VISITING OTHER RYŪHA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In the Edo period, unless one were a dignitary of a feudal domain, there were few reasons for a practitioner of a ryūha to visit another ryūha other than to make a challenge. Once safety equipment had been developed, this was not necessarily a hostile action, but it was, as I have described elsewhere, always potentially so. If one intended to ‘cross-train,’ this usually followed a match—the loser trained with the victor. Perhaps the most likely exception to this was if a young man became acquainted with a venerable warrior. An example of that is recorded in the internal records of Takenouchi-ryū.
. . . , the family lost its castle to an alliance of Oda Nobunaga and the Hashiba clan.[2] They fled to an adjacent valley in Owari in 1571, . . . . The Takenouchi were welcomed by the Shimizu lord, Shinmen Iga no Kami. Takenouchi Hisamori, the founder the ryū, then a seventy-eight-year-old man, became the guest of a thirty-one-year-old warrior, Shinmen Munisai Taketo. Takenouchi-ryū records state, “They did not see each other as competitors or enemies but instead paid each other respect as teacher and student.” Hisamori taught him kogusoku—in his school, close-combat, particularly incorporating the use of a dagger in grappling. Munisai was described as a diligent student. [Amdur, Old School, p. 174].
This, however, was not the norm. The idea of visiting another ryūha to observe their practice, with no intention of requesting an opportunity to enroll in the school, is a modern one. This is true even among dōjōs of the same ryūha. Were a student of a ryūha to travel: be it across town or to the next domain and request to train, it would very likely be viewed as an attempt to shame the ‘host school,’ to show that the visiting student, an exemplar of his teacher, was learning things better than what the host school had to offer.
That we are able to visit other schools in modern times, even being invited to practice for a day to experience the character of the school indicates a remarkable change in the nature of traditional schools. For the most part, we do not regard each other as enemies, even rivals. On the one hand, this is positive: knowledge shared can be for the benefit of all, and this is a phenomenon most likely in peaceful times. On the other hand, we run the danger of dulling the sharp edge of distinction, that which makes each school unique as a fighting art, an edge that is honed by adversity rather than amity.
VISITING FAMILY
Historically speaking, ryūha exclusively headed by sōke, lineal headmasters who managed a single dōjō, was a rather unusual phenomenon. Instead, most koryū-bugei certified various individuals as licensed instructors. In this system, once one was certified, one left to set up one’s own school, no more beholden to one’s teacher than a PhD graduate is beholden to his or her graduate school advisor. They were independent, and they would establish schools in various locations under the same name, with no reference or communication back to a headquarters. The idea of shibu-dōjō (支部道場, ‘branch schools’) under the aegis of a central authority was quite uncommon until modern times. This is true even in modern martial arts. The Aikikai, the mainstream organization of Ueshiba Morihei’s aikidō, allowed the opening of its first branch dōjō, the Kuwamori Dōjō, (where certified instructors of the headquarters were dispatched to teach) in 1951.
As I have discussed elsewhere, when one became the student of a teacher, one was bound by strict, universally understood rules, grounded in feudal culture. In such a culture, the idea of visiting other schools of the same ryūha, led by other teachers, either junior or senior to one’s own, would have been a fraught subject, even if done so bearing a letter of introduction from one’s own instructor. It might have been interpreted as an implicit message that the student found his own teacher lacking, and either the teacher was trying to get rid of him or wanted him humbled or, conceivably, that they were visiting as a kind of challenge, to throw down a gauntlet, so to speak, demonstrating that what they learned from their own instructor was superior. It should also be remembered that travel was not a simple matter in the Edo period; one needed official permission to leave one’s domain, so the idea of casually visiting another faction of one’s own school to augment one’s understanding of what one received from one’s own teacher was unlikely. In other words, a visit was always meaningful.
To be sure, in the late Edo and early Meiji period, when the bulk of training involved forms of freestyle competition, be it armored fencing with split bamboo sword replicas or jūjutsu matches, people frequently visited other schools, be they other ryūha or one’s own. Then, the challenge was explicit, but not always hostile. One might also stay and train, sometimes for long periods of time, because, for the most part, people were studying increasingly generic methods of martial arts practice. Competitive practice, which eventually became kendō and jūdō, began to create universal martial arts, quite different from sectarian, hermetic ryūha.
Withal, the old ryūha still survive, and they do so by maintaining an old, even archaic, perspective. With that in mind, how should one visit another dōjō within one’s own ryūha?
AS A GUEST
Why would you go visit another dōjō, when you are training in a perfectly good school already? Of course, with the easy access of travel in modern times, it is quite plausible that you will find yourself in an area where such a dōjō is located. Aside from meeting fine people, the most important reason to train in another dōjō should be to broaden your understanding of the ‘possibilities’ of one’s ryū. At the same time, you should be fiercely loyal to your own dōjō and your teacher. This may seem contradictory, but it is through such tension that we learn.
Properly speaking, you should request that your teacher contact the dōjōchō (head of the dōjō) where you want to visit (I’m using this generic term because not all dōjō are headed by shihan). Your instructor will introduce you, so to speak, and tell the dōjōchō a little about you, and probably discuss your skill. He or she might specifically request that the dōjōchō teach you something specific that they are especially skilled.
When you visit, it is a nice gesture to bring a small gift, a small representative souvenir from your home town. Something too ‘special’ or expensive will make the recipient uncomfortable.
Some dōjōs seat their students by seniority and others do not. The problem is that various schools have different rules as to where seniors and juniors sit. In business settings (including the Japanese military) the junior always sits closest to the door, with the seniors the farthest away. One of my informants wrote, “In one of the schools I attend in Japan, they follow that system with the seniors lining up farthest from the door, which places the juniors toward the right. The other school has the seniors line up closest to the door with the juniors to the left.” Because this is both confusing and somewhat fraught, it is quite acceptable to ask a senior of the dōjō what the rules are concerning this or any other point of etiquette or expected behavior.
If the dōjō does have a seniority-based seating system, a senior member or the instructor will then, either recollecting the introductory letter or by asking questions in present time, will move you to the appropriate spot. Of course, that lets his/her own students know your approximate skill and status. It is also a mild challenge–any healthy-minded student of the dōjō you are visiting will wonder if you are really worth being placed in a position above him or her. In other schools, you will be placed in a position of honor, representing your teacher, so to speak, and you can then engage in a duel of politeness where you struggle to go to a lower position.
When you start training, maintain your technique in exactly the form you have been taught by your own teacher. That denotes loyalty to your own dōjō. You should not be trying to ‘sync’ with their style. If there is a point in the kata where the differences in technique are so great that you and your training partner cannot continue the kata, you should, mostly silently, rework it together so that you can continue. I would recommend that you defer slightly—you are a guest after all, and through this process, you will learn another perspective on doing things. However, if the two of you are really unable to achieve some way to execute the kata, the instructor will surely come to help, partially to make things work and partially out of curiosity as to what you are doing. An instructor who is not ‘tracking’ you as you train is not doing his or her job.
Your training partner should NOT correct you, unless they are either shihan-dai or shihan. If they do not hold a teaching license, simply state that you have come to learn from “X sensei,” and you will wait for his/her corrections. Then offer to carry on with training. (By the way, if the dōjōchō (head of the school) is neither shihan nor shihan-dai, they are still, in fact, a de facto shihan-dai nonetheless—he/she is authorized to teach, after all).
When the shihan or shihan-dai does correct your technique or offer other advice, meticulously follow whatever he or she has said. Don’t argue. Don’t defend the way your teacher taught you (you might be wrong and your defense dishonors your teacher, because the other shihan might then think that your teacher is incompetent, having taught you what you claim). Do NOT show any frustration or defensiveness; show nothing but interest, and strive to execute what you’ve been taught. However, if the instructor says, “Try that on me,” do so to the utmost of your ability; you and the instructor will thereby learn the merits of what you have learned, however imperfectly, from your own teacher.
If the students of the dōjō you are visiting pressure you on the dōjō floor, do NOT simply accept being pushed around. Execute your techniques with more power, cut bigger, move with more speed and grace. You MUST defend your teacher’s honor by displaying what you have been taught with all the power and skill you possess. I am NOT talking about getting into a fight or even an argument. Rather, match the best your training partner is offering and be a little better. To put this on a personal note, I simply hate the image of a budōka as a modest, unassuming person who, when faced with any sort of disrespect, bows deeper because, “I was at their dōjō, and I didn’t want to be pushy or seen as arrogant.” . . . Or, “I thought I’d be best representing you by being polite.” Absolutely the contrary! I regard it as unacceptable if the students of another dōjō push my student’s around, much less those from another ryūha. Again, I’m not talking about a fight or even a shiai. I am simply stating that a good student will show his or her best skill and power when visiting another dōjō. It is through your actions that the dōjōchō has some idea of the skill of the teacher whom you represent. What I say to my own students is, “Give me the opportunity to apologize for you ‘not knowing your own strength,’ or ‘being a little hot-blooded. . .'” After all, we are doing a martial art, and there should be some heat, some competition. As long as it doesn’t degenerate into violence, it makes all of us stronger.
AS A STUDENT OF THE HOSTING DŌJŌ
When you practice with a guest, strive to maintain technique as you learned it from your instructor, and at the same time, treat your guest with respect. What I mean by this is strive to be as powerful as possible without crushing your training partner—he or she is not your enemy, and he or she may be inferior to you in skill. Part of your training is to figure out, immediately, how good he or she is, and try to be a little better.
Your guest, if behaving properly, will strive to offer respect to your instructor by not clinging to the way he or she was taught to a degree that it is impossible to practice together. Therefore, because they may be a little deferential, there may be openings in their defenses, and if you are too powerful, you may injure them. In this case, however, it is not because you are necessarily better; it is possible in a free-fight, they would annihilate you. Rather, their timing and combative spacing are off because they are striving to do the best they can of what they learned from their teacher, and simultaneously, striving to fit in with the way kata are done in your dōjō. Therefore, gradually work up to 100% speed and power: get to know each other first at weapon’s length and then bit-by-bit, move faster and faster.
If there is a clash of technique and understanding of the kata is making practice difficult, or dangerous, signal your instructor and get some help on how to work together.
AS AN INSTRUCTOR
You have been honored by your fellow instructor that he or she sent you their student. Do not hesitate to correct their technique, according to your perspective, to make what they are doing more powerful. At the same time, do not try to remake them. If I send my car to a new mechanic, I hope that he or she will retune my car to a higher performance, and this is true even though the new mechanic is a specialist on German cars and I’m driving a Maserati. I do not, however, want them to rebuild the chassis, or replace the engine.
Keep an alert eye on your guest(s) and who they are training with. Your task is to enhance your own students’ skill through contact with this guest and return the guest to his or her own instructor more powerful, more skilled in some aspect of the martial tradition that you both share.
If, for any reason, a NEW guest student acts in a way that you do not like, in this case it IS the your responsibility to correct their behavior. However, if they train more than several classes, it is now the senpai of your dōjō’s responsibility to put them in place.
Both sides should come away from such encounters believing that they learned something new AND affirmed that their own way of doing things is the best that there is. [Yes, I am being a little humorous here, but ‘best’ is a complicated question, one that I do not choose to answer it here. Suffice it to say that anytime a fellow shihan or their student shows me something that is superior to my understanding of the way I do things, I will strive to incorporate it into my own skill set].
I think the most valuable part of such ‘cross-training’ among “dōjōs of the same family” is that it can lead you to question techniques that you, hitherto, were very comfortable. For example, if you are executing a technique in such a way that it works perfectly against an opponent moving backwards, but it doesn’t work when the opponent moves forwards and there is no immediate adaptation to deal with the opponent’s forward movement, there is a problem. There are only four answers: 1) you have to figure out some way of ensuring the opponent will ALWAYS step backwards at a certain point; 2) The absurd – “Will you step backwards and not kill me by stepping forwards?”; 3) you will have to refine your technique so it lives up to its ‘promise,’ 4) If you are a shihan/shihan-dai, perhaps you will have to retool/rework the technique so that it has real integrity. Waza should work when the opponent does something contrary to what one intends; any technique that commits you to a vulnerable position from which you cannot retreat or adjust is problematic. Through this type of training, I have been spurred to adjust spacing, timing, angle of attack and defense, power and speed, all from training with an ‘imperfect’ training partner. This is how we keep our practice alive, rather than 井の中の蛙大海を知らず [“A frog in a well that has no conception of the sea.”]
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