick into someone's face. I hasten to add that these talks are not necessary, the judges have never indicated that they need to be reminded of this. They are inclusive, as are their own instructors. If they were not inclusive by nature, they would not be in the Kendo Federation. Exclusive types tend to be off on their own where they can dictate what is right and what is wrong without all this inconvenient discussion stuff.
I point out this pre-grading meeting to indicate that a grading panel does get a meeting with the chief judge before a grading and that judge will set the tone for the grading. I have been on panels where we were told what percentage of students were expected to pass. This was not presented as an exclusive way to do things, we were told "of course it is possible that everyone is above the standard and can pass" but we were informed that "in Japan" the percentage is such and such for this rank. Since Japan has a problem with too many bodies in the top ranks, and that they are trying to slow down the flow into those higher ranks, thus creating an exclusive grading atmosphere, the comments were in fact exclusive, if not in theory.
Being a jerk, as I have mentioned before, I simply said (in my head) that Canada is not Japan. Our students get to grade much less often and therefore spend a lot more time between grades. There is also no problem at all with too many bodies at the higher ranks, quite the opposite in fact, they are few and getting old, so the application of a bell curve is inappropriate to the situation. Furthermore, I said to myself in my head, it is good budo to adapt to the situation and not try to force a solution from one war onto the next, that way leads to cavalry charges toward trenches with machine guns. Cue Canadian innovations on the rolling barrage.
Never mind, judges still have permission to judge according to their conscience. When that changes the head judge will simply have rubber stamps to hand out to the other panelists and I can sleep through the gradings.
Organizations can be inclusive or exclusive. The difference is how they treat their membership. An organization can have a constant set of bylaws yet swing from inclusive to exclusive depending on the people forming the administration. From the grassroots this is most apparent in how present that administration is in their lives. Budo administration is present in gradings of course, and in collecting the dues, this is constant to all budo organizations. The money can be inclusive, Aikido grades in my organization used to be $10 a kyu back when I was involved in that stuff, that was pretty painless to get involved, so I'd call it inclusive. Now it is, I believe, a bit more exclusive, with more restricted judging being required. If you have to bring in a judge from somewhere else it's harder to grade the students. If you used to be able to judge your own students but now cannot, that can, might, create resentment and create a more exclusive feeling to the orgnization.
With a judge coming in from another place there can be different expectations on the students. If a judge "from away" is inclusive he will look at the students and judge them on a dojo basis. If what they are doing is aikido, but not in the style the judge is used to, he will pass students accordingly. If that judge is exclusive, he might just fail everyone and imply "your teacher is crap".
The "man of good faith" way might be to pass the students (they are good students, they are doing it the way they were taught and so are performing in good faith) but have a quiet word with the instructor after the grading.
What about having a seminar before the grading so that the visiting instructor can fix the problems before the grading? I'd like you to think about this.
What about a judge who flies in from another country altogether, or from a different part of the country and applies the assumptions of the old place to the new? That's not very inclusive is it? Different places are different situations and an inclusive type would take the time to figure out what's needed. To apply your own assumptions to a new situation is the definition of prejudice.
But it's the same organization isn't it? Not if it's world wide it isn't, a thousand years ago I was at an Aikido seminar where I watched Canadian 3rd kyus drop Japanese third dans straight onto their heads. We had always done hip throws in our training, the Japanese had yet to be introduced to them. Same organization, different training curricula. In North America we have small arts like jodo with "hot spots" of largish population and scattered groups in the outlands. Some groups concentrate on koryu, some only do seitei. There is no question that areas have different training priorities. An inclusive view is to understand all these priorities. An exclusive view would be to demand uniformity.
It's pretty easy to get uniformity out of three students and a sensei, which is where things can end up if there is too much emphasis on exclusivity.
Speaking of sensei, how inclusive are you? Thirty years ago we used to have the occasional student show up in Aikido class and refuse to bow to O-sensei. If I was leading class that day and was asked by a student if he could practice without bowing I'd say "are you respectful of the art and your fellow students". If the answer was yes I'd say "sit down". Now, somewhere long ago I wrote something about bowiing and how a potential student might not want to join a class where bowing happens if they don't want to bow, but that was from the point of view of the student. In short, thinking about bowing might cause thinking about their faith which could cause a personal crisis that they don't need as a University student. For my part I don't mind. I'm of the opinion that intent matters more than form. You may expand that beyond this situation if you wish, it applies to a lot of what I do and teach. The problem is usually self correcting anyway. Humans are pack animals, to become a literal "nail that sticks up" every time the rest of the class bows is highly uncomfortable and the nail-student disappears after a while. Or starts to bow, regardless, I've never noticed them in class after a couple of weeks.
I should just save everyone time and tell the student to bow or get out? First that thought really bothers me. Seriously, it makes me uncomfortable. But if it doesn't make you squirm, then consider that if you're in a public place like a community center or a University you WILL allow them in class. At least in my country. A culture and legal system of inclusivity.
Is this starting to sound political? It's not. You don't get to vote for your culture. You don't get to change legal systems that have been in place for centuries by voting anyone in or out. Not easily and not quickly. Now, if the one you vote in becomes a dictator that's another story but then you don't get to vote on it any more.
"There's none so Scots as the Scots abroad".
"There's none so faithful as the converted"
Discuss these statements in terms of their effects on inclusivity or exclusivity in budo.
Because done my coffee.
Why do you grade?
I dunno, why do you climb mountains? There would be a lot of the same reasoning, I actually like "because it's there". You grade because it's there. It's what everyone is doing next month, so you do it.
The counter-argument to that is the expense. In most organizations the first few ranks are "gateway gradings" costing something like $10 for kyu grades. Later it can get quite expensive.
Some folks seem to climb mountains for some sort of boost to their self-esteem. The steady stream of folks going up Everest (and not other, equally challenging mountains) would seem to contain more than a few folks who aren't climbers at all, just people who figure that if they do something like "climb Everest" they will somehow become a better person. They will like themselves and others will like them. It's unfortunate that it doesn't work this way, you're the same person before and after your 7dan test. There's no mystical portal to wisdom that opens up for you, it's just the same old voices in your head telling you that you're crap. Sorry.
For some people this can almost be crippling by the time they reach a high enough rank. The imposter syndrome can become a real problem as those who are convinced they don't deserve the rank come to a position where they can say that everyone else is also undeserving of their rank.
Some folks undoubtedly climb Everest in the same way that they buy their private jet and have their three mistresses on different continents. They deserve it. These are the folks who go into shock when their number doesn't appear on the board after the grading. These are the folks who run to the judges and demand to know why they failed. "Ask your sensei" is the standard answer for kendo federation judges. At least that's what I was taught and I agree with it. What other answer can there be? You suck in general? Not very helpful.
You need to change such and such. So they go away and fix only that.
You went over time. "So I failed because of a stupid rule that has no meaning". "Obviously you wanted to fail me".
And on it goes for the ego driven.
There are as many reasons for taking a grade as there are people challenging. Unlike mountain climbing, there is some actual use for grades, like helping the organization hold more grades by getting to panelist rank in your region. But I suspect the vast majority of people grade simply because it's time to grade and sensei reminds them of it.
What about the other side? Why do people not grade? Often it's a lack of local grading. We run into this in Canada all the time, especially for small arts like Iaido. There is enough rank to hold regular gradings to middle level ranks in Vancouver and Toronto but that's about it. There is no particular history of kyu gradings in the federation except as kid grades so it's not very useful for the adult-oriented iai and jo arts. Perhaps it should be encouraged, these club gradings, done in the hinterland, would give the students the feeling of being connected without being robbed.
You see, to do an ikkyu grade or higher in Canada you might have to spend over a thousand dollars to travel, stay in a hotel and participate in a seminar before the grading. That's all on top of some pretty high grading fees (a historical funding system left over from the days when nobody ever paid membership fees).
A thousand dollars for an ikkyu? One might see why people from the hinterlands might not grade. I mean aside from being ticked off at those in the fortunate regions calling their area a hinterland. And if you fail? That's another thousand plus next year.
It is a genuine problem, one not seen in countries that have better established grading systems, lots of rank to fill local panels and smaller countries. We once got what-for for having a hanshi in Toronto and another in Vancouver a month later. "What do you need two hanshi in the same month in one country for?" Umm, because a five hour airplane flight between places? How long does it take to fly from Hokkaido to Okinawa? Would you be bitching if those hanshi were in Holland and Belgium within one month? Aaargh.
We do it ourselves. Those in the populous regions tend to forget how much it costs to grade. "Oh, not to worry, you can grade again next year I'm sure you'll pass then". Umm, not when I need a new deck. Not when I can use that thousand to replace the shingles.
What is a bit more interesting (not that you low ranks are uninteresting... ) is the higher ranks who stop grading. Therein lies some valuable lessons for an organization because these folks are committed to the art, have found the time and money to get to their current level but just refuse to go on.
I'm one of those, I have no interest at all in challenging for my 8dan in iai. Under the standard guidelines for gradings under the IKF there is no use for an 8dan.
Don't I want to challenge myself? Getting into seiza is challenge enough thanks.
Don't I want to make my students proud? Don't care.
Don't I want to contribute that fee to the CKF? It's a free grade.
Don't you care? Frankly, no. As I said, it's currently a grade of no use in the organization. If it ever becomes necessary then the CKF can give me an 8dan. Tomorrow. Eight dan is given by the country, contrary to common assumptions, it is not necessary to go to Japan to get one. That means that if the CKF ever needs hachidan, or shogo ranks to run their gradings they can hand them out as necessary. Shogo also come from the country.
I suppose I should back up and say that one reason for high grades to stop grading is the lack of gradings for high rank. I have been trying for three years plus to assemble a grading panel to grade 4dan and above for the jodo section. I'm still working on it, as a result there are 40 plus people of middling rank who are not grading. Please don't ask me why I haven't done this yet, it's too nice a morning to start shouting.
So lack of opportunity to grade happens due to geography and also to lack of rank to put on a panel.
Because people.
Now we come to a very interesting point, why would senior ranks not go for their next grade given the opportunity? The reasons are instructive and should be listened to as "canaries in a mine". When folks refuse to grade the organization should ask why. Many years ago I was told by a seven dan that he would never challenge 8dan. His reason was money, he would not attend every seminar that was taught by his particular panel members for three or four years ahead of his grading, nor would he spend the associated gifto fees required. This fellow had the talent but refused to participate in the extra-technical stuff required. Stuff, I hasten to add, that seems to be doing what it is intended to do, keep the 8dan challengers down. You can have only so many people at the 8dan rank and when those ranks get filled up you start screwing down the lid. This means all sorts of other requirements to the rank appear like jam leaking around the jar lid.
Because I seem to be a sympathetic ear I get told things. Some of those things end up in these essays if I think they will help make those running budo organizations think about what they are doing. I have no particular power to fix stuff otherwise. I say this because a big part of folks not grading is that they have dropped out of the system due to people. Due to small-mindedness, to organizations which contain men who are not of good will. I will leave those specific reasons unspoken because they inevitably involve people who are already well known as "jerks" in the organization. I hasten to add that I'm one of them. (The very fact that I just said that is both true and proof that I am a jerk because it was added to deflect the criticism that by suggesting that there are jerks in budo I'm being a jerk.)
The point is that an organization as a whole can learn just how badly a jerk is damaging the organization by the number of higher ranks who drop out of the grading system for reasons other than money or disinterest.
Stranger danger:
Then there are those who are not "in the loop". Those who don't fit into the standards of the local panel. They may be from a different instructional lineage for instance. This is especially acute when an entire panel comes from one set of instruction and a student comes from away. All the things that the panel accepts and does not notice, as it were, like a fish doesn't think about water, make the newcomer an outsider. This is the "culture" thing that we get told about all the time. You must understand the culture to understand the art! No you mustn't, the fact that you come from a different culture just means you irritate those in your present culture. Let's face it, if the founder of your particular art were to come forward through time to stand in front of you and challenge for 6dan would you pass him? I suspect not. His etiquette would be wrong, his dress would be wrong, his technique, even if he hit all the particular points required for your art, would be wrong.
Culture is another word for prejudice.
When I speak of fitting in with your panel, of giving them what they want to see in order to pass your grading, I mean, quite simply, to pander to their prejudice. By thinking of gradings as a game it's easier to stifle your gag reflex at doing things "wrong" just to get past the grading.
In a very real sense, an outsider to a local scene might be better able to pass a grading if he went to another country (or region) to grade. That panel would obviously be expecting a difference from the stranger and would not expect him to be "of our culture". The trick is to go before the most highly experienced panel possible, the more experienced the judge, the more tolerant of difference.
Why should budo be any different than the rest of life? Those who travel are, on the whole, more tolerant.
That's enough, time to get off this comfy seat and finish my son's new bed.
What is rank and grading for?
While I have written about this before, I've been asked to give my current thoughts on the subject. Why not?
First, rank exists. In the various large organizations you have the kyu-dan system that everyone thinks about when they say "rank". Then you have various other formal rank systems such as the shogo (renshi, kyoshi, hanshi) and the "paper" ranks of various koryu, the licenses (menkyo) with various levels.
You say to me "yes but some arts have no rank at all". Untrue, there is teacher and student, that is an organizing heirarchy. You may have a name board assigning position on the board in various ways, maybe first in to last in, maybe this is modified by how often you show up in class.
Then you have your position in class, many dojo line up by seniority, first in to last, perhaps modified by rank. We have never bothered with that but one day I noticed that the class was piling up a the low end of the dojo. There was a competition to see who could sit in the most humble place. That got converted to "get the h--- over there and stop your nonsense". For teaching purposes we scatter the beginners amongst the experienced from first lineup to last and ignore ranks otherwise.
But rank still exists. Even in a class where you can sit wherever you want there will be those who sit as close to sensei as they can, and those who sit as far away as possible. Like most things this can be driven by ego or by a desire to learn (or both). I'm closer to sensei / on the high side of the dojo so I'm more important (ego). I'm closer to sensei so he can see me and hopefully pick on me (desire to learn).
Whether there is formal grading or not, rank exists. Most functional rank consists of 1. Permission to teach. 2. Permission to judge gradings. 3. Permission to license teachers and perhaps 4. Own the art. These ranks exist no matter what.
I practice a koryu that has rank, I've practiced for longer than most students who hold "paper" in the art yet I have no rank. I started practicing somewhat to one side of the ranking system and remain there. Yet I have rank. I have the rank of teacher, having had permission to teach from my sensei and from two of the last three soke of the art. The most recent soke I have not met yet, but he knows I exist and has acknowledged that. I suspect I have former students who have obtained paper in the system. This is also a form of rank, rank through my students. I was once offered the "rank" of North American Shibu (head of things). I asked if anyone could organize a seminar with soke without going through me. The answer was no. "Then I already have that rank so I don't need a piece of paper but thank you for the offer." Since then others have gone to Japan and there is a new soke so I may no longer be the functional Shibu. If I had that piece of paper on my wall it would make no difference to the present situation.
Are you the only person teaching in your area? Do you have the ear of your organization? You are "the man" in your region, you are the shibu whether you want the rank / grade / work or not. Regardless of your grade, you are the most powerful member of your organization in your region. "Big fish in a small pond" you may say, but ponds often grow.
We just finished a lovely seminar featuring two arts that have no grading for us (Niten Ichiryu and Kage Ryu). There were a dozen or more participants in Calgary and the same at Tombo dojo near Wiarton. Pretty small groups so no particular reason for formal grades anyway, but there certainly was rank present, the sempai kohei system of experience. This is as real as any grading system, when people paired up for Niten the sempai took the uchidachi position and the kohei took shidachi. For Kage Ryu, which is a solo art, there were those up front who knew how to do it, and those behind who were watching while we did suburi.
Colin Watkin sensei, who is shihan of the Kage Ryu and Menkyo of Niten Ichiryu had some interesting comments about rank. He has published these elsewhere so I don't have any hesitation putting them down here. Many of these comments will seem to indicate some of the "problems" with ranks and grades. If you think about it, you may back off this initial feeling. The problem isn't the systems the problem is that there are people within the systems.
Watkin sensei was the person who took Iwata sensei to England for the first time. While organizing that, Iwata sensei asked him what he wanted, what rank he wanted for taking him to England. Watkin sensei said he wanted no rank or other thanks and "if that's what you think than you can go on your own" (I'm paraphrasing of course). Iwata sensei bowed and apologized and said that most people doing this sort of thing would expect some sort of reward.
Watkin sensei also discussed the issuing of paper, from that granted for technique, to that granted for convenience (geographical leadership) to rank granted for favours to the art. All of these exist. One might call a rank "honourary" but it won't say that on the paper (that's a certificate of appreciation). It will probably look just like any other rank certificate in the organization. Is there a problem with this? Only if you think that the paper means anything in and of itself. Would a shibu paper on my wall mean that I get to tell those who have practiced in Japan and have permission to teach that they can't invite their teacher to Canada? The paper means what the organization says it means at any given moment.
How about geography? It won't be much of a surprise I suspect, to tell you that it's easier to get a rank if you're far away on your own in a place with few students. This is rank given to grow the art. I know folks who jumped from 3dan to 8 because "I need it for respect in the foreign country". Is this a problem? Why? It is what it is, a recognition that the person asking is "the man" in that country. Does this sort of rank cheapen your rank? Did you work for 30 years to get your 7dan and this dufus outranks you after 5? It is what it is, see it for what it is, the problem is yours if you're offended by that sort of thing.
I was recently told that for my contributions to the art I ought to be made an 8dan, "I certainly would have been in Japan". I was also recently told that I ought to give my 7dan back because I don't understand proper etiquette. I've been told that my 7dan was "just a reward for bringing sensei over from Japan". What Ever. No rank certificate changes either my skill at the art or the work I do for the art. The SOLE use of any rank I have is to allow me to do the work for the art a bit more easily.
People tend to listen to the rank. That makes them fools but it is what it is.
With that we come to grading. If you are in a place with lots of rank and a well established art, you can be the "anti-grading-guy". This too is a form of competition (which is what the desire for grades is, a competition with yourself (ideally) or your fellow students (shame on you)). It is a competition for purity of spirit. I am above the crass desire for paper, I am Mr. Spiritual Budo. What Ever. I figure you just get nervous doing a grading and so don't want to do it.
Now, if you're alone in the wilderness and trying to get things started and your organization offers you a grade, no, rather hands you one without any test, take the damned grade! It will let you get on with the work. This is the Rank as Punishment I keep talking about.
Watkin sensei talked about his kendo grade where he had not graded for many years (he was a high school coach with teams that won national championships). A senior asked him why he wasn't grading and he said he didn't care about his rank. "But your students do, you should grade for them".
Students want to grade, they love grading. Gradings are useful for building the art because of this. Gradings make them focus on specific skills in a specific sequence. Gradings make sensei teach to the gradings which means teaching things in a specific sequence. This is good for guys like me who just want to work on what I want to work on and the students can come along willy-nilly. I'm selfish, I don't like teaching etiquette or how to dress, but I should. My students have trouble getting through the first few grades because I am working on the stuff they will need for their 6 / 7 dan gradings.
In arts like iai and jo a lot of students are also students of other arts such as karate or aikido or even kendo. If we had no grades for those students to perpare for we would lose them. Let's face it, if you have four hours a week to practice and you have a karate grade coming up but no jodo grade in the forseeable future, what are you going to practice in your four hours? Oh, but these students should be making the time to practice jodo too! Sure, in an ideal world we can expand time to suit our needs. Back on this planet we need the numbers to keep the arts going. If you want to practice an art purely for the sake of the art, be prepared to teach classes of two or three people. Watkin sensei mentioned that for both Niten and Kage it was often just him and the headmaster in class. This is in Japan! In both those arts today, most of the students are outside Japan.
My populous arts have gradings, my small arts don't. Is there a relationship? Beware logical fallacy.
If you are a student who figures grading is a way of proving that you're better than the other guys, or who wants to get through the ranks fast so that you can go teach, consider this a virtual slap across the back of your head. Now come to me to learn a bit of one of my obscure arts and then go somewhere else and be the big shot teacher if it will make you happy. I don't mind.
Are there problems with grading systems? Not really, just with the people who grade. All grading systems of whatever type are just as good as the judges and no better. First in? Yes even here, how often have you heard a kohei suggest he's better than his sempai? Yep, because people.
I've been told that the grading systems I participate in (kendo and aikido) are "committee" oriented with their specific requirements and their judging by strangers. Much better if sensei just hands you the rank one day and says you're worth it. Watkin sensei expressed surprise at this idea saying that he figured most people would go from that sort of system to the major organizations in order to get a more unbiased assessment of their abilities.
Unbiased? Most systems are at the lower levels, and most become problematic at upper levels. The upper levels become those in charge, so other things come into play beside pure technical ability. Sometimes the guys in charge are not the best fighters. Sometimes the guys in charge aren't even good administrators, they are just the guys who have the time to do the job.
Get over it.
My advice on all this grading angst? Take the grade / grading when it's offered. Don't worry about it if it isn't. The organization is what suffers if there is not enough rank around, not you. Let the organization worry about it. I happen to be the guy who has to worry about the Jodo gradings in Canada. I wish I wasn't. Because people. But I'm the one who gets paid the big bucks to deal with it so I do.
Wait, what?
The purpose of seitei
The purpose of seitei is to pass gradings. One of the seniors apparently did an "interesting" kesa giri last evening. He bent over, dropped the sword out of the saya, swung it up low and said "YO".
Epic fail.
Another senior wanted to leave the himo loose at the front as we often do during practice because our sensei used to do that. Another way to fail, this time for wardrobe malfunction.
On the net I am reading long explanations of things like why the first to rei is at an angle and the last is not. Sure, why not, but the answers are always too long. Most can be answered simply with "because seitei".
At recent gradings I heard of two 5dan challengers who failed by one second and two seconds. That's certainly an automatic fail "because seitei" and I don't have a lot of sympathy. Whatever time you're given is the time you have, the rule is inflexible and I'm sure it's necessary in Japan where there must be thousands of people at a time doing a grading.
So come in under time. At 5dan you really don't need sensei to remind you to practice your etiquette until it's fast enough that you come in under 6 minutes.
But can't the timer fumble with his flag if he sees two challengers just switching their sword over as it hits 6 mintues? Sure he could, but that's not really his call. The only way you pass if you're over time is if enough judges fail to see the flag come up... like if they drop their heads to mark your pass while you're still moving your sword to your left hand after your final bow. That can happen, judges aren't supposed to tittle tattle to each other at the table, it's supposed to be an independant judgement from all of them. Still, if you pass like that you should feel awful because you should have failed.
Now, if a group doesn't know it's being timed, or if the timing changes without notice, then you have a reason to complain. But you are not going to get the fail verdict changed. We're on the old rules, the call stands no matter how much video replay you show later.
Trust your panel or don't challenge a grade, those are your choices. You don't get to argue the rules. Well OK you can argue but it won't change anything.
Of all the budo I've participated in, the grading system of the kendo federation iai is the easiest to auto-fail someone. You can fail for an untidy uniform, you can fail for poor etiquette, you can fail for doing the wrong kata or for doing the right kata in the wrong order. You can fail for going over time, an "unwritten rule" given to me at my 7dan test was that I could fail for going under time as well. I had a 15 second window to finish in.
No problem. The purpose of seitei is to grade. Learn the rules and follow them in order to pass. It's as simple as that. Perhaps I ought to be even more clear. Figure out what is an automatic fail and don't do that! I was also told, at that 7dan grading that "you have to wear a montsuki". I didn't, the book says kendo-style keikogi so I suspect I got away with it for that reason.
The stuff that isn't an automatic fail is the stuff you probably figure you ought to be graded on, how well you perform the kata. This means how well you conform to the universal rules of the kata (what's in the book) and how well you perform to the expectations of the panel in front of you. The panel gets to decide on all the stuff that isn't written in the book. The panel also gets to decide what level of skill is associated with which rank.
Is this correct? I dunno, when I did my Masters of Science my research produced three published papers and a few posters at conferences, one in England where I spent an extra week studying iai with Don Harvey. As I was working the department was told during a review that if they were going to require PhD research (original, ie publishable) they ought to give a PhD for it. But I hold an MSc. Was that fair?
Look, I was in that department doing what I wanted to do, I started a Masters and I got a Masters. Just like I stand in front of a panel to grade and I give them what they want to see to the best of my ability. If they want to see a tidy uniform they see one. If they want to see me finish between 5:45 and 6:00 minutes they see that because I spend the day before the test practicing that timing.
It's not my job to protest the existance of a time limit in a small grading because I think it serves no purpose, it's up to me to pass. I stand in front of that panel to receive their judgement, not to educate them.
In other words, the purpose of seitei is to pass the test.
You think the postures of seitei are unrealistic because we use light swords and a heavy one will cause you shoulder damage? Get a light sword or stop practicing seitei. You don't get to change the kata. Well, you can, but don't expect to pass.
A hachidan told me several years ago about a fellow in Japan who was headmaster of a small (compared to the two main schools in the kendo federation) koryu iai. He challenged the 8dan test for many years but never passed. The hachidan told him that he had to change his style to give the panel what they wanted to see but this fellow refused. The hachidan asked him why he was challenging then, after all he was the head of his school, why keep failing a test for a rank that wasn't all that useful to him anyway.
"They need to see what I do" was the reply. Now, before all you 4dans decide to take your panels to school, remember that this fellow was the head of his school and he had a 7dan so he could obviously do seitei as his panels wanted to see it. That's speaking from a position of authority. Do you have that same authority?
If your authority is that some teacher or other once told you to do it "that way" you might want to rethink your lesson to the panel. If you "feel" that your way of swinging the sword is better than the way the panel wants to see it, you might want to rethink. That's provided you want to pass. If you don't care about pass or fail and you want to pay the testing fee, by all means, step on up and show the panel your skills. Hell some of them may even agree with you, and given enough time the majority may come around to your way of thinking and pass you.
Don't hold your breath. Seitei is more standardized than it might appear.
Seitei is not an easy set of kata to be given to beginners so they can learn the fundamentals of iaido. Look at the 12 kata with the eyes of an educator, do the skills build from one kata to the next? Is an angle an angle? While it may be moving in the direction of uniformity, all angles are moving toward kesa angle for instance, the set will never be uniform. It would have to be replaced to make a uniform set.
Just because you start with seitei these days doesn't mean it's a starter iaido school. Some schools only do seitei and almost never do koryu. Why is that? It's because grading. You learn seitei because you need it to pass your first / next grading. Koryu is not harder than seitei, it's not something you should do beginning at 3dan because you need a koryu kata for your 4dan test. Koryu is actually easier than seitei, same etiquete both ends, same fundamental movement, that sort of thing. Once learned, a movement can be applied throughout the rest of the kata.
No, the purpose of seitei is to pass gradings. Learn what the automatic fail points are and avoid them, only then can you start demonstrating your skills. If you show up with a juban out of place, a hakama that doesn't fall correctly, or vertical folds at the back of your uwagi, the ushers may as well boot you right back out of the room and same some time for everyone.
If you don't practice to finish under the time limit, you're only stabbing yourself in the foot. The purpose of a grading is to pass that grading, the purpose of seitei is to have a set of standards to use for grading.
The purpose of seitei?
Beach Seminar
What a great way to spend the last weekend of the summer, out on the beach swinging BIG swords. The locals seemed to appreciate it too, we spent the morning raking the sand and picking up the garbage from the park (the equivalent of sweeping the dojo), and even raked in the hole at the bottom of the slide and the trench around the roundabout. Yes it's that sort of place, where kids can still fly off the equipment and learn how to tuck and roll.
Anyway, half an hour of that, warmups, and a couple hours of Kage Ryu. Off up the block for ice cream (Oh, you guys are here again) and back to the cabin for lunch and an afternoon of Niten Ichiryu. At one point we had 7 pairs across the dojo in the cabin, a bit crowded but with most of us having done this stuff before there were no throbbing heads.
At least not from the sticks. I can't speak for the empty bottle of Tasmanian Whiskey and the bags full of beer cans we carted back to the city for recycling.
The deerflies, horseflies, blackflies and mosquitos were mostly gone, just the house flies to bother us and the dragonflies to amuse us. Everyone wanted to see a bear but the best we got was a mini-jaguar (so it was claimed) and some overnight help from the raccoons with the salad that was left out. They also helped us with the recycling bags, rearranging the cans and bottles all over (and under) the deck for easier sorting one presumes.
At one point we had seven vehicles parked in various places around the cabin, but nobody hit anything, mostly from being careful, unlike the idiot woman who just blew through the red light and almost hit two cars turning left to clear the intersection outside the window here. Yes you are late for work folks but really, the kids are back in school, get up ten minutes earlier and you'll miss Guelph Rush-10-minutes altogether!
OMG I'm not kidding, ten minutes, by the time I finish this it will be all old people and delivery trucks driving at reasonable speeds.
The Pamurai slept for most of the ride back to Guelph but had to rush to teach her class in Kitchener, then rush back to make our 10 to midnight class which didn't happen because the schedulers of classes didn't talk with the closers of the building I guess. Needless to say the stress of the seminar combined with the stress of being back in the city was showing a bit as she veered in front of a girl who was trying to drive the wrong way up a one-way. A pint of strongbow at the local seemed to calm things down.
Many thanks to said Pamurai for organizing the seminar. I hope by next year she'll have forgotten whatever stress (and mostly lack of sleep due to drinking until 3am....) there was because it seems to be the consensus that we ought to make this a regular event. I'm good with that as long as the breakage stays at minimal levels and everyone continues to cook / clean / wash up without being assigned to it.
Men and women of good will, you can't beat them. It was a group with one thing in mind, train hard, keep it running and then dive for the seminar vitamins.
Thanks to everyone who attended and expecial thanks to Watkin sensei who is probably still in the air heading back home.
I'll have more to say I'm sure but now I'm off to deliver speaker wire and pots to the son who is in a new place for the school year. Hope I can find it on just two cups of coffee.
Retirement, yeah that time where you just sit on the deck and read a book.
I'm not feeling that
How did that statement become a thing? I see it all over the place, mostly attributed to pop singers (OK that's how it became a thing) in instances such as I'm not feeling it that I'm compared to some other singer.
I think that the comparison isn't valid? Is that what that means? If so it is aimed the wrong way. I'm not feeling it means I'm uncomfortable with the comparison. So who cares? But "I think the comparison is invalid" would give us something further to talk about.
Is there an appeal to emotion fallacy? I suspect there is. Yep, I cared enough to go look and sure enough, it is "googled" often enough to pop up in the list of "you looking for this?".
I'm not comfortable with that so you must not do it. Should we buy into that argument? Is it even an argument? If it is, we run into the same problems we run into when people talk about rights. I've got a right to do that! Yes, perhaps, but your right conflicts with my right to do this other thing so now we argue about it. You don't feel the comparison of yourself with someone else but I do feel it. What do we do then.
Lawyers? Or do we have a heirarchy of feelingness. If you're a woman and I'm a man do your feelings trump mine? No, men have fewer feelings than women, well known fact, so men's feelings ought to top women's because they are less numerous and therefore more precious. Well known fact that a species' importance increases with its nearness to extinction, same with feelings. Or is that a false analogy?
When did it become correct to base our decisions on our feelings? When did belief become more important than reason? Was the enlightenment just a fad?
This stuff isn't new, back in my day we had "the personal is political". It flippin' well is not. Corporal Carrot says just because it's personal doesn't mean it's important. Now, if there's not a logical fallacy of appeal to a fictional character that one's sorted.
What's the budo equivalent of this stuff? Here's a list of fallacies from Carson-Newman college. Never heard of them but they say that knowing a fallacy when you spout one is intellectual kung-fu. Must be relevant, they mention a martial art. They say you really shouldn't use an argument from fallacy because it makes you look stupid or deceptive when they are caught. I dunno, there are whole classes of politician that seem to thrive on the things.
Irrelevant arguments:
Appeal to force (ad baculum):
If you don't agree that my art is the most noble art I will hit you really hard on the head with my stick.
Note, an appeal to force might not be a poor argument in budo if we are discussing whether or not your art lets you hit me on the head with a stick. In that case, it's the actual force that is the proof of the argument, not the threat of force which is still a fallacy.
You hear this one a lot in discussions of budo.
Genetic fallacy (ad hominum):
Your art came from Germany and not from China, India or Japan so it's not a real martial art. This is the argument that the source dictates the truth.
Personal attack (ad hominum):
Your budo is garbage because the fourth headmaster back used to beat his wife. Seems a very popular sport these days to take down the dead white guys because they were jerks. And why not, they were jerks and the fourth headmaster back probably did mistreat his wife, I'm sure she'd tell you so.
Ad populum (truth by democracy):
Judo is a much better martial art than Iaido because many more people in the world do Judo than do Iaido. Real men do MMA. The seminar we're about to start is amazing because we will be doing two arts that hardly anyone in the world do, very exclusive, very important because ... see blue whales.
Appeal to tradition (ad traditionem or ad antiquitatem):
Really? Do I need to?
Appeal to Improper Authority (ad verecundium):
The emperor's third cousin is head of our budo organization therefore...
Biased authority:
We paid Chuck Norris to say our form of TKD is the best.
Appeal to emotion (ad misericordiam, from pity):
Or as I like to think of it, ad misery (I suffer more than you, I'm a bigger victim therefore I am right). There are no appeals to emotion in the martial arts are there? It would be silly to say "I feel this kata needs some sword twirling so therefore it needs some sword twirling". I was fonder of our founder than you flounders therefore I ought to be the big fish. I was with sensei for 30 years before he threw me out for stealing the coffee money, I ought to be sensei now because you guys have only been here for ten minutes.
Nah, never happens.
Argument from adverse consequences:
Don't denounce the fourth headmaster back for being mean to his wife, it could reflect badly on the school. Oh yeah, big time. The dignity of the dojo, the honour of the organization, the a-word of the association. Getting caught is the biggest sin, not the doing of it.
Argument from personal incredulity:
Are you kidding, this is not a logical fallacy in the martial arts, it's one of our most powerful weapons of dojo war. "No, there's no way you can do a double back spinning axe kick to that target! I don't believe it!" And ten minutes later the ambulence is arriving at the door.
The founder didn't dodge bullets because I don't understand how anyone could do such a thing.
Component Fallacies (poor symbolic logic, stuff just doesn't add up):
Begging the question (petitio principii, circular reasoning):
My budo is still here after 400 years. Anything that stays around for 400 years must be pretty good. Therefore my budo is pretty good.
My budo teaches the mysteries of ki. The things that I have learned can't be done without using directed energy.
Hasty generalization (dicto simpliciter):
The last three national champions came from the Tuktoyuktuk dojo so the next one will come from there as well. You know, in a judged sport that may not be a fallacy at all. Everyone knows the USA will win at basketball, Canada will win at hockey and Japan will win at judo.
False cause (post hoc, non causa):
I always wear the obi my sensei gave me because I always win when I wear it.
Irrelevant conclusion (red herring):
How the fourth headmaster back treated his wife is just fine, after all the fifth one back beat his dog and that's worse.
Non Sequiter (doesn't follow):
My budo is the best because our fourth headmaster back didn't beat his wife.
Slippery slope (camel's nose):
Look, if you don't stop talking about the fourth headmaster back the next thing you know there will be wife beating headmasters all over the dojo.
Either/or fallacy (excluded middle):
Either we erase our fourth headmaster from the records or our school will collapse.
Bored now, there's lots more of them but it's become all about the fourth headmaster back.
And I'm just not feeling that.
Please forget me when I'm gone.
Of many, any jobs that I've left over the years I don't recall doing the go out for lunch on the last day thing on any of them. I'm just not that friendly, and I suppose just walking out one day without telling anyone I'm going isn't all that conducive to planning a workplace lunch. I don't look back much. You're not supposed to, but these days that will be "an mean thing" to those who figure you need to be in constant thought of the past. I've just never been all that good at it, I could give pop-psych reasons but I don't care much why, it's enough that I don't hold grudges very well. For that alone it's worth not keeping score and making lists. OK I'm lazy, I don't want to spend the energy it takes to stay angry and the default is happy so I look back fondly on even my past enemies. Enemies? You must be really important to have those, I never considered myself that important or that much in need of attention.
Sometimes you're not above noticing your enemies, sometimes you just don't notice them.
I've got "grand-students" now, and maybe even great-grand-students, but I try not to be too concerned with them. They aren't my students and they don't have to know who I am. I don't ever want to walk into a dojo and see my photo hanging on a wall like some dead guy. I bet some of my students just had a bit of a start there. It would no more occur to them to put my photo up than it would to me. A big part of that reasoning would be the way I run my classes I suspect. You are free to wander in and out as you wish. I don't charge so I have no reason to keep track, if you show up I'm a happy guy and will teach you. If you aren't in class for a few months or even years I'm just not built to fret about that. I may worry a bit that you're in good health but not that you're missing my tutelage. I teach mostly physical technique and I try not to get too philosophical about it all. If I do I try to keep it short and expand on things here in these essays which you can read or not as the mood strikes you.
So if a class goes by and I don't do an essay we were likely just reviewing kata, or learning new ones. Occasionally I'll do class notes so those who are not my students, ignore them.
I don't expect or even want to be remembered by my students who have gone on to start their own dojo. I do apologize to those who tell me that they hear my voice in their head when they're teaching. I'm flattered of course, because I hear my own teachers in my head and I'm happy for that. I hope my voice fades as they discover their own budo, and I hope it fades quickly because they really should be forgetting me and my teaching and going on beyond where they got with me.
Too much sensei worship can get in the way of going beyond, but really, a much better way to be faithful to your teacher's teaching is to become better than your teacher. I'm not talking about those mid-level students who are so full of ego and fresh knees that they figure they're hot stuff, I mean those who spend enough time to learn the things that are worth learning. Time is a harsh sensei. Time takes care of those who can't get beyond the technique.
Stay with me long enough to get over the techniques and into the place where you can actually learn on your own. That means that, while you may hear my voice in your head, you don't have the urge to preach my words at your own students. Never say "Kim said" instead just say "this" and know that it's true because you know it's true.
Please forget me when I'm gone and remember the art instead.
Kim Taylor
(and he signs his name.... I'm not without ego, I'm telling you what's good for you, not what I actually want)
Olympic Iaido
Well, first time in quite a while that FB has inspired anything but a sort of sinking feling. The current question is Iaido in the Olympics. Half or better simply say no, iaido isn't a sport, it's private, it's personal. These are certainly reasons for not competing but not an argument that it can't be treated as a sport. In fact just about anything you do can be a sport, it's a matter of judging it. In 1895 or thereabouts Indian Club Swinging was an Olympic event. No problem.
Some folks argue that it is a sport judged like ice skating or synchro swimming and so would be open to all the same nonsense that happens with judging there. My response would be "what's your point?" One might argue that the same sort of judging nonsense is already in the art with the grading systems and tournaments we have.
Tournaments, the very fact that we hold them is proof enough that the art could be set up as an Olympic sport so let's not argue that it isn't a sport or that it couldn't be judged. It is, and it is.
Some argue that the art would be a good way for older folks to participate. Others say that there aren't enough participants. Both these observations would change when the government money comes showering down on the new Olympic sport. There would be a massive growth in participation, much of it being from young, fit, aggressive, competition-oriented kids who would push the oldsters aside very quickly. Those in the arts now would have to content themselves with being judges, coaches and administrators. Their days of respect as practitioners would be over very quickly.
There are other considerations that haven't been mentioned in the discussion yet. First, where is the world championships for iaido? A sport that has no world championships isn't likely to become an Olympic event. The last serious attempt at a "WIC" was in 1997 at the Kendo world championships (WKC) in Kyoto. They never happened because they would be "too much trouble" with the kendo championships going on at the same time. In last year's WKC in Tokyo I heard not a peep about an iaido championships. This is the Kendo Federation, the organization that would probably have the best shot at organizing a world championships due to iaido members and organizations in dozens of countries. I honestly don't know of any other organization that has the same potential. The ZNIR could conceivably take a run at a world tournament and this might be a way for that group to expand internationally (the first to a world championships will be the one that attracts the sport oriented folks). But the ZNIR isn't structured along sport lines like th ZNKR is. They would have to reorganize their administrative systems.
Neither of these groups seems interested. Could another group come up with a sport-oriented iai from a standing start, and create a world championships that would lead to an Olympic sport? I don't know, the infrastructure is very hard to create.
The best bet would be the Kendo federation I suspect, so is it interested? The answer is obvious, if they didn't want a World Iaido Championships in 1997, when they could have started in Japan, with more countries participating than when the Kendo championships began in 1970, it isn't likely to happen. According to Alex Bennett's Doctoral thesis, the Kendo federation made a conscious turn away from sport kendo in the mid-1970s and has continued on this course. The International Kendo Federation joined GAISF (now Sportaccord) the pre-olympic organization of sports bodies, not to attempt to get into the Olympics, but to become the Olympic-recognized Kendo organization so that they could prevent Kendo from entering the Olympics.
Does this mean that the Olympic movement recognizes the FIK as the world body for iai and jo as well? I don't know, if not, there is still room for another organization to get iai into the Olympics. From the grassroots? I doubt it. But perhaps the Koreans might have a shot through their Kumdo or Tae Kwon Do organizations. These administrations and clubs are already in place, a worldwide competitive iaido could be created within this framework and within a couple of years a world championships could be created. This, more than anything, would give iaido a shot at the Olympics, but would it be the iaido you want to practice? As we see in most discussions of Olympic iai, it comes almost instantly to "I don't" or "I do" and the practical questions of getting a sport into the Olympics are rarely considered.
It could be done. It would not be easy.
It would not be the iaido you do now.
Cabin Days
Frankly, it was a bit of a shock, walking into the cabin this weekend. Floors, rearranged furniture, an outdoor shower with windbreak. I've put quite a bit of work into the place in the last two years. One thing I could have done is some work on the screens, or at least door discipline. I have three flies that won't leave me alone. I put up two fresh fly paper strips and out of curiosity read the ingredients. Rosing Rubber mineral oil, 62% Tack-paper tape 38% Total 100%. Is this list just an excuse to make really small type? Good to know all the ingredients I guess, and it says no poisons, no vapours. Sure they are ugly but they have worked for generations and they look sort of retro with the little bodies stuck there. Wish I saw three of them just now as I looked up but no, I'm so sweet they're sticking to me.
We're here to prepare for the seminar next weekend. This will be the first with an invited sensei as Colin Watkin comes from the exotic east to teach Niten and Kage. We will probably have 12 or 15 people in the place, Colin will be at a B and B to avoid the crowds sleeping on the dojo floor. Yes there is a dojo, a ridiculous 13 foot high, 800 square foot thing that I got as my reward for letting the cottage be built out of logs. If I remember right (I probably don't) that was $60,000 dollars worth of logs 20 years ago. But of course that's it. Logs, no insulation, no framing, no inside or outside wall covering, just logs.
Try heating a two story building with a thermal mass of logs downstairs and a 13 foot high ceiling upstairs underneath a metal roof using a wood stove. We did for years.
My martial arts journey has been sort of like this cabin. Starting out with big plans (a dojo in a cottage, "I'm going to learn budo") it started with what I could put into it. Two week's vacation got us from the foundation to the roof trusses. I had to go back to work while the guys finished the roof and the job stopped with the shell finished. It looked like a tower, pretty much three floors straight up in a square.
For the next several years that's where things sat while I worked to pay for the shell. Sort of like learning enough budo to get the shell of a school, and then years of what feels like no more learning as you wear the connections into your body.
Slowly, over the last 20 years I've managed to do some work on the place, not just me but also those others who have been using the place. Some work from the specialists too, a well pounded (old school, not drilled), plumbing and a septic system, electrical, all required by code so all done. Like going to the occasional seminar with senior instructors to get those special jolts of knowledge that you need to keep going, each chunk a spur to more learning. One of my fellow sword students spent the summer building 800 square feet worth of decks. The electrical system got changed when we realized that we would be paying to install the electrical from the road and then paying to have ourselves connected regardless of how much power we used. A solar/wind system went in and has remained (minus wind now) to this day.
A lot of the work was done by folks who just got tired of me not getting around to it. Drywall to make rooms instead of cages, a bathroom cabinet and toilet from the hunters, donated furnishings. I continued to peck away at stuff. Over the years it's hard to tell how much of your budo training is you, how much your fellow students and how much your sensei. It all ends up in you. Although we may say "I built it myself" very few of us really do all the work on our house.
Year by year, with help and alone, I nibbled away at the place and it always looked semi finished, with gaping holes in the structure. Eventually though, you could see what it was going to be. Parts had to be repaired because they weren't done correctly, I spent most of last year staining logs and decks that were sun-blasted and damaged because they weren't finished for way too many years. The upper decks still won't take regular stain, I'm going to have to sand the boards I think. They are so damaged the stain just fell off.
Big chunks of my "knowledge" of martial arts have also been rebuilt over the years. Things that were half done that fell apart, things that were simply never built correctly in the first place. But because the shell was there, the work could continue. It's frustrating having to repair things while there is more to be built, I hated doing the decks again while the floors inside were waiting to be done. But first things first. No decks (and stairs up to the decks) meant no access to the cabin at all. You have to have a foundation before you can build the house. You have to keep rebuilding, repainting, reworking to keep a house from falling down.
But almost un-noticed this place has come down to "finishing". Twenty years of work on the foundation, the substructure has come down to some short, sharp work this last couple of years. Flooring laid, drywall installed, shelves built. The flooring has been a delight to see and an excuse to rethink some design.
Needing to clear all the junk off the floor has meant an excuse to get rid of it. Loads and loads of it. Several families use the place and each has, on occasion, dropped old pans, old chairs, old junk in the place. Just like you accumulate old ideas and old ways of doing things that clutter up your budo. Seeing, finally, how it could be, you make changes. You take the old stuff and throw it out. More important than that....
Damn flies are humping on my coffee pot! Find the tape!
More important than that, I have rearranged the furniture so that visitors can't come in and shove their bags, purses and other junk under the couch or in the corners. The big spacious living area is now big and spacious again, that means an accumulation of empty boxes gets noticed and cleared. No more room for furniture ought to discourage donations. New, easily scratched and dented floors will, I hope, encourage some care with what is dragged across them, banged down on them and sanded with tracked in grit.
Because it was "everyone's" job to clean and tidy the place it was nobody's. Or those few who did clear away did so in their own way, so that things went to different places regularly and needed items were (unfortunately) no longer needed because they were no longer there.
Too many teachers, after 20 years or so you really need to clean up the junk you've accumulated in your budo. You need to get far enough along to see what the final project will look like, then you need to be ruthless in cleaning out, redesigning and setting things up so that the junk no longer accumulates. There comes a time when you need to stop listening to every new expert that comes along, when you stop being a sponge and start being a filter. As much needs to be rejected as accepted. This only happens when you have looked at all the junk and can identify the stuff that will contribute and that which will just accumulate in the corners making a big room small.
I really want to report that there's a fly on the new paper but I'm afraid I'm going to have to do some swatting. Now if I can only figure out where someone decided a good place for flyswatter...
Swatter under machete, 30 years of budo and three flies down.
Work yourself out of a job
What is the end goal of teaching self defence if not to work yourself out of a job. I have taught self defence for decades, no that's misleading, I've taught self defence to students for ten weeks many, many times. The goal is to give them the tools to resist and escape a physical assault and say goodbye when they have them. It doesn't take long to do that and so I'm out of that particular job.
It must be working because I don't pay any attention to the classes any more, they are inevitably cancelled due to low registration. They have gone from twice a week and 30 per class to one Saturday with maybe six, to zero.
That's good isn't it? I don't like teaching it much anyway, it hurts and I have to reveal the hard facts of life. That it's not likely going to be a stranger, and it's almost certain there's not going to be a cop or some other person to protect you. Self reliance. But those who take self defence courses get that or they wouldn't be there.
I hope I've worked myself out of a job because folks already know self defence, not that this entire generation of university kids believe it's someone else's job to take care of them.
As I was writing in my nice, quiet, friendly cafe yesterday, I became aware of a loud voice behind me. A woman of "a certain age" was berating the staff because she was convinced that she had received a tortilla with wheat and therefore gluten the day before. "I'm not angry" she shouted, "but I must be assured that the staff be notified that this is unacceptable" and on and on. Call me cruel and selfish but my anger management issues were being impinged by this ranting. I went into passive aggressive mode and leaned over her shoulder and whispered in her ear "excuse me dear, can I get by to get a refill". She moved aside and started to slow down but it was five minutes or more before she finally let the manager get back to work. The manager who explained that just because a food is a different shape it doesn't mean it's a different ingredient list. When the manager was gone another woman started saying how much she agreed with the first woman because dying of anaphalactic shock is no light matter.
I turned around in my chair and started watching since this was now about having an audience. But, being in witness mode I wasn't arguing or agreeing, I was just watching and they wound down to leave me to my quiet place once more. Except now I had a bad taste in my mouth and was upset enough to write down the whole thing here so I can feel better.
My point is that these women expected, required, that the restaurant staff have special diets available for them, and that the staff be educated to ensure that these requirements never be compromised lest the customer die. If you have a food allergy that will kill you is it a good idea to eat in restaurants? Should you not assume that the low-paid, young staff will mess up and kill you instead of assuming their job is to feed you safely? If you are a restaurant owner and say you will provide special dietary needs are you not opening yourself up to lawsuits or, at the least, unpleasant people who complain that you are trying to poison them? Is this sort of "entitled behaviour" not the route to signs in the door that say "no special diets offered, eat at your own risk"? I honestly can't see how else that sort of thing can turn out. In fact, I have seen these signs, say things like "we cannot guarantee that our products are nut-free".
Perhaps my self defence classes are not useless any more. The main lesson was and would be, take responsibility for your own safety, don't assume it's someone else's job. Am I cruel for believing this? I suppose I am. The world, after all, needs to bend itself around our needs and wishes and whims yes? And when it doesn't, perhaps we learn the cruelest lesson.
One way or another we will eventually work ourselves out of a job, but that's a bit morbid for a Saturday morning at the cottage with the sun shining.
Do I hear folks saying, way back there before all the complaining, that you can't learn self defence in ten weeks? In a day? Sure you can, folks have come back and told me it works. What you can't do is learn budo in ten weeks. Why? Is it so hard? No it's not, it's no harder to learn the physical techniques of budo than it is to learn anything else physical. It has nothing to do with being hard to learn, it has everything to do with not stopping after you've learned the physical stuff.
You can't work yourself out of a job with budo (while you are alive), budo is for life, you (can) do it until you die. Even if only in your head, you can practice. Budo is like breathing, it's just something that "you've always done". There are many reasons for starting, self defence, a quiet place in your busy life, learning about a bygone culture, the magical fascination of moving "through" an attack. All these reasons can end. Every time you set something down as "why" you can find "done". But budo, like breathing, can become "what we are" rather than "why we do".
So far I haven't worked myself out of my budo job.
If it's not new, it's old.
Skip down to "HERE"
I picked up the paper and put it back down again. It's not that I'm uninterested in the news, it's just that it isn't news, it's the olds. I've seen it all before, several times and it never changes.
It doesn't matter where it comes from, which country, it's all the same. Sometimes I visit other countries and when I come back it all looks the same. If I don't read the paper for a month I can pick up any old paper and it will have the same stories, the same headlines as always.
Is it any wonder people vote the same way regardless of who is the leader? Just keep the old names on the parties and nobody will notice because nobody listens because its all the same. In Canada the new Reform Party couldn't get any traction outside the West. Then they bought the failing old Progressive Conservative (Tory) party and suddenly they were the old party instead of the new party. Got power for over a decade.
Is this inattention good or bad? I don't know, as a species we're a bit out of control and due for a population collapse, so maybe we don't pay attention and knock our numbers back a bit. Maybe that's a good thing, as long as it happens a long way away to strangers.
But that's not what I want to preach about. Hmm, the church of birth control and being happy with what you have and working your way out of a job as a moral leader because you've given the flock the tools to stop being a flock led around by the nose. Education? Why is that not free for everyone forever? Don't want to work or lost your job? Back to school and be paid a living wage. No other social safety net except for those who can't learn for physical reasons. Turn the prisons into boarding schools and teach, teach, teach. What worse punishment for bad guys than to be forced to learn the three 'R's until they pass a standardized test?
On the other hand, I think I could go back to school for free but I haven't bothered to check because there's no degree, diploma or certificate I want to earn. Maybe a doctorate in philosophy? What would I do with the paper? I can't find any of my education or budo paper as it is. How would I put a new degree in with the old stuff?
This really is going nowhere.
HERE
Last evening we did some kage and two days ago we did some jodo kata. To some of our students this stuff was brand new, first time ever. Yet they got it immediately because they have had the fundamentals pounded into them for the last four months and I keep yelling "it's all the same".
The "new" kata were really "old" movements in a new dance form. With the background knowledge of how to move the new patterns were easy to pick up. It's only by convincing ourselves that each and every kata is somehow "different" that we make this stuff difficult to learn, requiring more time than it takes to learn how to root around in someone's brain (legally, we can buy a handgun and do that tomorrow).
OK I think I'm angry at something. Sometimes the news leaks into my head.
This impression that every kata is different is easy to get when we look at something like seitei iai, taken from several koryu, the kata have very little apparent similarity of basics. I mean what, five chiburi in six kata? Different to-rei at the beginning and the end? Who thought that was a good idea? Oh yes, a committee. After 30 years of adjustment a somewhat unifying force, kendo, has been glued on and now you can see a sort of theory beginning to happen. Hips square for all cuts and thrusts (except the ones that aren't), that sort of thing. Jodo seitei is a lot more sensible... not quite the right word... easy to grasp at a fundamental level, because the kata come from the same, single root. Oh please do point out to me that two of the kata don't come from Shindo Muso Ryu. Who invented those two kata?
Jodo koryu (SMR) can be had from Seitei with very little effort. Learn the basics and the new dances fall into your lap.
Kage Ryu? Watkin sensei (the current shihan) mentioned his initiation to the school. He was asked to join but even so the Kage sensei and seniors asked him to demonstrate his other budo experience. That prior experience with the sword was expected. On seeing that he could indeed swing a sword they then informed him that there is no paper involved in the school. No rank, no grades, just practice. All good.
So there is an assumption that what you have learned in other schools is applicable to this one. Old habits can be modified to new purposes. This extends even further, the school does not demonstrate the waza, what you see in public demonstrations are kata created from the basics, the waza, but not the waza themselves. These are brand new dances, within the parameters of the school, but new just the same, yet they are also old. The principles are those of the school, it's the dance that is new, not the steps.
Two ways of looking at budo. Each and every kata or perhaps each and every school is different and new. Or, the basics are transferrable and the dances only look different.
If it's not new, it's old.
Partners in Time
Cooperation seems to be the dominant theme these days, at least for me. It may be because I am getting very tired of fighting the same old fights going into the third decade of martial arts practice. Still, it's the same no matter what or where, as long as there are more than two people in the same place you'll get conflict. Brenda was just telling me how her lab is being asked to do work for another lab simply because "it's convenient, you've got the stuff all laid out already for your sampling, why can't you do our sampling at the same time". "Um because we are already working overtime to get our stuff done?"
But two people? How do you get two people in conflict while doing a kata? How does that even work? A kata is a set-piece of movement. Both sides know (potentially, are supposed to know, know eventually) what's happening. One side pretends not to know the defence and is defeated, the other side pretends not to know the attack, but somehow through the acquired skills of the school, handles that attack and wins.
It's hard to see where conflict arises here, but it does. One side is learning, the other wants to work on timing or distance or speed and bingo, someone is wearing a stick in their teeth. Impatience, lack of good will, resentment at having to practice with a beginner, these are all things that promote conflict, that famous "if you don't move I get to poke you" rule that seems to exist even though nobody ever owns up to creating it.
Almost always the intentional physical conflict arises from the senior side, the side that knows how the kata is supposed to go. From the junior side, the learning side, the clash usually comes from mistakes, from not knowing how the kata works. Beginners "learn out of" that particular conflict but seniors?
Do we not understand that without cooperation the kata can't teach us? If nothing else, practicing kata with a beginner can teach patience (beginners take time to learn stuff). It can teach attention (beginners do unpredictable things). It can teach control (beginners make you mad, they move the wrong way and go under your sword, they say "I can't do that"). In other words, a kata can teach a hell of a lot more than a bit of budo technique.
And later, when you finally get to practice with someone at your level or "score!" senior to you, the kata has the potential to teach you some deeper understanding of physical conflict, like for instance, how to see the exact moment the attack starts, and the moment it cannot be changed. These are not the same, and curiously, you can only understand this if you are cooperating during your kata.
You don't think so? This stuff isn't kami-gifted to you along with your last grade. You have to learn to see them. If your partner is really in conflict with you the very first time you don't get it exactly right you're flat on your back watching the birdies sing in a little circle around your head just like in the cartoons. No, kata are always, always cooperative. Heck, even competition is cooperative. How would one run a kendo tournament without referees to declare good or bad strikes? How long would things last if competitors cracked their opponents on the head as they walked toward the dojo?
Perhaps we should ask Sensei to keep an eye on things while we practice with a bit of healthy competition? That might speed up the learning process. Perhaps, but in a class of any size at all sensei can't watch everyone. Even in seitei classes (very well known, very standardized kata) there will be the occasional crack on the head with a stick while sensei's back is turned. In small classes (three or four people) sensei can keep a lid on and the training can get pretty tight, but it still comes down to partners caring for each other. I'm not convinced sensei can help here. If senior starts coming in for a strike and sensei yells at beginner "move back" when that look of confusion shows up, how does this help? This is sensei being the safety sense for beginner.
Well then, let beginner learn through a little knock on the head you say? Yeah how did that work out when your mom took the yardstick to your rear end when you tripped and broke the lamp? Yes, you are correct to say a mistake on the battlefield will get you hurt or dead. That's why we practice cooperatively to learn how to avoid that mistake! You DO NOT train to the specific conditions when you're talking about warfare. That's for sport and it means you play volleyball if you're training for volleyball.
That's how budo teaches more than how to spike cross-court. You can kill your partner, yet you do not. This teaches stuff. You don't learn that stuff when you're trying to "kill the ball" to "stuff the spike". You don't learn this stuff with fist pumps and index fingers in the air chanting slogans. The good stuff you learn from sports? That comes more from the practice for those sports than from the competition.
When talking about a kata I really try not to say "your opponent".
He's your partner, treat him as such.
Western Seminar Report
In a somewhat confused state I sit in my regular cafe window with my Grainer's Gold. It's nice to be back to the routine things of my home. The body seems in good shape after 20 plus hours of budo in the last week, a slight increase over the usual four or five.
Hmm, makes me wonder how much right we have to brag when hearing about all these olympic teens who are training 6 or 8 hours a day.
This isn't really a seminar report, it's just my impressions of the last 10 or 12 days travel. Nothing official here folks, move along, nothing to see...
First weekend was Vancouver for an iaido seminar which focused on the senior ranks, grading prep for 6 and 7 dan challenges. Much discussion of the difference between 5dan and 6, with an emphasis on smooth, powerful but graceful and dignified iai full of presence. Or, to put it another way, iai that shows 20 plus years of practice. In these seminars it seems like I'm trying mostly to get folks away from the 4th dan mindset of chasing the latest fashions and allowing an experienced, mature style to replace it. Let's face it, if you haven't learned how to swing the sword by 5dan it's getting a bit late, and for those of us a bit long in the tooth it's certainly too late for us to be jumping around relying on strength and speed.
Not that I've got anything against 4dans, I quite like some of them. Still, it's sometimes a task to listen to their expertise while keeping a straight face. Mind you, listening to self-important old farts is also a bit of a chore I suspect.
Saturday and Sunday in rainy, dreary, miserable Vancouver (they made me say that because of the housing crisis) was devoted to jodo where we had what seemed like 20 or 30 challengers up to nidan. Four judges from Ontario and one from the west put the various groups through their paces and the theme of students vs judges came up. This is due to the growth of jodo in the west, from one dojo to four or five groups where we could see the styles beginning to diverge a little. If you're all working against the judges you tend to pull together and after some more intense grading-focused practice to get rid of nerves and standardize movements a bit on the Sunday morning, the entire group passed their gradings.
The idea that there is "ONE" way to do Seitei Jo or Iai is a bit umm "optimistic" is the nicest way I can put it. The groups in the west are an excellent example. They are all under a single instructor and while they were all at the same place they were clearly "all at the same place". Now that the group has expanded to several dojo a different emphasis on practice, combined with different background experience in the various dojo will inevitably cause a drift in style. This happens regardless of whether the base style of jodo or iai is close to the style of seitei. Even a local leader working on some aspect of their own practice will pull the rest of the club in a distinct direction.
This is a good thing. As our students "grow up" and start "moving out of the house" our job as instructors becomes less to teach closely and more to keep an eye on things and gently guide.Yeah, we all know how well that went with our own parents.
A couple days visit with the cousin to reintroduce myself to his boys and a nice walk around White Rock took me to Wednesday and the flight to Calgary where I went from plane to class and from grading practice to just practice. Jodo and Iaido was the focus and we stuck mostly to Kendo Federation seitei until the very last class where we fell about falling about with some Tosa jujutsu. This is simple stuff and because it's practiced on dojo floors rather than tatami there's not much actual flying through the air so some might ask what the point is, but knowing how to deal with your sword while someone has his hand on it or on your wrist, will inform your solo iai. It's easy to do silly things when you've never had to draw under physical pressure.
The Calgary "group" is usually a bunch of groups who come together for these seminars. Most, but not all of them are in the Kendo Federation but all are in the "Federation of budoka of good will". Calgary is a small city (sorry guys, but you are compared to Tokyo) and has a limited number of students shared amongst each practicing group. These groups know that, and come together once in a while thorugh practice of, in the case of last weekend, the kendo federation seitei. Next weekend a slightly different group of "good willers" will come together to practice Niten Ichiryu and Kage Ryu. I love this. There is little more sad than a couple of people huddled in a cabin by themselves when there is a village just over the hill. Especially if they know the village is there. To tell you how diverse this mutual assistance group is, this year it included Japanese sword and stick folks of a couple different organizations in Calgary and also from Edmonton, Saskatchewan, and, well OK instructors from Ontario and the Philippines. The practice next weekend will also include a Western Medieval Sword group in the mix.
When you hear of groups splitting and splitting until they're down to a president, secretary and treasurer per each, it's nice to see budo can still bring people together. I often think that the most important job of a visiting sensei is to give the various local groups an excuse to socialize and maybe plan other joint events.
Yes, this is a hobby horse of mine, yes, I started way back in the '80s gathering groups from all over to come together so we could bring an instructor from Japan. That's the way I like it. This going to Japan to learn by yourself is fine, but I'd rather bring from Japan and have dozens of people learn. Now that I'm sometimes the guy going I want to see the same thing, lots of people of good will coming together to share. I try not to dictate too much because if I do all I get back is a reflection and it's hard to steal stuff from a reflection. If I suggest and share I get a discussion and I can steal a lot more back than I give out. That's the true budo way, steal those techniques.
I hope lots of stuff got stolen.
Students vs Sensei
Earlier I mentioned that at gradings the students ought to gang up on the panel to make sure that everyone passes. Do this by making sure that everyone is dressed properly, and is prepared for the grading by being coached from the sidelines, undistracted by extraneous paperwork or comments and suchlike. In other words, those who are more experienced at gradings look out for those who are there for the first time. As a judge I like to see challengers putting aside their own nervousness to help others get over theirs.
The same ganging up ought to happen in a seminar or a class. In seminars there are students who have serious trouble asking a question. If so, ask that question for them. I've done that for years, asking some rather basic questions that I really ought to/do know the answers for. Not once has a sensei accused me of being stupid, they all seem to understand that I am asking for someone else. Funny how they figure that out. (Those same sensei can also see the eye-rolling of the senior students as a junior asks a question... Just saying.)
There are other ways to gang up on sensei. One is to practice as we were doing in the iai warmup yesterday. Everyone works together, same movements at the same time, everyone stays in their rows, everyone watches everyone else and slows down to stay in time. Those who can't see anyone are "the leaders" and act like it. Eyes forward and not looking inside your heads in other words.
We had a brand new student and some newish students who didn't know all 12 seitei iai kata but we went through from one to twelve, once each. With the movement of the "school" (as in school of fish) the beginners learned faster and better than if they had been talked at for a week. Everyone on the floor got through all the kata with the right shapes. Everyone. Too often I see practices where the seniors just blast through the kata and the juniors are left in the dust. There's a reason why my classes are organized with beginners sandwiched between seniors, and I expect my seniors to be acting as models at all times.
How is this ganging up on sensei? If sensei isn't spending time teaching the beginners which foot goes in front of which, he rapidly gets bored enough to teach what might be thought of as higher level stuff. At that point it's the beginners that have the bored looks on their faces, not the seniors. If the seniors are bored it's because they aren't modeling for the beginners, forcing sensei to teach beginner stuff... you know, the boring stuff.
This doesn't mean that seniors should be teaching juniors during class. With partner practices we partner seniors and juniors because the juniors can be led and therefore learn faster. Two people trying to learn a kata together is difficult, one experienced, modeling (playing the other side) for a beginner goes much faster. But if that senior stops and tries to explain too much (more than "other foot forward") the beginner hits a wall. This forces sensei to slow down the class as a whole and wait for that beginner to catch up. It breaks the solidarity of the class vs. sensei.
How much is too much? How much should you explain? If you can't keep your pair moving along with the other students you're saying too much. Say only what needs to be said ("other foot") in a command tone and leave the explanations out. If you're explaining you're showing off.
To be more specific, think back to that class of iaido where the beginners are pulled along by the "school of fish". Think what they are picking up in their first go-through of the kata. Big moves, right foot forward, draw sword (somehow), cut horizontally. That sort of thing. The general shape without worries about grip or sword angles or any of the other little, essentially meaningless, details we all obsess over.
I do mean meaningless. The correct angle of the blade at the end of nuki tsuke is meaningless to a beginner because they can't do anything with the information. They can't put the sword tip into a sphere of less than six inches so why bother them with an angle of 1/4 inch? I also mean meaningless for the seniors who are past a certain experience level, like heading for 6 or 7 dan. Your sword angle will be correct by then. To hear about what that angle should be is just distracting, like a pro golfer being asked whether he holds his breath or breathes out when he swings. It can be harmful to hear the question. (Seniors, this is why I get angry when you demand that I tell you what the latest angle is, or "what does the panel want to see here". I'll tell you if you make me tell you but now your practice has been put back by another week as you make the changes.)
So how do you, as a senior, help your junior partner in a paired kata? Big movements, follow along with the rest of the class (we line you up for a reason). Stay up with the class, don't sweat the details, present a target and let them see it, when they swing at it move on to the next bit. Stopping to explain the angle of the left hand grip half way through the swing is pointless and really not helpful to them or to you. Don't be a "tommy teacher" even if that's your heart's desire. Just gang up with the rest of the class to make sensei do his job, which is to go on to the next thing and teach that.
But now perhaps, you say to yourself, maybe for seminars and for classes it would be even better if we just get rid of the beginners and those who don't pick this stuff up as fast so that us fourth-dan experts can get to the good stuff!
Maybe.
It depends on your sensei, but if I ever get wind of my seniors pushing fellow students out the door the classes will become truely advanced. Yes that is a threat. I'm not here to make a couple of my students into world champion anythings, I'm still teaching because I believe in the art and in what it can contribute to society. That means I want to see the generation after the next one. I want a class that is united against me. One that gangs up on me and makes me work up a sweat trying to keep ahead of them. I want a class that cares more for the kids just starting than they do for me. My seniors' time is much better spent helping the beginners than it is sucking up to me.
Gang up. Be a gang. Create a new family within the dojo. Sensei is dad. Students are "the kids". You want to go to Disneyland. So which set of kids are most likely to go, the ones who don't get along and force dad to deal with spat after crisis after mess or the kids who take care of each other so dad can get on with the driving and the buying of the tickets?
Along this way maybe we learn some real world skills like how to care for those who aren't like us. Maybe we learn that your "tribe" can include someone more than it did last week, that this week's stranger can become next week's brother.
I dunno, maybe I'm simple.
My kind of visit
Lest you think I'm being snarky here, I am not. Just wanted to get that out there first. This year's visit to Calgary is my kind of sensei visit, I got picked up at the airport Wednesday and was delivered to class immediately. When we arrived things were in full swing so I changed and joined in for the last half.
Next day I got up and headed for my Calgary office (the local Starbucks) where I spent the day going over revisions to the Kage Ryu manual which needs to be finished and printed for next weekend. Then off again to class which lasted from 6pm to 9pm. Hard work all around, great students, they got quite a bit of new stuff. Today was a quick breakfast and then some serious work on the book, putting in the edits and noteing questions for sensei when he gets here.
Tonight the seminar proper starts, three more hours, then a full day tomorrow and Sunday afternoon. That's my bit, but Watkin sensei is coming in tonight for the Niten / Kage seminar next weekend. So Sunday morning is going to be work on the Kage manual, and Monday morning will be photographs. Then I fly out around noon.
All in all, maybe 5 minutes of down time right now as I write this.
That's the way you use a sensei! I'm serious, I'm not here on vacation, I'm here to work and work is what I like. I'm not out here on my dime, I'm here on the CKF's dime so I like to see them get their money's worth. The local students take care of us, and our jobs are quite clear. Too much kid-glove treatment with tourism and I start to feel like a leech, a sponge. Sure, show me the mountains if there's time but I have seen them and really, I'd rather be swinging sticks.
Now, that's all from my point of view as a sensei but I'm not unique in this, I have been told that same thing by many of the instructors who have visited us. "Put me to work"!
From that other side? From the student side, that's somewhat different. If I have invited you to a seminar you may be forced to do some sightseeing. Suck it up buttercup, I'm not going to work you until you drop. Just until you mostly drop.
What's the deal on presenting seminars? I just quizzed the local organizer and he got it right.
1. Do you have an instructor?
2. Find a place.
3. Inform the students where they will show up.
In that order. The instructors you want are probably busy people. You work around their schedule. They are not your employees, nor are they your family. You ask, you don't tell.
Only if they are available do you set the seminar in stone, you find a place and only then do you invite the students.
My very first time organizing a seminar with an outside teacher was a bit of fun, it taught me a lot about this stuff. To start with, my sensei told me to invite his teacher. No problem, the date was found and he agreed to come. All that was needed was to book space and find enough students to pay the eventual bills. Easy so far, but then the students did not come. There was little feedback and few preregistrations about a month before, so my sensei said "cancel it".
Not a chance.
This was my teacher's teacher and I had done the invitation, no way it was going to be cancelled. So things were re-adjusted, a couple less hours of this topic and a couple more of that and we now had a larger audience. Did it work out? Of course it did, the seminar happened, therefore it worked out. Did I lose money? I don't remember so I probably didn't, but seriously, who cares. I was there, I practiced, all is good. That sensei had to know there was a suggestion of cancellation so he would know there may be few students, but he came.
These are the guys I learned from. You teach as you were taught, you act as your sensei acted. At least that's the assumption, so if you want to know who someone's sensei was, look at them.
My various sensei liked to work, they worked hard on visits to teach. As above, so below, I like to work hard. Well, I like to see the students working hard.
Men of good will
Have I mentioned that I don't like to travel? I am a real stay-at-home guy but I keep getting called out and, well, I have to go. Poor old Kim, has to go across the country and even further to sit on grading panels. To sit in the sunshine and meet new people and see new things and be treated kindly and get taken care of by those who invite him.
Well yes.
I don't like travel but I do like those I practice with when I travel. I will hand it off to others when I am able, and happily stay home but as long as folks say "no" to that plan I'll go. Part of the reason I get told no is that "you're the one who knows everyone, the one who gets along with everyone, and the one who will put your foot down and say 'it's this way' when you have to". Yeah, BS, I've managed to pull out of lots of "nobody else can do it" positions and the world did not collapse. I haven't really pulled myself out of the budo trips yet.
It's because on the other end of that trip are folks with good will. A lot of them, and as long as they keep saying they need me I'll go. OK let's not go overboard with that, actually a lot of the reason I go, and am invited, is my rank, I'm a handy body on the panels but eventually that part won't matter. Even considering the rank thing, right now, if there was no good will I would feel quite comfortable saying "pick someone else". There are loads of folks my rank in the world.
What do I mean by good will? An honest practice with honest students. A desire to practice and learn together with folks you've never seen before, and I mean learn together. There were four jodo and iaido seniors from Ontario in BC yesterday and the day before and I suspect all four came away with something new, something to steal from the local sensei and, yes, from the local students.
If that situation ever changes to me flying in and telling the locals that it's my way or the highway, trust me I will be pulling myself from the rotation faster than they can. I want to be a man of good will too. When I'm not I'm done.
Yesterday we had a jodo grading in Vancouver. The previous day was nervous for the locals and perhaps even for the visitors. The locals have a single overall sensei with, now, four or five dojo spread from California to B.C. They get "the way" to do things. A single voice which makes it easy to practice. "How do we do that? Oh, yes, the way sensei tells us to do it". Then sensei brings in several new voices and now the students are hearing "different things". Uh, what do I do? Sensei says do it this way but this stranger is telling me something different!
Aren't sensei mean. Well, no, they aren't, not if they are of good will. It's helpful to see things from a different angle and visitors of good will will get together with your sensei (who is of good will) and make sure that the students aren't actually hearing contradictory things. Just things in a new voice with, perhaps, a different accent. You think all those little chats you were watching up front were about the weather? "Hey, do you guys do this move like this, that's not what we do?" "No, that's his invention, I will fix that." or maybe "Sure, weren't you listening last time we had a hanshi in the house?" Either way nobody gets bent out of shape and the students get to learn that the world is wide and it would be a funny old place if everyone was the same.
So a first day of umm and errr and "getting to know you". On that first day I had some minor concerns but, learning how to look out of the corner of your eye is a necessary trait in an instructor and I could see that once they thought we weren't looking the students mostly got it right. On the second day, the grading day we did "grading practice" which is really intense concentration of "how to pass the test". I'm not fond of this sort of practice but when you fly in a bunch of rank for a grading there had better be this sort of thing. Students get nervous and screw up, but once you've spent a couple of hours doing your test twenty or thirty times the nerves go away.
The hachidan do that at our annual seminar and grading in Guelph and we did it yesterday in Vancouver. With, I am very pleased to say, the same result. Students of good will were listening and smoothing out their rough spots and the visitors of good will were taking a personal interest in getting their practice group through the test looking better than the other guy's group. Nothing like a little rivalry of good wills to push things along.
The end result was we didn't have to fail anyone and that's down to the hard work of the students and their local instructors. Period. On a test there is no free pass. Being of good will means you do your job as a judge, you judge to the standard, not because we're all buddies here. Never get that idea. A well trained judge might have a real sick feeling in the pit of his stomach because he was rooting for you to pass, but he'll fail you if he has to. The good will of a judge is in understanding that there is more than one way to perform a technique, even in seitei gata. This may be news to some but it's true. Having a single voice, a single "right way" to do something is really just a way of making it simple for the beginners. But at some point good students need to learn that there are other ways out there. And judges of good will... they shouldn't be judges if they don't understand the students in front of them. Theirs or not.
Good will doesn't mean "free pass". It means wanting the best for the ones who count, the students. It means working hard to understand different accents so that we can all talk together.
So I continue my wanderings through the wild wild west and will be in Calgary next weekend. In the meantime maybe I'll be refinishing a floor in my cousin's coffee shop in White Rock. If not, there's always the beach.
Oh it's a tough life.
Grading fever
This weekend is all about gradings, a bit of iai with some 6/7 dan challengers and jodo with challengers up to 2dan. Quite a few new faces here on the wet coast, not too wet either, some beautiful weather.
Some of the theme was "don't make the judge's jobs easy". We did a mass run-through of the seitei jo kata with the beginners going as far as they could and seniors on tachi. It was crowded and after the first three kata (we did 12) it got a bit confusing as folks went off on different directions. Nobody got hit, everyone stayed attentive to everyone else. I was pleased.
We owe a duty of care to our fellow students and that was shown. This duty extends to the grading where the challengers really ought to gang up on the judges. You see, in a grading everyone can pass, it's not like a tournament, we don't have pass percentages to keep in mind, here is no bell curve. The guy next to you isn't a threat to your win, he's an asset to your successful challenge, help each other. For instance, in the lineup waiting for the test, everyone should check the person in front and behind for uniform violations. One of the sure ways to fail is to have a wardrobe malfunction, hakama too high, too low, wrinkles in the top, too much or too little skin showing, rips, that sort of thing. Someone will have pins for rips, and everyone can straighten everyone else. Don't give the judges an easy target because lazy judges love a simple reason to put that X down and go back to sleep.
Etiquette is another thing you can fail at from your first grading, and we put the newest challengers out there first so that they have no chance to see how things are going. Students, especially seniors, can help each other out by practicing the test a few times in the free practice warmup so that the juniors, who have likely been taught the movements by their own sensei, can watch you and be reminded. You don't have to teach and it won't do you any harm to go through the bows to remind yourself as a senior. Be an example, help a fellow challenger.
Partners can help each other, slow down if you have to, make things clear and stay calm if your partner has a meltdown. I'd rather see challengers go over time, start again, even waggle their eyebrows at each other to get through the kata, rather than see one partner go off on their own and leave the other hanging. I have been known to go temporarily blind when one partner gets frazzled but the other is patient and things get back on track. Especially in the early grades where we really are supposed to look for reasons to pass you. One of the judges remarked that his criteria for the first three grades is to decide if a mistake will sort itself out in the next short while or if it's something that is a real problem and should be looked at again next year.
I like that, it makes for tougher times for the judges. There's nothing I like better than seeing judges hum and hah and twist their pencils in their hands.
It's challengers against panel, make that panel work!
Not Rocket Science
I warned the Pamurai that writing about the last class (pivot points is the essay) would be difficult. It's not that I'm a bad writer of technical stuff, I think, but that at some point it's easier to understand this stuff in the bones rather than in the ears. If folks want to understand my last thing about pivot points they will do so fastest by having a friend watch their swing and describe what's happening as they try out the steps.
Knowing what to look for is also a help in getting there. Not everyone worries so much about the shape of their cut or the smoothness of the transition from one hand to the other.
Body to body is the traditional way to learn this stuff for a reason. Once felt it's hard to forget.
You also need to be at a certain place to get this. You have to be able to relax your hands and that's not possible for a few years, as anyone who does this stuff will know.
Rocket science is best learned theoretically, messing around with highly explosive chemicals and seeing which things blow up in your face and which do not is a bit risky. Learning the theory and applying it just once is the ideal. With budo you can try, try, try until sensei says "yosh", then remember what that felt like.
Similarly, I was just reminded about other pivot points in the chain by Eric, even before he had a coffee he mentioned the wrist, elbow and shoulder and their effects. Which tells me that our frequent attempts to use physics to describe budo are also somewhat doomed since it's easier to feel how power moves through 6 major joints from the ground to the sword than to describe all of them.
So not rocket science, that's too dangerous to mess around with. Better to hit yourself with a stick and read about explosives.
From four budoka in the Starbucks window in downtown New West.
Pivotal points
I'm sitting in the London (the other one) airport waiting for my flight, enjoying a Dead Elephant. An IPA from Railway City Brewing (St. Thomas). Having just told the Pamurai about the death of Jumbo the Elephant I figure I better let her know about the beer and try to do as she asked, which was to do an essay on last evening's class.
It was about the shape of the cut, which is highly teacher specific. I cut the way I was taught, which isn't the only way to cut so take this, like all my essays, as something I write for my own students.
First, a cut should sweep the ceiling, but not scratch the ceiling. I don't know who said that to me but I totally stole it. If you think about sweeping with a broom, you can do it with longer strokes, bending the bristles, or you can stab at the floor. Same with the swing.
Next, at one point we were taught to bring the sword (we're talking iaido here by the way) around and then over the head where we "push it up further before cutting". That lasted for a few years and then we were told to stop it.
But it wasn't wrong. The swing for seitei should be continuous, from nuki tsuke to the finish of the vertical cut, all one movement. What happens of course is that students swing it around, lift it up, wait for the left hand to come on, then cut. Both hands do the same thing, both hands grip the same. No no no we say, use the left hand to cut. More waiting while we replace the strength of one hand with the other, or worse yet, the tip drops and we wind up.
"Aargh. Cut as if it's a one handed cut and the left hand overpowers the right hand as you cut! Now we're getting better, but the tip is scratching the ceiling and we whang the sword off the floor. OK a little bit of right hand back in maybe?"
Last evening something percolated up in my head and I made the class move from nuki tsuke to kiri tsuke one handed but, above the forehead the left hand hooked the end of the hilt and made the pivot point the end of the tsuka rather than the right hand. Now, a one handed cut must pivot on that hand, can't do anything else, but by hooking with the left we can shift the pivot. How does this work? You take the left hand to the correct position, catch the tsuka as it is being pushed upward by the right hand and pull with the left to cut. We'll see if it works after trying it for a few weeks.
While we're talking pivot points let's look at three one handed cuts, horizontal, rising and falling. The horizontal cut, nuki tsuke, is done in three parts if you want to split it up. Push the sword forward, grip, starting with ring finger and then little finger until the grip is complete and the monouchi is about a quarter of an inch from the target. Then open the chest, squeeze the lower part of the scapula together and cut across with the back and hips.
You know this. Now, think about the pivot point of that cut, it's at the base of the little finger isn't it?
Good, now do Morote zuki, where's the pivot point? If it's at the base of the thumb, or between the thumb and the forefinger did sensei just say "all you did was thump him on the forehead, you didn't cut"? Try making this vertical cut the same as the horizontal cut, make the pivot the little finger side of the wrist and wait to get the tip over and at the target before you close your armpit to cut. Now you're sweeping instead of scratching.
Rising cut as per Kesa giri? Same, pivot on the little finger side.
That's it, make the pivot point as far away from the striking surface as you can and you have greater reach and faster tip speed. Pretty simple. Something it's taken me only 30 years to work out. But then again, I'm sort of slow, I'm sure you'll get this right away.
5dan blues
Got a Jodo student visiting from overseas who is ready to take his 6dan and will be doing so soon. His comment was "I just need someone to practice with". He teaches but his students aren't 5dan yet.
It's a common problem, really, and not just at 5dan. There are many places where students are teaching at even lower ranks in order to get the time and space to practice, but feel they aren't practicing at the level they should be.
Don't you believe it. What you're missing isn't practice at the proper level, it's practice at your level. Not having someone at your level or higher means there's nobody to check yourself against. You aren't sure if you're improving, not sure if you're good enough and this makes you nervous, especially if you're thinking about your next grade.
Practicing at the level you should be? If you're teaching and you're nervous you are probably practicing at a much higher level than you would be if you were still at your teacher's dojo. If sensei is constantly in front of you, fine tuning, tweeking you, the job of your improvement is his isn't it? You can simply coast and concentrate on fixing stuff. It's a pretty easy life with no responsibility, if you don't pass it's sensei's fault. On the other hand, if you're teaching you must not only improve your own skills but also impart them to your students.
Budo isn't a zero sum game, what you give does not come from what you have. There is not, as they say, a small pie, a piece of which you have. You don't "give your students a fish" you "teach them to fish". The skills of budo are not exclusively physical, and there are things that you will learn and acquire by teaching that you will not get by staying at home as a student. One of the most important is to learn how to teach. That act alone will put you on the same level as your teacher. I don't mean it will make you as good as him, I mean it will make you the same. If you accept this fully you will acquire some of the arrogance and ego... oh sorry, some of the poise, self confidence and presence your teacher has.
You think that isn't important to pass 6dan? You don't ask for 6dan, you don't show how skillful you are and expect to get it because you hit all the grading points. You "are" 6dan. You might say that you "command" 6dan. That means that you simply go and demonstrate your skills, it's all you can do. You aren't challenging, you are demonstrating, in a sense, you are teaching. This is my budo, if you agree that it is good, fine. If you do not, also fine. The simple act of asking how to pass 6dan, or asking why you did not pass, or what to work on for the next test, will get you a fail. It's a different test than 5dan. In a sense, it's a teacher's test so teach the panel. After 6dan the shogo start, and most people say these are teacher's levels, renshi, kyoshi and hanshi.
But teaching at 3dan, that's different right? Not from the presence point of view. If you go into your test as a teacher, rather than as a student asking to be given a grade, your challenge will be stronger simply because you aren't as nervous be be "centered out". You're "centered out" every class, you're probably used to it.
As a teacher you will start to discover just how much you know. Sure, you will find gaps in your education but you can fill them in if you know they are there. You can't fix a problem you don't know exists. Some people figure if they don't look and don't find they won't have. Teachers find that rotten foundation and if they're good they fix it rather than paint over it.
Your students are a mirror, you will see your faults in them. Quickly. To practice with a senior or someone of your own rank means you are hoping to be challenged, to be pulled or pushed up to a better level. You think this doesn't happen with your students? You must show your very best at all times. You cannot slack off, ever. Even when you are doing your best you will find your students doing silly things. You will ask them "who taught you that"? You will know. You will find your faults much faster in your students than when you practice with someone at your level in front of sensei.
You think beginners can't challenge you during a kata? Someone your level or higher will go faster, or stronger. Those you can handle, it's a kata, you know what's coming next no matter what speed or power. But a beginner? They will come at you unpredictably. As sensei you can't just smack them. You can't go into automatic and do whatever your body says at that moment. As sensei you have to handle the off-angle attack, the switch into a different kata altogether, without showing any surprise, fear or anger. You think that's not training?
The 6dan test in Jodo now features a rotating set of partners. You will not be testing with the usual fellow, you may have to work with someone you've never met. Someone who may be awful, someone who may be nervous, or trying to take your head off because he figures that's what you do.
They won't be half as bad as your beginners. You'll be fine.
My Creationism
Today was spent making frames for plastic to put over windows. Two dollars worth of 1x2 strapping and a couple bucks worth of clear plastic tablecloth (more transparent and seemingly thicker, certainly tougher than 6mil vapour barrier and I've got a nice, reusable, double plastic (r-value of 3/4) storm screen for my garage window. Sooo much easier than replacing it with that window I picked up at the Restore. Now I have to decide what to do with that window if the neighbour doesn't want it.
So on to the same winter storms for the cottage which will cost me something like $30 instead of the $1000 I was quoted for aluminum storms. Much more fun and maybe I'll paint them bright red just for fun... looks warmer.
I was going to write a bit about the art (as in it's a creative art) of budo while I drink my pint of Bass here at the local (the only place I know that serves draft Bass although Marianne says you can get it at the Dojo Bar in Okinawa too). But I watched a couple of episodes of the BBC series artsnight after dinner and the last one was "will the west/world survive the next ten years" (depressed me).
It damned well better survive because those are shaping up to be the best years of my life. I am, after a decade of trying, getting the hang of this retired thing, and I'm learning not to give a crap about the self-important little poops who want to screw around with my hobbies. You know the ones, the gatekeepers whose only power is the power of "no you can't do that". How do you get around them? You ignore them of course, walk on past and into the office of the guy you need to talk to. The gatekeepers have exactly as much power as you give them and no more. Took me 60 years to figure that out, take my word for it and be happier.
So I can ignore the irritating kids, do exactly the same thing every day, which makes every day Saturday, and I've got, I figure, ten more years of health to do it in. What's not to like!
More than anything else though, I create. I make stuff in my shop, and out in the sunshine since it's summertime. I sweat and seek shade. In the morning I drink coffee and write about budo, during the day I make budo related stuff and maybe other stuff if the whim strikes, and in the evening I have a couple of pints. On the days I do budo I also create. I create when I do a kata and I create when I teach. My life is as good as I ever imagined it. This is what I have looked forward to forever, what I worked for all my life, the money and the time to just create.
I do daydream though, I have another life that could be just as rewarding and that would be to run a Ramen counter. To be like those guys of my youth who ran lunch counters. I'm sitting at the bar now, I've always preferred the bar and when I was a starving kid (seriously) I sat at the lunch counter and the old guy gave my 8 year old self credit so I could have a burger. I could happily run a hole-in-the-wall ramen place where you come in, drink some beer, eat some ramen and go on about your life. Wipe your own counter, put the money in the jar on the way out. If you can't afford it, pay me next time (or never at all, I was paid when I was a kid).
So many people gave me when I was growing up... no wonder I teach for free now. I'm retired dudes, keep your rules, your gatekeeping, your "gotta do it this way" to yourselves. I teach because I was taught. I give because I was gave. I'll feed the whole damned neighourhood until I have no food left and I'll happily go hungry. I've done it before but I didn't starve because people who didn't have much shared with me.
Funny that those with more than enough never shared at all.
Today, tomorrow and the next two days I am going to make stuff, then I'm going to get on a plane (which I hate but will do because I was taught) and share whatever folks want to share for two weekends and a week. Then I'm coming back to my shop, to my boring retired life of coffee, making stuff, practicing, beer and sleep. Interrupted by a brief bout of learning from my Kage sensei.
OK not depressed any more. My life is sweet. My Creationism has no room for your gatekeeping heaven or hell stuff. I live as a human should live now, here. My consciousness is welcome to be a random, meaningless happenstance of quarks bouncing in a quantum field. It's pretty sweet. I'm here, I'm alive and I'm creating stuff. I need nothing else.
I create, therefore I do not need.
Kihon, Waza and Kata
Since I use these terms in class I got asked what the difference was. Good question. I suppose I can define them for myself and my students but really, like pretty much everything else, they interpenetrate.
A split between basics and forms is pretty standard martial arts speak. Basics are the individual techniques, a reverse punch, a front kick. Kata are what you develop by combining the techniques. As long as the techniques are short and the kata is long there's no confusion. It gets a bit tricky when the kata are short, one technique long perhaps, then what do you call it?
Use "kihon" for a basic, for a technique, one movement. Use "kata" for form, a set of techniques strung together. So what about the confusion? What about a kata that's one kihon long? Well let's backtrack a bit, a kihon is a practice movement, a movement that is isolated out of a kata. Sometimes they are formalized, as in Jodo (Kendo Federation Jodo calls them kihon, Saito-derived Aikido practice call them jo-suburi) and sometimes they are simply "invented" on the spot. What distinguishes them is a repetitive nature. You do a single movement over and over to "make it a habit", to "soak it into the bones".
In contrast, a kata is done once with bits in front and behind. Let's take an example we used at the class. Tsuki hazushi uchi is a formal jodo kihon. We hold the jo horizontally overhead. Tachi makes a swing at us and then thrusts for the solar plexus. Jo steps back with the left foot and controls the centerline, switches his grip and smacks the sword down, followed by a thrust toward the eyes. This is done repeatedly across the dojo as a kihon. In order to demonstrate the difference between a kihon and a kata we extracted one of the repeating units of the kihon practice and made it into a brand new kata. The partners start at a distance, tachi goes to chudan, jo moves the jo overhead. Tachi adopts hasso and approaches, swings at the eyes, then pulls the sword to the left hip and thrusts to the solar plexus. Jo reacts as above and stops with the jo a couple of inches from tachi's eye. Tachi then very carefully moves back to issoku itto, the matching distance while putting the tachi into kamae o toku. Jo performs the first part of osame (noto, putting the weapon away) and tachi accepts this, opening some extra distance so that jo can finish the osame movement. Both sides move back to the original starting position and now we have a new kata.
We also have a somewhat functional definition of kihon and kata. When a student says to me "how come we don't do the full movement in the kihon" I reply "you do that in the kata, that's what the kata is for". Kihon are the individual movements that are usually repeated and kata are formalized forms with a beginning and an end. A paragraph or a sentence and a story if you wish.
So whither waza? I suppose I should call on Colin Watkin sensei to comment on this since it is he who introduced the term to me through his Kage Ryu. To my mind, a waza is a fundamental, a basic which is practiced in kata form. Watkin sensei has said that a waza is a "tried and tested" original movement which is not to be altered and (in Kage Ryu) not to be demonstrated publicly out of rememberance of the school being closed to outsiders for many generations. Instead one creates a kata out of the waza for demonstration purposes. Waza are not to be invented by the likes of me and thee, but you can invent kata to your heart's delight.
Kage is a drawing art, we draw a very long sword from the scabbard and cut the opponent. It looks like iaido, you draw a sword and you do it solo. So a Kage waza is a thing that is done in a way that looks very much like an iaido kata. Only a waza is kihon, it is the basic technique. In order to repeat the waza you have to put the sword away in the scabbard which, if you're doing an iaido kata we call noto. There is no noto in Kage but you have to put the sword away to do the next waza so we do. Since you should practice/perform all parts of budo with the correct attitude, we do the sword putting back in scabbard thing with zanshin, which means a little bit of a prepared preparation. Call it the equivalent of chiburi in iaido.
Now, in Kage we also do kihon, these can also be called suburi, they are, for example, repeated swinging of the sword across the dojo floor. These are not the waza.
The waza in Kage are not demonstrated publicly, instead they are changed and combined to create kata. I need to ask Watkin sensei when I see him in a few weeks whether that means we therefore do chiburi and noto in kata rather than "put the sword away in preparation to do the next waza". I haven't asked because it's a silly distinction, it would look no different and the mental aspects would also not change. Do everything with attention and care.
So, kihon are basics, fundamental techniques. Suburi could be called kihon but if you want to split that term out, suburi are, specifically, repeated strikes or thrusts and kihon are somewhat more complex movements. A waza is a kihon with the appearance of a kata, or a waza is, in Kage Ryu, a fundamental practice that is to be done within the dojo. Kihon, suburi and waza are done in a repetitive manner to train ourselves in the fundamentals.
A kata is a kihon or combination of kihon done formally, with a beginning and an ending. In Kage Ryu a kata can be a waza with a single small change to allow it to be demonstrated publicly. Kata are not kihon, kata are stories which contain meanings and lessons beyond the training of technical skill.
Perhaps: suburi > kihon > waza > kata in terms of increasing complexity? Remember, this is only as I use the terms, they are jargon and jargon is only as useful as the common undertanding between those using the jargon.
This is language. Budo is better communicated body to body. Go practice.
Reluctance and inertia
Travel? You can have it, seriously, I am having a hard time understanding just how reluctant I am to get on a plane. as I drove to my local for a pint of Bass I saw a plane coming in for a landing at Kitchener and my stomach twisted, I hate the security checks...
Wow, as I wrote that... maybe that's what it is, I detest security checks. I don't mind driving for ten hours to go to a seminar but I dread a five hour plane ride to the annual Western seminars. I especially hate the thought of going through Pearson but even Kitchener is getting dreadful for me.
I am told, every time I start complaining, that I enjoy myself when I travel, that I come back and say how nice the trip was, but I Just Don't Like Traveling. I leave next Friday and I would happily hand the trip off to someone else. Maybe now that I've perhaps identified the problem (security) I can work on it.
Lord knows I could use a break from what I'm doing lately. My hands ache. In the last week I've driven a 18ga nail into my knuckle, ripped my thumb open on a screw, burned my fingers on a brazing rod and given myself a sanding belt cut on the little finger (you catch your finger on the edge of the belt which then sands its way into your skin). Of course the sanding of knuckles and busting of fingernails on my custom-made 24 grit sanding belts is a constant.
My hands could use a week to heal. Brain could use a break too. I caught myself at least four times today reaching too close to the table saw and the router bit on its table. Sure signs that I'm getting too tired to be making complex weapons like kusarigama. Woodworking and metalworking really should not go together, when I see scorch marks from the propane torch in a dust-filled shop I start to doubt my intelligence. A week off might give me a chance to get a bit of fear back, you need to be a little scared in a shop.
Tomorrow maybe I'll work with pine and plastic, stuff that doesn't tend to attack me as I cut it, and make some winter covers for the cottage windows as I invent more projects to distract myself from thinking about getting on a plane.
Pathetic really. And now I feel even worse about myself as I watch the Olympic volleyball and think about my 60 year old carcass out there on that court.
Time for another Bass damnit.
Blame and Budo
The urge to blame comes from a somewhat fearful outlook on the world. A fear that one cannot control events and so external forces cause stuff, usually scary, bad stuff. I can't remember the name for this but it's a "type" according to some researchers. Let's call it the externals.
The opposite "type" (you can't have a single type, you need at least two to have a type. I usually need at least two coffees or two beers to have a type.) is the internally oriented worldview. These folks believe they can affect events around them and are mostly not fearful about the world, but are confindent they can handle whatever happens. The internals then.
This is overly simple but look around yourself. If you are a martial arts type you tend to believe that you can deal with the world. On the other hand, you say, there are those who do the martial arts for self defence, out of fear of the world. This is true, but why take a self defence course when "it won't do any good". One likely doesn't start the class without at least the hope it will provide some control of events in the future. Actually self defence classes have been shown to change people's outlook on the world. "Ozer and Bandura, 1990. Mechanisms Governing Empowerment Effects: A Self-Efficacy Analysis", if you want to look it up that ought to find it.
Folks that blame are not exclusively fearful and externally controlled. Sometimes they blame out of ego. Out of a denial or inability to believe they might be responsible for their own problems. This mess can't possibly have been caused by me, it must be your fault. Or, if you're a certain type of egomaniacal politician you might say "it's their fault" and now the politician's ego-driven blaming can link up with the blaming of the fear-driven powerless-feeling common folk and create a "grassroots common sense". Common sense in this case not meaning "something that accords with reality" but "an outlook that is the same as my outlook". Again, two different meanings which can be associated one with the other but which are in fact not the same. Ego-blamers can hook up with external-blamers and say things like "common sense" which implies "obvious wisdom" but actually means "similar outlook or bias".
And then there are lawyers. These people have done a wonderful service to the external types. They have empowered them. Blame of external forces has now become "sue someone". Something bad the internals might call "chance" and the externals (and insurance companies) might call "act of god" some lawyers will call "actionable". It's a funny old world.
All of us are somewhat internal and somewhat external. All of us blame sometimes and accept responsibility sometimes. It's up to you to figure out which you are most of the time.
Budo helps. It's hard to blame your partner if you mess up and get smacked on the head because you didn't move aside. Hard, yet not impossible. That's what waivers are supposed to be all about. That's what insurance policies are all about, and not being able to rent space in schools and....
Is it better to screen your students and only accept internals, those who feel they are responsible for their own safety? Those students tend not to sue you if they get a bump on the head. But what about those who could benefit from a martial arts class? Do we leave them outside for fear of lawyers? The older I get the more inclined I am to put a porch roof outside that gate to keep the rain off those students hoping to be accepted (to prevent catching colds which would be my fault because I could have reasonably known that rain might cause a cold while, presumably, the students don't have to reasonably know that).
It's not just budo, it's any kind of education. One tends to feel "acted upon" in situations where one has no tools. One tends to act when one has tools to act with.
Learn or fear. Choose. (It's my choice / I can't learn)
Is it Real or is it Memorex?
Memorex being a casette tape of course. The ad was meant to imply that Memorex tape was so good it sounded like the real thing. This automatically implied there was a real thing of course, and everyone knew this.
When the first movie of a train was shown the audience ducked. When the first photographs were made people couldn't believe the realism. Both of those imaging techniques settled down quickly so that everyone understood that photographic images were "images of" something. What makes a photograph (a movie being a series of photographs projected one after another) is that it is of something that is real.
But what about now? What about digital imaging that includes the ability to create something that doesn't actually exist. How about CGI in movies that is so seamless we don't know it isn't real. That's not photography (or movies) is it? It's back to painting, back to animation (which existed before movies). The reality of these images exists nowhere in the real world at all, and unlike painting or animated illustrations, not even as created images in the real world. One can photograph a drawing, one can create a movie from stop action clay figures and inspect a single frame. One cannot photograph a digital file, in fact the only clue to what is in a digital file is when it is displayed using the correct interpretation program.
When it is displayed, it appears identically each time. Unlike photographing something which introduces mistakes at the creation, or which creates a real thing that will deteriorate over the years, a digital file exists or it does not, and it displays exactly the same each time (given the variations that exist in different monitors, but that is not the file, that is the visualization). The file, once created, does not change, even if copied. If there is change, the file ceases to exist. Digital files are whole or nothing, they do not fade, they do not accumulate mistakes (to any extent, we've all seen those files that are only half a picture... half perfect, half not there).
Has man reached the ability to work on Plato's ideal plane? Can we create, not an example of a chair but "chair", the ideal of chair. That essence, that "chairness" that lets us know a thing is a chair because we somehow know the original? Because everything we create digitally will live forever in "the cloud" with no need for any "real" form at all, are we all Platonists now?
Can we call a CGI image a photograph? By pushing the technology of digital photography far enough have we gone beyond "photograph" thus enabling ourselves to define, finally, what a photograph is? A photograph being an "image of" something that exists in the world, rather than on the ideal plane.
Our digital image is unchanging, cannot change, and not real without being displayed, that display itself being real, and thus introducing mistakes and other real things.
Our photograph was a real thing, light on light sensitive chemical emultion. It is still light on a sensor, a real detector of light, so it must be "of something" that reflects light onto the sensor.
Our CGI file is unreal, both in the real world, it is not "of something" and in its creation it was not a recording of light on a sensor, it is created, it is on the ideal plane, it has no need of an essence, it need not exist.
What, then, is a kata? What is your koryu sword art? Is it a set of ideal, unchanging, unchanged "Platonic forms" which, like CGI cannot be changed because change destroys them? Are the kata "budoness" the essence of the school which created them, an ideal kataness that allows you, through contact with this ideal plane, to understand that it is a kata, just as you understand that thing over there is a chair because you apprehend "chairness" through contact with the ideal realm?
Or is a kata a real thing, a thing that exists in the real world, that cannot be reproduced in the same way twice because of the imperfection of the reproducing system? (You) And, if it cannot be reproduced ideally, without change, is change allowed? Can our "ideal form" be an abstraction, an average, an illusion, dare I say, which does not actually exist? If so what does exist?
Perhaps we need to look at the creators of our images. They are not gods, they are you and I. I may take a photograph, I may also create a digital image without resort to photographic techniques, by manipulating a digital painting program to create a file that is never displayed. Are these two things different? Perhaps. Do they have a link? Yes. Me. I create both of them, I take the photograph and I create the CGI.
Good. Now, why do I create them? What purpose did I have for creating them? Perhaps by looking at them you can derive my meaning. No? Well perhaps together, me creating and you viewing, a meaning can be created. Yes.
A kata, what is it? It never existed on some god-crowded plane to be dimly glimpsed by us like shadows on a cave wall. Every kata ever created was created by a man. Each time it was performed, even by the same man, it was different. Just as each viewer of a photograph will find a meaning which depends on their ability to see and their entire life experience up to that moment of seeing, so a kata will mean something different each time it is performed.
Can a kata change within a school? Of course it can, as a real thing it cannot exist without change. It is nothing but change, "because time".
To look at a photograph, or any piece of art, honestly, we must try to see what the artist intended when he created the image. We must then understand that we are bringing baggage to the image and we must be honest about that. The Wallendorf Venus is a sculpture, an image in three dimensions. Forget "what is it" and try to tell me "why is it". No you are wrong, whatever you just told me you are wrong. We are 40,000 years away from that artist, our ability to understand his or her time is gone, we can only project our experience and bias on the artist. The object remains, meaning remains, but understand, be honest, the meaning of that image is, now, entirely dependant on your bias.
A 400 year old kata? With the writings of the creator of that kata still around? We have a much better chance of knowing what Musashi's intent was in his kata. We know the name of the artist! We can, with work, try to understand the society he lived in. (Hint, it is not the Japan of 2016).
We read the Gorin no Sho, we read the Hyoho Sanjugo Kajo and we... don't recognize the kata. Are the translations from old to new Japanese faulty? Are the translations from Japanese to English faulty? Have the kata been changed over 10, 11, 12 generations?
Of course the kata have changed. I have film and textbook evidence that the "standard kata of the kendo federation" have changed in my lifetime. Hell, I've got my memory that says they have changed. But they are standard! Kata never change!
Bull. CGI don't change because they can't. They don't change because the technology that keeps them can't handle change, that technology isn't "real". Those CGI do not exist in the real world. Kata do. What are kata? They are art, they are images created with a meaning and that meaning persists to the extent that we have contact with the creator and we are honest about our bias, and the bias of every generation that has copied that kata from the creation down to us.
The meaning of the kata is not found in reproducing, copying the digital file exactly for fear of breaking it. The meaning of the kata is in understanding why it was created, in working toward the lesson our teacher was trying to teach us when they taught us the kata. That teacher, we hope, tried to understand why his teacher taught it to him, and why every teacher, back to Musashi, taught us that kata. We listen, we read, we think about what bias we bring, the bias of all our teachers back to Musashi. Then we try to understand what Musashi wanted us to understand.
Is my Chudan the Chudan Musashi did? Who knows. Do I believe I can understand what Musashi wanted me to understand when he created Chudan? I have faith.
And I think maybe I know what a photograph is now.
What do you really need?
Wow, look at that, the Brazil Olympics is beginning. All it takes, apparently, is some people who are willing to gather with other people to do what they love doing. What is it that you really need? A place and the people mostly. The press will doubtless continue to spin stories about unfinished bathrooms, polluted oceans and mosquitos but the athletes will compete anyway.
I've practiced iaido on cement under a gazebo during a rain, on sandy beaches, plywood patched basketball floors, rollerskating rinks, on walkways in the sun, in parks, plazas and pavillions. It doesn't matter, what matters is a few people who want to get together and learn something.
The problems come with the publicity and with the money. Once fame and fortune come into it you get the advisors, the hangers-on and those who worry about such things as "the dignity of the art/sport". As if that matters when you're going full-bore at something you love. There is no dignity but the dignity of practice, the interplay between you and your partner. The rest of it is window dressing. I've been given what-for for having the wrong coloured top. Good thing that sensei wasn't at class when we wore t-shirts and hakama because the dojo was 38 degrees. Good thing they aren't around when I empty the pockets of my shorts and do two hours practice in a Hawaiian shirt. Does showing up to a grading in a brand new outfit show my respect for the art? It shows I have more money than the kid who can't afford a new outfit, certainly. Respect for the art? How about I buy that kid a new outfit and I grade in my old, patched, lovingly cleaned outfit. Is that respect for the art?
It's the practice, not the outfit. Not the perfect floor (I've sliced the bottom of my foot on the edge of a board in our current dojo), not the perfect lighting (we regularly step into sunlight and get blinded in our current dojo), not the specific direction and number of bows (respect your partner, that's all you ever need to remember).
Work hard, swing safely, look after the equipment and each other and you can practice anywhere. Wait for the perfect room with the perfect outfit and the perfect partner and you may as well not start at all.
Remember always, if there's money to be made someone will jump in to demand it, those who practice will mostly have the same pay in an unknown sport as in the most popular Olympic sports. Except of course for those Olympic sports which use professional athletes. Those guys are probably making more money at their sport than I do at mine. Probably.
As each country enters the stadium the commentator dutifully tells us how many medals that country won and when. With each pronouncement I feel a bit more depressed.
Tomorrow I'm making kusarigama. There is a worldwide market this year for no more than 30 I suspect. That makes me feel better.
Learning the rules
Uchidachi is in charge of the timing and distance in a kata right? That's the rule, so uchidachi doesn't need to pay attention to shidachi's timing.
Well, no. A rule is a tricky thing, it doesn't mean you can walk onto the tip of a sword just because you're supposed to be leading a kata. The whole point (forgive) of a kata is for two people to work together and if one of them believes in rules it sometimes makes a difference. Not always, many kata, especially when both partners are starting out, will go just fine if both partners follow the rules. These are simple call and response exercises, I swing, you step to the side. What can go wrong? Aside from you not stepping to the side and all I have to do to prevent consequences is stop swinging before I hit your head.
But there's a kata in Niten that has been irritating me for two weeks now and I finally saw the problem. It's not simple, it's not "at the same time" (sen no sen) and it's not quite "defend then counterattack" (go no sen) it's more subtle. The kata is Ryusui Uchidome. Uchidachi approaches, does kissaki gaeshi (raises his sword overhead) and on the third step cuts down vertically at shidachi's head. Same old same old for the attack in this set of kata. Shidachi approaches and raises his swords into chudan on the second step. On the third he opens his swords to invite an attack, steps back to avoid that attack and then brushes the attacking sword to the side and counters with a strike to the head. The lesson is somewhat the same as in the first kendo no kata, it's not strange in any way, step back and let your opponent miss then hit him. But what makes this kata slightly different is the chudan position which stalls uchidachi's attack. Uchidachi can't swing for shidachi's head without being stabbed in the throat, and he is too deep to strike down the swords cleanly, and... there is confusion. There is supposed to be confusion, the whole point is to create confusion.
But you can't create confusion in someone who isn't paying attention. Startle yes, but not confuse. If Uchidachi follows the rules he raises the sword on the second step and cuts on the third and he's in charge of timing so away we go. Shidachi has to rush things to make it work and you know, it might even look good, but neither partner learns a damned thing.
Rules are those things you are supposed to learn right? We memorize the rules and we pass the test. We memorize the rules and we win the tournment. Well, yes. But rules can prevent another kind of learning, the sort of learning that involves creativity, the kind that allows you to develop "perceived self-efficacy", that allows you to deal with new situations. In short, rules can prevent thinking. Rules are the things that you use when you don't want to think.
Take any set of standardized kata which are used for grading and tournaments. (ANY seitei folks, not just kendo federation seitei). You learn it from sensei. You learn the rules on etiquette, you learn the rules on how to wear the uniform, you learn the rules for the kata, how to stand in line for the test. You learn lots and lots of stuff right?
You do. Lots of stuff, and it's all good. But if all you do with it is grade and compete in tournaments it will be as if you're in a school system that teaches the three Rs, readin' writin' and 'rithmatic. You memorize the times table for math. You memorize poetry for english. You memorize formulae for physics. It's the right way to teach, it's the Eastern way, you copy characters until you learn how to read.
Here's the thing. At some point you're supposed to derive the principles from all that copying and memorizing, and that's not an easy thing to do. Not when you're constantly being slapped back into the rules. I don't care how many times you copy the word democracy, the meaning is going to escape you. If you repeat the phrase "(insert current heavily repeated meaningless phrase here)" it might come to be believed by large numbers of people but it still won't mean anything. The simple answers of propaganda are rules. If you do this the problem will be solved. Actually it usually means "if you put me into power I'll fix this". He won't you know, if it was easily fixed it would have been fixed. If it is really a problem people would probably be working on it because there is more than one smart person in the world. "Here is the problem and I am the only one who can fix it". Repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes a rule.
So, let's take iaido, a very easy target for rules-worship. No partner, just you waving the sword around. My favourite? Swing the sword at this exact angle and stop it at this precise spot. Good rule. If you do it you will pass your test and you will win the tournament. But what does it mean? "Well it means that your opponent is at this exact place and you have cut him in this exact manner". Yes, good. Anything else?
There is an anything else. It's the place where most teachers say "practice and you will understand". I think that's right but... how do you practice? If you only practice in front of sensei who only tells you what angle and where to stop... and interrupts your kata to tell you that...
The rules of kata are those things that tell us "this is the kata". You memorize the rules so that you can do the kata but after that you really need to practice the kata and pay attention to the deeper lessons that can be taught.
There's a reason the difference between 7dan and 8dan is "understand the riai". Extracting those deeper lessons is hard if all you've ever done is memorize the rules.
Maybe it's that you have to be 7dan before you're "allowed" to think beyond the rules. Maybe that's why it takes 30 years to "learn budo". We let guys poke around in our brains with half that time spent learning. I really don't want a 75 year old poking my grey matter, they get tired fast and their hands shake!
Shut up, stop thinking and memorize the rules as fast as you can, then turn your brain back on and think about what the kata is trying to teach you.
Jodo, Not for armour
A comment on an angled strike in Jodo last class triggered quite a long speech on the history of Japanese weapons arts which I thought I'd use today to discuss a couple of things about jodo.
The comment was that the strike, to the temple, was actually to the joint between the helmet and the shoulder-guard of the armour. No, I said, it's to the temple and went off on a long discussion of when Jodo was formulated, which was after the unification of Japan so no need to wear armour and no battlefields to use 4 shaku sticks on, like that ever happened. At which point a naginata student said "cut off spear shaft". At least she didn't say naginata shaft. But armour? Not so much those lovely square things for 12th century bowmen everyone thinks about, not after 1542 or whenever those guns came into the country (actually a paper I read not so long ago said they were there before that), but regardless of appearance, they were plentiful by the late 1500s when Oda used 3000 of them in one fight. The old armour didn't have much effect against bullets so why wear it unless you were a general and needed to look cool.
Which sparked a comment on why the Japanese gave up the gun and I said they didn't so much give it up as disarm the population and send all the guns to Korea where Hideyoshi also sent all the surplus soldiers to keep them busy and out of the way.
So why the jo? Peacetime policing I said, to give some sort of non-lethal response weapon to the low ranking samurai who were trying to get the drunken upper ranking samurai home to their beds after a night of excitement in Fukuoka. Note these were lower ranking samurai policing those above them on the social scale so non-lethal weaponry is a really good idea if you want to keep your job. Killing your drunken boss is almost always a bad career move. On the other hand, if we're talking upper castes policing the lower castes who cares about lethality, reach for your sword. In fact let's make sure the lower castes are well aware of the lethal response to any insurrection. Hideyoshi sent the peasants back to the fields and froze the social order for good economic reasons. He also disarmed the lower classes, and several peasant revolts during the Edo era showed the wisdom of his ways, the Tokugawa managed to suppress all of them, sometimes with quite bloody methods.
Which brings me to my last essay on the survival of the sword. How did the jo, a low-class, low-romance weapon end up surviving to the modern age where it is now quite well-established in both east and west? Policing. It remained a practical police weapon through the Edo. During the Meiji restoration when all those old-fashioned arts were dropping off, it managed to hold on long enough to be introduced into the modern police forces. Once that happened a link to the police Kendo training was easy enough to establish and from there into the present kendo federation where it finds a home and a supply of new students. How's that for a nutshell.
A stick is "just an aide to walking sir, I've got a trick knee". A cane is never a romantic weapon, but it remains a practical one. Not much good against armour on a battlefield but just the thing for a touch upside the head.
A tachi tale
If you go into the history of warfare in Japan you rapidly come to the conclusion that the sword wasn't very important on the battlefield. Bows, and later guns certainly, and when you got close, spear formations but swords? Not so much. The same is true for western armies since the Roman Legions I suppose. Pikes, bows and guns.
So why is the sword the pre-eminant weapon of Japanese arts today? Between aikido, kendo and the koryu there is probably more sword practice than all the other weapons combined. We certainly sell many more bokuto than we do naginata. The only other weapon that comes close is the jo, and that would reflect the numbers of aikido dojo that include weapons training. Actually I have a suspicion that in the west at least, aikido is the number one sword art by population. My introduction to the bokuto was certainly through that art.
But why not spear? Why not naginata? How did the sword get the place it holds?
A big part has to be symbolism. The sword, once peace broke out in the Tokugawa era, came to represent the samurai class. While some folks could wear a sword, it was only the samurai that wore the daisho, the set of two swords. If a doctor walked around with a sword in his belt it was a practical tool for self defence. The samurai's sword was a badge of rank, something entirely different. While a samurai might have a spear or two at home, leaning in the corner of the kitchen, the sword was in his belt whenever he was out and about.
Still, a symbol doesn't need to be a tool, and we still need to look at the arts to see why the sword, rather than the naginata or the gun, became the premier weapon to practice the budo.
Why budo in the first place? Around 1600 the unification of the country under the Tokugawa was not a sure thing. There was a chance that war would break out again so folks kept practicing the practical arts. Musashi (Niten Ichiryu sword), Muso (Shindo Muso Ryu Jo) Jinsuke (Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu iai) and the founders of many other arts we practice today were of this era. They taught practical warcraft as young men and, as the age of peace extended, they codified and taught their arts as the activities we practice today. Not quite practical warfare skills but not entirely divorced from those origins. So what do you need for these new schools? How about a weapon that is easy to carry around, how about one that you have with you all the time? How about your sword?
As a practical training tool a bokuto or a tachi are fairly easy to cart around, so while there were doubtless people who were very good with a 12 foot spear at the end of the wars, a 12 foot pole isn't easy to cart around or store at home. Guns and bows require expendable ammunition and require big ranges for practice.
Now we add the thought that "since a samurai carries a sword, he really ought to be able to use it". This thought never went away, really. Musashi complained about the samurai "in recent days" (early 1600s) who don't practice any more, and a hundred years later Yamamoto (in the Hagakure) was singing the same song. The sword was the symbol of the samurai, they really ought to be able to use it as well as wear it. I suspect this attitude was a big part in the survival of the arts through the centuries to the modern era. The samurai survived as a class and so, therefore, did their budo practice.
But beyond all these arguments, there was one more fundamental which Musashi made in his Gorin no sho:
" In this Way, the person who swings the tachi is called a "hyohosha" by the world. Extending this to other martial skills, if a person pulls the bow well, we call him a bowman, if he has a gun, we call him a gunman. If he uses and acquires spears, we call him a spearman, and if he learns the long sword, we call him a long swordsman.
However, even if he has learned tachi, we don't call him a tachiman or a wakizashi man. Bows, guns, spears and long swords, these are all weapons for buke (samurai or samurai families and their members), thus any of them are the way of the sword too. This is the logic of why we call only the way of the tachi, hyoho. By the tachi's grace, we accommodate the world and settle ourself down, this is therefore the fundamental instrument of hyoho.
If you understand the Tachi's grace, it is the same if you win fighting against ten people. If you win fighting against 10 people, 100 people can win against 1000 people, 1000 can win against 10,000. Therefore in my style of hyoho, one or ten thousand, these are all the same and I call all considerations of the way of bushi, hyoho."
In other words, Musashi is saying that the sword is the place to learn hyoho, to learn the theory behind the skills, the strategy that exists beyond the technical mastery of any one weapon. It isn't that a sword can mimic a gun or a spear (you often hear people talk about the jo as combining the skills of the sword, the spear and the naginata) it's that the sword is the best place to learn how to command yourself, your opponent, and by extension, your armies. The Gorin no sho is Musashi's argument that you can learn the arts of war by learning the arts of the sword.
Why the sword? You tell me.
Privilege
A while ago someone commented that being able to practice several arts seemed like a privilege. I suppose it is. First you have to have other arts available to you, then you have to have the time to spend practicing them and finally, you have to have permission from your first sensei to go practice other arts.
Other arts to practice
Actually, it's probably not a problem to find other arts in your area to practice. Even if you live in a small town there's probably at least a judo, karate or aikido club around. If you're in that small town you are probably practicing one of those to begin with, obscure koryu schools being, well, obscure. In a larger center there may be several mainstream and smaller arts around. In other words, lots of choice. If so, you ought to think a bit before picking up a second art. See if you can find one that fits with your first, or one that adds to it, or one that is a total change. Two that fit would be iaido and kendo, they are supposed to go together, iaido being where kendoka learn how to handle a real sword. That's why it exists in the kendo federation. Aikido and a koryu sword art often go together, and I'm reminded that I should mention that an old aikido acquaintance, Joel Posluns, of North Vancouver Aikikai is hosting a seminar in September.
Ryushin Shôchi Ryu - Canada (RSR-Canada) is pleased to announce a seminar with Yahagi Kunikazu, Soke of Ryushin Shôchi Ryu, to be held September 20-25, 2016 in Vancouver, Canada. For details on RSR - Canada please visit our website at: http://ryushinshochiryu.ca/
There you have it, aikido and RSR. You see, some dojo give you a pre-existing mix which, presumably, fits (why teach two or more arts in the same dojo if sensei doesn't think they fit).
Two arts that add to each other might be the traditional (in the west) karate and judo combination. What happens if the guy gets hold of me? Well, if he's got you, you have him. Arts that are a total change? Perhaps tai chi and mixed martial arts? Although I seem to see a lot of folks who are in highly competitive arts taking tai chi as well.
All combat arts can inform other arts, so perhaps I can suggest, instead of trying to pick arts that go together, you look at the sensei instead. Does that second instructor look likely to be compatible with your first instructor? If so, go for it.
Time to add a second art
Ah, here's the thing. If you can't make it to all your current once a week practices, what makes you think you can make it out to three practices a week in two arts? Most of my own students don't make it out to two a week, they get a mix because we practice in a very unplanned manner. What we do tonight is supposed to be jodo, will likely be related to jodo, but could end up being something else depending on who's there and what specific topic we need to learn.
Sensei says it's OK
I specifically mentioned your first sensei being OK with you practicing other arts. That's because each additional sensei you visit will be fine with you practicing two or more arts. Otherwise they will say no, or ask you to give up your first art (that's not very likely because that's a bit impolite). Your first sensei? There's a good chance he will say no to you practicing elsewhere. Many sensei feel it will do you more harm than good to practice more than one art. Some will feel you should concentrate on one for a while before branching out, and a few will simply have an ego problem with you looking elsewhere.
I began my practice in Aikido and it was not a problem when I added iaido to my practice. When I asked Haruna sensei about adding Niten Ichiryu to my iaido he was encouraging, he practiced both of course and thought one would inform the other. When I mentioned jodo (which we did not practice at that time) he asked me if I had the time to devote to an art that didn't "cross over" as much as iai and Niten did. There was no question of disapproval, just a warning that spreading too thin doesn't get you as far as concentrating does.
Sometimes you have to worry not about sensei, but about those under him. I've seen situations where sensei is just fine with students learning different arts or the same art from different sensei, but lower ranked students have taken it upon themselves to deny such permission to other students. This situation never happens unless sensei is somehow being screened away by "gatekeepers". If you can't get to sensei to ask him, I suppose you have to abide by the rules of the keepers.
In all of this you need to consider why you are practicing your art. If your orientation is competitive, to win tournaments or even to "become the best Xryu-ka in the world" you should spend your spare time praciticing your art. Concentration makes for mad skills. Practicing other arts to gain insight into your own is something that will pull you away from the conventional teaching of your art, and will not make judges or senior instructors in that art praise you. Instead you'll get comments like "you've got too much Yryu in your Xryu." It will be true. One should understand one's intent before rushing off to "collect kata". What is it that you are looking for?
Me, I didn't so much decide to branch out and study different arts as accumulate them. I began iaido at an aikido summer camp. Niten Ichiryu was taught to me by an iaido instructor, similarly jodo. About the only art I added deliberately was Tae Kwon Do and that was to get my leg speed back since Aikido was reducing my Volleyball jump height. Or so I figured.
Mix it up
When you're doing a budo you aren't supposed to bring stuff in from other arts. You really ought not to mix stuff up.
I'm totally down with that, and yet I take stuff from one art into another all the time. Not the actual techniques, not the theory, but the way I understand my hips move, or the way an attack line forms.
It's not so much that I bring something from one art into another, it's that I learn some things in some places and some things in others. So I tend to teach things that way, waiting to teach... no, remembering to teach driving right straight down the line and slipping 8 inches to the side in Niten Ichiryu. I teach the difference between strictly square hips and angled hips in Zen Ken Ren iai, I remember to teach control of the centerline with the weapon in jodo. That sort of thing. You can teach all of it in any of the arts but that's not how I learned and so it's not how I teach. You teach as you learned, usually, after all, why not dance with the one what brung ya.
There are only so many ways to twist a wrist. That's how I put it when I hear people start to speculate that some 14th century western swordsman must have met a Chinese sailor who studied the roots of Daito Ryu in Japan. This stuff does cross between arts, especially if you're talking about arts from one country, where they would have been exposed to each other. After all, "back in the day" I suspect students went out behind the barn to compare notes and brag to each other as much as they do now. "Look at this cool hip throw we got taught last week!" Shimomura ha Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu may move the hips differently than Tanimura ha does but they both use the hips to draw the sword from seiza. The problem with mixing comes when one uses the arm movement of one with the hip movement of the other, as seems to be happening recently. Some things don't mix, but if you get shoulder damage from a technique, or if the technique now has no power at all, that ought to be a clue that something ill advised has been mixed up.
Stuff works. Sometimes you can link something from one art to another. I've got karate folks who keep naming stances at me when I tell them to move their hips from one position to another. Why not? If it's the same hip position and you can connect that to what you're doing now, why not use it to jump-start your student? Adult learning theory says you teach by building on skills learned earlier. That means "know that when your body is in this stance you are strong in this direction, so take that stance when you want to be strong in that direction. Good, now let's move on."
If I am taught the same stance in three different Japanese sword arts I begin to believe it's a thing. If I get it slightly wrong in the only art I practice, I may never get it right. If I can make a strong stance in three different arts but with slightly different turns of the hip, maybe I start to understand that there is a range within which strength exists, and outside that there is weakness. Now I know something that wasn't taught at all, maybe now I know how to break a stance in my opponent. Knowing the range means I can see that range in an opponent and now I know when he's weak in a certain direction. Stuff I might not know for decades if I stuck to a single art, but that's me. I'm a comparative sort of guy, I took every comparative physiology course available during my undergrad degree. Not because I had to, but because they appealed to me.
What brought this on was watching an old Niten Ichiryu film and seeing the technique uke nagashi performed. I have had students tell me that they know how to do it because they learned it in Seitei. I watch those students get their bokuto smashed into their shoulders and sometimes their heads. I have other students who have done Aikido and "get it" instantly. It's not the way you move the sword, it's the way you move your shoulder. What you bring in from other arts can make it easier or harder to learn what you're trying to learn right now.
Mix it up, by all means, but if what you're trying doesn't seem to be what you need, let it go. Fast.
Large and in charge
It takes a certain kind of idiot to want to be "in charge" in a volunteer organization. There's no money and very little thanks. Does anyone really think that being in charge will bring fame, glory or respect? Have you been in a volunteer organization? Everything is the fault of someone further up the chain.
OK some folks do it these days to pad the resume and that's legitimate, in fact that ought to be one of the ways to talk the young folks into getting involved. "It will look good on your resume". Of course in these days of unpaid internships, that might be met with a certain amount of cynicism. Still, volunteer groups (I'm talking most martial arts administrative positions) do offer positions where unprepared and untrained (unsuspecting) people can be thrown into positions of actual authority and thus thrown to the wolves. Much better training than to be doing scut-work for a commercial organization for no pay. Scut-work is the necessary stuff that you can't pay people enough to do, that is dirty, hard, boring and teaches you nothing. It tells future employers that you can be taken advantage of, which, now that I think about it, might just help you get a job.
How about those who "have a lot to offer"? I'm dissing those folks who have pure motives and lots of fresh ideas to improve the organization aren't I? Perhaps. Maybe I've just not met anyone who is that much smarter than the dozens of people who have come before. Maybe I'm old, no I am old and I should shut up and let the youngsters get in there and fix things. Things need to be fixed right? They always need to be fixed. Ah, what's the fun in shutting up. The young complainers who want to fix things? If they get annoying enough give them the job as punishment. Bwahahahahaha, I've done it!
It takes a certain kind of self-delusion in an old person to believe they can fix what isn't broken, or perhaps is working as well as it ever will. Oldsters ought to know better. The youth? Of course they know how to fix it, they may even have taken a course!
Why am I on about this? Because one or two of my former students are in a position where they could step into their volunteer group and fix what is in fact a bit of a mess. The thing is, even though they have the skills and the inherent authority to do the job, they have actual lives and actual jobs. In other words they are neither retired nor young so don't really have the time to devote to a bunch of unpaid, frankly mostly unworthy people who want someone else to fix things without paying them to do it. Where is the incentive for my students to step in? I should mention that they are all more qualified than I, and could do better jobs in their groups than I ever did in mine. There's no question they could do the job.
One way that they might end up doing the job is if they are asked to do it by someone they respect. Hah, it isn't going to be me. I like them, I don't want them to be irritated and frustrated doing a difficult job that isn't going to do them any good at all. (Full disclosure here, I also have selfish plans for them down the road and don't want them burned out elsewhere.) My advice, as always, will be to let those who want to do the job, do the job. If this means a giant mess that nobody is happy with, someone else should step forward and fix it. Perhaps a youth who has not had the enthusiasm and optimism pounded out of them yet, provided that youth will take advice, it can work quite well.
Youth don't have people skills and need to develop them (hence the advice taking). A volunteer position can teach this, but often does not because youth already have the "answers" and where answers don't exist they have "rules". Youths love textbooks and operational manuals and theories. What they have trouble with is personality and quirk and the mess of the real world. Youths figure you go to the top guy to get things done because all he has to do is issue an order and everyone all the way down the chain snaps to it.
Well then if we're not going to tap the shoulders of working people who, frankly, have better things to do with their time than mess about with volunteer groups, what about retirees? Ah, those I believe in, mostly. They have no job, no family (grown up kids and a wife/husband that is happy to see the backside of them each morning) and a lifetime of dealing with people. In other words, they have had the idealism of youth gently massaged, or not so gently, OK pounded out of them. Where a youth will go to the top guy and expect massive things to happen all down the chain of command, a retiree will find the secretary who actually does the work needed and ask nicely.
Retirees don't usually want to fix the world, they just want it to be there next week. They believe in fixing only those things that are broken, and only to get it to work again. Where a youth will fix something "for all time" (strike a committee and make some more rules) an oldster will simply find a way to get rid of the squeaky wheel. Oil it or rip it off the wagon, don't even replace it if it can't be replaced, just stop the damned noise before it makes everyone on the wagon jump off. Retirees aren't fearful of making decisions that make them unpopular, they understand that not everyone will like them for all time. They understand that being liked isn't the same as being respected for making unpopular decisions. Life experience is figuring out what needs to be done rather than what people (themselves as well as others) want done.
To be blunt, youths see their career stretching out in front of them and make decisions based on that. Oldsters see a legacy and work toward preservation of what's there. Those in the middle see a week already full of stuff that needs to be done and really should be left alone to get on with it.
Me, I'm waiting for one of those former students to retire so I can dump my job on them, they have the experience and the skills right now, and when they have the time I'm out of here to do proper retiree stuff like paint the new roof over the deck.
The long view
A while ago I was thinking about how to better understand your art by looking at another art. Last evening we did a Kage Ryu practice which we had missed at the weekend seminar and I was reminded of this. Mostly I was reminded that all the "incorrect" things I avoid in much of my iaido practice are not incorrect in an absolute sense, but rather in a situational sense. While it is a good thing to maintain a straight back, head over hips, while drawing with a 2.7 shaku blade, it is simply impossible to do with a 3.6. While we can cut as we step down with a thousand gram iaito, trying to do that with a blade that is four times the weight will get you a sprained ankle and bruised knees.
What is Kage Ryu? It is "Choken battojutsu of the Tachibana feif (Yanagawa). The name (kage) means a scene, or a long view (keshiki) rather than shadow as most people assume. Seeing a long way away? Absolutely, you have to look into the future to fight while using a choken. You have to cut them a full step ahead of time. That's sort of the point of the long blade. As your opponent is approaching you reach out and cut him just as he is thinking about his last step into range to cut you. Where else could I find a physical measure of this distance that is so hard to figure out in arts like Niten Ichiryu where students can't quite get the feel for cutting into space a step ahead of their approaching partner (that is, cutting into the place where that partner is about to enter). Kage gives that space a physical shape.
A newly encountered art promotes questions and we spent a while at the bar discussing the reasons why a cut across the back of a retreating opponent was an acceptable thing. "Is", in Kage Ryu, "was but is no longer is" (or at least is not emphasized in many lines) in Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu. That discussion covered Japanese history from pre-Edo to the Meiji and then the Showa. It involved discussions of culture and the idea of "fair play" as regards asassination, sneak attacks and "pre-emptive self defence".
As we were leaving the athletics building the badminton crowd was taking down their nets and I was suddenly laughing to myself. I wondered if the Chinese students who were playing a game invented on the lawns of the English aristocracy were asked if they were also taking lessons in crumpet baking in order to better understand the culture their game came from, which, one presumes, will make them better at the game. (Anyone who has just slid over to wikipedia and is about to tell me that the game is 2000 years old and was invented in India will be told by me that Japanese swordsmanship came from China and that Kumdo originated in Korea 3000 years ago.)
I laughed because I often get told that I have to study Japanese culture to understand iaido, yet the Japanese themselves hardly know what iaido is, let alone jodo (you mean judo right?). What are the chances the man on the street would be able to explain the cultural nuances of an art that was kept "within the gates" for most of modern Japanese history? Yet the theory of cutting someone with a sharp piece of metal seems to be understandable in any culture. I would even hazard a guess that cutting someone across the back is fully understandable in any culture that uses those sharp pieces of metal. Cultural values and pre-emptive self defence? Orwell would be proud... well OK he would be appalled. I suspect a lack of knowledge of the English peerage would not affect the skills of any badminton player, regardless of ancestry, unless of course they are using badminton to understand English culture.
What makes me think is of value to me personally, or as the name says, the long view.
If you too want to take the long view, or at least view the long swords, go to http://seidokai.ca/kageryu-seminar.html where you will find information about the upcoming seminar along with a registration form.
Moving the mess around.
At the cabin this weekend (also known as Tombo Dojo) we managed a couple hours of practice but mostly I hijacked the crew to help do some deck-roofing to keep the water away from the floor joists in the crawlspace, a problem I noticed while putting down a wood floor (red pine just like Namitome sensei's dojo in Fukuoka, I look forward to a golf-ball finish if I ever get enough practice on it). With luck the deck roof will let the joists dry and then I can get into the crawlspace and fix it. Oh joy.
In order to do the downstairs floor we had to move a lot of stuff upstairs (into the dojo) and in the process I threw out a LOT of junk. Now the stuff upstairs has to get out of the dojo so we can host Watkin sensei the first weekend of September for Niten Ichiryu and Batto Choken Kage Ryu (you're all invited). Didn't get to the beach to do Kage this weekend, so we'll practice Tuesday here in Guelph (if you want to try drawing a five foot sword come on out). The ice cream folks in Red Bay wondered where our skirts were when we dropped in. One practice on the beach and we're an institution.
When the piled up stuff moves downstairs I hope to shed a bunch more of it. Some of it is tools that could be stored somewhere, but there's a lot of accumulated lumber that could be turned into storage.... hmm. How much time dilation could I get away with this month before someone notices...
When I was a student I seemed to have a lot less stuff than I do now, I suspect it was because I moved quite often and moving is a good chance to get rid of stuff. Getting rid of stuff is a good thing. It means you have room to move around, room to swing your arms in a room without breaking stuff. It also means you have room for new stuff.
Here it comes, can you feel it?
Just like budo. There, I did it. Budo can be like an old house you've lived in for way too long. Stay in one dojo with one teacher for long enough and, if you're not paying attention, you can accumulate a lot of extra baggage. You're comfortable, sensei says "you need to drop your shoulders" and you hear... well you hear that like you see the boxes of old college textbooks in the corner of your basement. You don't. It takes a special kind of person to be able to spot dust bunnies under a bed behind piles of old boots. It takes a special kind of effort to see a pile of mildewed board games on a shelf at the back of the broom closet.
We are adaptable. Attenuation is a good thing, you couldn't drive if you didn't learn not to see what you don't have to see, too much information all at once. Or to keep it with the cottage construction metaphor, you can't bang in a roof if you don't learn to ignore the tippy ladder under your feet after about ten seconds. The problem is, we are very very good at this, we can learn to be blind to temporary piles of stuff in the hallways which end up living there. We can... ahem... learn to kick our shoes off directly in front of the door "just for an instant" so that the next person through gets to practice their breakfalls. No folks, it's not about which way the shoes face in the dojo because of metaphysical ideals of "being ready to leave as you enter", it's about putting them somewhere other people won't trip over them. Line them up and you can put more of them in less space. Arrange them so that you can get into your shoes and out the door without holding everyone else up for ten seconds as you bend over, turn them around, put them on and step out. Otherwise, after 30 people you're taking 5 minutes to clear a room. Because fire. Because attack from the dojo next door.
Not seeing the mess is not paying attention. Budo is paying attention. Take home lesson? Maybe a visit to another dojo or a visit from another sensei will mean clearing away enough of the clutter to see the under-clutter that could be thrown out. It's not so much that your sensei doesn't tell you to get rid of the wind-up before you throw that punch, it's that you don't hear him any more. It's the drone that happens after you throw the punch in the kata, it's like a long kiai. Punch/
If you move the mess around you have to look at it. If you look at it you see it, if you see it you might just take this opportunity to throw it out or give it away. Mostly in budo it's a matter of getting rid of stuff, like that wind-up.
Move the mess around. Try a new sensei or even a new art to see your old habits, not in a new light, just to see them at all. See you all Tuesday for Kage-ryu, I promise it will show you all sorts of clutter you haven't noticed in years.
How far is too far
How do you learn distance? I mean Musashi talks about it all the time, and yesterday was pretty much nothing but frustration all around because I couldn't get across the distancing in one of the less practiced kata we do. After calling the class because it was definitely beer o'clock I worked out how to sneak up on it so wasn't as depressed as I could have been.
Just how do we teach distancing (and of course timing which is bound up with distance)? We start with awase, with matching swords. At every kata we start and end with that distance, and we name it, issoku itto, one step. Seeing it year in and year out, students should eventually start to understand just where it is. We set and start from this distance quite a lot in the jodo kihon, so again, this is training the eye to recognize this interval.
Why this space? Beginners hate it, "I can't get over there to cut your head in one step!" Not now you can't. That's the point, I can cut you but you can't cut me, this is the transition distance, this is the edge between life and death, be like Granny Weatherwax and learn to find this edge where you go from safe to oops. Know your limits. Eventually you will be able to cut from there so suck it up and try. Later you will start to understand that distance and realize that it isn't painted on the floor. This distance changes with you, your partner, the weather, the time of day... that's when you find Musashi's string and yardstick, that hara to hara connection that turns on the red light in your head which says "dangerous distance here". Or perhaps the green light that says "go"!
During the kata themselves the senior side, the uchidachi, sets and controls the distance so that the learning side can do that technique. Assuming uchidachi knows the interval and sets it consistently, shidachi absorbs it gradually, kata by kata. Eventually, this conscious measuring of inches and feet (cm and dm, sun and shaku) goes away and, ideally is replaced with "oh, target!" The distance becomes "where do I have to be to reach the target". Issoku itto has taught you to feel that distance in your gut, your feet take you there, all is good. It's kata so the distractions of feints, timers, judges and getting smacked on the head do not exist to distract you from the real job of getting the right distance.
All this can take years, there is no formula written down to read, no distance to be told and remember, in fact, there is no changing of this combative distance at all. The distance is that place and that time (interval seems to be a good word to describe the combination) where you can strike your opponent, hopefully without being struck by him.
Ai uchi is a thing, you both strike, you both die. It's often where training stops but it's not something Musashi thought was a good idea. In my head it seems to be "that place in the training where the best you can do is die expensively". It's about four years in, these days, or if you're practicing each and every day, maybe about the time when you send the kids out as cannon fodder while the real work is being done by the professionals around the other side.
Sometimes that's the end of it for training. It's pretty good, not shabby at all to be able to get ai uchi consistantly, and it's impressive if you can slip to the side and win with it. There are a LOT of kata that are two people striking from the same interval and arriving at the target at the same time but with one shifting slightly offline to create a hit and a miss. Think hasso hidari in Niten Ichiryu. Timing also is adjusted in many kata to accomplish the hit and miss, as is seen in the Jodo movement of "ai uchi" where the jo and the sword start attacking together but the jo takes the centerline and gets there first. "There" being the place where tachi's face is about to arrive. These are ai uchi timings and are not to be scoffed at. They are not easy.
But wait, there's more! There are the intervals where we cut short on purpose, as in the Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Tsumi Ai kata of Tsubame Gaeshi. The short cut (or the cut to the target that is slow enough that uchidachi can step back and slip it) opens shidachi's head to attack. It's irresistable, "look he's swung and missed and his head is open!" Of course, uke nagashi and the final strike of the kata reveals that shidachi has a good sense of distance and timing and it was all part of the same, compound attack.
That's where we were last evening while doing Ryusui Uchidome. Uchidachi begins to attack, shidachi puts up a chudan kamae which prevents the attack but just as the attack is about to change, the chudan is opened up, revealing the head as target. Uchidachi cuts to the head but shidachi slips back, then sweeps the attacking sword outward with the shoto and cuts the head with the daito. This kata, and any kata, can be done 1-2-3 but the name would indicate it ought to be flowing. That means testing and tickling around that edge we talked about earlier. It means putting your face in the meatgrinder and then pulling it out again as someone flips the switch. Too soon, too late, too far, too close and it's too bad.
This, like the idiot I am, I was trying to teach ippyoshi (all at once) last evening as the last kata of the class and as something most of the class had never seen before. Didn't work. What a surprise, I had gone too far down the chain too soon. You can't ask people to put their faces in a meat grinder when they are still trying to figure out which foot should be in front when they do it. This is the selfishness of the instructor working on stuff in his own head while using his students to test it.
Never mind, I figured it out and the 1-2-3 version will be done this weekend at the seminar.
The hit and the strike
Musashi spoke of the accidental hit and the intentional strike. A pretty simple concept, but it keeps coming up these days. The concept is pretty clear in kendo, you call your strike, you hit the target, it's a strike. You wail (whale?) away like a teenager hitting as fast as you can and hoping you make contact, that's an accidental strike and you're not supposed to get a point for that.
A problem comes, I suppose, when you hit from the void, with munen (no thought). Is that accidental or intentional. Most of us would define that as an intentional strike but who would know from the outside?
In photography we are well into the era of the digital image. That means we can "spray and pray" we can take lots and lots of pictures and occasionally we'll get a good one. "Even a blind monkey finds a banana once in a while" as one of my fellow studio mates used to say about me. I'm reading a book on how to read photographs which was written in the polaroid era and the authors were concerned that party polaroids were not "intentional" images and so were not "good". It was easier to take intentional photos when film was needed. It was expensive to buy and process so you didn't want to waste a shot without an attempt to make it a good one.
Except for family snapshots. Those were just images of people, to remember the family doing something at some time. Any of those shots that were "good" were entirely accidental, the intent being to record a face not make a good photograph.
Today I can set my little G15 to take 10 or 20 shots in a couple of seconds on burst mode. The ultimate way to get a hit instead of a strike yes? Except that I have to work at it to set the burst mode, I have to have a reason to do it in the first place, and I still don't want to waste the burst since it takes a few seconds to write it all to the card. If I set up a model to jump and turn and I shoot that in a burst, looking to find the one perfect shot in the burst is that a hit or a strike? How much credit do I get for the good shot?
How about sports? If your opponent slips at the final point is that your victory or his defeat? Neither I'd suggest, it's a hit rather than a strike. You only get victory or defeat if you are both acting intentionally and one of you is better than the other. What about judged sports? Gymnastics or, in budo, kata based competitions. Now you and your opponent are both acting intentionally (assuming one of you doesn't slip or have a bad knee moment) but we now have judges who may or may not be looking the other way when you make your decisive punch, the one that should have won you the match. Is that a victory and defeat or an accidental hit? There is certainly a winner and a loser but how much victory or defeat can there be in an accidental win?
Let's say you're just practicing iaido by yourself. You really like the activity of waving a sword around by yourself so you practice it three hours a week and you have trained all the good habits into yourself. You are capable of hitting all the judging points in the same way each and every time. You're so well trained that you don't even have to think about it any more, you can think of the grocery list and still look amazing at what you're doing. So you do. Is this a good kata? Is this a strike or a hit? From the outside your pals say you look amazing but from the inside you realize you were adding milk to the list.
It's not about the win, it's not about the photo, and it's not about the ability to touch your nose with your finger when your eyes are closed. It's about the intent. You can't have an intentional strike without having an intent to strike.
It's about paying attention.
Throwing your weight around
Two days of class and all I've talked about is shifting your weight. That's the good stuff, but there are also some things that I wish my students would not pick up from me. Like going on and on after the point has been made, talking over others, being just a bit loud and aggressive when making that point... Pick and choose what you take from your teacher, not all of it is good stuff.
Weight. What is an attack in budo except someone transferring their body weight into you through a hand-held weapon or a part of their body. Chemical weapons (guns) or muscular energy storage weapons (bow and arrow) are out for this discussion, if they are coming at you there's not much you can do except hope they go through something you don't need.
In a throwing art like aikido you want to avoid your partner's weight, you want to slip it or deflect it when attacked and then you want to have your partner's balance so you can use his weight against him. The easiest way to control your uke is to keep his weight tickling around the outside of his stability box. That's a line on the ground between his toes and his heels, toe to toe to heel to heel. Look at that square on the ground, move his center of mass to the edge and he's at the limit of his balance. Move it outside the box and he's off balance and moving to catch up.
There are many ways to move his weight outside his stability. Bend him over and the center shifts outside his body, pull a bit (after bending him forward) and you pull it out over his toes, push a bit (after bending him back) and you move it outside his heels.
You don't have to break the hips (bend him) to do this but it's a help because it's hard to recover the feet under the weight if you're bent. That's why we yell so much about keeping your back straight. Still, even here we can throw his weight around. An easy exercise is to have uke strike shomen uchi (straight down on top of your head). Lets say he is striking with his right hand and his right foot forward. It's the foot that's important. Slip to his front by moving to your right front. You are now facing him "hara to hara". As you move use your right (front) hand to touch his left shoulder, and use your left (rear) hand to defend your face from his attacking hand. Just put it up there beside yourself. Uke will naturally turn toward you which will move his intention from the previous line to you but as he does he will move his weight toward the short side of his stability rectangle. He will go over his heels. This happens because you are holding his rear shoulder in place so that when he rotates his hips you force him to do it on his rear heel rather than stay on the balls of his feet. We're closer to our heels than our toes, we tip over our heels easier than over our toes. The defending (your left) arm blocks his right arm so he can't use that to counter-balance by moving it toward you. By putting strength into this arm to try to move your blocking arm uke will further drive his weight back over his heels.
His only choice is to move his rear foot but... you've thrown his weight onto his heel there, hard to move. Yay, you have his balance, do with him what you wish. You just tried it and it doesn't work? Is your right elbow close enough to him to drive it into his ribs? If not you've moved too far sideways to avoid his strike. This is not, as you might be thinking, safer than moving "just an inch" (2.45cm).
These days I'm usually happy to let it go at that point but the kids like to fall down and throw so have at it you rubber-limbed youngsters. Just remember you can't move him from attack to throw without going through the "move his weight" part.
Dropping the weight. Another part of the class was the "what if". What if he comes in with the wrong hand? Often there's nothing for it but to swat his attack away. This is exactly what it sounds like, an unexpected hand coming to your face and all you've got time for is a movement of your arm to bat it away like a fly. Even here you can take the balance if you swat with some power and he resists the swat. The power comes from dropping your weight into his resistance when you feel it. If you don't feel resistance his attack will move offline, no problem. Dropping in the weight? Tighten your stomach and your armpits. The direction of the swat matters too. Don't move him sideways or toward yourself (unless you can move, which sort of means you don't have to swat in the first place) Instead, swat slightly away from yourself once his arm is moving offline, that way you are moving him toward the narrow side of his stability rectangle. Cleverness. You've taken care of the attack, now Musashi says go back to trying to defeat your opponent, flow into the opening you just created and take advantage.
Weight with weapons
The next day was a jodo class and I just couldn't let it go (see the beginning of this essay for "bad things you should not learn from sensei"). I had to keep talking about weight so we went right back to our "samurai walk" as in "walk like you are crossing a rotten bridge". You pick up your rear foot, move it forward and place the whole foot down as a unit then gradually put your weight on it as if testing a rotten board, ready to stop at any moment. Repeat with the next foot. You've done that? It doesn't work outdoors so it's sissy dojo sliding foot stuff? Maybe, so how do you cross a rotten bridge? Provided you're trying this out, pay attention to your hips. How do you transfer weight from one foot to the next? Do you keep the knees flexed and drive the hips forward rather than move up and down over your locked knees? If so you've just learned how to "keep your head level" as you move. It's really about keeping your hips level which, further down the rabbit hole, means keeping your weight in the center of your stablity box which is expanding and contracting as you move one foot in front of the other. Danger point? When one foot is right beside the other, keep your knees flexed to keep that weight closer to the floor and keep your weight forward of your heels so that you can at least use the length of your feet to give you time to compensate for a sudden shove.
That was square hips, but in jodo we don't use square hips all that much. We were working with kaeshi tsuki, we do a backstroke with the arms, reverse the ends of the jo while twisting the hips, then thrust as we step through. Why not just thrust and be done? Hey, I teach the stuff I don't make it up, ask someone further up the ladder.
Right, we twist the hips as we flip the jo up and over. If we're on the right foot forward we raise the jo with our right hand, turn the hips so the left one is now forward (or more than it was at least) and drop the right hand behind our right hip leaving the left hand forward. Hands switch around the ends of the jo and other stuff but never mind. My concern was how to launch into our opponent after we've spent all this time flipping the jo end for end.
Three ways to move the hips, we move the right hip back, the left hip forward, or we rotate around the central axis so that both hips move. Got that? Are you looking down from on top? Got it now? Good. Remember I want to move into the opponent as soon as the jo comes onto the target (his solar plexus). If I pull the right hip back my weight moves onto my left (back) foot. Remember all that shifting the hip to walk stuff? If my weight is on my left foot it's hard to move and so my right foot twists out to the right to, what, about 90 degrees. Now I have to shift that weight forward again to get the weight onto my right foot so I can move my left foot in front to thrust. Ouch, I'm thrusting with my right foot out at 90 degrees which makes it more of a lunge than a thrust, or if I'm bringing it up as well (which I'm supposed to do) a boat anchor dragging across the floor like Igor (pronounced eye-gor marthter). So somewhere during the time I'm moving forward and putting weight on that right foot I have to twist it to face the front once more. More likely I fall forward and turn the right foot toward the front while recovering the stance, further robbing the thrust of energy.
Hmm, OK let's move the left hip forward as we flip the jo. Ah, now the weight moves immediately onto the front (right) foot, making it hard to turn so the rear foot turns instead and even before we know we're doing it we can be thrusting off of our right (front becoming back) foot. Simpler, faster and more powerful, all because we figured out that our weight shifts as we twist our hips.
Too aggressive? Try rotating the hips around the central axis so that the weight stays equally distributed on both feet. Do both rotate? Perhaps a bit, you can stop the rotation half way to 90 degrees which is our standard 45 degrees for the back foot in our stance. DO NOT DO THIS WEARING TRACK SPIKES. You will end up twisting your knees as you twist your hips and that's a bad thing. To stabilize your knees activate your groin muscles, think of twisting the knees inward, get onto the inside of your feet and then turn. This will protect your knees as you grind your feet into the floor.
My point? I dunno, how about sometimes you should throw your weight around, sometimes you should not.
Other People's Business
I really want to do an essay on a couple of conversations I've been presented with over the last 12 hours, one in the bar where I heard all about how a couple of new moms gave a more experienced dad what-for for leaving his kid unattended for 20 seconds, and the other a real estate saleswoman who doesn't want to give someone hell for something because she was in a book club and three newly-joined women gave her what-for for being late to a meeting and not reading the book. (Real Estate, works hard, unpredictable hours).
Something along the lines of "those who are new to something and have little background information are sometimes the ones who are convinced they know the most".
But then I thought "it's none of my business".
You want to teach WHAT?
Having talked about why anyone would want to teach I was tempted to call for a list of things teachers figured was necessary to know. It suddenly struck me that you need different things when teaching different martial arts. So I'll noodle a bit and maybe teachers can chime in on this with their advice for the youngsters who want to teach.
What you're teaching dictates what you need, in order to teach. If you are teaching in a commercial dojo on main street you need good kid skills. You need a plan to work with your audience and that audience will be kids if you want a steady income. Same as for ballet class and music lessons. There are fewer and fewer students available as you go up the age scale. I know one fellow who seems to have this model worked out. He's in a bedroom city so lots of commuter parents. His dojo is set up with multiple arts and a big after school program. There's a van for picking up kids from school, a snack and homework room, then martial arts lessons and finally, if mom and dad aren't home yet, a babysitting service. A six or seven day a week business with a steady income allowing a professional teaching job. Looking over that model you can see that along with the requirements to teach the arts you need advertising, good word of mouth (it's kids), good parent-relationship skills, amazing planning and organization...
The dojo that is mostly adults, still commercial, still on main street, will require somewhat less in the childhood education theory but will still require the rest of those good small business practices.
With both these models you will need to be teaching a well-known art. Karate, Tae Kwon Do, MMA for preferance. The obscure stuff won't work except as the side art because kids won't be asking to be taken to a naginata class.
Base knowledge as required in these dojo includes good business practices and an ability to "babysit" kids and adults. Good people skills in other words. Knowing the art you're teaching is important of course, and being able to teach it well enough to keep folks happy. That perhaps means being able to get your kids into the later rounds of tournaments. (What, you don't think tournaments are important to kids? Take a look in the front window of that main street dojo. What do you see? You want to know which dojo to send your kids? It's the one with dust on those trophies in the front window.)
But for mad coaching skills we'll move to the Olympic arts of Judo, TKD and Karate? Is Karate in there now? This is the realm of government money and coaching levels (which possibly relate to salary levels) and professional administration jobs. Doping schedules, ranking and rating forms, meetings to keep up with the latest rule changes... oh my. Because there is government money involved this is the serious stuff. Don't even think about making up new budo things here, it's all taken care of. At the higher levels where things get really serious you've got professional sports psychologists to take care of that quaint "mushin" stuff.
Moving down to the non-olympic sports stuff you've got kendo, naginata, jukendo and the other serious sports-involved arts. Kendo has to go through the olympic doping stuff because it's in sport-accord so someone in the organization needs to know about that stuff, that means meetings and "the reading of the regulations". Teachers may be sensei or they may be coaches depending on how serious they are about the competition aspects. There are different skills involved in each, and the sensei who wants winners had better be a bit of a coach.
Staying in the kendo federation but getting away from kendo itself you have kendo federation iaido and jodo.These are a thing separate from koryu iai and jo, they are in and of themselves with a grading system. That grading system is the sole ranking system of many iaido and jodo students who are members of the Kendo federations and so it takes on considerable importance. Teachers of the ZenKenRen iai and jo (call it seitei) need to know the details of the art. Not the personal, "this is how I do it", details but the standardized stuff in "the book" along with the current practice of the senior instructors from Japan. The seitei sensei does not get to have an individual take on these arts, they are standardized worldwide so you teach what is "standard". But more than that, the seitei sensei needs to know what the panels want. Those are the panels his students will stand in front of while challenging a grade. It does no good to argue that this or that quirk is allowed by the rules of "the book", if the panel doesn't want to see that quirk, that quirk, no matter how allowable by the book or even in some other area4, fails. Any sensei teaching something that doesn't get past the local panel is failing his students.
Do kendo federation seitei iai and jo sensei need to know all the business stuff necessary to a commercial dojo? Not unless they are running one. Do they need to know the anti-doping regulations of the olympic movement? No, and no to the latest nutrition research for optimal performance in olympic competition. But they certainly need to know more than how do do effective iaido or jodo. They need to know how to do those in the current, standard, accepted by the local panel, way. If those sensei are senior enough they'll also need to know how to sit on those local panels and judge in a way that is standardized worldwide.
We come, finally, to "everything else" which as far as I'm concerned means koryu and their equivalent from other cultures than Japan. I'm talking also about the "western martial arts", those European sword arts that are revived from the old manuals. I'm talking about martial arts from other asian countries like, oh, China and Thailand and the Phillipines and what have you. Everything that is still around, not popular, not standardized, and not regulated.
What do you need to teach these? You need to have been taught them and you (depending on how traditional you feel about it) need to have permission to teach them. That's about it. I mean you aren't going to need a business course because I can't see any way to make a living with any of these arts. When you're talking a student population of 200 people in the entire world there's not much need to know adult learning principles or current coaching practices or how to set up after school programs for kids. You teach what you were taught and you teach how you were taught and you hope there's someone around to teach. This is old school stuff, certification and government licensing applied by accident only (like, if you teach in a community center). Sure, the koryu kops on the net get all concerned about who's got paper but really, that stuff is between you, your teacher and your students. What else does anyone else have to say about it?
These little arts are the only place where questions like "how and when do I teach the advanced kata to my students" make sense. All the rest of them involve so much extra stuff that it really requires hanging around for long enough that questions aren't needed.
So.... teachers..... go.
You WANT to teach?
Apparently this is a thing according to several questions at a recent seminar. Mostly they were along the lines of "what should our current teachers be teaching us to become teachers" which, when I look at it, seems sort of clear as a question, but not as a "thing". To say the least, the question sort of startled me. I "grew up" in an era of no teachers. I mean there were one or two and for those who wanted to learn the arts they were soon teaching whether or not they wanted to.
You teach to continue practicing and you teach to get enough people together to rent a space to teach in. It's always seemed clear to me that you teach because you have no other alternative. Who would want to teach?
As one might expect, a bunch of teachers who are out there teaching before their time meant a bunch of teachers with a big desire to keep learning this stuff so that they could pass along something that's close to correct. The attitude is more like "damn I gotta work hard to stay ahead of these guys" than "well I think I'll condescend to teach these guys a little bit more of what I know today". Ain't no Masters here, not even the feeling that we're qualified to teach. It's only now, after 20 or 30 years of teaching, that I'm beginning to feel confident that I have something worth passing along. Curiously, that same time would be what put me somewhere around "instructor" level in Japan. In fact some of the hachidan who come from Japan to teach are now younger than I am.
All of which may explain the question at the seminar (what do I need to be taught in order to go teach) and some of the suggestions to institute an extra-art teaching curriculum alongside the skills of the art itself. Is there really a need to teach how to teach? A lot of our instructors are teachers from elsewhere, those that are good at teaching tend to be good at teaching whatever they teach. For the others, did you learn the art well? Then teach like your teacher taught you. I know damned well that I've always taught my students how I'm teaching them at the same time that I'm teaching them because I knew they'd be out teaching too soon. It's the curse of a university club and a country with few instructors hanging around.
I really liked the answer the visiting instructor gave to "how do you teach the next teachers". It boiled down to "those who are dedicated enough to spend the money and the years to get to the point where they become teachers will be the next teachers". Stick around long enough and someone will hang a rank on you and make you teach. Not as a reward, not, as I've said before, as a punishment, but just because you won the tontine. You stuck around long enough to see you teacher out the door and now it's your job.
That's the easy way to start teaching, the dojo is there, the students are there, you get handed the keys to the door and you're set. Nice for those places where there are lots of dojo and lots of students. That's not the situation in most of the world where those who move to a new town have no existing dojo to settle down in and wait for sensei to give them the business (let alone finding a sensei who will "give you the business". Bwahahaha)
How would I teach the teachers?
Traditional way: You don't. You're here to learn kid, I'm going to teach you, when I die you can deal with it then, the art is mature, we've got lots of dojo around, you aren't going to start a new club unless you move out of the city, in which case you'll teach there under me so I can continue to teach you. If you stick around long enough to get sick of me I'll give you a license that says you know something, to show to the locals wherever you go. If you stick around as long as I'd like you to, the keys are on that hook over there. Take my name off the board and throw it in my grave and move yours over one place.
Western way: Here's the budo curriculum, and over here is the teaching curriculum so that you know how to structure a class and learn how to apply "adult/kids learning principles" and here's your forms to apply for a police background check. Once you pass the teacher part of the curriculum you get to call yourself a teacher. Good luck and goodbye.
My way, in case anyone ever asks:
Spend as much time as a student as you can. Learn the art because that's why you're here, forget about teaching. Oh, you still want/need to teach? Fine. Take a small business course and learn things like bookkeeping and advertising.
You're going to teach for free at the local community center? Take the business course anyway, you still have to deal with money and getting butts on the floor. You don't want to deal with that sort of stuff? Fine, build a dojo in your back yard or find some free space somewhere and wait for students to stumble over you. It's been done, it works that way too, but you're not going to have 50 students. Five if you're lucky. This is my business plan (free space and find me if you can) and I get 8 people in a class if it's a good day.
Still interested? Got your business course? Now go learn how to teach. It doesn't matter where, we don't have to teach you, go get certified as a CPR teacher, they'll teach you how to teach. The principles are not hard, but teaching is. You sure you want to do this? It's not you up front being adored by rapt students, not in these arts, it's adults who sometimes have high ranks in other martial arts who will challenge you. Hard. You ready for that?
You're not? Then get back in line and study our art some more, learn it, learn it by having it soaked into your bones, not by rote. These are not formulae. You need to be able to take an MMA guy apart with your bokuto without hurting him if he decides you're full of shite. Not yet? Keep learning. I promise one day you will be so arrogant that you will believe our martial art will work in a fight.
If you move to a town with nobody teaching our arts, fine, don't beech and moen (a company that makes wooden faucets) start teaching and do the best you can.
On the other hand
You know, there are times when teaching is good, even necessary for a student. If sensei says "go out and start a club somewhere" you really should listen to him. If you say "oh I'm not ready to teach", what else are you not taking on board, what else do you doubt sensei is right about? Maybe you're stuck, maybe you believe you know better/more than sensei. Maybe sensei figures your best bet to continue learning is to go try out your ideas. So go. The absolute worst that could happen is that you fail as a teacher and don't learn anything more. Maybe the failure teaches you something. Maybe you're really good at it and learn lots. Jump off the cliff.
Finally, seriously dudes, if you figure you can do a better job than sensei, go start your own club. You don't even need to tell sensei you're doing it, you can stick around the old dojo and keep learning while teaching elsewhere if you aren't sure you can do it. Apron strings and all that, but why would anyone want to waste their time in a dojo where they know better than the teacher? Go prove it to yourself and to him that you can do it better. As one of those teachers who got shoved out there too soon I have no doubt that you can do it so go, have fun. You know as much as I ever did and you're 30 years younger, of course you will succeed. I did, sort of.
Finally, I have a question. Do you want to be a teacher because you figure the guy up front knows something? Make sure that you aren't confusing the position with knowledge. You don't know stuff because you have the title "sensei", you should have the title because you know stuff.
This can be confused.
The intolerance of youth
The Pamurai mentioned last evening that I seem to be a bit more tolerant than she is while working with juniors. Since she has her own classes I suspect she'll get there eventually. You have to, or you stop teaching out of frustration at never finding anyone who listens!
Back in the day we used to have a senior and a junior grading panel as we trained up the youngsters, and the junior panel was always much more tough than the senior. Only to be expected, the senior panel has "seen it all", they've also got no worries about people looking over their shoulder so they aren't afraid of looking soft. Although it always mystified me that it was assumed "looking soft" would be worse than "looking hard". Personally I figure one of the reasons you practice budo is to learn how to be more forgiving. To be fair though, it's much easier to find a reason to fail someone than it is to find reasons to pass them.
Most of the hard-assed comments I've heard about "you can't do iaido if you can't do seiza" come from youngsters. Again, that's to be expected, the young have knees that still work. The future they see is probably one of constant improvement up until the day they die. "Hope I die before I get old..." It's only when you get a little older, a little heavier, when your knees get a little wonky that you start to suspect that maybe you won't get better until that final battle with the elf lords where you will die gloriouosly with a hundred spears through you after making a final defiant speach.
No, the older I get the more grateful I become that I can still walk around without a cane and still wave a sword a bit if I'm careful not to demonstrate the "wrong way to do it" too often. Does that make me more tolerant of others who are trying to learn this stuff? You bet it does. It makes me protective of their joints.
Youth is wasted on the young, not because they don't know anything, but because they won't listen to what they're told. You don't learn the good lessons of tolerance and kindness until you need some yourself. If we old people had the youth of the young we'd be just as intolerant as they are. Their youth would be wasted on us.
There's a reason we send the young and healthy ones out to fight for our principles (or our greed, take your pick they amount to the same thing). They figure they're never going to die so off they go willingly. The old? The enemy better be on the doorstep and they'd better be there in force. I know too much about "invisible enemies" to buy into "ground wars in Asia".
Was I intolerant as a youth? I'm a boomer, of course I was. It was my job to fix the mess, I knew how to do it and I certainly didn't need any advice from those who had screwed it up.
Having watched my generation fail at that job, and having watched them create a world that's just as fearful as when I was waiting for the atomic bombs to fall, I use the only weapon I can find to combat the despair. Tolerance and kindness. In an era of "microaggression" and "systemic XXXism" and the reactionary equivalents to them I simply shut my mouth and keep my opinions to myself as much as I can.
As I will do now.
Humble is not the opposite of proud.
Having just read the obit for Pat Murosako sensei in the Kenyu newsletter I'm feeling somewhat reflective so of course I am in my local typing on the newly finished bar. It looks nice.
Murosako sensei was one of my earliest arse-kickers. Way back in the late '80s he got hold of one of the early editions of The Iaido Newsletter which was mailed around as a 'zine. Look it up kids, its pre-WWW. The copyright was "photocopy and share this". Sensei got hold of John Prough who was one of the early supporters of "the cause" and complained about this know-it-all kid who presumed to write about iaido. John fired right back at him "so write something and correct him". Pat did, I published it, and he wrote more. When I finally met him years later he was exactly the fellow I expected and I'm sorry he's gone.
There's nothing wrong with being told you're wrong. It's good for you and if you're humble you take it for what it is, a correction. Everyone can be wrong. I can be wrong and I've learned more by being wrong than I ever did by being right. I'm talking about the Murosako sensei sort of criticism here, the "here I am right in front of you and I'm telling you that you're full of it" kind. This is vastly different from rumour and gossip which is entirely cowardly and unsuited to even listening to, let alone considering. The sole function of gossip is to make the gossiper feel superior. A hurtful and harmful sort of pride. The function of rumour is to damage someone else by accusations that cannot be challenged because, often, the target isn't even aware of being attacked. Again, a cowards weapon that only works if gossips take it up.
But in your face criticism? Bring it on, teach me sensei.
Be humble, understand that you can be wrong and that you can be corrected. Welcome that correction like a scientist. Scientific knowledge? No such thing, the whole enterprise is based on making an educated guess (hypothesis) and trying to prove your guess is wrong. If humble is admitting you can be wrong is pride the opposite, not being able or being unwilling to admit you're wrong? No, not for this essay, pride is knowing what you know.
Let's call pride the hypothesis of budo. I know what I know, this is what I know. Now what's humble in budo? It's being willing to be taught. I know what I know but I'm willing to let you prove I'm wrong.
This is all face to face, or at least signature to signature. If I'm wrong about something tell me so, but you'd better be willing to back that up or you aren't going to get through my pride to my humble. Rumour? Forget it, you aren't in my laboratory.
Humble is a good thing. Don't confuse it with sack-cloth and whips, err, excessive self-doubt and the conviction that you're no good at all. That way leads to listening to rumours and believing the gossip about you, and even more shameful, believing the gossip about others.
How's your rank? Do you deserve it? I deserve mine, all of them. I deserve them because I was given them by people I respect. I didn't invent any of them, and I'm damned if I'll take a back seat to anyone or any country. That's my pride talking.
Now, if you want to point to people who are my rank but better than me, I'll watch and learn. That's my humility talking.
To talk about self doubt, let's talk gradings. Here's one I hear a lot. I got my grade in Japan, so it's better than yours because I got it in Japan. That's pride. How about I got my grade in Japan but I got it as a foreigner and they probably figured I needed a grade to promote the art overseas so they passed me even though if I was Japanese I'd never have even been allowed to grade. That's self-doubt.
How about.... I got my grade in Japan. Period.
Here's another one. I got my grade overseas but in front of a Japanese panel so my grade is better than your grade in front of a bunch of know nothing foreigners overseas. Pride... errm, since we're overseas would those overseas foreigners be the Japanese panellists? Never mind. How about, oh I got my grade from a bunch of Japanese visitors but since I invited them to my country and gave them a good time they probably felt they had to give it to me because I invited them. That's self-doubt.
See how this works? How about..... I got my grade in my country. Period.
Got your grade in your country from a panel of your peers? I can't think of a way to be prideful or self-doubtful about that except to respect or disrespect your own teachers. Do not go there. OK go there and think about what all that means. Now, happy you went there?
How about.... this is what my teachers feel my level is. Period.
Rumour, gossip and criticism? How about, "you figure your grade is better than my grade? Why not show me instead of talking at me?" I'm not talking tournaments or competitions here, I'm talking about show me. Since I will certainly have different criteria for better or worse than those used in a tournament, you'd better be prepared to show me on my own terms that I can learn from you. It's you and me kid, you have to show me that you're better at my game than I am. Good luck.
Yet it happens all the time. I get taught by all sorts of people, higher ranks, lower ranks, my rank... all have taught me and I'm pleased to be taught. Proud to be taught by my own damned students oftentimes. Most especially proud when they pass me by because I'm way too old to be the guy on the floor, my job now is as a teacher getting as many people as I can past me on "the ladder" and up to the next floor.
You're better than me? I'm proud of you.
Old stone hands
In jodo, about the most fun thing to do is to knock the sword aside with the jo. We do it a lot, and of course it is the subject of much concern and analysis.
What I've noticed mostly is that it's important to blast it completely out of your partner's hands, or failing that, at least get the tip facing the other way. As a result beginners like to use a really heavy jo and a LOT of muscle. I have no idea if this is causation or correlation but on the other side, tachi tends to grip and muscle that sword just about in proportion to jo's swing.
Hard to move sword? Use more muscle.
Rather than spend another class telling the jo to ease up and pay attention to the angle instead of the muscle, we tried to go at it from the other direction. Tachi needs to believe in friction, that a slight tightening of the little fingers will make the bokuto sticky enough to stay in the hand when it gets driven behind. With that, the target can be set with soft hands. In other words, make the sword easy to move.
Now mister heavy hitter will not only move the sword but bury the jo in the basement while doing it. Somewhat embarassing, somewhat attention-calling, so the natural urge is to ease up a little and with that, suddenly we have a chance to pay attention to the angle of the strike.
Just how far does that sword have to move anyway? Is there a benefit to putting the sword behind uchidachi so that he can come back in with a full swing? Me I figure I need to move the tip far enough outside my shoulder to give me enough time to come in for the poke to the face. The worst place for the sword for uchidachi while I'm attacking down the line? Aside from on the floor in the next room I'd say it would be at 90 degrees to the attack line. The very place it ends up if you get two partners with stone hands and heavy hits.
Stone hands? If you can hold your bokuto hard enough to make your partner's jo bounce off, consider what just happened to your "one year's salary hand forged metal razor". The Japanese sword is not designed to take hits on it's side, it's not designed to take hits at all, really, and a bent blade is almost as useless as one that's on the floor behind you. Ease up Mr. Stone Hands.
Blocking with a bokuto is an anomoly. It's introducing things into the art that really should not be there. That aren't there "in real life". There's a lot of that in the arts. Consider cutting down with the sword and then waiting for a count of two or three for the jo to hit the sword. is this likely "on the street". Of course not, but it's a nice way to avoid a lot of broken fingers and flat eyeballs. A lot of things are done in the name of safety during practice.
We call it practice for a reason. If we were to do our things realistically we'd call it combat, or at least competition if we figure out a way to move as we move in combat without the combat results. Like maybe kendo.
Oh, Sure, kendo. That thing where you deliberately aim for the armour rather than the gaps in the armour. Completely useless for combat. Should use sharps and pull your blows.
Anyone here play squash without glasses? I did and spent six months with someone's hand over half my right eye until the retina re-attached. How about longboarding without a helmet? My son did and spent quite a while in hospital concussed and throwing up from a broken skull.
Manly men in my family for sure. Aikido summer camp with a dislocated collar bone. Seminars with broken fingers and dislocated thumbs. I'm really not sure what I learned from all that except that old injuries never really go away. My thumbs ache, my shoulders are ripped up in most directions but one.
Give up the stone hands, practice lightly and correctly, protect your shoulders and knees. Mostly don't make practice a competition, even with yourself. How much can you take? Usually enough to cause serious problems if you're practicing budo. You want discipline? You want to see just how much you can take? Do situps until you throw up, don't go full out with bokuto and no protection until you get hit on the head and throw up.
Soften up those hands on that bokuto, it's not a competition.
Just a thought.
The Budo Theory of Relativity
It was Aikido on a wood floor again last night, and we started with the usual, one hand grabs, irimi, tenkan, kaiten sort of stuff. (Somebody tell me there's a term for stepping back to absorb an attack, surely this is a thing in Aikido, I do it all the time but all I see is terms for moving forward. We used to call this ten shin.) The idea was to work on releases vs let the attacker hang on but we rapidly changed to the relativity of movement.
Here's the thing, in aikido we move around the attack and then we have to make sure the attacker moves around us. Yet the instinct seems often to be that we try to move uke's grab around, often with our arm before we start the technique. The problem with this is that if we move uke's arm when he's trying to hold us still, we create a reaction as he tries to hold our hand, so we move harder and he holds harder until he decides (as Terry Pratchett would say) "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and lets go. Once he lets go he's got two hands to attack us and we're sort of swinging in the wind.
You don't want him to let go. If an attacker wants to grab your wrist and focus his attention on it... who are we to disappoint? Let him have it while you move to the side (usually to his backside, away from his other hand), offline of the real attack (the grab is not the real attack) and then do your technique.
So you move your body while keeping your held wrist immobile relative to the room, or relative to uke's hand if he is pushing or pulling. You move around that point. If the point is moving, if uke is pushing or pulling, let him push or pull and move relative. If that point is still, relative to the room, move around it.
If you move that contact point around, provide resistance, pry against his grip, you will change the situation, you trigger a response that you don't want to trigger. So move without telling uke you're moving. Move around his grab and out of the way of his attack.
Now, once you've moved to the side things change. His attack or grasp are no longer the constant line or still point around which you rotate. Once his balance is disrupted, once he follows you or (if it's a beginner and he hasn't learned how to continue the attack yet) you move him slightly in a new direction, you become the still point around which uke's balance moves. This new still point can be fixed relative to the room, or it can move as well, but uke must be moving around you.
Another possibility is that you are moving around him in an attempt to get into position to throw him. This is a mistake, you will only throw someone who has their balance if they fall down for you. Fiddling around with uke's wrist trying to get it into kote gaeshi or nikkyo while he stands balanced in front of you looking bored is just asking for a broken nose.
Or you may both be rotating around a third point (that point being the wrist you're trying to wriggle into nikkyo perhaps), like a couple of binary stars flying through the galaxy. In this case it's about even money which of you falls down first. Probably the one who trips over the crack in the mat.
Think relativity, you move around the attack, his balance moves around you. Once you avoid his attack and then have his balance and are moving it around yourself, you can think about applying a technique.
Try to get used to thinking in terms of frames of reference when you do your budo. Attacks come in planes, lines or arcs, movement isn't just movement, it's "moverment around" movement "relative to". If there is movement, there is a still point somewhere that defines that movement. We're hurtling along at tremendous speed through space, more speed than you can possibly imagine.... no I'm not, I'm right here on the seat in the cafe window. My frame of reference is the ground under my feet not the center of the galaxy or the one point of the big bang.
This can get woo woo too. Sei chu do, do chu sei. When my body is still, my mind is moving, when my body is moving, my mind is still.
It's all relative.
Short Armed Monkey
No I'm not going to talk about Musashi's Shukonomi... (is that what it is? Yep the interweb says so) I was just reminded of this by something the Pamurai said yesterday. She was writing a lot in her notebook, at one point she said "ten minutes class, 20 minutes writing", so of course I asked what her main insight was for the day.
"My arms are shorter than yours."
That took me aback a bit. Shorter arms? It turns out she was watching me do a movement and was timing how long I moved my sword and to what position, and she was following that. But with arms that are shorter than mine, that movement was taking her sword upward away from the place it was supposed to be. I would push her hand down which took it closer to her body and she would frown, watch me again and do the same thing. Until she realized I had longer arms so my sword could move further to the side before the shoulder joint forced the hand to rise.
This is a "paying attention to sensei" sort of problem. Consider how much worse it is to be told you have to have your arm at a specific height above your head, or held at a specific angle. I mean not everyone watches sensei but everyone listens.
Some comments about the situation. 1. Who cares? The movement we're talking about was yoko chiburi. Move the sword to the side to "shake off the blood". Wouldn't happen of course, blood is too sticky so it's a metaphor, or it's misnamed and is simply the place from which the next movement takes place... which begs the question, "why that place"? Why indeed, if we weren't practicing the kendo federation iaido I would not have corrected the height. Who cares if it's an inch up or down as long as you can do the next movement from there, and you have the power to defend yourself from that position. Judges care of course, which makes that exact position important.
2. Ya ya. A lot of the stuff written in The Book has, or should have, the phrase "ya ya" beside it which means "about". So "about this distance", "about this angle". Why about? Because short arms.
3. Beginners fetishize on things like "exactly this far above the floor". They do. But what some people don't realize is that we teachers are the reason they fetishize. We say "there" but we don't say why. They should just do it and not question, we wouldn't say it if it weren't important right? Which important? Important because it protects your shoulder from damage? Important because it will keep you alive if you're in a sword fight? Important because the judges this year figure it looks good at that height so you're more likely to pass? There are many "importants" and beginners aren't able to distinguish between them so everything is important.
4. Correcting the still points makes more still points. For every time we say "freeze" to a student and walk over to correct something, we create a stop point in their kata. This is OK for places where they actually stop during the kata, places where the judges can flick an eye over them and note an inch of difference in height above the floor. It's important not to give the judges easy targets because some judges look for reasons to fail, that's the easiest way to judge. The problem comes in places where we say "freeze" when the movement ought not to stop. At the top of the cut, just as it begins, is a favourite place to stop a student. "No, you see, your left hand is coming on from the side and so you are creating a grip that will make a weak cut, and your tip is too low and your sword isn't centered above your head... check that in the mirror"
Great, now you've got the student stopping half way through the cut to check that stuff. Then you say "do the kata" and they stop at the top of the cut. "WHY ARE YOU STOPPING THERE, THERE IS NO STOPPING THERE, READ THE BOOK IT SAYS YOU DON'T STOP THERE!!!!"
Ugh.
5. Is the height of the yoko chiburi even mentioned in "the book"? I've had some beginners tell me lately that one of the yoko chiburi must now be done with the hand higher than it used to be. I wasnt even aware that a new edition of the book had been published. Guess I should start looking for it.
Or not.
Some people have longer arms than the guys that wrote the book, some have shorter arms. Good students with longer armed sensei might just try to put their swords in places that their shorter arms won't go. Watch out for that, one size does not fit all.
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
Maybe. Then again, anyone who really misses me and decides to look up all the stuff I wrote will soon hate my guts. I haven't a clue where it all is, and I sometimes find myself reading something on the net that sounds pretty good (it's good if I agree with it), then sounds kind of familiar... then I look at the author.
One of the class suggested that maybe it's a good idea to just practice for a while and answers to questions will come.
Yes, that happens. But really, when I'm gone you'll have 40 or 50 years to work away at it. While I'm here why not just ask. Letting the kata teach you is a wonderful way to learn... perhaps the only real way, but you can take shortcuts. You can get an initial direction from someone who has gone before that might save you a lot of time. Any question that you ask today has likely been asked by someone (or me) over the last 30 years or so.
On the other hand, there are books and videos out there that must contain pretty much everything I know. (Read them when I'm gone. Lord knows nobody reads them now.) I commented that I know more now that I did, but another student (who is visiting after moving away for several years) pointed out that I'm probably just saying things in a different way.
Could be right, could be right. It's not like I'm creating anything here. Morihei Ueshiba created Aikido. If you look at the videos of those who learned in the early days and then those who learned toward the end of his life you see differences. Is the later stuff more something or other than the early stuff? Go join the arguments if you have an opinion, but there is a difference.
Is it style or actual substance? Early and late aikido is recongnizeably Aikido. Rough vs smooth? I've heard that said but in my experience of looking at people who practice lines from different years of Ueshiba's life, rough vs smooth is a beginner vs experienced sort of thing. You are learning, you're rough. Enough years of practice, it gets pretty smooth and pretty subtle.
I'd like to think my sword is a lot more subtle than it used to be. It's certainly closer. I read a story somewhere which told of a student who noted that Musashi only moved an inch to avoid a cut. He said "well spotted", you need to start at, say, six inches and then practice to bring it down to half an inch. What's the secret of avoiding a sword strike by half an inch? Keiko.
Learn everything you can from your sensei right now. Do what he says, don't argue, he's trying to get as much stuff crammed into you as fast as he can. You'll have 40 years to work on it once he's gone.
There are no shortcuts to getting to that half inch distance. You have to train your eyes and that means rewiring the brain and that takes time. Something as simple as lining up directly in front of your partner takes time. You think you're right in front? Use a mirror, can you see yourself in the mirror behind your partner? You're not lined up directly in front! Line up, check, line up, check. Keep checking until you don't have to check any more.
As for the rest of it, the mind reading stuff, that takes much longer. Pay attention to your partner, pay attention to sensei, especially if he's likely to wander. Most old guys wander a bit. Listen, watch, be open and you can usually pick up clues as to where he's going. If it's sensei and you're a senior student he will be leaking clues all over the place in an effort to teach you how to pick them up. There were times during my training when I wanted to take my teacher and shake him and say "Use your words! Tell me what you want me to do!" I didn't, and I got better at it.
Still not good at reading minds but at least I know what it looks like. If I can start you down the path you will have 40 or 50 years to work on it after I'm gone.
Want a starting exercise? Get a partner and match swords. One partner is to attack in some way as quickly as possible. The job of the defender is to move his sword into the place where the attacker is about to move. No faking, no trickery, attack and pull your strike just before you make contact but be accurate. Move the sword into the space softly, just in case your attacker jumps right onto the point. That's it, have fun, don't hurt each other. Oh, and if you aren't attacking when your defender pulls his sword aside, go right down the middle. No fakes to get him to open up, be honest. Pay attention to the timing, how long can someone wait for the attack before they jerk their sword aside?
Be patient, wait for the signs.
You've got 40 or 50 years to work on it.
Arthur Murray Dance Steps
My students tell me I mustn't write about their poor skills. Honestly, does nobody want anyone to have any fun? Well so be it. I'll talk about painting footsteps on the dojo floor and making sure you step in them each and every time you do a technique. (There once were dance studios with footsteps painted on the floor... maybe still are.)
I see this all the time in Aikido, ikkyo for instance, you enter to the side to capture uke's arm, you move sort of back to the line to unbalance him, then you move back away once more to drop him onto the mat and pin him. Three steps. Exactly.
Fair enough, easy to write down, you can judge to it, I give it an 8 out of 10. But I don't do that. I mean I do the first step like you're supposed to (unless uke is waving his arm four feet in front of my face in which case I have to walk over to there to get hold of him.) I usually do the second step as prescribed, but after that I've got uke's balance and he can fall on his face any time he wants to, I'm not going to drag him there, that's undignified, so I'll walk around the room while he scrambles and flails if he wants to do that.
A reliable source informed me last evening that I used to teach the Arthur Murray dance steps and I believe it. I still do, especially when I'm teaching toward gradings. You do what you are required to do to pass, otherwise what's the point? But I really want students to go beyond this. I want them to know why the steps exist. I want them to be able to deal with changes in the situation and if you never allow changes during practice I don't know how you expect to handle them when they show up.
There's a move in jodo that nobody ever gets. Uchidachi is cutting down on your head, you have to step out with your right foot to a point half way between your feet and off the line, then you have to put your left foot sort of where your right foot was but to the outside of uchidachi's left foot. The result is that you've changed from right shoulder forward to left shoulder forward and from facing 90 degrees to the left to 45 to the right. It's not important, really, for jodoka it's the move to catch the hilt in Hissage.
No beginner ever gets it... you know, I think this is where I'm not supposed to be writing but the heck with it, we're all friends here and it's really not about every beginner, ever, who didn't get this when sensei came over and showed them the footsteps painted on the floor.
I mean some dude is swinging a bokuto at your head. You want to go back! Or if you're brave, inside! This dancing around at the same place is really scary. I know, I get it. What I said last night was "forget the steps, pay attention to the important things like where you are now and where you want to get. You know where you are, now here's where you need to be next. You figure it out how to get there, I don't care how you do it."
It seemed to have worked the next time I looked over. Here's the thing, the dance steps on the floor are really just the averaged result of several generations of quite talented people trying to get from point a to point b without getting clobbered with a stick. The dance steps are not, for the most part, created to make pretty shapes. They are not invented one day by a bored sensei. I mean, they may have been originally, but they have been through a lot of brains trying to make combative sense of them, so they end up, for the most part, usually, being the most efficient way of getting from a to b.
But that doesn't mean they are sacred, if they don't work for you, figure out how to make it work. If the opponent doesn't follow his side of the script, adjust. If you have his balance the instant you touch him, if you have the centerline before you start your attack, you're gold.
The steps aren't painted on the floor, they aren't ritual movement to attract and bind demons to your will and watch out if you mis-step or scuff the chalk on the floor. On the other hand, they are easy to judge so you better walk the painted footsteps if you want to get your next grade.
Heading for grading or not, it's easier to remember the right steps if you know why you're making them and if you've tried all the other possible combinations of steps and found out for yourself that the old guys were right.
It's not the steps I dislike, it's the blind faith, the unthinking fetishization of the steps. Eyes on the prize, point a to point b, the steps are just a way to get there.
Drowning a snail
The little boquet beside me at the counter was getting a bit low on water so I filled it up. While doing that I covered a snail who managed to come in with the flowers. I watched for quite a while before he started to move up to the air and now he's happily wedged amongst the stems enjoying the sunshine I guess. Or eating the leaves.
I'm sure there is some sort of lesson there but I really can't get beyond "drowning a snail". It seems such a great title, and I should be writing a poem instead of an essay.
I mean, can you even drown a snail? I can't remember if they have lungs or gills. I would assume you could, perhaps if you filled a jar completely with water or held them under. I just don't know.
It's the same with budo isn't it? Does this stuff work? Is what we're learning enough to defeat what those guys over there are learning? Would this stuff work in a back alley? On a battlefield? If we do iaido how do we get our opponent to sit in seiza in front of us?
How do we test it out? Do we get a mason jar and fill it completely with water? Seems a lot of work to find out something I don't really want to find out, I mean I wasn't really trying to drown the snail, I was watering the flowers. I like the snail, he looks good there in the sun. I don't really want to kill anyone with a sword either, so it's just idle curiosity that makes me wonder if you can drown that snail.
To drown a snail means to fill a container with water faster than the snail can crawl toward the air. It is to keep up a slow but relentless attack until the enemy falls exhausted and drained. Sounds like some ancient martial advice.
Brexit leave vote? Drowning a snail, the leave campaign kept up their tactics for so long that the snail finally drowned. Now all the experimenters are wondering if the result is really what they wanted in the first place. The Donald? How long can the media indulge him? I dunno, but if they keep reporting his campaign long enough the world might just be wondering if the result was what we wanted.
There ya go, "Drowning a Snail", pick some ancient famous person and make a meme.
Gorbies
F-ing gorbies actually. I first heard the phrase in Banff about 40 years ago and was reminded of it again yesterday. It means tourists. I was born in a tourist town so am familiar with the concept.
Yesterday I spent some time sitting outside a clothing store in Sauble Beach while the womenfolk shopped. I got to watch tourists driving and tourists parking. Holiday long weekends in tourist towns involve very large numbers of cars coming from big cities to line up for, and I'm not kidding here, several kilometers (miles) outside the town to inch their way downtown over about an hour. By the time they are in the town they are doing things like honking at motorcyclists to move ahead six feet so they can get into the line (result is biker doesn't move and other bikers come off the sidewalk to yell at the SUV driver for being a dick). Since you can walk faster than you can drive I also watched another dick walk into town and stand in a parking spot with his cell in his ear, no doubt talking to someone half an hour up the road. Of course someone else wanted to park there. Result, phone-in-ear dick gets yelled at by onlookers for being a dick. It was fun because biker guy was male and the males stood up for him, trying to park girl was supported by females who actually didn't call phone guy a "dick" but a "female dog". (I'm sure I wouldn't be able to say the b-word on Faceplant.)
Me, I'm a more frequent tourist, some of the shop owners know me by name, so I know the secret ways to take advantage of the single stop-light, and I know the back streets that contain unmarked parking spots. It's all about not joining into the common mindset, not getting sucked into the major movement, but working to one side of it. You have to understand the way the mass is acting and then avoid doing that. In this case, it involves cutting the big lineup at 90 degrees and then moving parallel to it.
Sounds like budo to me. Know the terrain, know the movements of the enemy and use them to avoid the attack so that you can do as you wish.
What I wished after a while was to get away from all the gorbies from the city who figured they would go to the beach and relax for a day but ended up bringing their city frustrations and aggressions right along with them. You want to experience the small town, easy-going ways of a tourist spot?
Visit during the off season.
You want to do perfect martial arts? Use the same partner or two every time so no surprises, stay well within your envelope, never stretch yourself. Take those city ways with you right into the dojo. Get into that kilometers-long lineup and crawl to the beach.
In my small tourist town we just said "tourists" but spittle was involved.
Learning by Teaching
How does one learn by teaching? After all, you teach what you know and if you know it, you don't need to learn it. Right?
For a certain idea of learning this is correct. Learning as facts, learning as formulae, as memorization. If I know all the kata of my school I know all the kata. If I teach them to others I don't learn anything, I teach it. There's giving out and receiving, I give if they're respectful, they receive and they ought to be grateful to get it.
What are the kata? They are a set of movements that your sensei taught to you and you in turn teach to others. What do they mean? They mean what your sensei told you they mean and so you tell that to your students.
Quite straightforward I would think. Definitely cause for lamentation when you leave or lose your teacher. No more learning and, frighteningly, there may have been some bits and bobs he forgot to tell you. This way leads us out of the golden age and into the darkness where we find ourselves now. The arts declining, the giants of the past receeding like the galaxy next door. Better not forget to tell your students everything you know or you'll fail in your duty to pass along as much as you can.
Except... wait a minute... where did sensei get all that good stuff? I know for a fact I've been with him longer than he was with his sensei, and even accounting for his three classes a week as opposed to my two a week, I'm still ahead. So where is he getting all this stuff to teach me? He's my sensei so I'm not going to assume he is stupid and can't teach as well as his sensei.
I'm going to ask him!
Oh.
Yes, what's that other definition of learning? To put unrelated concepts together in a way that creates a new idea? Something like that. And how does that happen? Questions maybe? Thoughtful consideration of relationships?
Last class one of the senior students asked a question and then apologized for asking questions but some time away from class was apparently time to reflect on the arts so... questions. Specifically questions about targeting as uchidachi, what am I hitting? In jodo the opponent is standing still and uchidachi walks toward and strikes a target. In niten, both partners are walking together. In jodo it is simple, walk to the right distance, cut to the target. But in niten? You have to target the position where shidachi is about to occupy, you take the next step and so does he, so you swing for where he is a step from now. Worse, in some kata if you do that his bokuto is through your throat, so you swing for six inches in front of the place he is about to be a step from now.
Where's that? Should we develop some kihon to practice this? Have shidachi walk forward three steps and put his bokuto six inches in front of his head so we can touch it with the tip of our kissaki?
Really? Says sensei. You presume to add to the school? Madness, leave and never come back unless you agree never to presume again you lowly student.
Or sensei could consider the question and try to explain why we don't need to do that kihon or, quite likely, why we haven't been doing it all along. If sensei wants to steal the credit he will adopt a smug look and say "why we have never done that because you were not ready, now you are and we were about to do just that thing you clever boy".
Intellectual theft or not, sensei stands a better chance of learning by answering the question rather than saying "shup up and do what I was told to do".
You learn by teaching through the clever and sometimes not so clever questions of your clever students.
Fresh eyes on old kata.