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.
Author: Ellis Amdur Page 7 of 11
I recently noticed a question on a traditional Japanese martial arts discussion forum on Facebook: “Is there a proper way to bow?” And this was followed by a lot of sincere answers, most of which were wrong, or not-really-right, at least from the perspective of a traditional martial arts practitioner, where specific acts have specific meanings. In modern martial arts practice, on the other hand, there is often have a laissez-faire attitude, where a lot of things can be ‘good enough,’ based on the instructor’s arbitrary, often not culturally grounded practice. (This goes equally for Japanese and non-Japanese modern martial arts practitioners).
Rather frequently, I get asked how I’ve published my books. I also get asked how I write my books. I’ll answer the latter first. Depending on the book:
- I think of things and I write them down
- I think about things, research them, think about them some more, and write them down
- I imagine things and write them down
- I sit with my fingers on the keyboard and think – I wonder what will happen today – and then something other than me writes them down.
- What I never do is write an outline
OK, that’s taken care of. How did the manuscripts get from there to HERE?
Some time ago, I was sent a set of related questions on licensure and succession within koryū:
- What are your thoughts on koryū that predominantly only give out one menkyō kaiden, essentially declaring that person to be sōke. Would that mean the rest of the senior practitioners are not allowed to teach or open their own school, since they didn’t achieve the highest possible teaching license?
- What’s your thoughts on those who stay for decades, even though they would never receive a full teaching license, or how about other schools that might take a person thirty, forty or fifty years to get a license. Is it fair to a practitioner in one of these schools who, even though they have already learned and mastered everything there is to know, they are blocked from teaching? At the same time, they are unable to break away because they would lose legitimacy or recognition to be a certified instructor?
- How about those that face discrimination against them as foreigners, whether it is openly shown or not? In other cases, there’s clear favoritism, either to a family member, or to someone who plays the school’s political games–only Japanese people–or people the sōke or shihan likes–ever get promoted. What’s your thoughts on that?
In what follows, I address these questions as if talking to someone specific: “You.” I do not mean the person who asked the initial questions whom honestly, I don’t remember (it’s been three years since I received the questions). It’s a rhetorical device only.
Ballet Boy
In Dueling with O-sensei, I presented the story of the ballerina who had a challenge match with a taekwondo black belt. Here’s another ballet story that definitely deserves retelling.
My wife was a principle dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, and for some years after she ended her career, she would teach during ABT’s summer intensives for young people. One year I went along with her, and after her class, ended up in a bar-restaurant, with a group of her colleagues, some of the greatest dancers of the mid twentieth century. One thing about retired ballet dancers: they end up in two forms. Half of them are stunning: elegant, noble men and women, the best looking older people on the face of the earth. And the other half are “F**k it. I trained since I was a child, I watched what I ate, I obsessed over every calorie and every movement of every muscle. No more.” And you’d never imagine they ever danced – they are overweight, lumpy, poor postured . . . but even so, they still have the best looking legs you could imagine.
If you haven’t read it, the best loved aikido story (after Ueshiba getting enlightened after taking a challenge from a military man who attacked him uselessly with a sword) is Terry Dobson’s “Train Story.” I used to have people come up to tell me the story, and I’d tell them I knew it, knew Terry, was hanging around when he wrote it, and they’d insist on telling me anyway. Look – it’s a wonderful story. It influenced me profoundly and I hope, one one occasion or another, I have exhibited the compassion of that old man. But somehow, I’ve always had bad luck on Japanese trains.
There’s this obsession whether aikido is street creditable. Heck, I know of an aikido club amongst correctional officers in one of the most hardcore prisons in America, and they tell me aikido has been more than useful.
So did I ever use aikido on the street? Yes, I did. Back in the early 70’s, I used to train at Terry Dobson/Ken Nisson’s Bond Street Dojo and also Yamada Yoshimitsu’s New York Aikikai (known to some as as 18th Street). I was a member of the former (I lived in the dojo) and a guest at the latter. I subscribed to Terry’s patchwork ideology: “Aikido is an art of love that will save the world, and if you are concerned about self-defense, you have to ask yourself, what is this ‘self’ you are concerned about, and how can you protect a ‘self’ without love . . . and if you piss me off, I will probably f*ck you up, given the right provocation.”
When I was twelve years old, I wanted to do karate. Actually, another boy to whom I’d already lost a fight was taking karate, and I didn’t want him to have the jump on me that much more. My parents, however, thought it was low class, and refused. I kept nagging. Finally, my father took me down to the basement, picked up a length of two by four, maybe eighteen inches long and said, “If you can break this with your bare hand, I’ll let you do karate.” Honestly, I don’t know if Oyama Masutatsu, the ‘God Hand’ himself, could have broken a piece of dry wood that short, unsecured. Surely, my father thought, I’d try it once or twice, and give up and leave him alone.