A Review of UCHIDESHI: Walking with the Master: A Book by Jacques Payet

Japanese martial arts, as codified systems known as ryuha was developed in the Edo Period (1603 – 1868 CE). Also known as the Tokugawa era, this was perhaps the most successful totalitarian state ever developed. Through an elaborate system of checks-and-balances, the Tokugawa family, in the role of shogun, ruled a vast archipelago, comprised of separate feudal domains. Unlike Europe, they were able to maintain this essentially feudal federalism even with the rise of an economy based on the capitalism of the merchant class.

Society was ordered among four major classes (with any number of subclasses, “outclasses” and outcastes as well). The four classes were ordered in terms of prestige as: warrior, peasant, craftsman, merchant. However, in terms of power and actual social roles, things were rather different.

• The bushi (warrior) bore two swords, but aside from ‘police actions’ in routing thousands of peasant revolts, few otherwise used their weapons. These warriors certainly participated in no wars. They functioned as a combination of armed bureaucrats and tax collectors.
• When we think of peasants, we imagine impoverished individuals sunk knee deep in the muck of rice paddies, and this was true for many. Some peasants, however, were wealthy landowners, complete with tenant farmers on their own land.
• In modern times, we think of craftsmen as remarkable people, able to combine art and function in hand-crafted objects – as far as social status, however, they were poorly regarded by those for whom they provided their exquisite objects.
• And the merchants, regarded with contempt, were by the mid-Edo, the most powerful class in Japan in all but military matters. They drove the development of culture, and controlled the economy of the entire nation, as well as individual feudal domains.

Martial arts were essentially an activity which upheld this social structure. Bushi trained in martial arts, in part to legitimize their definition of being a warrior class. The schools inculcated certain values and a way of using the mind; they also prepared warriors for duels, a rare but distinct possibility. By the mid-Edo, well-to-do peasants and merchants enrolled in martial arts dojos in increasing numbers—in fact, in many locale, they outnumbered bushi in most dojos, except those called otome-ryu that the feudal domain had defined as exclusive to the domain’s bushi.

Among the values that ryuha imparted to their enrollees was that loyalty was an absolute value—ultimately, this meant loyalty to one’s feudal lord, but this was enacted, in microcosm, within the dojo. Lest their be any mistake, if there was ever a conflict of loyalty between the demands of one’s feudal lord and one’s martial arts teacher, the former was absolutely, unquestionably more important.

Few students of martial ryuha were full-time. Merchants had to turn over money and goods, peasants had to farm and bushi had a number of responsibilities that took up most of their time. Those passionate about martial arts were surely few, and did the bulk of training on their own time. That said, some teachers had true disciples, who, for a period of time, perhaps at the dispensation of their feudal lord, devoted themselves to a martial arts instructor. These disciples are described as pervasively loyal to their instructor. In personal correspondence, John Stevens wrote: “During a snowstorm, Sakakibara Kenkichi and his otomo Yamada Jirokichi were walking back home after teaching at the military academy, when the thong of Sakakibara’s geta snapped. Yamada was able to check his master’s fall while simultaneously slipping off his own geta and sliding it under Sakakibara’s foot for him to step into. It is said Sakakibara designed Yamada the 15th Headmaster of the Jikishinkage-Ryu largely because of this incident; such an act demonstrated that Yamada was the ultimate uchideshi.”

How often did such master-student relationships occur? Did this event even occur? One can understand, however, how such tales served as indoctrination towards the development of such pervasively loyal and attentive individuals. Such a person, with his (or her) attention 100% upon the needs of his feudal lord or other superiors in rank was essential for Edo society. One achieved glory through service, not through individual attainment.

The advent of the Meiji period (1868-1912) was not only an explosion of new cultural forms, but the near collapse, if not destruction of much of the old. Loyalty to one’s feudal lord was replaced with loyalty to the Emperor, who was re-viewed as an embodiment of divinity through ‘state Shinto.’ This was certainly a paradox, as concurrently, there was a fascination with European cultural forms, and an abandonment of much that was Japanese: among the latter was the transmutation of traditional martial arts into modern forms, centered around a combination of competition and training of a militant spirit in the service of Japan. Many of the older ryuha were abandoned.

It was at this time that Takeda Sokaku appeared, with his reworking of the traditional martial arts that he had learned into something new that he eventually called Daito-ryu. Takeda is often (improperly) viewed as a traditionalist, but he was a revolutionary. He pioneered teaching in brief seminars, traveling from one venue to another, and he taught by applying techniques upon his students, rather than the traditional manner where the teacher (uke or uchidachi) taught by having the students apply techniques on them. Takeda demanded that his close students enact the kind of pervasive attention to him that we read above in the story of Sakakibara and Yamada (incidentally, Takeda was allegedly a student of Sakakibara for some period of time). Part of his teaching methodology was that his students had to be exquisitely sensitive to what he wanted, twenty-four hours a day, striving to achieve an almost psychic ability to intuit his needs. One can imagine how this sensitivity could possibly be transferred to other aspects of one’s life, most importantly, combat. If attending to one’s teacher requires the same level of attention and sensitivity that is necessary in a mission behind enemy lines, this would be a very powerful training tool.

Takeda’s student, Ueshiba Morihei maintained the same teaching style with his own close students. Among the stories most commonly told are:

• Carrying his luggage through a crowded train station, with Ueshiba sliding through the crowd to board the train which, if the baggage-laden disciple could not catch up, would leave without him.
• Preparing his bath at the perfect temperature, which the disciple had to know without actually touching the water, because his skin oil would contaminate the pristine bath. [NOTE: Terry Dobson told of preparing Ueshiba’s bath along with overly-serious Kanai Mitsunari and just when they thought everything was right, Ueshiba appeared and genially demanded that Terry get in the bath before him, which Terry happily did, Kanai looking daggers at him.]
• At public demonstrations, Ueshiba would be wandering the stage, talking about gods efflorescing into the cosmos, and how he, through aiki, ordered that cosmos into proper balance, and the correct disciple would have to instantaneously know to <ATTACK!> right then, with just the attack that Ueshiba wanted to illustrate his point.

Among the students who experienced this type of education most intensively was Shioda Gozo. Shioda was the privileged son of a physician, one who was an elite member of society, and very involved in prewar right-wing causes. Shioda was a physically tiny man, but apparently very strong: the great judoka, Kimura Masahiko, who attended Takushoku University with him, said that Shioda would always beat him in arm wrestling. Shioda was one of Ueshiba’s sotodeshi for one year; he did not reside in the dojo full-time, though he frequently slept there. By the second year of his training, he became a full-time uchideshi. As a young man, Shioda sounds like a ‘class clown:’ he trained seriously—very seriously—and he idolized Ueshiba Morihei, but at the same time, he was irreverent, reportedly making fun of Omoto-kyo chants, and getting fellow disciple Shirata Rinjiro to sneak out of the dojo after hours, to go to the red-light districts.

Shioda had an odd ‘Zelig-like’ existence during the 1930’s and 1940’s. He was ‘everywhere and nowhere.’ He was arrested near the location of the 2-2-6 incident, the attempted coup d’etat against the Japanese government (and it was never clear what he was doing there. It was suspected that he was lending some kind of support for the revolutionaries). He did not serve in the military in the second world war; rather, he was seconded to various military men in China and Southeast Asia, doing quite well for himself (in Indonesia, he had his own personal zoo). But what he was doing for these men was obscure, nor was it clear how he, unlike almost all of his fellow deshi, managed to avoid military service without being considered a shirker or a coward. What it means  is that he was a significant ‘player’ of some sort, working behind the scenes, in the service of some very powerful entities.

After the end of the Second World War, he led a group of individuals in strike-breaking activities at the behest of various business owners, and in the 1950’s, opened his aikido dojo, the Yoshinkan. At that time, his teacher, Ueshiba Morihei was mostly residing in the rural community of Iwama and the Tokyo dojo, led by his son, Ueshiba Kisshomaru, had only a few members. Shioda never regarded himself, at least publicly, as separating from Ueshiba’s aikido; he, one of the highest ranked aikidoka in the world, opened a dojo to teach when there was little else available.

Up to this point, Shioda had led a charmed life, making up his own rules, even under his own teacher’s leash. Part of Shioda’s charm was his ability to act impeccably with his teacher, yet know when it was OK to make fun and have fun—in just the right proportion. However, now that he had his own school, he did not structure it along the lines of his own rather individualistic personality. He codified a strict curriculum based on certain basic movements/exercises that had to be done the same way, no matter what body size one had. These exercises engrain a Yoshinkan style on all its students. Everyone moves much the same. This is not criticism on my part—rather, the Yoshinkan imposes a set of rigorous exercises that develop a strong lower body, one that enables the practitioner to move rapidly and precisely through the turns and pivots required for aikido. Techniques, too, were taught in the same manner. [NOTE: In one chapter, Payet briefly describes Shioda’s “Black Belt” class, where he strove to teach his version of aiki;  Payet describes what Shioda did as being mysterious, nearly impossible to understand. At the same time, Shioda was nearly unique among teachers of aiki, in his honest effort to explicitly teach his understanding of this higher level.]

Another area that Shioda codified was the ‘pervasive service’ model I have previously described as part of the requirements of Takeda Sokaku and Ueshiba Morihei. For Takeda and Ueshiba, the rules of attendance were never formally laid out; this was a training of intuition. Although there was never a ‘rulebook’ in the Yoshinkan, uchideshi were quickly informed of all the rules necessary to serve the dojo and specifically, serve Shioda himself. Sometimes, like preparing Shioda’s bath, for example, a senior would model the behavior several times and then the junior would do the work under the senior’s eye—then the junior was on his own.

And this was the dojo that a callow young man, Jacques Payet, entered in 1980. Payet first commuted to the dojo, was invited to live there (on probation), and then, after participating in the infamous police training course, he was invited to become an uchideshi.  (The police training courses is described with a goofy outsider’s eye in Robert Twigger’s  Angry White Pajamas).

Payet’s book, UCHIDESHI: Walking with the Master, describes the eccentric world that Shioda created, where, for example, a telephone in the dojo was never allowed to ring more than once (and one disciple, noticing that a tiny light would illuminate on the receiver before the first ring, would leap for the phone before it sounded), or an uchideshi, waiting outside the door of Shioda’s bath, would know exactly when to enter to wash the master’s back. This is not a book that spends much time describing how-to advance in physical skill: there is relatively little description on technical development, or the aikido techniques themselves, except in passing. Rather, it is the story of a progression within an individual through the training of intuition in order function perfectly within an arbitrary system.

What I mean by ‘arbitrary’ can be illustrated by comparing the demands for survival upon a polar Inuit of a generation ago, or a !Kung, living in the Kalahari Desert: these are stark and clear. If one deviated from what was best suited—only suited—for that environment, one would die. For the Inuit, the ability to recognize, at a glance, the difference between a pile of snow and a polar bear, humped upon the ice with one white paw covering her dark nose, had to be instantaneous. Similarly for the !Kung, recognizing a slight discoloration in sand that indicated that there might be water beneath the surface had to occur as one was running after wounded prey. It might be the last water in many kilometers. The requirements for the Yoshinkan student, however, were not based on biological survival within an environment from which one could not separate oneself. But despite its arbitrary nature, they tried to replicate the same pressure on the individual so a similar intuitive ability would be developed. There was no risk to life or limb—it merely felt that way, once indoctrinated. The Yoshinkan uchideshi had to be aware of the timbre and energy that one yelled “OSU!” to a superior, or the precise spacing that one’s senior’s shoes needed to be placed at the entryway when he was leaving. This, therefore, was a lifestyle in which one accepted an arbitrary social structure, established to achieve intuition by the absolute adherence to a range of activities centered around subservience to the wishes of Shioda Gozo.

Payet tells his story with humility. He does not defend himself, as some might, with a polemic about how this method of training is requisite to become a ‘true’ martial artist. Rather, in the tradition of a natural phenomenologist, he simply tells what the experience was like for him, an unprepared and naïve young man. What may be hard for the reader to grasp in my description above, is that Payet does not describe himself as obsequious—rather, he has the wide-eyed openness of a baby. The baby drinks in this strange world within which he or she has been thrown by birth; Payet did the same in the strange world within which he entered by choice.

Perhaps the most important point in this book is that if one has the engrained habit of intuitive attention, then one has the possibility of absorbing information that one’s teacher himself/herself can’t explain. Often, expert athletes simply have found that beautiful line towards efficient powerful action through simply sensing what feels right in the body. Asked to explain it, they are like the centipede asked by the fox, “With which leg do you start moving?” At which point, the centipede is frozen. But just as a baby learns to feed herself or walk with simple wide-eyed attention, Payet became a remarkably skilled martial artist (I’ve seen him) through picking up with a kind of osmosis what his teachers were doing. This osmosis (‘mirroring’) was surely enhanced by the environment he was in.

I very much recommend this book to practitioners of traditional and modern Japanese martial arts. I view Shioda’s system as somewhat unique, somewhat eccentric, but it was based on principles universal within Japanese culture, and in particular, Japanese martial arts. Beyond all else, Payet himself exemplifies the mind of one who will achieve high skill, even mastery, where, unguarded, he accepts the world he is in and absorbs what it has to offer through his skin as much as through his intellect.

UCHIDESHI: Walking with the Master, Jacques Payet, Shindokan Books

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