Showing posts with label koryu budo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label koryu budo. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Classical Budo Connects The Past And The Future



Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis



I was reading one of Ellis Amdur’s essays his excellent book Old School, in which he was discussing the Higo Ko-Ryu, an ancient system of naginata. Towards the end of the essay he talks very briefly about how “dedicated practice would allow one to ‘become’ someone from the 14th or 15th century.” 

Can you really learn to embody not just movements, but something of the thinking and feeling of a different time through studying a koryu budo? Few koryu budo go back to the 14th century, but arts that may teach you how to think and move and embody the spirit of a person of the 16th and 17th century are not difficult to find.

Ellis Amdur's Old School
Ellis Amdur's "Old School" is just about the best book there is on classical Japanese budo. 
Koryu budo have always been intended to train practitioners to embody a particular spirit. It is a world far removed from the idealized images of honorable samurai that comes to us through stories and movies. The various ryu and styles were created at many different points in history, and many still maintain the spirit of the world when they were born. The most commonly practiced tradition, Eishin Ryu (whether you train the Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu branch or the Muso Shinden Ryu branch, it’s Eishin Ryu), goes back to the 16th century.   Mastering the art requires embodying a way of thinking and moving that hasn’t been “appropriate” for at least 200 years. Some of the Oku Iai kata probably haven’t been considered appropriate for more than 400 years.

It’s not easy to imagine a time when hiding under a porch to ambush your enemy was so common and acceptable that someone was teaching important points for how to do it in a kata. Yet this is exactly the world that Eishin Ryu evokes through its kata. The Oku Iai kata are the oldest in the system. They strongly evoke the rawness of a century filled with civil war, double-crossing factions, assassination, and simple murder. Actions that don’t seem very honorable to us now.

This is the world we are trying to connect to when we train, though. One of the core benefits of training in these old styles is that they take us out of the world we live in and and give us the chance to look at ideas and actions from a very different vantage point. This is as true for Japanese students of koryu as it is for anyone else. The world has changed so much in the intervening centuries between the founding of the koryu and our entry into the schools that they represent worlds where we are all strangers.

Each koryu comes from a different time and place in Japanese history, and this contributes to the very different flavors and feelings they each have. Through study and practice we get to taste those places and times. This is an easy thing to say, but doing it takes dedication and effort. What we experience reaches back to what the founders of the arts felt was important and critical enough to pass on.

Through practice we can discover the elegant and subtle philosophy of Yagyu Munenori’s Shinkage Ryu kenjutsu. Yagyu Munenori was a ranking nobleman who taught kenjutsu to the highest levels of Japanese society, and his art reflects this. His book, Yagyu Heiho Kadensho is still read and studied.  Arts like Eishin Ryu and Araki Ryu were the work of low level soldiers, samurai who quite often were as much farmer as warrior. Their brutal, rugged arts reflect their world and way of life. Between these extremes are all the other koryu arts created over the 500 years from founding of Nen Ryu (roughly 1368) until the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868.

Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis


What are you interested in learning? What do you want to experience? The art you choose will teach you about a lot of things, and bring you face to face with ideas and experiences that may shock you. Some iai sword systems include kata for acting as kaishaku, the person who stood by when someone had to commit seppuku (ritual suicide as penance). The kaishaku’s job was to insure that person died quickly and cleanly after he cut his belly open. Could you imagine doing this for a friend?

The lessons koryu teach about the world they came from are rich and deep, and sometimes disturbing. The lessons taught in koryu are not just martial skills. Within the kata are embedded clues and ideas about the nature of the world their creators lived and fought in, and the things they felt were important to teach.

Koryu budo are replete with little lessons like how to move through a crowd while wearing swords, how clothes can entangle and encumber. How to address and behave towards your seniors and your juniors. All the details of practice serve to pull you back to the world of the people who founded the art you study.  It takes courage to face everything a koryu bugei offers. Students have to work and push themselves beyond the world they live in, and the journey is not always fun. Who really wants to imagine what it’s like to behead a friend to save them from a slow, agonizing death? Or plan and complete an assassination? 

Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis


These activities were all part of the world these arts were born in. To practice such  a system is to partake of a living part of that world. This was how people trained themselves to live then, to organize their minds and coordinate their bodies to deal with possibilities that were too likely to ignore. As we practice, we learn not just the shapes and forms of the movements used, but the way of thinking necessary to make those shapes and forms effective.

Ultimately, budo trains the mind as much as the body. Training in a koryu means stepping beyond the way of thinking and operating in the world where we exist and reaching back to learn something of how people not only fought, but thought and acted; and what they valued ages ago. Many of the lessons seem far removed from the world of 21st Century USA that I live in. The longer I train, the better I am able to adapt my body and mind to the core of the movement, thought, and intent required to successfully execute the training. The closer I get to reaching the core of the training, the more I realize that forms of movement are hundreds of years old but the mindset and thought are alive and part of the world I live in as well.


Special thanks to Deborah Klens-Bigman for help editing and pulling the idea together. 

Fine budo gear from budoka for budoka.



Saturday, November 22, 2014

Modern Musha Shugyo Part 1

Musha Shugyo 武者修行is an old Japanese term for the practice of leaving one’s home and traveling around the country to learn from people, engage in challenge matches, grow, and perhaps even establish oneself. Rennis Buchner has a great article on musha shugyo over on Acme Budo. The past few weeks I’ve been on a modern version of the musha shugyo, visiting Japan, training with some great teachers in different dojo, and getting my butt thoroughly kicked along the way.

Even in the old days, musha shugyo were not endless rounds of intense duals. They were as much or more about learning and trying to find a job as anything else. Buchner’s references from various Hoki Ryu records provide a much more balanced and realistic view of what was happening than the popular myths. Sadly, my journey was not about finding a job teaching budo somewhere in Japan. There just aren’t many jobs for staff budoka anymore. Today a musha shugyo is a journey of hard training, deep learning and mental and spiritual development. For these purposes, our journey was a wonderful success.

I set out with a friend and one of her students to attend a private gasshuku sponsored by the teacher of one of my teachers, as well as to visit several dojo of my sword and jo teachers. Along the way we also squeezed in a few sites and experiences from around Japan. Budo is not just what happens in the dojo, and we didn’t want to miss the rest of the experience that is Japan.

Our first destination was the Shinto Muso Ryu gasshuku, sponsored by the teacher of my Jodo teacher. This private gasshuku is a regular event, held at an incredible dojo space in Kashima Japan, next to the grounds of one of the largest and most famous Shinto shrines dedicated to budo. The Shinbuden is a privately operated dojo space that anyone can rent. The dojo space is vast, with enough floor space to run at least 3 kendo competition areas and 2 judo competition areas simultaneously. Walking into the vast hall the first time is intimidating. It’s huge and the room echoes with your voice. There are couple of enourmous taiko drums used to call people to order, mark the start and end of meditation, and to beat out the rhythm for group practice. When the dojo is filled with budoka screaming out their kiai the sound is incredible.



Shinbuden interior during practice. Photo copyright Peter Boylan 2014


This year the head teacher couldn’t join us due to health issues, so we had to settle for three of his top students, all of whom are not just menkyo kaiden in Shinto Muso Ryu, but are also highly ranked seniors in other arts including iaido, aikido, and judo. No one was really settling for anything. We had more instructor power than we could handle.

The training was not the harsh, brutal training often depicted in movies. We trained hard, but thoughtfully, with an emphasis on really grasping and understanding what we were doing. The goal was to establish a solid base of knowledge in each participant so they could continue to grow and polish what was learned during the gasshuku after they returned to their home dojo. Training was katageiko and we drilled one set of kata for three days. Contrary to what you might think, this wasn’t abusive or boring.  It was fascinating. After going through the same group of kata so many times, and being able to see even the most senior student in attendance getting corrected on numerous fine details, I have pages of notes to implement into my training when I finally get home.

We lined up in two rows, with senior students closest to the kamiza and wielding bokuto (bokken). Sensei called out the kata and we did it to the best of our abilities. Then the three teachers corrected people on various errors, and we did it again. I received plenty of correction on everything from foot placement to timing to fundamental positions. It was great. The teachers would come over, take my partner’s place, and then we’d do the technique. They would show me quite clearly where my flaws lay. One teacher in particular took great, good-humored, pleasure showing how he could cut off your leg or head with his bokuto to demonstrate to you just how weak your position was.

The training wasn’t just in the techniques of ryuha however. We learned a lot about being members of the ryuha as well. A ryuha isn’t just a set of techniques and kata. Ryuha are ancient traditions. The youngest of the koryu budo are a mere 150 years old.  The oldest go back to the 15th century. With more than 400 years of history, being a member of Shinto Muso Ryu is much more than just learning a few techniques. The ryuha really is a sort of family society, and the gasshuku emphasized this for all of us. The hotel we stayed at was much more traditional than modern. Meals were traditional Japanese style, and we helped with everything. Members would show up early and serve the rice, tea, and miso soup for each other, preparing the table in an exercise that emphasizes each person’s membership in the group.  This is part of how the group bonds. Since this was our musha shugyo, we made sure to be there and help out. We traveled halfway around the world to be a part of this group, and working together supporting each other is part of the shugyo.

A word about shugyo 修行 might be in order. Shugyo can be anything from simple training done sincerely to ascetic exercises performed for spiritual or religious purposes.  Within budo, practice is viewed as both training in the techniques of the system and developing students spirit, heart and mind. For my friends and I, and for everyone at the gasshuku, both aspects were fully present in our training. The technique training is clear, but the spiritual side was there too. We learned to not be put off by failure, as the teachers had us repeat techniques until we could get them right. We learned to endure fatigue and sleep deprivation because the socializing with the teachers could go late and cut into the amount of sleep we got. Sleep was already a precious commodity for my friends and I because we were suffering from jet lag. In previous years I’ve gone to the February gasshuku and learned to endure the suffering of training in the huge, drafty, unheated dojo, so the November chill felt like a warm spring by comparison. By the end of the third day we were also battling sore, achy muscles and a few bruises from strikes that missed their targets and thrusts that were a little too successful. At the gasshuku though, none of this was anything to complain about. That too was part of the shugyo.

The last couple days of the training we covered some less frequently emphasized pieces of the curriculum, which was as much fun as it was frustrating.  Because these parts of the system don’t get practiced as often, you were likely see someone (like me) stop in the middle of a kata because he couldn’t figure out how to get from where he was to where he needed to be. The fun came as we laughed at our mistakes and felt great when we finally got something right. I actually managed to do kusarigama without hitting myself in the face with the fundo consistently for the first time. I also got it to wrap around the sword correctly a few times.  Now I just have to practice it several million times more to get it down.

Katageiko 形稽古 training is not the harsh, abusive training you sometimes see depicted in stories of old Japan. It’s a cooperative effort. The attacking side provides just enough speed and energy for the learning side to be able to learn.  Sometimes this means we seem to be moving in slow motion, and sometimes it means we stop with a laugh as we make a really silly blunder.

As I mentioned, the Shinbuden Dojo is next to the grounds of the largest and most famous Shinto Shrine related to budo in Japan. Outside Japan the Katori Shrine is better know because of Donn Draeger’s books, but inside Japan Kashima Shrine is far more famous and popular as a pilgrimage site.  Kashima Shrine is old and huge.  The grounds are filled with a forest dominated by massive cedar trees that range up to 600 years old and over 2 meters in diameter.

Headed Out Kashima Shrine Gate Copyright Peter Boylan 2014


During the gasshuku, we took a morning to visit the shrine, received a blessing and performed a hono enbu 奉納演武, or demonstration presented as an offering. There is a fabulous old dojo on the grounds of the shrine where we all demonstrated our skills. The dojo is magnificent. It dates from the late Edo period, with beautiful cedar pillars surrounding the dojo floor. On one side is a statue of the Meiji Emperor, who once visited the dojo. The floor is lovely, pale wood, polished smooth the by feet of everyone who practices at the dojo, and those who come only for hono enbu.

This hono enbu was a demonstration by the ryuha, so we all took part, from the newest student demonstrating kihon waza to the senior teachers demonstrating kata at the highest level of skill and ability. It was a honor to be able to view the demonstration, and an even greater honor to be able to take part. The ryuha is more than 400 years old, and joining it is not like taking up Judo or Aikido. You don’t just show up at the dojo, pay your dues and become a member. Like many ryuha, you start training, and at some point the teachers and senior members may decide that you are worth accepting into the ryuha. Membership is less a privilege and more a responsibility. At any enbu, the responsibility is to represent the ryuha in a dignified manner appropriate to the situation and to demonstrate one’s best technique and behavior. Sometimes this means sitting in seiza until your legs fall asleep. If that’s what’s required, you do it and you don’t complain.

Following the enbu, we got into the hotel bus for a short ride to the grave of Tsukahara Bokuden, to whom many of the most famous martial ryuha in Japan trace their roots. Born in 1489, he lived during one of the most tumultuous eras in Japanese history. Warlords were tearing the country apart in their quest to become lord of all Japan. Everyone had an army and skilled warriors were in high demand. He is said to have learned Katori Shinto Ryu and then founded Kashima Shinto Ryu.


Tsukahara Bokuden's gravesite.  Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

Tsukahara was born in Kashima, and our hotel was nearby his reputed birthplace. His gravesite lies a little ways out of town 50 feet up the side of a mountain. A recent landslide caused the hillside below the grave to collapse and the town reinforced the hillside. We walked quietly past the graves below and climbed the steps to Tsukahara’s grave. I still find it remarkable that the grave of someone so influential in the world of martial arts remains a peaceful, unspoiled place of quiet and repose. As is customary during a visit to a grave in Japan, we each lit a few sticks of incense and said a quiet prayer. Tsukahara is one of the most significant and influential people in the development of Japanese sword arts, and the chance to pay respects to someone who had such influence on something as important in my life as my budo practice is a quiet wonder.




Offering Incense at the grave of Tsukahara Bokuden Copyright Peter Boylan 2014


After the gasshuku wrapped up, as part of our musha shugyo, my friends and I went back to Kashima Shrine to learn a little bit more about the shrine and it’s history. Kashima Shrine dates back to before the Heian Period (784CE to 1185CE) and has a rich budo history. The deity of the shrine is Takemikazuchi No Kami, who is a kami of martial arts. In Japanese legend, earthquakes are caused by a giant catfish under the earth, and Takemikazuchi No Kami is said to subdue the catfish and prevent earthquakes. His shrine covers acres and acres. It takes a good 20 minutes to walk from one end of the shrine to the other, down wide forest lanes surrounded by the massive cedar trees. The greenery is remarkably peaceful, and it is easy to imagine the Japan of a thousand years ago when most of the country was forested like this.

The path at Kashima Shrine. Copyright Deborah Klens-Bigman 2014.
Yes, those little specs are people!


Kashima Shrine Guardian Copyright Peter Boylan 2014









You’ll notice that the Shrine Guardians in the
Kashima Shrine Guardian Copyright Peter Boylan 2014
pictures  are holding large Japanese bows. This is because the bow was the chief weapon of the samurai for at least a thousand years. The sword didn’t become the primary weapon until the Tokugawa government enforced peace on the nation and made the wearing of two swords the prerogative and symbol of the warrior class.

Although there are two wooden shrines, the forest seems to be the real shrine, dedicated to the natural spirit of Japanese kami. Of the shrines, one is quite old, and was the main shrine until about 100 years ago, when it was relocated and a larger shrine dedicated in its place.

Old Kashima Shrine Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan
The setting around this shrine is quiet and dark, even during the day. The forest blocks out most of the sunlight. The roof is covered with bright green moss, and you feel its age. People walk up to the front of the shrine, toss a few coins in the offering box, clap, bow and make their prayer.

The new shrine is beautiful, but it feels new. This was where we had received the shrine’s blessing a few days earlier. Receiving the blessing can be a tough experience because you have to sit in seiza for about 20 minutes during the ceremony. Even for many Japanese this is difficult, since they spend their days sitting chairs in now too.




New Kashima Shrine building Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

Though we hear much of wabi-sabi, the old shrines in Japan were brightly painted, and that tradition is still visible under the eaves of the main shrine at Kashima. The bright orange and green wall surrounds the Inner Shrine, and the bright colors used to paint the Inner Shrine are clear under the roof.

After spending a peaceful couple of hours wandering around Kashima Shrine, we gathered up our luggage and headed for the Kansai region of Japan for the next stops on our musha shugyo.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Koryu Budo: The Long View

Practicing classical budo changes your perspective.  Yes, I train in an archaic system of combat.  Shinto Muso Ryu as a tradition goes back to the first decade or so of the 1600s.  The sword system included with Shinto Muso Ryu may go back further.  The Shinto Hatakage Ryu that I train only goes back to the 1700s, but it’s founder had studied Kashima Shinto Ryu, which has roots that stretch far back into Japanese history. Certainly the fundamentals of how to use a Japanese sword effectively have been the same since the Japanese sword first achieved the curved shape that we are familiar with.  The weapon and those principles go back about 1,100 years.  

When I started training, these were so many cool details.  They didn’t really have a lot of significance for me. The longer I train, the more I relate to the world, and see aspects of the world, through the the framework provided by the ancient traditions I’m studying. As I learn techniques and principles that go back hundreds of years I see my position in the world differently.  As I teach these same basic techniques for swinging a sword or a stick that haven’t changed in perhaps a thousand years or more, my position becomes even more fluid.

I started out solidly in the present studying about the past. Koryu budo is all about the past. Right?  We’re studying archaic weapons and fighting styles that don’t have a place in the modern world.  Everything about the modern world says that learning to fight with a stick or sword is a quaint pastime, a lovely hobby with no relevance outside the dojo where it’s practiced.  With something like a jujutsu system such as Kodokan Judo or Aikido, there is the possibility of applying it for self-defense.  Mention that you train with swords and sticks and the smile says that you never quite outgrew playing pirates.

The more I do it though, the less distant that past becomes from the present, the closer and clearer pieces of t the future become. The sword hasn’t changed in any fundamental way in a thousand years.  Sticks have been sticks since before humans figured out how to walk on 2 legs. The most effective means for handling these weapons hasn’t changed because neither the weapons nor the people handling them have changed. The epiphany for me was the realization that the centuries old practices were still relevant and effective.

The ideal postures remain ideal.  They are strong, stable and provide a base that allows quick movement and response. The cutting and striking techniques that were most effective 400 years ago have not become less effective over time. Those principles of posture and movement are available for me to apply all the time wherever I am, from the dojo to the kitchen to the office to the factory floor.

As I learn and apply these, the first lessons of any budo system, I see myself differently.  There is less and less of me and my world that is more advanced than the world where my budo originated.  Some of the technology surrounding us may have changed, but the folks wielding it have not. Effective cutting in the kitchen hasn’t changed since Cook Ting was working in his kitchen more than 2000 years ago. The effectiveness of these techniques will not be lost in another 2000 years either. We may develop new technologies, but they will continue to employ the same principles.

Though I live in the 21st century, I find myself less and less at the pinnacle of humanity. That peak sometimes looks much more like a valley with me at the bottom. I’ve learned some, and the more I learn the less advanced I become. Those ancient stances that are just for kids who never outgrew playing pirate turn out to be very effective for subtle communication with people who don’t know anything about them, but still respond to them with primal instincts.

When I delve deeper into the ways of stick or sword I am schooled again and again in the lessons of tactical and strategic thought. We may have developed new weapons, but the old lessons still apply. People don’t continue to study The Art Of War because it is quaint and amusing.  They study it because after thousands of years it is still the most concise treatise on military strategy ever written.

When I practice and learn, I pull the past up to the present. I stand in a valley surrounded by all the lessons of the arts. The accomplishments of my age come down to size. I am a part of the history and the ryuha. The past is no longer distant. Once it felt strange and unreal to think that I was practicing the same arts and techniques that have been practiced for centuries. Continued practiced has burned away the strangeness and replaced the sense of unreality with a strong bond to all those who practiced before me. I can imagine them making the same mistakes and learning the same lessons and asking themselves the same questions.

Now that I have a few students, I see them make the same mistakes I have made. I hear my questions coming out of their mouths, and I discover that the questions aren’t really mine. Those questions belong to those stages of learning.  Nearly anyone who treads that path will discover the same questions.  There are the obvious ones like, “Does this really work?” and “Can I do this?”  Later the questions get more subtle, but they follow a similar path for anyone who has trained in the art.

Because these are physical arts, verbal answers never receive more than temporary, tentative answers.  The student who is wondering if the techniques really work and if she can do them always has to answer the questions for herself. Can she really throw someone?  She trains and trains week after week wondering.  After a while she gets so busy training that she forgets to ask the question. Then one day she hears someone else ask one of her old questions and she realizes that it’s not a question anymore. That this works, that she can do it, these are solid facts burned into her muscles, bones and blood through the simple process of regular training.

Her view of the world and herself changes. She has become, not someone who might, not even someone who can, but someone who does. Like me, her view of the world has been changed by treading the path. Through practice ancient techniques and ways of being are worn into our being. We train and ancient ways of movement become modern and advanced for us. A way of moving and interacting with the world that was developed hundreds of years ago remains effective, efficient and advanced. The past becomes a part of the present, and that present can be clearly seen in the future.

Koryu budo are ancient systems. They are not out of date. Modern martial arts often fall prey to the sporting instinct, and their practitioners forego all the old lessons that can be learned there in pursuit of victory in the sporting arena.  The parts of practice that bring the deep lessons are dropped as training is modified to suit the narrow confines of the arena.

I want to continue learning. Being a sports champion at 15 or 20 or 25 is wonderful. More wonderful I think is whatever it is that makes teachers like Kiyama Sensei and Omori Sensei powerful in their 80s and 90s.

Omori Masao at the age of 85.

That’s a lesson worth learning, and a question worth asking. What is there in koryu budo that keeps people training and working at this when they are 90 years old? I’m not that old, but I can see that even after only a few decades of practice, I keep making new discoveries, learning new things. The question might be, what is that my teachers are still discovering after they reach 90 and have more than 80 years of training? I don’t know, but I also know that the answer to that question is not some discrete piece of knowledge or wisdom. The answer is that all I have to do to learn that is not stop training.

Dennis Hooker Sensei used to say that “If you don’t quit and you don’t die, you’ll get there.”  My only quibble with that is that I don’t think there is any “there” to get to.  If you don’t quit and you don’t die, you’ll keep learning, keep growing, keep going. If we don’t die, and don’t get distracted, there are infinite lessons to be learned in these ancient practices. Each time we train we learn a little more, even on those days when we feel like we haven’t learned anything. Koryu budo takes the long view. Learn the fundamentals, learn the techniques, learn the art, learn life. These aren’t arts and paths with a black belt ceremony at the end. They don’t have an end.

You keep training, learning, refining. You refine your technique and you refine yourself. Old questions become certainties. The path continues and you find new questions and you train the answers to those questions into your bones as well. Your view of the world is transformed. Old men can become enormously powerful. So can young girls who’ve never been told they could be powerful.
A lifetime grows both longer and shorter.  You begin to see all the changes and growth that can happen in a few years and the idea of what can be accomplished across a lifetime becomes immense. You see your own teachers age and pass away and that lifetime grows so short that every moment with them transforms into a precious jewel beyond price.

Working on techniques that you know a student 400 years ago was working on and traveling the path that they did. Teaching these techniques as a teacher did 400 years ago and seeing students progress and master the technique.

The past and the future cease to be separate places. We are not just connected to them, we are part of them. As I train, I age and grow younger. All in the same practice session I am teacher and student. I look to my left and can see the founder of my ryuha standing on a polished wooden floor in Japan wearing a tired and much abused hakama, swinging sticks just as I and everyone in our dojo does. I look to my right and see students in the distant future still wearing patched and faded hakama standing on polished wooden floors and swinging sticks as they train their minds and bodies. Koryu is a long path.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

How To Adapt An Art To Yourself



I often hear people talk about making an art their own and adapting the art to suit them. I hear it most often in arts like Aikido, Karate and Judo. The discussion will turn to adapting the art to suit an individual. This is a quite reasonable question. After all, every student’s body is different, with unique strengths and weaknesses. Adapting an art to suit an individual just makes sense, particularly in the modern, eclectic world we live in.

In competitive Judo, with dozens of legal throws, there is no way one person can be equally good at all of them. So people specialize in a couple of throws that they polish to perfection while giving the rest of the throwing techniques little more the cursory practice so they are familiar with what they look like and how they feel.  For a competitor, there is little use in doing a lot of techniques at a mediocre level. What they need are a few techniques they can hit from anywhere during a match. This compilation reel of people doing a number of different versions of tai otoshi gives a good feel for the ways and places one throw can be adapted for use.


I hear explicit discussion about adapting an art to individual practitioners quite often in Aikido as well. People want to make Aikido theirs. Even before the advent of Youtube, Aikido students could see many different senior Aikido teachers up close at seminars. There they could see that each of these teachers seemed to move a bit differently and have somewhat different approaches to practicing and doing Aikido. From there it’s natural for a student to want to make the Aikido they do as personal an expression of Aikido as that done by the shihan they see at seminars.

Adapting the techniques of an art to suit your particular body and personality is a reasonable idea. We all have different bodies with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, so why shouldn’t we try to optimize the techniques we study for our bodies. We can tweak and adjust the way techniques are done so they work better for us and are easier to do.  It seems reasonable that a person who is 2 meters (6’4”) tall will do their tai otoshi or kotegaeshi or iriminage differently than someone who is 152 cm (5’).


Across the spectrum of body types and shapes and sizes, students can see that they should be adapting their art to their particular body characteristics. Often they ask when they can or should start doing this. I’ve seen many comments that give a time after a student is well into dan (black belt) ranks. After someone reaches 4th dan in most gendai arts they should have a really solid foundation in the art and be able to experiment without getting into trouble by teaching themselves mistakes. They can start making the art their own, and by the time they reach 6th or 7th dan, they could have a personal style that is clearly all their own.

This is great, right? You study the art, learn it and then mold it to your body.  I used to think it was great. Lately though, I’ve begun to wonder. I do both gendai budo (Kodokan Judo) and koryu budo (Shinto Hatakage Ryu, Shinto Muso Ryu). At one time I thought that koryu budo could learn many things from the way gendai budo are taught and practiced.  Gendai budo, particularly arts like Judo with a huge global competitive aspect, constantly mine modern science for the latest training methods and techniques for improving competitor’s skills and the efficiency of their training. I don’t think anyone would argue that Ronda Rousey hasn’t done an incredible job of adapting her competitive judo training to the world of mixed martial arts and demonstrated the effectiveness of it.

Competition is an exceptionally narrow set of conditions though. Conditions that can make techniques and stances that are foolish to try in other situations into perfectly reasonable responses. A classic example is the strongly defensive posture you can see in many competitive Judo matches. It’s very bent over and committed forward to block out your grappling partner.  Outside the competitive match though, the position is rife with openings for punches, kicks or small weapons attacks. This competitive defensive posture is quite effective for blocking out sporting attacks.

It would be a huge mistake to try to apply this or any of the defensive tactics from competitive Judo to a broader practice intended for budo. If you tried to use that stance while doing any of the combative Judo kata you would discover all sorts of unpleasant general weaknesses in it.  Competitive Judo has adapted itself to the rules of competition. The International Judo Federation is constantly trying to tweak the rules to push competitors back towards a classical style of Judo that is more broadly effective than just within the limited space of the competition area. The effectiveness of their efforts may be questionable, but their continued effort is praiseworthy.

Competitors only have to be concerned with the narrow range of possibilities present within the competition arena. Those of us doing martial arts as budo have a much broader world of possibilities and consequences to be concerned with. We’ve ruled out taking ideas from the rarified world of competition, but we still want to make our budo our own and adapt it to our unique body and personality. Now we can start looking at what there is that we can change without destroying the art.

Fundamental stances are essential in any art. This might be the first place that someone could modify the art to suit them. I like to look at leading practitioners of arts like Judo and Aikido and Kendo, arts where there is more opportunity to adapt an art to oneself without major criticism.  Aikido and Judo provide perhaps the best examples, because there are plenty of high level practitioners around to look at. Kendo leaves a bit less room for personalization, but it’s still there. 

Looking at Aikido, I see people who prefer to work from hanmi stance and others who prefer a shizen (squared up, front facing, natural) stance. When they have the opportunity to reset their stance, they go back to their preferred stance. I don’t see high level teachers modifying their stances or coming up with new ones. They just have a stance they prefer to work from. 
The same is true in Judo (after we ignore all the bad defensive postures seen in judo competitions at all levels). People don’t modify the basic stances and grips. Some people prefer a right side grip, some a left side grip, some higher and others lower. What you don’t see are people inventing new grips. With millions of people doing Judo, and thousands of those practicing at elite national and international levels, if there were a new posture or grip that could be effective, I’m certain we’d have seen it. What we see are people fighting from the right or the left, or even squared up.  Some big guys like higher grips, and occasionally you’ll see someone who likes to fight with a sleeve and sleeve grip instead of a sleeve and collar grip.  That’s about the extent of stance and grip personalization you see in Judo.

The problem with modifying fundamental stances is that they are just that, fundamental. If you start modifying them, then everything in the art that follows from those stances has to be modified to fit the new version of the stance. More problematic is that the stances have been chosen and refined within the art for their strength and flexibility. In any of the fully established arts I know, whether koryu or gendai, the stances have been refined to their essentials and changing them just creates a weakness. 

What could you change in any fundamental stance that wouldn’t weaken it? Body angle, hip alignment or foot position? If you change your body angle then you’re not aligned to deal with your attacker  If you shift your hip alignment you lose the connection between your upper body, your hips, and your feet.  Change your foot position and you can’t react properly when an attack comes in.

So when you’re personalizing your budo and putting your particular stamp on the budo you do, it looks like changes to stances aren’t the way for people to go about it. Watching high level practitioners shows that me while they have stances they prefer, they don’t make significant changes to them.  I should also note that if you watch any of them long enough, they are generally quite competent in all the stances of their art, they just prefer some stances over others.

If people aren’t putting their stamp on the art by modifying the stances of the art, how about the techniques? This is a tough one too.  I can’t imagine being able to monkey around with the essence of a technique like harai goshi or shihonage and being able to make some modification that would let it work as well as the fundamental technique, at least not any modification that someone else hasn’t already thought of.


I don’t even know who the guys in the above video are. The Judo world is quite large and I know a tiny, tiny fraction of it. But clearly they have worked out a lot of different ways to attack harai goshi. I remember my first Judo teacher telling us about how proud he was of a variation on a throw he had come up with. He used it quite successfully in a tournament. After the tournament one of the old guys came over to his teacher and complimented them on the beautiful technique.  This old guy said he hadn’t seen that version of the technique in ages, not since some Japanese guy had used it back in the 1930s. So much for doing something new.

The same holds true for something like shihonage. I tried to find a nice compilation video, but no one seems to have made one yet. A search for shihonage on youtube though brought up dozens of individual variations on the technique. If someone can think of a highly effective variation of shihonage that is not already represented by a video on youtube, I would be amazed and impressed.

All the various entries for harai goshi in the video, and all the versions of shihonage on youtube, work because throughout the variations the fundamental essence of the technique has not been changed.  People can change how they enter, what movement they use for the setup, what attack they are responding to, what position they start in, and a dozen other things, but the core of what they are doing, the basic technique being applied, doesn’t change.

When we see someone doing their version of an art like Judo or Aikido, we’re not seeing a fundamentally different art. We’re not even seeing an art that has been adapted to suit a particular person. What we’re seeing is a person who has mastered the art and found particular pieces of it that they like and are most comfortable with which they use more often than other parts of the art. Their personal “style” of aikido isn’t a personal style at all. You’re seeing the parts they like and are most comfortable doing.

An Aikido teacher who usually starts from hanmi stance and does a lot of shihonage in her demonstrations has not made any modifications to Aikido to make it suit her.She’s mastered it and chooses the stances and techniques that she likes best. A judoka who specializes in tai otoshi and can do it from 15 different positions and entries is still a judoka. She’s just become particularly proficient at one technique and is most comfortable with it. She’s still a judoka and can still do the rest of the syllabus.

I started out with the question “How do you adapt your budo to yourself?” The answer is, you don’t. You study your art. You master your art. Within it, you may find particular stances and techniques that you are exceptionally comfortable with and feel best when you do them. As you use these more and more, they will be viewed by others as your particular “style” of Aikido (or Judo or whatever). You’ll still be doing the standard version or your art. You may have specialized in particular versions, but it’s still Aikido or Judo. Other people see your particular emphasis in stances and techniques mistake technical preferences as personal style and modifications to the art.

You haven’t modified the art. You do the full art, but you are especially comfortable in particular stances and you find some techniques more accessible and easier to express than others.  There’s nothing new there. That sort of thing is older than humanity. Even before Sun Tsu people studied their opponents to learn techniques, tactics and strategy they preferred. 

In fact, if you are too wedded to particular stances and versions of techniques, it makes you weaker, not stronger. People will know exactly what you’re going to do and how you will do it.  It’s very easy to catch a tiger that walks down the same stretch of trail every day.  ou just keep laying traps for him. Eventually one will work, especially if capitalizes on the tiger using those same movements and habits.

So don’t try to adapt your art to yourself. Recognize a truth that is evident in koryu bugei.  You don’t adapt an art to yourself. You adapt yourself to the art. Master the fundamental postures and techniques of the art you are studying. Make them a part of who you are so you can’t possibly do them wrong. These fundamentals are the core of the art, and they are what make everything else in the art possible. They are designed to eliminate as many openings and weaknesses as possible. If you mess with them, you will be far more likely to do something that weakens you than something that strengthens you.

So how do you adapt an art to yourself?  You don’t.  You mold yourself to the art.