Author: Ellis Amdur Page 9 of 12

A 2nd edition of my book, Hidden in Plain Sight has been published through Freelance Academy Press. It is two-thirds larger than the original, with eight new chapters. The revisions and development in the new version are enough to make it almost a new book entirely. Of course, I corrected all the errors that are enumerated below. Still, some may have the previous version on their shelves, and these errors should be noted, lest someone, unaware of the new edition, is misled. 

Concerning the 2nd edition: Every book is printed with errors, be they spelling, design, editing  and sometimes, regrettably, errors in fact. One of the latter appears in the 2nd edition. I note it below and note also how to download a glue-in correction of the book itself. It has been corrected in the electronic version, but will still remain in the bound version until all copies of this print run are sold.

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By Nigel Sutton

Note: During the writing of this piece Master Lee Bei Lei passed away. He was 86  years old. Rest in Peace, Shifu!

I first met Lee Bei Lei (aka Li Bian Lei/Lai) in 1987 on my first visit to Malaysia. My brother-in-law was secretary of the taijiquan group that he ran in Batu Pahat, a town in the southern state of Johor. As a ‘visiting fireman,’ who had participated and enjoyed some success in a competition in China, I was invited to perform in front of an audience of several hundred taijiquan aficionados. At that time Chinese in Malaysia were not allowed to visit China, so a foreigner who had been there and practised Chinese martial arts was something of a rarity. I strutted my stuff, the 48 step combined taijiquan form and a baguazhang form and afterwards, I was introduced to ‘The Master,’ Lee Bei Lei. My youthful naïve ignorance protected me from even being aware of the dread I should have been feeling. I had come to his training hall as a ‘celebrity,’ demonstrated in front of his students and basked in their applause! A traditional martial artist of Master Lee’s generation would see all of this as a challenge, literally an attempt  to damage his reputation. This to a man for whom challenges were an everyday occurrence, the very lifeblood and nourishment of his existence! But I knew none of that.

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When the word swimming is mentioned, many of us will conjure images of blue-hued pools, and the exploits of professional athletes such as Michael Phelps. For others, it will bring to mind the lacquered grimaces of synchronized swimmers, the unusual headgear of water polo stars or the tightly wrapped wrists of competitive divers. While completely understandable, this is a very limited view of natation arts, one that has been completely hijacked by the modern Olympics.

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NOTE: The following essay owes a tremendous amount to my consultation with Stephen Delaney of the Araki-ryu gunyo-kogusoku. I take full responsibility, however, for everything – both history and speculation – within this essay.

 Araki Buzaemon and his immediate successors

Two different martial traditions, Araki-ryu gunyo-kogusoku and Araki Shin-ryu, are associated with Araki Buzaemon Hisakatsu, a man otherwise unknown, but believed by these ryuha to be related to Araki Mujinsai (AKA Muninsai) Minamoto Hidetsuna, the founder of Araki-ryu torite-kogusoku.

These two schools are profoundly different, but both have the same anomaly in their lineage: after Araki Mujinsai, both Araki Shin-ryu and, until recently, Araki-ryu gunyo-kogusoku then listed the next two generations blank, followed by Araki Buzaemon in the fourth generation. Such blanks in the lineage are not unusual in Japanese ryuha. For example, Miura Yoshin-ryu has a gap between the alleged founder, Nakamura Sakyodayu Yoshikuni (Miura Yoshin) and the sixth, Abe Kanryu. Generally speaking, such a gap implies that the person after the gap, in this case Buzaemon, created a new ryu inspired somehow by Mujinsai, but separated by a few generations.

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 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.

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Throughout my career in martial art training, I would say that the majority of people I’ve met–my fellow students, my peers or acquaintances,  are people who are happy to train with what they think is an exemplary teacher. For a number of reasons, however, (lack of drive, humility, reticence to push themselves forward .. .  . .), they act as if they have an endless amount of time to learn the system.

That’s not so. Your teachers age, and as they do so, invariably, they cannot move as they once did. Some not only lose skill, but they lose knowledge. Others lose wisdom itself. Still others change: what seemed so important once is irrelevant to them as they approach, ever closer, to death, and their students’ mastery of their particular combative art no longer seems that important. In other words, their fire has burned out.

Some teachers continue to burn, training themselves rigorously even into old age, still discovering new aspects of their art. However, even if aspects of their art become more sophisticated and deep, there are often certain physical actions that they can no longer perform. Yet the student, quite naturally and sincerely, imitates the teacher, as they are now–particularly if they’ve no memory of him or her in earlier days. For example, when I first went to Japan and met Donn Draeger, he invited me to train in Shindo Muso-ryu. (it was, in a sense, the ‘entry level’ koryu for young people he was mentoring). There were a number of reasons I chose not to enter Shindo Muso-ryu or establish such a close relationship with Donn (I hadn’t travelled half-way around the world, giving up the life I knew, to land easily within the protective tutelage of someone who had been ‘there’ first…I wanted to find my own ‘there,’ different from his). In any event, the most important reason was watching Shimizu sensei, already old, shuffling his feet in 15 cm steps, and watching huge guys copying him, shuffling their feet and swinging their jo and sword much like their rotund elderly teacher.

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