Steal the Technique

Any modern sports science expert would cringe at the instructional methodology of classical traditions. The traditional method is often referred to as waza o nusumu (‘steal the technique’). It could also be termed, ‘learning by osmosis.’ An extreme example of this can be found in my recollection of account of a traditional Ainu midwife. She said that she attended births from the time she was a little girl. Her mother had her sit directly behind her throughout the entire birth. All she could see was her mother’s back. One day, when she was a teenager, without warning, her mother said, “You birth this one.” To repeat, she had never seen the birthing process itself, merely observed the movements of her mother’s back, shoulder and arms many hundreds of times. She stated that she simply reenacted those movements, which she had been doing in sympathy for most of her life as she observed her mother – the birth went smoothly and it was the beginning of the rest of her life.

Koryu bujutsu is primarily taught through kata. These are not, generally speaking, the one-person solo choreography that is so common in Chinese martial arts (they do exist in some Japanese arts, by the way; they are just not so common). Instead, these are almost exclusively two-person pattern drills, in which chains of lethal techniques are linked together, done in such a way that the multiple finishing blows are redirected (through management of space, timing or target) so that one’s reflexes are trained as if in a melee: fighting multiple opponents in a single engagement. Thus, although the drill is only among two persons, each exchange is, theoretically against a successive opponent.

The training partners are broken down into senior and junior practitioners, referred to by a number of different names, depending on the martial tradition. To use one set of terms: shitachi (‘doing sword’) and uchitachi (‘attacking sword’), the shitachi is usually the junior of the two practitioners, and (at least viewed) as the lesser in skill. The shitachi role in these two-person pattern drills is to learn how to kill using the techniques/weapons of the school. The uchitachi, usually the senior, has the responsibility of utilizing his/her knowledge of how to kill, to challenge the shitachi to the peak of his or her capabilities. The uchitachi is not a practice dummy – rather, s/he is also training killing tactics, but is expected to hold himself/herself apart at the same time, to gauge what the shitachi needs to learn. (And instruction, which could include a counter-technique, a blow to the body, wrist or head could be a remarkably harsh lesson). At advanced levels, kata can be ‘broken,’ or overlaid with other kata so that one approaches ‘live training’ from a variety of angles. It is not true that the essence of classical Japanese martial arts was always a rote reenactment of pattern drills, with no element of chance or danger within the practice, even though that is what the vast majority of classical traditions have defaulted to in this present age.

Nitta Suzuyo, the 18th generation headmistress of Toda-ha Buko-ryu, practiced for a number of years, not only with her teacher, Kobayashi Seio, but also with several seniors. She only practiced the shitachi side of the school’s kata, learning the complete curriculum. After Kobayashi sensei was felled by a stroke, Nitta sensei became the next headmistress and was now responsible for teaching, her seniors being regarded by Kobayashi sensei as not being suitable to the role. Nitta sensei now had to take on the uchitachi role with all her students, even though she had never practiced it. However, she was so attuned to Kobayashi sensei that by her own account, she knew exactly what to do at every moment of the kata as she had been mirroring her teacher, and on an unconscious level, not only ‘mapping’ what Kobayashi sensei was doing, but learning an exquisite sensitivity of response to everything she did. It was as if her consciousness was in the kata itself – rather than just within her own body, it permeated the ‘shared body’ of the two of them while practicing.

It is very likely that this type of learning is dependent on mirror neurons, nerve cells in the brain that fire when acting oneself as well as when observing another person’s actions (the reader will note from the linked article that this is a very complex scientific issue, and we are more at the level of discussing a number of plausible theories, rather than any definitive data).  It is believed that this is how babies learn the incredibly complex information of how to function within their bodies like humans in such a short time, their nervous system firing in sympathy with that of their parents and siblings as they move and act. Mirror neurons do not atrophy as we age, but for most of us, we tend to learn through other means: conscious copying, intellectualization, analysis, etc., so that we are not as easily imprinted as a baby. There is a particular ‘unbarriered’ intimacy between parent/sibling and baby, whereas the autonomy we acquire to achieve maturity and individuation gets in the way of a pure response. One is ‘infected’ by one’s caregivers – I’ve seen my son do a gesture that I got from my father and he from his mother. All without any verbal instruction; it’s a particular touch of a finger on and around the nose when being contemplative – the only reason I am aware of this is my father saw me do it and told me his mother did it too. She died before I was born.

The paradox is that we usually conflate intimacy (unbarriered communication) with love. Yet, there can be a profound intimacy among people who hate each other, or are otherwise in an adversarial relationship. Intimacy can be created through a shared cause, through loyalty to something (including a tradition one studies) and there is a particular intimacy that can occur in power differentiated relationships, if the ‘beta’ in the relationship is not over-invested in protecting himself/herself from the alpha. The Japanese term for the latter is nyunanshin, a kind of pliable willingness to be influenced.

When we examine how one learns in a classical art, we usually imagine this process – where the instructor gives little to no verbal explanation and just requires the repeated enactment of a kata (pattern) – to be a slow and gradual. Thus, the metaphor I use of learning by osmosis is a good one. Bit-by-bit, the knowledge seeps into you, bypassing intellectualization and self-observation. One learns like a baby learns to maneuver food into her mouth with chopsticks or a spoon – only slower. And this is borne out in the interminable length of time it takes people to learn a classical art (and honestly, most do not learn it fully – there is far more mediocrity than mastery).

However, is this necessarily so? Could things happen a lot faster than this? We have a hint in the lore around the phrase, ‘steal the technique.’ Many traditional arts have a cult of secrecy, that if an outsider were to observe, much less experience one’s technique, they could acquire it in an instant. I have often viewed this as a combination of affectation and paranoia, something that encourages an insular, almost cult-like attachment to one’s tradition.

I had an interesting experience recently suggests to me that there was more to this than I thought, that, once again, there is something ‘hidden in plain sight.’ I recently met with a peer – a training brother who shares one ryuha with me, but trains in another, completely different. We were ‘comparing notes with bokken,’ so to speak – not at the level of shiai, but by what could be termed te-awase (‘crossing hands’). We were studying things from tsuba-zeriai, when one’s two swords are crossed (in our case through powerful mutual attacks), with each of us striving to achieve an advantageous angle, a deflection, an application of power . . . .something – to open up the opponent’s defenses to cut him. I was doing this repeatedly, and my friend was taking this seriously – every time I succeeded, he ‘died.’ This was not an ego problem; it was underlining a survival issue, and he, as a professional, rose to the challenge. On several occasions, just as I was about to cut/strike him once again, my friend lashed out with a reflexive response, a cut that came from an angle I didn’t imagine a cut could come. He wasn’t even trying to ‘beat me,’  – we were not competitive in the slightest. It is simply that he perceived something that was, implicitly a danger to his life, and he responded with techniques  engrained in him from his training in his own ryuha. These are what I refer to as ‘pseudo-instincts,’ trained responses that emerge without thought or preparation. I was able to counter these cuts at the very last fraction of a second to avoid my head being stoved in. Just barely.

His training provided him with responses to the threat I presented. I considered myself as having lost, because my deflection was purely defensive, not defense-and- offense in one. Were he a little faster, or a little more powerful (and formidable man that he is, this is sure – next time he will be more dangerous), I might have been injured or even killed. And because he had a momentary advantage, had we continued, he might have overwhelmed me with subsequent attacks.

Whenever an event like this happens in my training, I spend some sleepless nights. Without choosing to, the experience infests my consciousness. I kept feeling the wooden sword a fraction of an inch from my head or neck (on one occasion, it literally touched my skin just as I interposed my weapon in-between his weapon and my neck), I saw the blur of motion through the air, I felt the sudden change of pressure between us as we move. What I do NOT do is imagine counters. That’s equivalent of watching a boxing match and thinking you see a hole in one of the boxer’s defenses, imagine your jab or straight getting through, when the world-ranked competitor in the actual ring is unable to do so. I simply re-experienced my own near death over and over.

From the sleeplessness recurrence of the experience comes sleep itself, and in odd and inchoate ways, it appeared in my dreams: a wasp flying towards my eye, standing next to a tree that begins to topple on top of me, a piece of paper flying on the windshield as I drive, blocking my view.

And the result? I was home, several weeks later, practicing with another training brother from another discipline, and something had coalesced. We were working out some innovative sword training of our own, and not only had I somehow ‘unconsciously’ worked out responses to the attacks of my previous training partner, I had actually incorporated some of his technique into my own. With one experience, I learned how to fight with a sword at a different combative spacing that was, hitherto, my preferred engagement distance. I haven’t lost what I knew before. This new information has seamlessly woven into my body.

So how is this possible? If you have trained incessantly in a methodology geared for survival, the components of the brain that strive to keep you alive are attuned to anything that might threaten survival. Be they mirror neurons or some other neurological (or psycho-spiritual) phenomenon, they can capture the essence of what threatens one’s survival.

There is, in fact, a naked intimacy in hand-to-hand combat – and in the realistic practice of it. Expertise is not just skill at movement or technique – true expertise is the ability to be as un-barriered as a baby, drinking in the world. The difference is the baby is indiscriminate, his or her attention drawn to what fascinates it; here, we have trained a part of ourselves – mind/body/spirit – to always be radically open to the fascinating possibility of our death. And then, to be able to say, “Not yet. I will steal you for my strength, and live a little longer.”

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