A Critical Engagement with Musing of a Budo Bum by Peter Boylan

 Several years ago, Peter Boylan began publishing some of his essays online. I was immediately struck by his wit and his articulate style, but more importantly, his ability to clearly describe one or another aspect of classical Japanese martial arts. He has published many of these essays in a book, Musings of a Budo Bum. There is much to admire in his work.  In this blog, I would like to engage with Peter, rather than merely praise all that is admirable within his book, and through that, further illuminate some of the things he writes about with such grace.

Peter’s background is in Kōdokan jūdō, Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryū iaidō, Shintō Hatakage-ryū iai-heihō, and Shindō Musō-ryū jō (and a number of the cognate schools—fusoku budō—associated with the latter). An understanding of an author’s background is crucial when considering writers on Japanese martial tradition. Our perspective on martial arts is unavoidably shaped by what we have been taught: not only our teacher’s knowledge, but how the specific martial traditions we study define combative training. For example, my background in Araki-ryū torite-kogusoku and Toda-ha Bukō-ryū naginatajutsu, as well as training in a number of modern martial arts disciplines, may lead me to very different opinions regarding the same phenomena from those Boylan might have. What we each believe to be truth is inevitably colored by the disciplines we studied and the teachers from whom we received our knowledge.

I am going to go through his book and simply react as things strike me. Of course, this should underscore how important it is to read the book yourself, because I am going to skip a lot. I will not discuss every chapter. In fact, I only discuss a few.  I simply find most of them praiseworthy, and have nothing to add.

After reading his book, you may disagree with some of my reactions, and be surprised that I didn’t comment at all on one or another area. That’s as it should be, yes?

On the Japanese Reception of a non-Japanese Practitioner

It was pleasing to read in the introduction how open a welcome Mr. Boylan received in some very traditional dōjō. All too often, I have heard a bitter complaint, sometimes from very senior practitioners, that “the Japanese never teach the depths of their traditions to outsiders.” To be sure, I have met people – Japanese people – who certainly fit that description, but I met so many others who were quite the opposite, people who felt compelled by a debt of honor to sincerely teach whomever was truly willing to learn.

My first internal question when someone claims that Japanese instructors have withheld essential knowledge is “What was wrong with you? Why didn’t they want to teach you?” Rather than an automatic default to racism, I usually see qualities in that person which would make me not want to teach them either.

In other words, as soon as the claim of victimhood is raised, my default is to blame the victim. Why? Because far too many martial arts practitioners, particularly non-Japanese, feel entitled, as if to say, “I paid in either money or time, so you owe me. Give me what I want.” The teacher may have a debt of honor to teach those who are truly committed, but entitlement and/or desire are not proof of commitment. Learning, which is proof of paying attention, is the only proof of commitment, leaving the teacher in a situation where he or she must say, “I have nothing left to teach except this last portion. What justification do I have in I withholding this information now?” Or, as one of my own instructors heard when he demurred at receiving menkyō-kaiden after eight years of study, “But we’ve got nothing more to teach you!”

Of course, in such cases, the teacher will ask if the student in question is a trustworthy individual whose intentions are clean—to aid in the survival of the ryūha, for example, or to use what he or she has learned to protect the tradition or to protect whatever society of which they are a part. If the answer is affirmative, why would a teacher still withhold knowledge? All too often, one sees a kind of fearful greed where the teacher withholds knowledge so that he or she can possess something no one else has—“They’ll leave me if I give them the rest of the information.”  Another reason is a kind of insecurity, as if to say, “Without students, what am I?” The problem with the latter is that such people need students to define their role in life. They will then compromise their martial art by making it more appealing to keep students or prostitute their art by making it a transaction (without money involved, but a transaction nonetheless) to keep students close.

Do You Have to Study in Japan to Understand Budō?

Boylan asks if it is possible to learn budō outside Japan, and notes the obvious–there are few people fully qualified to teach a traditional Japanese martial art. He then goes into some of the nuances beyond combative training that make a budō, specifically the cultural practices associated with training in a ‘way’ (道). He is absolutely correct here, but there is another perspective, that training consciously towards the ‘tao’ can lead to another flaw, an attachment to formalism, something that soon reflects in one’s overall character. This is particularly common in the martial arts that lack practical application. Just as Zen, originally a religious practice of iconoclastic rule breakers, has ossified into stilted ritual, so too traditional koryū can get so obsessed with tradition and formalism that ‘budōka’ become ‘embuya’– their raison d’être becomes the participation in public demonstrations of kata. Almost all Taoist stories are about people who find the Tao through some utilitarian pursuit. Boylan himself cites the famous story of Cook Ding, who never had to sharpen his knives, because he cut and carved with such perfection. Therefore, in wielding weapons, one must learn to become skillful in what weapons are for – to kill.

It seems to me that the practice of unrealistic movements and impractical techniques that have not been pressure tested for hundreds of years may lead one astray from the “tao.” As one whom Boylan cites as able to teach classical traditions outside Japan, my experience has been this: the ‘way’ is narrow and few there will be who even find it, much less traverse it in full. One loses the way in a demand that a classical art be practical in modern circumstances (i.e., “Why don’t we substitute aluminum baseball bats for swords?”), yet one also loses the way when, in a sense, any technique will do, because one’s teacher asserts that four hundred years ago, it worked. The problem is this: budō is neither a pure combative discipline nor a living antique. It exists with the tension of a taut violin string – students must train as if their life depends on the art they practice, while at the same time treasuring ritual and archaic behaviors that have nothing, apparently, to do with that.

A Question of Gender

Perhaps this note is too curmudgeonly, but Boylan, by choice, refers to ‘abstract’ individuals as ‘she’- such as in the chapter “Zanshin” – “The kata assumes an adversary directly in front of you. Once she has been overpowered, etc . . . .” As a man who grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I was a witness/participant to the widespread opening of the Western world to feminism, mostly for better, sometimes, due to ideological rigidity, for worse. Using ‘she’ exclusively in this context illustrates something that I notice in various portions of the work, that Boylan sometimes leans toward an odd ‘ahistoricity’ when discussing arts that are largely archaic. Were he merely to alternate ‘he’ and ‘she’ when discussing generic abstract ideas, that would be a suitable modern take, one I sometimes do myself. But there is something that grates – me at least – in using exclusively feminine examples in a context that 99.9% of the time, historically speaking, would concern males. Like making Thor female in a comic book, or using a white actor to play Shaka Zulu in a movie, or a Kyrgyz to play Eric the Red, it strains the imagination. Boylan’s example postulates a confrontation between two warriors on the ground, fighting at blade’s edge, at almost grappling range. This was almost never a configuration at which men and women in Japanese society would have engaged in combat.

Etiquette: Form and Sincerity in Budō

Boylan does a masterful job in explaining the necessity of etiquette as a means of modulating and calibrating relationships among men and women of arms. In addition to social relationships, he discusses the paradoxical (for some) obligation to bow to inanimate objects – the weapons with which one practices.  One aspect that he does not touch upon in this chapter is weapon-handling itself—I addressed this question in a previous blog, The Real Importance of Reishiki in Koryū, which was, in fact, written in reaction to this chapter.

Sensei, Kyoshi, Hanshin, and Shihan: Budō: Titles and How (Not) to Use Them

It is difficult to do a critical engagement when the writer is so spot-on. Boylan’s chapter here hits just about every point one might raise. Perhaps one thing that the reader may wonder about is if the enumeration of all one’s ranks on a name card could come off as ostentatious or vain. In fact, the meishi (‘name card’) is a tool to assist the recipient in gauging the power/social differential between them. If one individual is, for example, a judge and the other is a kendō hachidan; one is from a family that has roots in the now-extinct (but not really) bushi class, while the other comes from a family with its roots in the merchant class; one is sixty-four years old and the other fifty three; and one is rich and the other is not—an almost instantaneous calibration takes place where each individual decides/knows how deeply to bow, and what level of language to use, and this is also based on context: is the meeting in the judge’s courtroom or the kendō teacher’s dōjō?

One paradox for non-Japanese is that these social interactions become more difficult when one achieves some understanding of these nuances. You may become so versed in the cultural subtleties that your Japanese peers and seniors may relax with you, forgetting in a sense that you are foreign. Inevitably, however, you will make a mistake, and this is particularly jarring to your interlocutors: that you were so seamlessly natural in conversation, so impeccable in your sense of social nuance can only mean that your ‘mistake’ was not a mistake at all – it must be deliberate!

On the other hand, I once got a job teaching English (and I was a terrible teacher) when I closed my interview with a Japanese phrase that expressed a combination of humility, dignity and reserve—slightly archaic, but not unnaturally so. The principal of the school later stated, “I was reluctant to hire Mr. Amdur, but when he said (quoting the phrase) to me, I found myself literally unable to refuse him.”

Different Ranks in Martial Arts

Boylan takes an oddly ahistorical, modern approach to the discussion of rank, eschewing philology (a consideration of the development and cultural context of various words such as sensei), maintaining that it is only relevant to consider what words mean now. This leads to a rather idealistic view of koryū licensure. Boylan correctly states that as one advances in a ryūha, one realizes that one trains for something larger than oneself – the ryūha itself. But he also maintains that licensure does not include a comparison of skill with others. This is the ‘cultural treasure’ idea of koryū– that training in such arts is an activity of self-perfection that becomes greater through service to the ryū and its continued existence, in an ever increasingly perfected form.

Were this so, why were the majority of koryū in the Edo period concerned with shiai both within one’s own school and against other schools. Why do many schools have teachings explicitly focused on defeating the methodology of other traditions?

Boylan’s distinction between the competitive ‘defeat-others’ focus of such modern arts as jūdō to the hermetic pursuit of excellence within koryū is too stark. I know of more than a few, myself among them, who have engaged in tame-shiai (‘comparison shiai’ for mutual study) and taryū-shiai (‘other ryū shiai’ for the purpose of defeating another school).

I maintain that it is not a mark of small mindedness to consider each and every other individual practicing martial arts in the light of how powerful they are, how well they embody the combative principles of their ryūha and how one might defeat them. In fact, it is part of the upmost respect with which I consider Mr. Boylan that were I to observe his koryū practice, I would be looking at his strengths and deficiencies, and considering how I might take him off the map.

Returning to philology, it IS important what words meant as well as what they mean now. Not too long ago, menkyō-kaiden was a mark of complete tuition of a fighting curriculum, and it could be achieved within six or eight years—and I am aware of many cases that it was even less. For example, Matsuoka Katsunosuke Hisachika, the founder of Shindō Yōshin-ryū, received teaching licenses at Hozoin-ryū sōjutsu at the age of sixteen, Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu at the age of seventeen, and Tenjin Shinyō-ryū jūjutsu at the age of nineteen, the latter after two and one-half years of study.

Menkyō-kaiden, however, does not mean some kind of superhuman warrior – it is a license, which, like a driver’s license, enables one to take to the road, and improve oneself beyond the bounds of the dōjō. Just as one is licensed in order to drive, here one was licensed when one was ready to fight (not only teach!) in the name of the ryū and in the manner of the ryū. Now we have dōjō masters who may maintain students under his or her aegis for thirty, forty or fifty years. Boylan runs the risk that his description of how many, if not most koryū, are run today is taken is a statement of how it always was. Ironically, the menkyo-kaiden of several years study in the 19^thcentury may have been more formidable than the menkyō-kaiden of thirty/forty/fifty year’s tuition today.

Dō  Verses Jutsu

Peter follows several writers in contradicting Donn Draeger’s well-known formulation of a dichotomy of dō (‘a way’) vs. jutsu (‘a methodology’ or ‘technique’). The nuance is that dō is a training of the psycho-physical being, the human as one who can, conceivably, unite with the powers of the cosmos as a whole, opposed to a jutsu, where one focused on mere technique, or the mundane goals of winning competition, surviving combat, or serving an external entity, be it one’s daimyō or the ryūha itself. Implicit in this is that budō is a ‘higher’ goal than bujutsu.

Donn was not alone in this ‘either-or’ formulation. Many Japanese have also written in the same manner. The word ‘written’ is important here; this formulation is more of a scholarly delineation than it is a functional distinction made by classical koryū teachers. And yet, this too, is an ‘either-or’ assertion. A number of koryū teachers do subscribe to this ideology, as does anyone who asserts that a martial arts practice is for something else (beyond, above, what-have-you mere killing or survival).

But it is still more complex. For example, one of my teachers, a ferocious man of whom most koryū instructors were somewhat intimidated (I witnessed this myself many times) would dismiss certain martial arts by saying, “That’s not budō.” And by this, he meant not a realistic, practical fighting art.

On the other hand, a senior member of Kashima Shin-ryū told me about Kunii Zen’ya’s well-known taryū shiai. Kunii was infamous for his fights, either unarmed or armed, with individuals from other ryūha. Yet despite this infamy, few actually know the names of those whom he fought. Records of his fights are kept within the ryū itself, as a kind of research archive. When asked why he didn’t publicly state whom he had defeated, Kunii replied, as best as I can recall, “I fight for the ryū itself, to acquire vital information to make us all stronger. If I began bragging about whom I beat, I would create enemies. But beyond that, publicly naming people would be a budō, not bujutsu. I would be telling people either for my ego—“this is who I beat, look at me,” or for my supposed ‘non-ego’—“my matches were to enlighten myself.”  In the latter case, Kunii sensei viewed the idea of self-perfection as a higher goal of training as something to be condemned, not praised. It is higher to serve one’s ryū than it is to for it to serve as the vehicle of one’s own enlightenment.

Personally I love the dilemma this presents—any categorical statement one makes about budō or bujutsu is likely to be wrong or open to the opposite interpretation . . . .including this one.

The Only Thing I Teach is How to Walk and How to Breathe

Boylan discusses ‘diaphragmic’ breathing and contrasts it to ‘shoulder’ or ‘chest’ breathing. He is absolutely correct that breathing is an essential quality of classical martial arts. It is, of course, an essential quality of being alive. The truth is, however, we ALWAYS execute diaphragmic breathing unless something has gone terribly wrong. When we inhale, the diaphragm always pulls downwards, creating a vacuum that draws air into the lungs. When we exhale, the opposite. The movement of the diaphragm may be constricted or inhibited, but it is always the main ‘driver’ of breathing.

I have had severe asthma. The diaphragm still draws downwards, but due to swelling within the lungs, and eventual fluid build-up, the air cannot be drawn deeply inwards. One feels like one is dying (and sometimes, people do). To compensate, one breathes with the chest, the back, the shoulders—‘artificially’ trying to create a little more vacuum in the upper reaches of the lungs to get in a little more air. After an asthma attack, my back is as cramped as if I’d swum butterfly for 1000 meters.

So, anatomically, he is not entirely correct. Yet he is. Most people compress or constrict the diaphragm so it does not move properly, and instinctively, I believe, they do a fair amount of chest and shoulder breathing to compensate for the lack of oxygen.

It is unclear to me, but I am going to guess that what Boylan means (he doesn’t go into much detail) by diaphragmic breathing is what the Chinese call ‘natural breathing.’ The abdomen naturally rounds on the inhale, and drops inwards on the exhale.  This is an excellent breathing method and good for health as well. But within martial arts, there are a number of other breathing methods—for example, consider one type of  ‘reverse breathing,’ where one draws the abdomen inwards in the inhale (this does NOT suppress the movement of the diaphragm, but it creates pressure that paradoxically enables one to teach the body to breathe deeper). On the exhale, one tries, simultaneously, to push the air/attention downwards as well as out through the nose or mouth (depending on the type of breathing done). Done properly, you will feel pressure in the feet (of course, this is not air). Furthermore, if you keep the pelvic floor engaged, you will feel pressure there as well. You are training the body to have a very strong base. You can push into the floor (and the pelvic floor) to direct force. By the way, this is not even close to sufficient detail to properly describe this breathing method, but I use it as an example to illustrate that there are enormously sophisticated nuances to breathing correctly. Furthermore, difference ryūha use different methods.

I do not wish that Boylan to have comprehensively described to give full instruction in breathing. After all, this book is intended to be an overview, describing baseline essential characteristics of budō. But I do wish that he’d gone into a little more detail as to the baseline skill of breathing for budō practice, and that he was, also, clearer in the distinction on how you use the musculature of your abdomen vs. the upper body, and what the diaphragm actually does.

What the author does exceptionally well is his brief description of walking: ayumiashi and suriashi.Here he is my ideal of a writer—not one extraneous word, but every one well chosen. He links walking very well with breathing in an even briefer passage, clearly explaining how without these two baseline skills fully integrated, one cannot even begin to do something that is correct in budō training.

Parenthetically, I ‘get’ the provocative title of this chapter – it’s the kind of statement that stops a pretentious student in his or her tracks, defining the teacher is something different and beyond the potential student’s expectations. At the same time—–No you don’t, Peter.  You also teach people how to smash each other in the head with sticks and stab them in the throat with swords, and bury them six inches under the tatami in a well-executed tai-otoshi. . . . . . . . .Just for the record.

Is Kata Too Mechanical and Rigid?

Boylan does an excellent job debunking the baseline criticism that kata are rigid choreographed patterns. He also explains that even within a kata, one or the other participant (in his training history, only the senior—in mine, either one) can ‘tamper’ with the kata by changing the rhythm, timing, or power. I believe, however, he gives the ryūha too much credit—that they are, in fact, each a product of hundreds of years of research and development, and that they are, therefore, a distilled essence of those centuries of training – embodied perfection, in other words. Unfortunately, that is not true.

Unlike a sport like jūdō or boxing, koryū are often led by one person—and that individual may be a flawed character. His ego may lead him to make changes that make him look good (he believes); his ignorance may lead him to believe that he is maintaining the tradition as taught, but he neglects the several hours a day minimum of basic training to create a body able to accomplish the techniques; his arrogance may lead him to live off the tales of his ancestors, and imagine he has the same skill and knowledge, as if handed down by osmosis.  And this may have happened several times over a period of hundreds of years. How will successors know what they cannot know—that which has been lost – particularly if no avenue is available to pressure-test what they have been taught?

Also, not too long ago, many ryū actually did test themselves—and some that may surprise the reader. I was reading a list of famous gekiken contestants (‘rough sword,’ a kendo plus a little MMA which was the norm in that period) in the early Meiji period, and among them was a master instructor of Tenshin Shoden Katori Shintō-ryū. Modern leaders of the ryū have repeatedly claimed that they have never participated in such contests—and never had a need to do so either. Yet here, some generations ago, was at least one of perhaps many who did. It would be intriguing to find out what changes may have be incorporated within the curriculum, for better or worse, after that particular shihan brought back his victories and defeats.

To give a concrete example, there is a technique in Araki-ryū (bōjutsu against sword) that I’d been working on for a number of decades. It involves thrusting the bō at the enemy’s neck, and as he twists his head aside, trapping the bō between back of neck and arm, twining said arm, twisting and throwing them on their face. It’s a very nasty fall and nasty technique throughout. I was working out with a training brother from another ryū, and very happy that I had finally perfected the technique, thrust at his neck. However, he was cutting with the sword with straight arms, and his forearms smashed down on the bō, deflecting it downwards. He got a nasty poke in the ribs, but I got ‘cut’ in the neck with the edge of his bokken. We tried it for fifteen minutes—I asked him to cut with the style of arms that we do in Araki-ryū and the technique worked. But with his ryū? No. I had, in fact, a suicidal technique, a kata that teaches you how to be killed rather than survive. Because how can I ask an attacker, particularly at first strike, to attack in a particular manner? The best techniques rely little on what the attacker does. They are all-purpose, adaptable, and often reversible (this is a definition of the classical term, tsubame-gaeshi ‘swallow reversal’).

How could such an over-specialized kata have been preserved within my tradition?

1. Somewhere on a battlefield, a man with a polearm thrust at the neck of an enemy, and the particular way he held his arms and the fact he pulled his head away and aside created the configuration I am discussing. The man with the polearm survived.
2. He passed it on to associates and students—remember the line voiced over and over—koryū are battle tested. What such a statement  doesn’t factor in (even beyond the flaws of memory under conditions of stress) is that some people survive through dumb luck.
3. Now, generation after generation, the kata is passed on and it ‘works.’ Because uke is attacking like the poor fool on the battlefield who happened to move in a certain way.
4. But as soon as a subsequent generation tried it against another type of swordsman, the limits of the technique appear. Which means—if the founder had happened to run into someone from my friend’s ryū, he either would have figured out something entirely different in the moment (which would have resulted in a different kata being handed down) or he would have been killed—and there would be no Araki-ryū.
5. Different people have different responses to such situations. Mine? I dropped the kata entirely from the curriculum. Erased. I will not practice or teach anything that I know is flawed. I will not engrain what Don Gulla refers to as ‘training scars.’

If, however, I saw my ryū as an inviolate historical artifact, I would merely assume—“Those back then knew more than I. I simply need to practice more.” Perhaps some of my readers believe this still, and see my action as a kind of vandalism and immature understanding. It is an interesting question, is it not? Each ryū figures it out differently. Personally, if I were a beginner, I’d like to study with someone like me now, just as I did then (I am a product of my teachers). But given that I have only acquired a very few students in almost thirty years of teaching, my perspective is certainly the minority view.

In that light, respectfully, here is my minority view towards portions of an excellent book, one leavened with humor and enough personal stories to make a work of real depth that reads very lightly. My hope is that after you read this blog you actually read Peter’s book. Find out yourself where I might have gone astray AND read the 80% that I didn’t even discuss that I unreservedly admire.

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