The Ministry of Silly Walks

It stopped raining for a while, so they officially declared the end of rainy season. Then it started to rain, and hasn’t let up much since. I have been pretty lucky – the dry afternoons have coincided well with my open times to practice outdoors, so I can’t complain.

And it has been a stellar weekend. Gong fu on Friday brought in one old young friend and another new person. That made 4 in the 南拳 camp and a sudden surge of Southern Fist activity (the class is usually geared heavily toward the (Northern) Long Fist 长拳 style for all, but this Friday we separated. I think my entire being is geared much more toward the southern styles than the northern (at least in terms of the external arts), so this is exciting news for me.

Unusual Walk (1) This morning there was an unprecedented intro-to-Southern Fist seminar. Small group, lots of attention. And one made-on-the-spot form completed (assembled from an assortment of elementary motions). Cursory as my knowledge is, it is a blast, something to hold on to and develop.

We were introduced to several key motions of Southern Fist, one being a strange way of advancing. Each foot steps across the center line in a zig zag that looks like a kid who has to piss. This stepping combines with the butterfly palms 蝴蝶掌 which look a bit like cloud hands going back and forth across the body. I don’t know the reason for this stepping yet but am proceeding on faith. It has only been one day, after all.

Unusual Walk (2) Learned it in the Kumi Dachi set from iaido, paired practice with wooden bokuto swords. The steps also advance in a zig-zag fashion, stepping alternately across the centerline, but with the toes angled in. In Unusual Walk #1, the toes are angled out on each step (and the back heel is raised). We can also do it on one of the seated oku-iai techniques (which feels more like one of the standing techniques), 虎乱走. It is something the teacher will mention on rare occasion, though most people don’t do it. As above, I don’t know the reason for the unusual stepping, but am proceeding on faith.

Anyhow, it was a great weekend in every way (the morning’s seminar was followed by a tai ji seminar in the afternoon, but that is a different post for a different day).

rainy season (2)

I love listening to the rain at night, working out indoors in the humidity long into the night.

Now that this year’s rainy season has been officially declared over, it has rained all day today. And will rain tomorrow and the next day. Then a two-day sword seminar starts and I will be inside all day anyway.

Fine with me, as the three-day weekend gave me three days of working out in the sun (plus Friday night’s super-humid gong fu class with my daughter). Sensing that rain might follow, I spent extra time on weapons the next three days, and have pleasantly (?) sore arms to show for it. So tonight, with the rain, it will be the 64 hands of ba gua zhang in preparation for tomorrow’s class.

64 hands is quite unusual in that the techniques are performed moving in a straight line. There is plenty of characteristic ba gua circling, but the body is moving straight forward as a whole.

Created by Liu Jing Ru, he taught us this set last year on his annual visit to Japan. This year he is rumored to be bringing us the more commonly seen 64 palms. Not enough time, not enough time…

But this weekend had plenty of time. Hours of solo review and polishing, then a morning of much-needed iaido, a blast all the way through both seated and standing okuden forms, and on into a solid review of the paired kumi-dachi sets. The perfect, intensive review I needed, with both breadth and depth. I was on fire, moving well but not satisfied, looking for more. My head is still spinning, and not from the circles of ba gua zhang.

Less work than usual for the rest of the week means more of you know what. Truly glorious days are these….

in praise of newbies

Things are going much better on the gong fu front. Most importantly, my daughter seems to be over her “I’m quitting gong fu” phase. It is tough for her, at age six, to be in a class of half adults and with the nearest kid at least three years her senior.

Last week I had a really good practice. My daughter was off at a school function and I went alone to gong fu for a change. No progress on the sticks (nangun, 南棍) but great progress in other areas.

Usually I partner with her through the extended aerobic / agility exercises so I have to hold back quite a bit. But last week I blasted all out and enjoyed it, pushing myself to the limit in the extreme humidity.

For some reason, five new people joined the class that night, all of them adults, three or four of them very experienced. That kicked everybody’s intensity level up several notches, on top of the all-Japan tournament starting this week.

Midway through practice, I was called over to run through basics with the new member who lacked much experience. Usually there is little explanation and there are few if any reps of the demos by the teachers. But that night, the teacher really slowed down for the beginner – and I could benefit from that and really soak in some motions that have been half –understood and half-assed for far too long.

This strikes me as being somewhat similar to my situation in iaido lately. The teachers tend to focus heavily on whoever has joined the group most recently. The longer you have been in, the less attention you get. The less direct attention, anyhow. You have a growing responsibility to watch how the teachers teach those who are newest – to steal what you can and apply it to your own practice. I got a lot of attention when I joined this group – a thorough re-tooling of my iaido to get in line with our style. But now I am seldom taught directly and have to watch the teaching of others.

I am in a strange position in gongfu. They know I have experience with other arts. Despite the fact that I have little background in long fist (the core of this class) or southern fist, I am treated as one of those with experience. That means I am always trying to get all I can while others are being taught – but I am struggling to learn it the first time. At least in iaido I had a strong grounding before joining my current group.

Anyway I had a rare and special opportunity last week, since my daughter was gone and I had been partnered with a newbie.

Now what we really need in this gong fu class are some new young kids, my daughter’s age, to join. That would do more for her motivation than anything. As for me, I hope the newbies keep coming, as their presence gives me the rare chance to get some in-depth explanation and slower reps while learning new moves.

iaido mistake

This morning’s iaido class was quite good, in the intensive scrutiny kind of way. Some classes I am kind of left alone while the teachers focus on whoever is newest in the group. Those are the times to absorb or steal as much of the teacher’s instruction as you can. You are not being taught directly, but you are expected to actively take what you can get – and thus you are being taught, however indirectly.

There is a movement in the iaido world to make it more accessible to everyone, to teach very freely and directly, and to focus very strongly on passing tests for dan-ranks. The same movement tends to place very heavy emphasis on the seiteigata, newer iaido forms which were created after the war. The older, koryu styles are left very much on the back burner.

The pair of teachers I have chosen are not part of that world. Of course you cannot escape it completely, but they are trying to preserve something which they see as being more original and perhaps more pure.

We are pursuing an uneasy existence, floating along the edges while trying to preserve a different core. For us, the old style koryu techniques (from which the modern, seitei forms were adapted) are the core, and most practices focus strongly upon them, rather than on passing rank exams.

There is much more to the story, and much that could be written about machinations within the iaido world here in Japan, but this is neither the time nor the place.

What concerns us, or me anyhow, is one of my mistakes, and my teacher’s response to it.

I had warmed up with about ten zillion basic cutting techniques, most of them using yokoburi, or a sharp sideways motion with the blade to shake off the blood and goo which have accumulated upon the blade after dispatching my imaginary opponent. I switched to a standing technique to give my knees a rest and promptly botched it.

It is the only standing waza or technique in the shoden set, 虎乱刀 or korantou, and is one of my favorites. There is also a kae-waza, an alternate version which is the mirror image of the usual, and it was this that I plunged into – and messed up. My motions were good – the intention while walking, the pair of cuts timed and executed well. Then I went directly into yoko-buri to finish, just sharply taking the blade across to the side with a strong wrist motion. But it should finish with a much larger type of chiburi, with the tip being taken widely out to the side/ rear, then the forearm folding in like Mt. Fuji, and a strong cutting motion downward to fling off that troublesome blood and goo before re-sheathing the sword.

I tried to recover smoothly, finishing with a sense of zanshin for proper finish. My teacher had been watching all this from behind and I could sense him walking up behind me. He didn’t say a word about the mistake in the form. He was concerned with the mistake in my yoko-buri. Rather than taking the blade directly across, I had taken it across and then pulled it back slightly closer to my body, creating a bit of arc. He would have none of that! It was no longer in the optimum position to begin the next motion, taking the blade back across to the left once my left hand had slid down to the koiguchi or opening of the saya/ scabbard and rotated it 90 degrees.

So I repeated just that part of the motion several times, then repeated the entire korantou waza – with yokoburi at the end – until I got that tiniest of nods that means “it’s not great yet but it is a notch better. And I don’t want to spend all morning on this one damn technique…”

Then I repeated korantou a couple times with the “correct” / larger chiburi, and all seemed well, ready to move on to the next waza.

It may not seem like a big deal to most people, but I really appreciated his response. Too often in Japan, people are fixated way too heavily on the sequence of motions rather than the overall feeling or deeper issues. I know I mucked up the waza – but in this case, it really didn’t matter, because that muck-up revealed a big problem, and one that needed to be fixed on the spot. Just repeating the waza with the correct ending would really teach me very little, apart from reminding me of a sequence of motions – yet that would be what many teachers would focus on, just that single obvious mistake. But a flaw in yoko-buri…that would affect all of the chuuden techniques, all of the okuden techniques (seated and standing), even the kumidachi techniques, which are forms done with partners while using wooden bokuto swords.

I could babble on for hours about problems with the current iaido world here in Japan. But here was an instance of something very good and useful happening, the kind of thing I would like to see much more of. And it had nothing to do with rank examinations and promotions and the like. And everything to do with openness and flexibility which are all too hard to find in the modern budo world in Japan.

holiday in Japan

No, this is not a spin on an old DK’s song some of you may be familiar with, just a quick year-end wrap-up.

Christmas is celebrated as a marketing activity here in Japan – buy some decorations, buy some gifts. And buy some chicken. I used to think it quite unusual that people here have made a tradition of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner, even more so that long lines will form in front of every KFC joint on 12/25. Then someone reminded me that there are no turkeys in Japan. And I don’t suppose tofu turkey will catch on any time soon.

Like most people over here, I had to work on Christmas. And, unlike most, I got an urgent message on Christmas morning, asking me to help a client finish a year-end project that night. nnnnnnn. So that was Christmas, as the song (almost) goes.

Dec. 24 was much better for me – ba gua in the morning, xing yi and tai ji in the afternoon, tai ji sword at night. My teacher didn’t say a word to me for an hour during the night practice, then made one body adjustment to me mid-form, and that was the perfect wrap-up to a year of practice. That one adjustment touches on all my forms and was both valuable and embarrassing to receive. I have many extra hours of solo practice at the end of each year, so this has been a key point in my daily review, something to carry into next year.

Dec 31 and Jan 1 are much bigger holidays here, and most people have a stretch of several days with little or no work. It functions, in fact, a bit more like Christmas as known back home – no work, families get together and share meals and lie about.

Visiting shrines is also important. They have worked out a system where Shrine A is quite busy on 12/31 night and throngs wait an hour and more in line to approach. Meanwhile, Shrine B is almost empty. Then, on Jan. 1, Shrine B is packed and Shrine A is, well, much less busy. We chose Shrine B on New Year’s Eve. The other part of our yearly ritual is watching the K-1 fights on New Year’s Eve, many of which were quite disappointing this year. Drawing upon my years of experience outside the ring, I offer snippets of advice to each fighter while sipping my beers.

Martial artists often visit important shrines connected to martial traditions at this time of year, and many dojo have year-end cleanings and first-of-the-year practices. All of which got me thinking of how different that is from Chinese martial arts and their relative lack of emphasis on external appearance/ uniform (except on demo day) and cleanliness inside the training area (zokin gake, anyone?). And certainly no temple or shrine visits, at least for the majority. Should look much more deeply into this topic later…

I have done my share of year-end and year-beginning practices but recently I prefer to stay home with family. And, when they go out, I conduct my own first-of-the-year practice, working on iaido techniques. The cats got used to my living room workouts long ago, (iai is the one art I can’t practice outside our house) though they still run off each time I started moving all the furniture out of the way.

The seated techniques of shoden, chuuden, and okuden are better suited to the confines of a living room than are the standing techniques of okuden, but adjustments can be made. Besides, Jan. 1 is the best day to go back to the basics, to look again at everything you thought you had learned long before, to scrutinize each tiny detail and find new places to work on. And to hear – and feel – again the corrections of a few days before, in the year’s final iaido class.

One more good point to all this in Japan – mail is delivered on both Christmas day and New Years Eve, and I found a long-awaited copy of the newest Kendo World magazine in my box on the night of 12/31. Happy New Year.

iaido, manners, rank testing, and more

Heard something I liked the other morning at iaido. (Iaido, for the uninitiated, is the Japanese art of drawing a katana or Japanese sword, performing a series of cuts as if against an actual opponent, removing blood from the blade, and replacing it in the scabbard. It is not a flashy art and has little to do with the crap seen in "samurai movies" or throwing aluminum fake blades up in the air and catching them, as seen in some American "martial arts" tournaments. More on what it actually is, elsewhere and elsewhen).
Back to the main story: somebody Sensei was talking about testing in iaido. At least in the Tokyo area, you go out in groups of five. Each person does the opening reiho (etiquette/bowing related to the sword), does 5 waza or techniques, does finishing reiho, and is done. Basically,everyone is focused on those five techniques. They are announced that morning and everyone does the same techniques for the test.
But this person's point was that there are really 7 waza in the exam, that the opening and closing reiho should be weighted equally with the 5 sword techniques. Apparently something like 50% of the people testing for 2-dan recently failed - and most of them because of improper reiho.
This is really unheard of, at least in Japan, as the first three ranks (shodan, nidan or 2dan, sandan or 3dan) were pretty much guaranteed in kendo, iaido, and jodo (they are all part of one federation). Even the initial test begins at ikkyu or first kyuu level, and it was of course pretty much guaranteed. The idea seemed to be to encourage people, to give positive reinforcement.
Then bang! Things suddenly get very demanding at 4dan level. I managed iaido 4-dan in one shot (the much-hallowed "ippatsu") but my kendo has been stuck for years at 3dan, and I have failed kendo 4dan about a dozen times, having lost count somewhere along the way.
This has always been puzzling to me, having started in the US. I practiced kendo for 5 years and reached the respectable rank of sankyuu or 3rd kyuu (the lower, kyuu ranks start from 10kyuu and count up to 1kyuu). For adults, 3kyuu does not even exist in Japan - everyone starts from 1kyuu and as long as you can hold a shinai (bamboo sword) correctly and swing it somewhat correctly, you have passed. I became a kendo 1kyuu overnight and passed the first, second and third dan levels bang bang bang. And am now stuck.
After about three years of iaido in the US, I had no rank but came to Japan and received first, second, third dans, bang bang bang. I practiced longer than the minimum time required (3 years after 3dan the minimum) and took 4dan on my first try. I started jodo (a staff about 4 feet long) in Japan, worked up to 3dan but left my dojo, end of jo career.
Along the way, I have had many reservations about the ease of attaining 3dan in Japan, after coming up through the ranks the hard way in the US. So when I heard about the recent toughening of standards at iaido exams in Tokyo, I thought it a good idea and one long overdue. Hell, I would re-institute the kyuu system and make people practice about five or seven years before attaning first dan/ shodan / "black belt" status (colored belts are not actually worn in kendo, iaido, or jodo, except for the purpose of holding one's sword in place).
The notion that so many people could fail for reiho - which is something I see as so basic and essential - was shocking to me. But take a look at the prior post re: decline of manners and general courtesy in Japan.
This is all doubly strange to me because I have been wrestling for years with the sense that far too much concern is paid to inane matters in Japanese budo, and that people fuss too much over external matters of little consequence. I think much of the recent over-focus on appearance is a mere by-product of living in a country with too much money to spend. Go tell Miyamoto Musashi he has to spend four thousand dollars on a set of kendo bogu (armor) before he is eligible to test for fourth dan...
I would rather go back to helping teach kendo in Wenzhou, China, ten years ago. We used the leftover and cast aside bogu and uniforms from Japan. Yes, we tied it properly and took good care of it - but external appearance was not what the key. It was the internal desire to find and express good kendo. Same at my university club before that - we students had miserable bogu, held together by duct tape, our skulls and wrists crushed with every blow because the padding had long since worn thin...I hesitate to say it, but I may have learned more about reiho outside Japan than in Japan. Our equipment looked horrendous - but I was thankful to use it each time and I believe we were evaluated upon our efforts to learn and show good kendo, not upon the length of the hakama trouser/skirt, or the number of stitches used in sewing one's equipment, or other such.
Don't get me wrong - I am all for caring for one's equipment, respecting the tools and uniform of one's trade - but I do think too much attention is sometimes paid to inconsequential things (i.e. external appearance) here in Japan. At the same time, I think more attention should be paid to things like reiho, which expresses inner qualities. It cannot be measured and is thus hard to judge, but I think it is far more relevant to budo/ the martial way. So I am all for a toughening of standards in this regard as has been seen recently in iaido.
I have written in Kendo World magazine about my experiences in testing for a referee qualification in naginata here in Japan, and that article touches on some of the above topics. I don't know how to upload a Word file onto this blog, so anyone who wants to read the article, please email me. Of course everyone should be familiar with the Kendo World website at www.kendo-world.com