Modern Musha Shugyo Part 4: A Castle, 2 Dojo and a Holy Mountain

After spending an incredible day training and talking with Kiyama Sensei, on our Musha Shugyo, Deborah, Adam and I  had a day without training planned, then we were scheduled to spend a day doing jodo in Osaka, a night at Mount Koya, and then training at still another jodo dojo in Osaka.  Shiga is lucky enough to have one of the few remaining castles in Japan, so we headed there for our free day.

Hikone Castle Donjon. Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

Hikone Castle Donjon. Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

Hikone Castle was started in 1603 and completed in 1622. Many of the surrounding buildings have been lost, but the main castle donjon still stands, as well as the surrounding walls and gates.  The castle sits on a natural hill, and the first gates are  well before you begin to climb the hill.  We had lunch within view of the castle, and then began climbing up the winding path to the top.  

Hikone Castle gate. Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

Part of the defensive strategy was to make the journey up circle through several gates.  An invading army would have climb the hill and at the same time get past numerous choke points where they could easily be attacked from above.  At one point as we circled up the hill, we arrived at the bell just before the hour, so we are able to stand and hear an ageless sound that hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.

Hikone Castle Bell. Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2014

The next day we traveled to just outside of Osaka to the Yoshunkan Shinto Muso Ryu Dojo. This dojo is in the garden of I. Sensei’s home.  It is one of most lovely private dojo I have had the privilege to train in.  It’s not large but it is lovely and simple.  I met I. Sensei though my jodo teacher, M. Shihan, and I come to train at his dojo whenever I can.  I. Sensei is the kancho for the M. Shihan’s group, so as is typical in Japan, everyone calls him by his title, “Kancho.”

We arrived just after the beginner’s seitei jo class ended.  A couple of the more senior students stayed around to help us train. Kancho said that M. Shihan was planning to come by the dojo later.  In the meantime, he asked me what we wanted work on. Knowing it’s never a bad thing to practice your kihon, and remembering that Adam is still new enough to not be familiar with the basic format of training, I suggested we drill kihon techniques.

This turned out to be a good idea for all of us, not just Adam.  I have been teaching a lot of kihon techniques, but I haven’t been drilling them in the same way M. Shihan’s organization routinely does, so while Adam was being overwhelmed by the intensity of practicing with some of I. Sensei’s more senior students, I got to work at remembering many of the important points for the uchi side.  Uchi is always the senior. While shi practices the kihon, uchi received shi’s technique and controls the spacing and speed of the practice so shi will get the most out the training.

Adam and Deborah got a lot of good training, and I got some excellent corrections in how things should be done.  Training is Yoshunkan is quietly focused. Kancho doesn’t yell at anyone. His training is intense but he is gentle about it. It is completely unlike the atmosphere in movies or stories of traditional teachers who yell or don’t say anything at all.  Kancho made sure each of us was stretched, but the feeling was one of having a treasure quietly shared with you rather than brutal training.  Fujita-san worked me hard in both the kihon and some of the kata that we did. Adam was sweating from the effort that was being pulled from him as he worked to keep up with the demands of his partner and to integrate the corrections from Kancho. Deborah and Adam were both my guests in the dojo, so I was really responsible for them. However, between my own practice and trying to keep an eye on Adam, I left Deborah to fend for herself. I wasn’t really worried about her though.  Her Japanese is quite functional and she’s traveled to Japan numerous times on her own. She doesn’t need any help from me.

Adam occasionally got that deer-in-headlights look though. His partners were drawing him up and down the length of the dojo, making him work at each of the kihon techniques while also subtly changing the distance for each attack so he could learn to understand and read spacing as well as practice the individual techniques. He had plenty to work on. On top of practicing techniques he’s not really strong at yet, he had to try and understand the corrections he was getting from Kancho and the senior students. When the corrections were straightforward, his basic Japanese skills were up to the task. Whenever the corrections were more subtle though, he was quickly floundering in a sea of unfamiliar Japanese vocabulary. I tried to stay out of it as much as possible, but when things got too complex, I would bow to my partner and then give Adam some language assistance.

While we were practicing, M. Shihan arrived. He is a delightful man, about 5’2” (157 cm) tall. If you see him on the street, aside from his incredible posture and carriage, he looks like a fairly average Japanese man. When he starts talking about Jodo though, he lights up with an energy and enthusiasm that is incredible to see and feel. I know from experience that Shihan’s jodo is powerful and inexorable. There is no stopping it. We didn’t get to feel it this day though. He had a busy schedule but had taken time out to visit the dojo to see us.

He asked what we had studied at the gasshuku, and we described our training there. Shihan asked Deborah to demonstrate the Omote set, and for me to act as uchi. We worked our way through the entire set under Sensei’s critical eye. Neither one of us wanted to make the least error. Despite our effort, there was still plenty for Shihan to correct. His corrections are always couched in a way that makes you think about not just what he’s correcting. He asks questions as he corrects that make you consider why you do something in a particular way. In this way, working with Shihan pulls our technique and understanding of everything behind the technique upwards.

After commenting on Deborah’s Omote, and the way I was doing the uchi side, Shihan asked Adam to demonstrate a couple of the kata he felt comfortable with. Shihan gave his some corrections, but didn’t overload him. I know Adam came away from this practice with plenty to think about.

Shihan had to leave before the practice was over, but it was wonderful to see him and get some instruction from him. Before he left, we mentioned that we were planning to visit another one of the dojo in the Osaka area that he leads on Monday night. Shihan warned us he might not be able to make it, but encouraged us to go train.

After Shihan left, and we had bowed him out of dojo, we practiced for a while longer, focusing on the points Shihan had corrected. Eventually though it was time to wrap up practice and bow out ourselves. Kancho served some tea and we chatted a little bit before we changed and headed for the train station. We had plenty to think about while we rode the train back to Shiga.

The next day we headed to Mount Koya, or Koya-san as it’s known in Japanese.  Koya-san is where the head temple of Shingon Buddhism is located.  Founded in 819 C.E., Koya-san is a major pilgrimage site. It is a wonderful, peaceful area in the remote mountains of Wakayama. The only way there is a funicular train, and the only places to stay are temples. We stayed at Daen-In, one of the numerous temples there. The temple provided dinner, sleeping rooms, breakfast, and an early morning Buddhist service of chanting, bells and incense for the numerous pilgrims visiting the temples and graveyard.

Daen Temple. Mt Koya. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

Buddha statue on Mt. Koya. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

We spent the afternoon and evening walking about the graveyard. The graveyard is huge, and no one knows how many people have been buried and memorialized there. Filled with moss covered graves and 600 year old cedar trees, it is one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. Numerous rich and powerful families from the last 1200 years of Japanese history have graves there.

Mt. Koya grave. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

 

Mt. Koya Grave. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

Mt. Koya graveyard. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

A more recent trend is for large companies to have a grave site for memorializing all those who work at the company and have passed away.

Yakult company employee memorial gravesite. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

Nissan company employee memorial grave site. Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

One of the most interesting graves was erected by the termite exterminators association. Buddhism teaches that no living being, including insects, should be harmed. The exterminators have erected a grave for the spirits of all the termites they kill, a place where the spirits of the termites can be prayed for and offerings can be made on their behalf.

Memorial grave site for termites killed by exterminators.
Copyright 2014 Peter Boylan

We spent the night in the temple, ate the wonderful temple food (all vegetarian of course), and attended the 5:45 AM service. After some more time wandering around the temples, we got on the train back to Osaka.  We had Jodo practice that night.

At the dojo that evening, we arrived early, but several of the senior students and teachers were there ahead of us and practicing. We got changed and started warming up. H. Sensei was there with his wife, who is quite accomplished also. And while we were warming up, Kancho came in. He doesn’t train at this dojo usually, but some of the members were preparing for a competition the following Sunday, and he was there to help them get ready.

H. Sensei told me that M. Shihan had called and wouldn’t be able to make it this evening, but that we should please stay and train. We were happy to do that. Even without Shihan, there were a couple of 7th dan teachers and plenty of other senior students in the room.

H. Sensei is a very different style of teacher from Kancho or Shihan. He reminds me much more of the classic image of the brusk, severe Japanese teacher.  We worked our way through the warm-ups, and H. Sensei focused on Deborah, Adam and I. As we were working on hikiotoshi uchi, Sensei started yelling at me. I’ve been reworking my technique, but it seems I’d let my attack angle flatten a little in doing so. Sensei yelled at me that I’d never be able to do anything with that weak technique.

H. Sensei asked me what I thought I was doing and made me work at it until he was satisfied. After he watched Deborah and Adam for a few moments, he decided that we would focus on kihon for the evening. He found partners for Deborah and Adam and started us drilling. He yelled at Adam. He yelled at Deborah. He yelled at me more than the two of them combined.  He asked what sort of Jodo I was doing? He yelled that we would never be able to do anything with such weak technique. He yelled and kept us working hard.

H. Sensei is an example of a classic Japanese teacher. I don’t think he is constitutionally capable of being complimentary during keiko. You know how much he cares about you and your learning by how much attention he pays to you. Unfortunately for us, the only way he knows to express that is by being harsh. From the amount of attention we three got, he is very concerned with us learning to do it right. Which is what I want from a teacher.

If H. Sensei ever said anything nice about my technique, then I’d be really worried. If he, or teachers like him, see anything worthwhile in you, they will yell and hound and badger you to bring out the best that they can see. If he ever said something nice about my technique and then continued on, it would be the worst comment I ever receive. If he says something nice, it means he doesn’t see any reason to bother giving me corrections or attention. A compliment from one of these old style teachers is the kiss of death. The compliment is their way of dealing with someone they rate as a waste of time to teach. They can compliment you and walk away.

If they decide to invest time in you though, that’s the sign they see something of value in you. Deborah has been around Japan long enough to have encountered this style of teacher before, but I was worried about Adam. Adam is still a beginner in Jodo, so this was an intense experience without having a 7th dan teacher yelling at him from close range and making him do techniques over and over until the teacher was satisfied. Deborah knew the best course is to stay silent or just said “Hai Sensei” if a response is needed. Adam’s Japanese isn’t anywhere near to being ready for dealing with this. When things really got tough, he’d look at me and I’d give some translation help, and then we’d be back to practicing the kihon.

I never complain about practicing kihon. Nearly everything in Shinto Muso Ryu can be boiled down to the 12 kihon waza that Shimizu Sensei developed. The better your kihon are, the better every other part of your Shinto Muso Ryu will be. So we drilled kihon. H. Sensei had me call out the commands for practicing the kihon in the dojo to make sure I was doing that right. Somewhere along the line I had flipped a couple of the Japanese words, so I got excoriated for not even knowing the Japanese commands. As we worked through each of the kihon waza, Sensei made sure Adam and Deborah were getting it right. A couple of times he had Adam attack him with a sword so Adam could experience how the techniques should feel when done properly, which is always a worthwhile experience.

I noticed as the evening went on, Sensei’s demeanor softened quite a bit. Adam and Deborah persevered under his pressure. They took everything he threw at them, and they kept showing him their best effort. They never gave up. They took each correction and worked to integrate it into their technique. Deborah and Adam let Sensei yell and they just kept working. By the time we reached the break, Sensei could see that they were going to work hard. He started backing down the volume. He still got all over them for anything he felt was poor technique. He didn’t give up on them, but he was clearly less harsh. They had proved to Sensei they were worthwhile students who are mature enough to handle serious instruction.

H. Sensei let me know that he was still disappointed with me. As a teacher, it’s my job to bring everyone up to the level he expects. I got quite the lecture about that. We all learned. Deborah and Adam got to polish their kihon under the close attention of a high level teacher. I learned what my teachers expect me to be focusing on with my students. I’ll be changing my lessons going forward. Lots more kihon.

At the end of the evening, as we were bowing out and then sharing a post keiko cup of tea, H. Sensei had us introduce ourselves to everyone. Even Adam’s basic Japanese was quite appreciated. People were impressed that he serious enough about Jodo to travel to Japan to train, and to put in the effort to begin learning Japanese. With keiko over, H. Sensei returned to his normal self, which is to say he was very pleasant to chat with. Everyone invited us to come back and train again soon. We promised we would.

Training with H. Sensei can be tough, especially if you don’t know about traditional teaching attitudes in Japan. There is long tradition that being nice to students of anything will make them soft and encourage them to give less than their best effort. The traditional way was to never compliment the student. If you know about this, some of the traditional teachers don’t seem nearly so harsh. They can still be tough to endure, and sometimes they will make you want to break and run. They can really toughen you up though. Day-to-day trials are a lot easier. That boss that likes to yell and pound on his desk? He doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating after having a 7th dan teacher verbally flay you and then insist that you attack him so he can demonstrate the flaws in your technique.

Maybe there are some real benefits to that traditional teaching that I hadn’t considered before.

You Thought Being Sensei Would Be Awesome

After hearing me comment about what a great day I’d had at Judo practice, a friend of mine lamented the fact that there is no one senior to her in her koryu budo dojo. At that Judo practice I enjoyed myself and learned a bunch. Because I’m not the most senior person in the room there, I can relax and absorb what is being taught. I don’t have to worry about how to teach a particular point or think about what we’re going to do for the entire practice. I get to learn. Yes, if someone junior to me seems ready to learn a particular point I’ll work with them, but it’s always within the framework of the class someone else is teaching. I can focus on learning and practicing as a happy student.

I understand my friend’s lament. Where I’m at, if I want partners to train iai and jo and kenjutsu with, I have to teach them. There is no one senior to me for quite a ways. I’ve known lots of people who wanted to be the big kahoona teaching martial arts. Having arrived at that position by the simple expediency of moving to a place where I’m the only option if you want to learn the stuff I do, I can let you in on a little secret. It’s not fun.

In fact, I don’t know of anyone who’s teaching that wouldn’t trade in their cold, windy, exposed position on the top of the heap for a nice, cozy spot somewhere down the side a ways. At the top, all the responsibility is on you.  You get to worry about what to teach and how to teach and and why the people aren’t catching the point of your carefully thought out lessons. Plus you get to worry about the dojo have space and enough money to cover expenses and that someone is there on Thursday night to lead practice because you are attending your daughter’s recital and gee, I thought I remembered how to do this kata, but now I’m not so sure….how did that entry go? When you’re on top, it all comes back around to you. This is a particular problem outside Japan where dojo don’t usually have decades and decades of history.

In Japan most of the dojo I train in are lead by people in their 70s and 80s. Many of them have more than 70 or 80 years of budo experience under whatever is left of their well-worn belts.  Imagine a dojo where the median rank on the floor most nights is 6th dan. That’s pretty common.  Training in a place like that is incredible. You absorb lessons without even realizing it because the atmosphere is so rich with experience. Your training partners as often as not started practicing decades before you were born and the head sensei started decades before that.  

You don’t have to worry about what teach or how to teach it. There are plenty of seniors doing that. You just go and absorb everything you can. Some of it you forget and other lessons you don’t realize you’ve learned until they bleed from your bones and muscles and heart when needed. Secure in the knowledge that whatever question you might have someone around you will be able to answer in more detail than you can handle, you can relax and just focus on your training, on improving your budo and yourself as much as possible.

When, for whatever reason, you find yourself at the top of the heap with people around you calling out “Sensei”, that security melts faster than ice cream in an Arizona summer. This is especially true if you’ve only got a couple of decades of experience under your still all too new belt.  I still have loads of things to learn about all of the arts I study, not just Judo. For iai and jo though, most of the year I’m the only teacher around for me to rely on. I don’t have all the details of every kata nailed into my head yet. This is a problem for my training. I can teach my students a lot, but they aren’t nearly ready to work on some of the things I’m doing, so I have no practice partners nearby.

I’ve got a pile of kata that I was introduced to at the most recent gasshuku. Anything I don’t remember and don’t have written down somewhere is lost until the next time I can get together with a senior student or teacher. Of course, the nearest senior for my Jodo practice is at least 600 miles away. For iai, it’s 6,000 miles. I don’t get those checks and memory enhancements nearly as often as I’d like. I can get together with a senior in Jodo a few times a year, but getting to Japan is a lot tougher.  

For my students, I hope our dojo is a great place with a good mix of juniors and relatively senior folks. This way they can learn and grow as quickly as possible. For me improvement is comparatively slower and takes more effort. It’s also lonelier.  

A big part of budo, especially koryu budo traditions, is all the stuff that is not techniques and kata.  There are discussions of history and traditions of the system. Koryu bugei traditions are not just collections of techniques. There are stories and anecdotes that enrich and enliven the tradition.  These are not supposed to be dead, fossilized collections of dried and desiccated memories from ages past. These are living traditions that flow on from the past into the future. These stories and memories provide an important part of the foundation and understanding of how the technical practice relates to the world outside of the dojo. Without seniors and peers, all the responsibility for sharing and remembering this part of the art is yours.

Being sensei sounds great. It’s a fabulous idea right up until the moment it becomes reality. Then you discover that it is lonely and stressful. Every buck stops with you. If you have any questions, there’s no one ask. You’re on your own.  If you don’t know or don’t remember something, you’re just out of luck. You never have the luxury of relaxing and letting someone else handle it. If you want to learn something then you’ve got to figure out how to do it right. You don’t get to ask anyone. You’re sensei, and you’re all alone.

A Wonderful Sensei

My favorite Judo teacher, Hikkoshiso Sensei, was an impervious 55 year old 6dan when I met him. He loved randori, but most people in the large dojo wouldn't play with him because "He's too strong." I played every chance I got. He threw me all over, with power and control and finesse.  His throws were clean and perfectly controlled.  He always landed you beautifully, without pain or bruising or discomfort. To this day I can't understand why people weren't lining up to play with him.

His technique was fantastic.  Big movement hip throws are famous in Judo, as you can see here.  

Hikkoshiso Sensei could do them, beautifully.  Often though, he would use the most subtle of hand techniques, no big hip or body movements at all.  He just sort of waved his hands around while holding my collar and sleeve and my feet left the ground and I went flying through the air.  After more than 20 years of practice, I’m starting to get to the place where I can understand how he did it.  I still can’t do it on anyone who isn’t letting me practice it.  When Sensei first started doing it to me, I was solid 23 year old shodan who practice several times a week. I was young, strong, getting lots of practice, and he still tossed me around like a stuffed doll.

For some reason though, very few people wanted to train with him.  There were a few of us. All of the top guys in the dojo played with him, and me (I was so far from the top I needed binoculars to see it).  Everyone else just avoided him.  There weren’t enough of us to provide a partner through every round of randori.  I tried encouraging some of the other guys at my level, but they always said something like “He’s too strong. I can’t.”  

Yes, Sensei is strong, but that’s the reason to train with him.  He’s strong, his control is excellent, his throws are clean, and he will help you raise your art.  He will make you learn good defense without being abusive or harsh.  I learned every time we grabbed each other’s gi.  After training with him for years, one day I got good enough to stop his waving hand throw.  I couldn’t counter it or throw him or anything like that.  I could just maintain my center well enough that he couldn’t just wave his hands and make me fly.

So instead he threw me with some of those big throws like in the video above.  He threw me all over, and I loved it.  I learned more about throwing and movement and balance and defence. I knew my throws were making progress when I could break his balance enough that he had to take an extra step.  I studied Sensei when he played with other people.  After a few years of this I picked a technique and polished and polished it.  After maybe six months of work, I was playing with Sensei and things felt right.  I tried the throw and Sensei went up and over.  I had thrown him!   Sensei got up and bowed his congratulations to me.  He was happy that I had learned enough to be able to throw him.

Of course, that technique never worked again on him.  He knew it was out there, figured out the weakness I had exploited, and eliminated it.  I think he did that while he was bowing to me, because I never saw another chance to use that technique on him.  It was back to the drawing board if I wanted to throw him.  

That was great though.  I wasn’t training with him because I could throw him.  I was training with him because I couldn’t throw him.  I didn’t learn much doing randori training with people I could throw easily.  With Sensei, every step, every breath counted.  I had to constantly improve or Sensei would just keep throwing me with the same technique.  If I left an opening, he would make use of it.  It was great.  We could laugh and smile at techniques tried, failed and successful even as we were trying to throw each other around the room.

As tough as the training might be, and as much as I got thrown around, it was always with a spirit of joy.  Sensei loved training and randori, and he shared that joy with everyone who would bow to him and say “Onegai shimasu” to invite him to do randori.  He still does.  I train with him when I can bet back to his dojo in Japan.

He’s still going strong, quite strong.  He’s in his 80s now, and last year took home a bronze medal at an international tournament in Tokyo.  He’s still strong and powerful, and his technique is gets more subtle, effective and cleaner each year.  Sensei keeps training and polishing himself.  People still don’t want to train with him because he’s too strong.  They still can’t throw him unless he lets them, and that is too much of an ego breaker for them.  So now if now one asks him to train, I go over and get an extra session with him.

The Spirit Of Learning

We study martial arts.  That should mean we’re here to learn.  How we approach learning, the attitude we carry with us in the dojo is critical to what we learn.  Sadly, all too often when we get advice the thought barging through our heads is not “Thank you. I will work on that.”  Instead we’re thinking “I know that. Don’t bother me with stuff I already know.”

It’s easy for me to write that we should always receive advice with gratitude, but what does that really mean?  It seems pretty obvious we should appreciate and be grateful whenever someone helps us.  That’s a lot harder to do than it is to write.  So often people, especially peers, or people who think they are our peers, will give us advice that seems pretty worthless.  

Advice and instruction can be broken down into 3 categories.  The first, and best of course, comes from our teachers.  They are giving us advice from their deep experience and knowledge.  This is usually easy to receive with gratitude and an open mind.  After all, we go to our teachers for instruction on how to do the techniques right, so whenever they share their knowledge and experience, we are happy to receive it.  Except sometimes.

Sometimes teachers are telling us something we already know.  Do we really know this stuff though?  If we really knew it, would our teachers feel the need to tell us again?  For me, the most common direction I get is to relax.  After nearly 30 years in the dojo, you might think I know I should be relaxed and that my shoulders shouldn’t be pulled up tight next to my ears.  In one, limited, sense I do know this, and it’s the correction I most often make with my own students.  In a deeper sense though, I don’t know it.  If and when I truly know how to maintain a relaxed state, it will manifest itself in my movement all the time. Kiyama Sensei won’t feel the need to remind me because I won’t be tensing my shoulders and tugging them towards my ears.

Another direction I get frequently from Sensei is to use my hips better.  Well, what he actually says is “Koshi ha yowai.”  “Your hips are weak.”   Sensei has been telling me this for years.  I’m working on it.  I have made major improvements.  I can see it in video of me training in years past compared with now.  Sensei still pushes this.  It’s something I know quite well.  Sensei reminds me often though.  Should I feel annoyed with him for always harping on this one thing?  Should I be frustrated and resentful that he never lets me forget this?  

Annoyance and frustration aren’t a part of this.  Koshi 腰　(really the whole region of the lower back and hips) are fundamental to everything we do in budo.  They are what ties together the foundation provided by our feet and legs with the floating mass of our upper body and head.  If this connection isn’t solid, my balance with be weak and I won’t be able to transfer the power of my legs to my upper body.  It’s absolutely critical.  I’ve made a huge amount of progress in this area, so why does Sensei keep coming back to it?  I’m working on it after all.   Then I watch guys like this, and wonder why Sensei doesn’t spend more time pushing on this point.

I approach anything Sensei has to say with gratitude and a desire to figure out how to apply what he is telling me.  Sometimes this is pretty tough.  I don’t always make the connections immediately, so I spend a lot of time wandering around trying to figure out what I’m missing.  I learn a lot this way.  It makes me think about things from different perspectives trying to understand what Sensei is getting at, and why it’s important at that moment.

It’s tougher to take the same advice from someone of equal or lesser skill.  Having one of my training buddies tell me to relax or to use my koshi could really annoy me. Sometimes this  annoyed me badly enough that I got busy being annoyed and I completely lost the point of my training that day.  These guys have no right to be telling me what I need to work on!  Especially someone who’s only been training that long!

Then one day a thought walked over and smacked me in the temple.  If someone with that little experience can see how much I need to improve something, maybe I should be paying attention to it.  It really doesn’t matter how skilled they are.  I can take what they say with openness and appreciation and gratitude.  If they can see it, then there may be a very obvious weakness that I need to work on.  The one thing I am 100% sure about my budo is that it’s not perfect.

I also understand that not all advice offered by juniors is good.  Sometimes I have to explore it.  I’ll ask “What do you mean?” or “Why do you see that as a problem?”  Then we can talk and explore their concern together, and if it’s a valid point, I’ve got another item to add to my already long list of things to fix, or they learn why their understanding may not be as strong as they thought.  Either way, we learn something.

If we are honest with ourselves, our budo becomes a search for improvement and not an ego building exercise related to how much more we know than someone else.  I’ve reached the point where I’ll take help improving myself from anywhere I can get it.  I’m a slow learner, so if I’m going to accomplish much of anything before I die, I’ve got to take all the help and assistance I can get.  Even if it’s from my own students.

Recently, I’ve started doing something new..  I ask my students to sit down. Then I demonstrate something.  Their job is not to look at it and think about how they can emulate what their teacher is doing.  Their job is to look at what a fellow traveler on the budo path is doing, and help him. I ask them to tell me about anything they see that I should correct.  It’s a lot of fun and we all learn something from it.  The more senior students are quite capable of telling me in detail about a lot of things I should work on.  Often these are the same points I’ve just finished bringing to their attention in their own practice.   At first it’s embarrassing to have a student call you out for the same problem you were helping them with 15 minutes before. I had to work at not being embarrassed by this and just accepting their help.  If I’ve just pointed something out to them, they are hyper-aware of it, so if I’m off by one degree they see it.  

After a few run throughs though, I’ve gotten past most of my ego issues (if I ever transcend them all, you’re invited to my investiture as a living Buddha).  At first my goal was to take advantage of my senior student’s ability and knowledge to help improve my practice.  Now I’ve begun to see some other benefits.   All my students gain from this.  They really focus on trying to see more clearly in my practice what I have been asking them to do in theirs.  Even the beginning students begin to see better because they are looking for things at higher levels and advancing their understanding based on what other students are saying and what I am doing.

Once I fold up my ego, put it in a bag, stomp it thoroughly flat, and kick it to the back of the closet, we all win.  I get progressively better and more subtle critique from my own students.  In turn, they become more discriminating about their own practice.  They begin to understand what they are trying to achieve, and they can see where they want to go.  Then we can work together to get there.  We all advance.

That’s the spirit of learning that I love to see in the dojo.  We are all there trying to improve. Ultimately, there is no perfect in budo.  There is only progress.  Once I put aside my ego, I know I can learn from everyone.  Now I’m teaching my students how to critique me so I can improve at the same time they are learning to see with clearer understanding what some of the goals of practice are.  Enter the dojo in the spirit of learning, and you can learn from anyone, not just they people you address as “Sensei.”

Budo Professionalism

Should budo teachers be professional?  This is a discussion that comes up with fair regularity in modern and classical budo circles.  They are a lot of people who see budo as a pure art form and equate accepting money for teaching as selling out the soul of the art.  As an art form and classical legacy, budo should remain pure and above simple economics.

My early budo background is in Kodokan Judo, which in the USA nearly has an allergy to professional instructors. There is a feeling common in Judo and many classical budo circles that being a professional budo teacher requires that you sell out the core of your budo to attract a steady stream of students to pay the bills.  The feeling is that to make money teachers have to quit teaching real budo and start doing marketing schemes and selling belts.

Then there is the example of Japan.  There are very few professional budo teachers in Japan.  Pretty much every city and town has one or more public dojo that anyone can rent for a very reasonable fee and hold a class.  Nearly every town has a judo dojo and a kendo dojo, while cities may have several (we won’t even talk about Tokyo and Osaka, which have so many judo and kendo dojo it would take years to visit them all).  Many towns and cities also have a couple of koryu being taught as well.  None of these teachers is getting paid for teaching.  The dojo communities are clubs where everyone gets together for the love of what they are doing.  It doesn’t hurt that even smaller towns will have several kendo seventh dans and the judo club in even a small town will be run by a 5th dan or higher.

But there are professional budoka in Japan.  Not a lot, but they do exist.  There are some professionals employed by the various local and regional governments to teach budo to the police. There is the wonderful example of the Kokusai Budo Daigaku or International Budo University, which is what it's name says, a 4 year university focused on the martial arts. It employs a lot of people who are professional budo teachers and researchers. There are also a few professional instructors around teaching privately. Most of the ones I'm aware of are teaching karate or aikido.

What you don't have in Japan is a martial arts industry promoting business techniques for maximizing the cash flow generated by schools with a variety of schemes to get students to pay for extra classes and training.  The budo teachers are professional teachers, not professional businessmen.　　The difference is, to me, an important one.  Professional budo teachers are focused maximizing the effectiveness of their teaching of budo.  Professional businessmen focus on maximizing the profit of their business.

Every teacher I have dealt with in Japan never stops displaying professionalism.   Professionalism is defined by Miriam-Webster’s online dictionary as “the skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well”.  It is something I have found lacking in many so-called teachers outside Japan.  There are many teachers who do show professionalism outside Japan, but there are far too many who start teaching long before they have sufficient mastery to serve as examples of good technique, much less be able to communicate what students need to do.  Just because you’ve got a colored belt doesn’t mean you’re ready to teach.

In fact, the organizations in Japan generally have a minimum rank for running your own dojo.  In the Kendo Federation it’s 5th dan.  In the Judo Federation it’s 4th dan.  Those are the minimums, but you don’t see many dojo run by people with the minimum rank.  The only time that happens is if an area doesn’t have anyone else.  Generally in the Kendo Federation, no one under 7th dan opens a dojo.  In Judo it’s usually 5th dan.  You don’t see people running out to start a dojo.  

Running a dojo is considered a serious venture that calls for lots of experience.  Outside Japan, 5th dan may sound like a high rank, but in Japan it’s not.  It barely gets you into the “serious student” category.  People spend a lot of time developing their skills to the point where they can teach.  Often even after they open their own dojo they will may the journey a couple of times a week to train with their own teacher.  I have to say, watching 7th dans working on things while an 8th dan makes corrections is a fabulous thing.  They are all working at such a high level that it’s gratifying if I can just figure out what the correction is.

Outside Japan see a lot of “teachers” who have stopped training, or at least their physical condition suggests that they aren’t training very hard.  If training and continual improvement is good enough for your students, it’s good enough for you too.  Budo teachers owe it to their students and to themselves to keep practicing, to keep training, to maintain their physical abilities and continue polishing their themselves as examples of budo.

Oddly enough, I’ve never seen an example of teachers who stop training before their bodies give out in Japan.  In fact, I see just the opposite.  Teachers whose bodies are slowly fading still pushing themselves to get out on the floor and train, working hard to slow down the fading of their skills, discover something new about timing or spacing or control and giving their students another lesson in perseverance.  It’s not about always being the best.  It’s about always giving our best.  

This is what I would like to see more of.  It’s not about having a pretty belt and a nice title.  It’s about always working to have the best for our students.  It really doesn’t matter whether you are being paid money or not.  Students are giving you a chunk of their time, their life.  If a teacher is worrying about how to extract money from their students and is constantly coming up with new programs to sell to students, that’s not professional.  If a teacher is constantly working on improving their ability to transmit the fundamentals to their students and is working every day on improving her own fundamentals, that’s a professional teacher.

Swords, Budo, and the centuries

My friend Kawahara Sadachika is a sword smith in Japan (he's a Buddhist priest too, but that's an entirely different story).  I managed to squeeze in a visit to his house in the Shiga countryside during a business trip last month.  He is always a tremendous pleasure to visit.  His home is on the grounds of the temple he cares for and it is always lovely.  It's called Nenpo-ji and was built in 1712.  Here are some pictures of the temple.

Kawahara Sensei is gracious and wonderful gentleman.  I've known him for about 15 years.  Hopefully I'll get to visit him again soon when he is working in his forge.

This time though we looked as some swords he has made, as well as a beautiful Nanbokucho Period blade that he was studying.  I always enjoy looking as Japanese swords, because each one is so unique, not just in shape and history, but also in appearance.  Each has a unique hamon (temper line) and jihada (steel grain).  We looked at a couple of nice blades that Kawahara Sensei had made.  They have a wonderful, lively jihada.

It is always a pleasure to watch him work with blades, even just to clean them.  He does it with a sense of respect and honor towards the blade he is handling that is truly impressive.  In the above picture he is working on a wakizashi that he made.  It's a lovely piece, and my picture below doesn't do it justice.  I really need to take a better camera on my next visit.  The picture is fuzzy, but the blade itself is delightfully clear with a lively, active jihada.

We talked quite a bit about the beauty of the blades, and in particular about the Nanbokucho tachi that he was studying.  It's a really fine blade with a wonderful shape and general appearance, as well as beautiful detail.

As we were talking about the incredible craftsmanship and beauty of this particular blade, Kawahara Sensei commented casually that he would be satisfied if he could ever make a blade of this quality.  This stuck with me because I have heard similar sentiments from another friend of mine who is also a sword smith.  Nakagawa Sensei has said to me many times that he “wants to make a sword that someone will look at in 1000 years and say 'He made a beautiful sword.'”

At first I thought of this just as wanting make something of quality, which is in itself quite a worthwhile objective.  Later it struck me that Nakagawa Sensei and I had been looking at, appreciating and talking about swords made a thousand years or more before we were born.  Sensei has every reason to consider what someone a thousand years from now will think of his swords.  It is quite reasonable to believe that some of his swords will be around in collections in the 31^st century and that people will be sitting around looking at them and commenting on the grace, power, balance and beauty of his swords.

It’s quite common to talk about future generations, but how many of us really consider the future that far out?  Who seriously considers what someone one thousand years in the future will think about their work?  Who among us has reason to think about things that far in the future?  But if we practice budo, there is a good chance that a thousand years from now people will still be practicing the arts we practice, and they will be the descendants of what we teach. 

If you practice a koryu budo, you are practicing something that is already hundreds of years old.  Ogasawara Ryu kyudo is already nearly a thousand years old.  Katori Shinto Ryu dates from the 1400s, while Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu and Muso Shinden Ryu trace their origins to the 1500s, and Shinto Muso Ryu dates from about 1610.   When we start considering our practice in the scale of hundreds of years rather than decades, that should impact how we practice and what decisions we make.  Can we think about the arts we practice with a longer view than just a few years that are easy to imagine?  Can we imagine someone a thousand years in the future doing what we are doing and benefiting from it?  Can we make decisions about how we practice recognizing that what we choose now may influence how people train in the distant future?  Should we?

So what does it mean to practice with an awareness of hundreds of years of tradition leading up to us, and of hundreds of years of practice flowing down from us?  To me it emphasizes everything that we are doing, and it explains why teachers can seem so conservative.  It places even more importance on me getting it right, so that when I demonstrate for someone, or teach someone, I’m passing on the lesson correctly.  If I’m a poor student, I can only be a poor teacher as well.

The fact that after hundreds of years and revolutions in the technology of combat the koryu arts are still practiced and appreciated by people, and people still find so many relevant lessons is testament to the depth and enduring value of the lessons they teach, and the effectiveness of the way they teach their lessons.  It also suggests that whatever imaginable and unimaginable revolutions we have in combat, the lessons of the koryu we practice will continue to be relevant.  Scary thought there. 

We are teaching stuff that will be important for someone hundreds of years in the future.  I can see it pretty easily though.  The little lessons are the techniques and kata that we practice.  Those may or may not be directly relevant to anyone.  But the big lessons about movement, posture, timing, spacing, positioning, zanshin, and rhythm, these lessons I expect to be relevant as long as there are beings in conflict.  I find the idea of being part of a stream that stretches back hundreds of years, and will flow on for hundreds more to be an incredible thing.  It makes me awfully small, but with a huge responsibility.

Knowing that these lessons remain relevant after centuries, and will continue to be relevant is also tremendously exciting.  It means I’m not just preserving a fossil.  The art is useful and alive and contributing much more to student’s lives than just preserving a memory of things long past.  As long as people are people, there will be conflict, and it will involve blunt sticks, clubs, bladed weapons, chains and ropes.  The capacity for violence is part of who we are and I don’t think any amount of wishing is going to make it go away.

I’m ok with that.  I’m also ok with training that helps deal with that capacity.  I find the idea of training in arts that have successfully helped people deal with the capacity for and actuality of violence for hundreds of years reassuring and fascinating.  I’ve been studying budo for more than 25 years and I still learn something new every time I step into the dojo.  The arts are that deep.  From talking with my teachers, the ryuha they train in are deep enough that even after training for 2 and 3 times as long as I have, they are still learning new things and discovering new depths.

This is what we take part in and contribute to when we train in koryu budo.  We partake of living lessons about how to deal with some of the most fundamental of interactions.  These lessons have been refined over centuries, and now they are very effective and efficient.  Our job as students and teachers of these arts is to pass on faithfully what has been given us, but just as faithfully, to refine those lessons where we see a need.

Koryu budo have survived, seen a decline for a few brief decades when nearly all interests in Japan turned to all things shiny, new and modern, and are seeing a resurgence as a more balanced view valuing both that which is modern and new and those things which have shown resilience and worth over time.  The growth of koryu budo internationally in the last 2 decades is easily as great, and possibly greater, than that of gendai budo in the first several decades after their introduction the world outside Japan.

Those of us lucky enough to be involved in these arts have the responsibility to maintain the high standards of practice that have come down to us.  We also have to help our arts adapt to the changing world, but we must not change the arts just for the sake of change or temporary popularity.  Arts that are well-maintained, well taught and well practiced, that adapt wisely, will surely survive many, many more centuries, and continue to have value.  We are part of the current of these koryu, and students in centuries to come may well look back and see us as having had some small part in continuing the flow of these arts into their future.  If my name is remembered a thousand years from now in some list of koryu teachers, I hope it is remembered as having served the ryuha well, and not for having tried some fancy new trick that lacked sustaining value.