Author: Ellis Amdur Page 1 of 12

Although this multiple episode story is mostly true, it is also largely unprovable and dependent on men who tended to rewrite their life story every time they told it. So, I will start this story with:

Once Upon A Time

In the early 1910’s, there was a boy who was fascinated by the tairiku ronin, the Japanese adventurers who, often relying on extra-territorial legal rights, raw courage, and a world so violent and strange that it reads like Cormac McCarthy’s “border trilogy:” where trees were festooned with corpses and a blind, degenerate Tibetan ruled Mongolia, where bandits became generals and even rulers of provinces, where a psychopathic Baltic-German Cossack with Japanese among his troops ran amok over Mongolia, striving to create a Buddhist paradise, killing so many that some Mongols still worship him as a God of War, and where a Japanese woman became a pirate queen (This is true! Her exploits, which included taking over an ocean liner, were reported in the Japanese newspapers).

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In 1977, thanks to an introduction from Donn Draeger, I began training with Wang Shujin. Here is a video that spans from the  the early 1960’s (black-and-white) to a year before his death (color), when I met him.  We would meet at a temple near Shibuya, if I recall correctly, and in the bitter cold, try to imitate him as he went through his version of the Nanjing Synthesis taijiquan form. This form was created by Chen Pan Ling (here a portion performed by his son, Chen Yun Ching). Wang’s form was very different – he emphasized the elements of xingyiquan and baguazhang that Chen included in this form.

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From Stephen Foster

When a big bell tolls, the sound seems to sink into your soul, affecting you deeply. In the Japanese koryū community the news that Quintin Chambers Sensei had passed most surely had that very same effect.

He trained in judō and aikidō, but when he found the koryū, he became enthralled by it. Quintin was one of the foreign koryū pioneers in Japan that trained under both Shimizu Takaji Sensei in Shintō Musō-ryū (SMR) and Otake Risuke Sensei in Katori Shintō-ryū (KSR). Shimizu Sensei authorized him to instruct in SMR which he did in Hawai’i. He taught the art to a group that always remained small; the required fee was sincere effort and thought about the art.

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Notes: From Ellis Amdur

1. This essay is published with the kind permission of Mayumi Abel
2. Any additions, clarifications or other changes to Laszlo’s essay, that follows the foreword, will be in oxblood script. I have made minor textual corrections and added a few links.

Forward: Ellis Amdur

Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a small number of non-Japanese who were training in koryū-bugei. Some such as Phil Relnick, Quintin Chambers, Larry Bieri, Meik Skoss, Hunter Armstrong and the very recently deceased David Hall were closely associated and trained with Donn Draeger, the groundbreaker who proved to many, otherwise chauvinistic, Japanese that non-Japanese could fully integrate themselves within classical Japanese martial traditions (my apologies to anyone I left out of that group). Many others of us were not so closely connected to Donn, but also trained in classical koryū-bugei. Among the most remarkable of them was Laszlo Abel. He was a wiry man of medium height, with a nose that preceded him like the bowsprit of a battleship. He had a hot temper and a rude sense of humor, and I never saw him back down in a debate, even when we were out drinking, and things might turn physical.

Laszlo was interested in the unusual rather than mainstream. I know he trained in a rather obscure branch of Tenjin Shinyō-ryū, Masaki-ryū with Nawa Fumio, Negishi-ryū shurikenjutsu and Shindō Munen-ryū kenjutsu. He had wicked skills with a short chain in his hands, and every time I saw him, he’d reveal some hidden weapon, like a ring, turned inward, that had small spikes on it.

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After the release of my book, Hidden In Plain Sight, I began corresponding with Spyridon Katsigiannis (Spyros). He was then living in Sweden, teaching physical culture. He later returned to Greece, and we began to meet regularly, during my biasnnual trips there. He taught me some kettlebell technique, and we informally began an exchange in our various training methodologies to develop greater abilities to use the body in martial arts practice. We were becoming close friends, something I find increasingly rare as I get older, and it was a personal loss to me, as well as his many students, when he suddenly died of a heart attack. The only blessing is that, at the moment of his death, he was with one of his closest students, whom he had brought up, so to speak, into manhood. He did not die alone.

Spyros’s martial arts training started with Chinese martial arts. If I recall correctly, he trained in Hung Gar kung fu, did tournament fighting, and then became a coach. He lost interest in fighting and martial arts, per se, in his early thirties, but became very interested in Russian Martial Arts, interested in it more for physical culture.

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Pre-War Jiujitsu in Europe

Before the second world war, jiujitsu was taught as an independent system throughout Europe. [1] There was no influence from arts like karate or aikidō; furthermore, jiujitsu was different and separate from jūdō. This jiujitsu may have been a bit stiff, and probably relied more on strength than we are led to believe when we read the books and newspaper articles from that period, but its practice still developed formidable fighters, who fought matches against boxers, wrestlers and sometimes just plain street fighters. Some of these matches were organized, while others were unruly affairs, the result of an impromptu challenge during what was intended to be a demonstration of the art. Jiujitsu had to prove its mettle and the record shows that it did.

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The short treatise, translated into English, was on the nature of budō. It was written by a very senior exponent of classical koryu. I knew him. He was among the most erudite—and physically talented—budōka I’ve ever encountered. I have paid attention to every word he’s said and written. He made the point in the essay, one that was an overview of some of his opinions and beliefs, that in the end the ultimate goal of all traditional budō was to “establish peace.”

The notion is hardly unique, of course. We read it, we hear in the dōjō similar sentiments all the time. Curious about it though, I found the same essay online in the original Japanese. The same line in Japanese used the word junjo (順序) for what was translated as “peace.” Which is not at all the same thing. Junjo means “to put things in order.” And that, to paraphrase Robert Frost, makes all the difference.

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I am prompted to revisit this topic after viewing this video of Tada Hiroshi, a remarkable 94 year old aikido instructor. For those who like order, you are in trouble. I will live up to my promise of ‘casual’ – this will go all over the place. I’ve got no final point to arrive at–this essay is more like a jazz improv on a basic theme, the latter of which might have been insipid to begin with. [NOTE: A few people contacted me that they were unable to see the embedded videos, so I’ve also put a direct link under each one.]

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