古現武道

Among the chapters in Old School, is one entitled “Keppan: Blood Vows in Japanese Martial Traditions.” I’m very happy with that chapter, for what it is worth, but I think it is fair to say that I leave the impression that kishōmon were always a solemn rite, one properly accompanied by massing clouds, and lightning flickering on the horizon.

It is certainly true that such an oath could be the assumption of a deep responsibility, but it was also true that they were simply the generic way that one made promises in the Japanese feudal period, similar to those in the West avowing such phrases as “So help me G-d,” “On my mother’s grave,” or “On my children’s lives.” Sometimes it had as little weight as a “pinkie swear.” I recently discovered a pledge by a cadre of young bushi, members of a faction of Araki-ryū that reveals a far more human side of things.

Shinmon: Oath Before the Gods

Having respectfully requested instruction in the Araki-ryū arts of torite, jūjutsu, sword-drawing, staff, rope, spear, glaive, and military usage, and being now earnestly set upon the chūdan and the innermost teachings, we respectfully request these as well. For this reason we once again, on this occasion, set our blood seals and present [this oath].

• We shall not sharply criticize the shortcomings of other schools. We have been told repeatedly that all of us alike must be restrained in this, and we acknowledge it. Further, when we are asked ⟨whether such and such is so⟩ by those of other schools, we shall answer in the manner proper to this school. Should there be unreasonable persons who press for a contest, we shall report the matter, consult among our fellow students, and only then proceed to a contest.
• We acknowledge that quarrels, disputes, heavy drinking, discourtesy and the like are not to be engaged in. Toward outsiders, needless to say, and toward our fellow students as well, we have been instructed to permit nothing unreasonable, and we shall be strictly careful of it. Should we in any way act against what we have been told, and our standing in the school be suspended, we shall harbor not the slightest resentment.

The articles above we shall strictly observe. Should we act contrary to them, may we incur the unseen punishment of the gods of war, of the great and lesser deities of the sixty-odd provinces of Japan. Accordingly we set our blood seals, as stated above.

                                                                         Kansei 8, the year hinoe-tatsu [1796], first month, on an auspicious day

This is followed by the signatures of six men.

Let us consider the implications of this. They surely offered an oath upon their entry into the school –  that was the custom. They already made promises under the auspices of the gods. Now, some years later, their instructor viewed it as necessary that they made another oath – the fear of the deities was not sufficient, and evidently, their punishment had not yet descended upon them.

The text reads:  “We have been told repeatedly . . .” “We acknowledge . . .”  Obviously, there have been  . . .  problems, not unexpected among young men who are studying how to fight. In short, we have a cadre of young men, probably in their late teens or early twenties, who were obviously brawling with members from other schools at the slightest pretext: provoking conflicts by talking down to them, or responding to a question in a manner like this: “What???!!!! How do we do kesagiri? I’ll show you exactly how, you [******].” One can imagine such men standing in the entry way of another school, laughing, poorly imitating their practice, bumping shoulders on the street, spilling a drink on someone’s kimono sleeve as they passed them in a tavern. It’s a fair assumption they were probably abusing the local shopowners (particularly in taverns), getting drunk and fighting amongst themselves. Their instructor (and seniors) were receiving reports of all of this and apologizing for them

So their instructor sits them down and has them write out a new blood oath, in essence, saying, “We promise, under penalty of destruction from the most august of deities, to stop acting like knuckleheads.”

There is a poignant note concerning one of the young men, Mitsui Kakuemon, written in another hand, surely some time later, which indicates that the lesson surely was taken to heart. “This man received the school’s licence during a time when he held no official post. While he was seconded to the vanguard corps (o-sakite, 先手組 – the shogunate’s advance-guard bow and gun unit, quite an elite posting), he died of illness while serving as instructor.”

We can imagine his instructor , late one evening, perhaps after receiving a letter, or being otherwise notified, pulling out this vow, and writing this note, thinking of  a young, hot-blooded youth who grew up to be a fine man, then lost too soon.

Note: If anyone finds themselves grateful for access to the information in the essays published on this site, you can express your thanks in a way that would be helpful to me in turn. It would be most welcome if you were to purchase one or more of my books, be it those on martial traditions, tactical communication or fiction. In addition, if you have ever purchased any of my books, please write a review – the option is there on Amazon as well as Kobo or iBook. To be sure, positive reviews are valuable in their own right, but beyond that, the number of reviews bumps the algorithm within the online retailer, so that the book in question appears to more customers. 

“If a person is cut down with a sword in front of the compound, chase the assailant down. If he will not hand over his sword you may kill him. Should he surrender his sword, however, hand him over to the magistrates office.”

-1620s Shogunal notice to Tosa domain on duties during incidents in front of their Edo compound.1

The classical martial traditions of Japan, or koryū bugei (古流武藝) – “military arts flowing from the past” – have undergone something of a minor renaissance in the West in recent decades. Seen as distinct from modern martial arts, the koryū bugei are said to preserve the battlefield skills of the Japanese warrior class down to the present day. Specialist scholarship has long demonstrated this is largely an “invented tradition,” and that the reality is more nuanced.2 Certainly warriors of the Sengoku Jidai, or “Era of the Country at War,” practiced fighting techniques, and in the first few decades after the turn of the 17th century, at beginning of the Tokugawa era (1603 – 1868), a culture of musha shugyo (“warrior pilgrimage”) flourished, that entailed engaging in challenge matches, including fatal duels. This largely ended by the mid 17th century when authorities put an end to it. From then on, bushi of status pursued bugei primarily as a means of cultivating warrior identity and character development. There was “increasingly an emphasis on formal gymnastics and disciplined choreography,” where combative etiolation was perhaps inevitable, and roundly criticized in the explosion of commercial print on all manner of subjects at the time. (Dore 1965 p. 151 et al) 3   The persistent discourse on the martial arts as “arts of war” in the parlance of practitioners, and on their well-documented peacetime deterioration on the part of professors, may have obscured a pragmatic approach that still existed: law enforcement.

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I recently received a twenty-one page document, dated 1916. It is a magazine article in which the writer, Andō Kizaburō, interviewed shizoku: retired bushi of the Tanba-Sasayama-han (AKA Aoyama domain). I am going to discuss certain information revealed in the document, as well as providing excerpts, framed in quotes. 

1. The main martial arts promulgated by the domain were heihō (military strategy),  hōjutsu (gunnery and artillery), kyūjutsu (archery), sōjutsu (spear fighting), kenjutsu (swordfighting), bajutsu (horseriding), and jū-bōjutsu (jūjutsu and bōjutsu, which were regarded, more or less, as one entity). 
2. It is clear that the Japanese were well aware of the encroaching West, long before the “shock” of the Black Ships, the American visit to Japanese ports which opened up the country, despite Japanese wishes to the contrary. Evidence of this is shown in the Aoyama daimyō taking charge of heihō and artillery and amalgamating various ryūha in these two disciplines and establishing Goryūgi Heihō & Goryūgi Hōjutsu: domain-wide schools of military strategy and artillery, supervised by the daimyō himself. “Regarding artillery, according to the official proclamation around March of the 4th year of Kaei, it was specially emphasized as a martial art that young generations must practice, regardless of the hierarchy of rank.”

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Preface

This is my thirty-fifth year of practicing aikidō. I’ve been Executive Editor of Aikido Journal for a number of years and have run Ikazuchi Dojo for over twenty. In that time I’ve fielded a lot of questions — from students, from people curious about the art, from people outside the martial arts world entirely — about what aikidō is actually about. And I’ve heard, just as often, people espouse principles that I find difficult to reconcile with what the technical system actually contains or what the history of the art actually shows.

I should say at the outset that none of what follows comes from disillusionment. Aikidō has been a foundational part of my adult life and it will remain so. I love the practice—the feel of it, the community it creates, the questions it asks of you on the mat and off. It is precisely because I take the art seriously that I think it deserves serious examination. Examining what we actually do, and whether the common claims made about it hold up, feels like one of the most respectful things I can offer the art.

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https://therannetwork.com/amdur-roots-still-cracking-rock/

I am pleased to announce the general release of my book, Roots Still Cracking Rock in English, French and Czech.  [Spanish, Italian, and German language versions will be released in the next few months.] This book is my testament to classical Japanese martial arts.

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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