Taryū Shiai & Other Oppositional Matches Within Japanese Martial Traditions

Preface

There are only a few extant koryū bujutsu that date back to the Sengoku (‘warring states’) era. Despite claims to the contrary, none of them are pristine. Many claim founding dates that are historically inaccurate, often by many hundreds of years. Some claim founders who actually had nothing to do with the school in question. Still others have founders who may have initiated the ryūha, but they surely never imagined the current state of what they created—it has been altered over the centuries almost beyond recognition.

This is not fraud. The term 流 (ryū ‘flow’) means something quite different from ‘organization.’ Whoever truly created a school often gave credit to those who flowed into its creation, going back centuries, if not millennia. This could include one’s family lineage (the core of one’s identity), one’s inspiration (this could include deities, ancestors, even someone in a war tale or legend), as well as antecedent schools that were directly or indirectly related. For example, a large number of schools  list famous warriors or tutelary deities associated with Shintō-ryū (schools associated with a nexus of activity in the general area of the Kashima and Katori shrines), as these are generally considered to be the primordial martial traditions of Northeastern Japan. However, the technical parameters of a particular school may have very little to do with Shintō-ryū itself.

Most importantly, a school may have changed significantly after its founding because subsequent teachers may have added new training methodologies. Sometimes this was innovation: a refinement of technique, or something new to suit the society within which the ryūha now existed. Other changes were for mercenary reasons, at least in part—what we call koryū was often a business in the Edo period, as one paid one’s teacher for various mokuroku (‘compendia of teaching’). This was profitable for both teacher and student. The teacher received payment for each certification—the more mokuroku, the more profit. For students who were bushi, it was a form of ‘continuing education;’ he might receive an increase in his rice stipend with his new certification. For commoners of the other three classes, it was an enhancement of one’s social status, like a newly rich business owner of modern times getting membership in the ‘old money’ golf club.

Edo period martial traditions became increasingly stylized, not only in etiquette, but in how techniques were executed. Koryū are indebted, in various proportions, to dramatic poses and movements from performance art (noh and kabuki) and particularly in more rural ryūha, fight-dance sequences used in local matsuri (festivals associated with various shrines), called by such names as bō no te. 1

The main focus of martial training shifted from comprehensive training with various weaponry, allegedly for survival on a battlefield, to preparation for one-on-one duels. The sword, a ‘side-arm on the battlefield, became the primary weapon—in many schools, the only weapon—that was practiced. However, duels were very rare; the Edo period was one of the most successful totalitarian states ever developed, and duels were strictly regulated. If people were training for something that most likely would never happen, it is not surprising that theory and aesthetics began to supersede experience.

By the middle of the Edo period, many schools also began to include a form of fencing, using split-bamboo sword replicas: 竹刀 (shinai, bamboo swords), as well as protective armor. As in every martial culture, this ignited the unending debate between proponents of ‘live training’ versus ‘pattern-drill training.’ On the negative side, shinai are not weighted nor balanced like swords, the tsuka (hilt) is much longer than most swords, and the blade portion were also longer—sometimes far longer. In the interest of winning bouts, some people used shinai with a length approaching two meters; a real Japanese sword of such length would be too heavy and unwieldy for one-on-one combat. Moreover, since everyone wanted to win their matches, people adapted to the ‘game.’ Given that most confrontations were on the flat, smooth plank floors of dōjō, proponents changed their stance and footwork—sliding, hopping or jumping from the balls of one’s feet, and striking (not cutting) with the weapon with snappy, quick movements. Although claiming to replicate combat without the barbarity of maiming or killing one’s opponent, the proponents did not cut like they were using a sword, did not move like they were using a sword, and because they could be largely unafraid of injury, thanks to body armoring, they did not react to potential threat the way one would if facing a naked blade. 2

The benefit of kata training is that, performed enough times, you engrain a pattern of movement within your nervous system. If you do something often enough, it’s difficult ‘not to do it,’ even when stressed. Those of you who are expert drivers in winter conditions will understand what I’m talking about here—you hit a patch of black ice, feel the loss of traction, steer calmly into the skid, and when one wheel ‘bites’ the raw pavement, you feather the accelerator, and you are on your way. However, despite this rationale, kata practice, even using potentially bone-breaking oaken weaponry, became increasingly sterile from the Edo period onwards. Exclusive pattern drill removed one of the most important components of real combat: the unexpected. Freestyle practice can introduce you to the unimagined, something that is a given in combative engagements. 3

Even though competition with shinai is ‘unrealistic,’ it enables you to learn to continue to fight even when frightened, enraged or fatigued, and it also teaches how to fight and win against an opponent who doesn’t follow any ‘program’ you are familiar with. A great example of the merits of this approach is cited in Chapter 12 of Old School, concerning the Ichinomiya Insurrection in 1864. Here we see fighters who maintained both classical kata as well as ‘live training’ able to accomplish in combat what classically-trained swordsmen could not:

One particularly dramatic example of this was a peasant uprising in 1864, which started in Mobara and Nitta villages, in the Ichinomiya domain on the Bōsō peninsula in present-day Chiba prefecture. The reason for the uprising is unclear today, but records of the time show that it was originally a farmer uprising that was used for political reasons by activists—Miura Tatewaki and Kusunoki Otojiro—who proclaimed an anti-foreign policy. The official records state that their intent was to create social instability, and from a farmer’s revolt, it spiraled into mayhem: arson, looting, rape and murder, with over one thousand people participating. Miura and Kusunoki hired a ferocious swordsman, Yano Jugoro, as their bodyguard.

The ruler of the domain was Kano Hisakira, who had a high-ranking position within the shogunate’s power structure. Kano was the leader of the Kobusho, the head military school, established during the mid-19th century that decided the curriculum of military training inside the shogunate. Kano himself had trained in Yagyu Shinkage ryū from his childhood and was a skilled swordsman. He had recruited samurai—only those who had exceptional combative abilities—among his retainers into a special unit, the Burengumi. As a favored official of the shogunate, Kano had holdings in different areas of Japan, including Akabori village in Kōzuke, the home of the Honma Nen-ryū. Lord Kano asked Honma Sengoro Ōji, the family leader, to form a militia of his students to aid in suppressing the uprising. Honma quickly set up a ‘pacifying unit,’ with over one hundred of his disciples. Honma arrived to find the Mobara village in flames, and the elite Burengumi samurai in full retreat. Seeing Yano leading the rebels, he ordered one of his followers, Nakajima Yōnojo, to kill him. Nakajima stormed into the melee and challenged him. After several mutual attacks, Nakajima killed Yano, stabbing him with his blade upwards. With Yano killed in single combat, the rebels lost confidence, and the uprising was suppressed. 4

Duels And Other Forms Of Conflict

Historical accounts concerning  Japanese martial traditions often describe various forms of duels and other ‘oppositional matches.’ The further one goes back in history, the more remarkable these duels sound, but one must look at them with some degree of skepticism, the same way we should regarding stories of the American frontier where one or another hero ‘wrassled’ a grizzly bear or an alligator. For example, Araki Mataemon, a legendary master of Shinkage-ryū allegedly had a duel against thirty-six opponents—at least, that was the story in a Kabuki drama of the period. However, I recall a news article in Japan in the 1970’s, where an old document was found in a family’s storehouse (these kura, sometimes sealed up for centuries, have remarkable historical records and artifacts) that purported to be an eye-witness account of the duel. As best as I recall, Araki faced two enemies. The three of them faced off, swords clenched, trembling, unmoving for a L-O-N-G time. Eventually, one man’s nerve broke, and as he turned to run away, Araki cut him down. The other man ineptly attacked and Araki killed him too. 5

It is at this point that some definitions are in order, because there were a number of force-on-force encounters that individuals could engage, short of warfare or duels. In fact, most adversarial encounters with weaponry in the Edo period did not result in death, though it was always a possibility.

(真剣勝負) Shinken-shobu

Shinken-shobu (真剣勝負, lit., ‘win-lose by real sword’). In shinken-shobu, the intention is killing. This would include both mutually agreed-upon fights that, unless sanctioned by the authorities, would legally be considered an act of murder on the part of the victor, but also other legally sanctioned acts of killing. Particularly in the latter, there was no particular stricture requiring a ‘fair fight.’ There were three categories legitimized in Edo period law where, after killing one’s opponent, each was ‘signed off’ with a small blade stabbed into a particular part of the body:

• 御意討 Gyōiuchi ‘at the will of a superior’—When killing by order of a superior, one stabbed the body through the bottom of a foot
• 仇討 Adauchi—When killing in the service of a vendetta (retaliation), one stabbed the body under his ear. (Vendetta has the nuance of obligation—you are upholding the honor of your family, for example).
• 意趣討 Ishu-uchi—When killing for personal revenge, one stabbed the body through the solar plexus

Each of these was a stab with a kogatana, a small dagger that was part of one’s sword fittings or a kogai, a small spike ordinarily used to arrange one’s hair. They were referred to by such terms as tome sandan or todome sandan. There is surely some symbolic meaning associated with each of these acts, probably associated with Chinese-based medical theory, but these stabs were enacted after death—they were not specialized killing techniques. There is a misunderstanding in this area because ‘todome’ is a word also used to mean a ‘finishing blow.’ However, imagine a fight where you are required to kill someone by stabbing them in the bottom of the foot with an implement customarily used to arrange your hair! In fact, one left the small blade in the body as a kind of explanation of why the person was killed and an attestation of who did it. Without tome-sandan, all one would have is a dead body, ostensibly murdered. Of course, the bushi would present himself to legal authorities, explaining the matter in more detail, prepared to suffer any consequences, up to and including a command to commit seppuku. A duel that was not legally sanctioned was, in essence, a murder. 6

Why were duels so rare, when all bushi were armed, and they were inculcated by a fanatic sense of personal and family honor? There is a minor and a major reason. The lesser reason was the honor of one’s teacher and of one’s ryūha. Consider that keppan (‘blood oaths’) in most ryūha have a stricture that one cannot engage in duels or even matches with other schools without a certification of menkyō kaiden or the like. The reason for this is that no ryūha would want their school shamed by an inept member losing a duel. Another limiting factor was that by the time one received menkyo kaiden, one was probably in one’s thirties or forties, tempered by years of training— less likely to be overwhelmed by emotions and impulsively engaging in fights.

The second, more important, reason was the Shogunate’s abiding interest in public order. 7 The ryūha were potentially armed political factions and therefore were quite tightly restricted. The last thing the government wanted was group conflicts between various ryūha, something that did start to occur with the breakdown of social order in the late Edo period. 8

For these reasons, duels were actually quite uncommon—most bushi in the Edo period never drew their sword in earnest, with the exception of putting down the nearly two thousand farmer’s revolts, precipitated by oppressive rule by various feudal lords, particularly in times of famine—and actually, their primary weapon for doing so was firearms, as the bushi, armed with their swords, were frequently routed in an initial engagement with enraged farmers armed with long-handled farm implements and takeyari (bamboo spears).

(道場破り) Dōjō-Yaburi

Dōjō-yaburi was not simply an inter-school match, even one that might result in injuries. Dōjō-yaburi (道場破り lit., ‘dōjō breaking’) meant exactly what the words said—you lost your honor, your reputation, and literally, the sign-board of your school. You could expect your students to quit, and if your school was an official school of a feudal domain, your employment would most likely be terminated. Dōjō-yaburi is wrapped up in ideas that are inconceivable to many people today—at least those who do not live by the codes of an ‘honor-based’ culture. The mindset is that your identity is so bound up as a practitioner—or a ‘master’—of such-and-such a school, that a defeat would destroy your existence. One famous example of this is the legendary story of Miyamoto Musashi against the Yoshioka school. After their defeat, the Yoshioka not only abandoned teaching martial arts, but also their status as bushi.

There were a number of fail-safe mechanisms to keep dōjō-yaburi from occurring:

• Otome-ryū, official schools of the feudal domain, might refuse challenges as they were, implicitly, a challenge against the domain itself. The headmaster of an otome-ryū would likely only accept a challenge when ordered to do so by his feudal lord.
• An outsider to a domain issuing a challenge might be considered a kind of armed vagrant disturbing the peace, no more welcome that a thug entering a nightclub, whom the doormen know is going to pick a fight. Therefore, the outsider might be given no opportunity to get near the school.
• In many schools, the students would simply gang up on a challenger. Imagine that one had a venerable teacher, respected and wise, but elderly. If the teacher took the challenge, he might be defeated by raw crude force—although not really a fair metric of the value of his knowledge, he would be dishonored nonetheless. If a student took up the challenge and lost, the teacher might be compelled to fight next, so the students would simply manage such a challenger by collectively beating him to a bloody pulp.
• In other cases, the instructor would have the guest ‘run the line’ and only face the individual if they defeated everyone, exhausting themselves in the process. This was considered ethical by all concerned, but gave the seniors and teacher a real advantage.
• Finally, there was diplomacy. If things got that far, the teacher might beg off with an injury, or otherwise lavish praise on the aggressor and ask him to stay and teach for a while.

Of course, once shinai practice became the norm, the consequences of a loss usually far less severe, and the last two alternatives in the above list were surely much more common. Also, with protective equipment and shinai, techniques among various schools began to homogenize. There was less impetus to change from one ryūha to another, because everyone was doing roughly the same thing. In a sense, an intruder might conceivably try to take over the teaching position of a dōjō owner, but this would be more like pushing someone out of a job than having one’s own martial system beating another. And as an outsider to a domain, literally a foreigner, one would hardly be welcome to simply move in. From this, I infer that, as the Edo period progressed, much less intense interactions became the norm, rather than actually destroying a dōjō. Better to visit, win your fights, (and learn if you lost) be invited to train or teach a while, get well-fed and rested, and then go on your way. I describe Takeda Sokaku’s career as an itinerant challenger  of this type in Hidden in Plain Sight. 9

(他流試合) Taryū-Shiai

Taryū shiai (他流試合 lit.’inter-ryū match) was a match between people of two different martial traditions. It was a kind of dōjō-yaburi embodied in two single individuals. One usually fought with wooden weaponry or, later in the Edo period, with shinai. (which, if unsatisfactory to either party, could conceivably escalate to wooden or steel weaponry). True taryū shiai was a serious business; one’s life was potentially at stake. One’s honor was always on the line, and thus, one’s identity (one’s ‘name’ was one’s existence). In taryū shiai, one absolutely accepted the possibility that one might injure, even kill one’s opponent, and furthermore, would not hold back if such an act was necessary for victory. [NOTE: I said ‘accepted,’ not necessarily ‘intent upon’]. The line between taryū shiai and shinken-shobu, therefore, was tenuous. In a famous match, Higuchi Takashige of Maniwa Nen-ryū fought Murakami Gonzaemon of Ten-ryū using wooden swords. Higuchi killed his opponent with a single blow to the skull, and then left his home, accounts say, to escape Murakami’s vengeful disciples. What this illustrates is that in taryū shiai, even though it was almost always a one-on-one engagement, one is fighting for one’s ryūha against that of another. In defeating Murakami, Higuchi destroyed the standing of Ten-ryū and in the logic of the times, his students were justified in seeking his death (and this was true even though Murakami was the belligerent challenger).

To be sure, many if not most such matches ended without death or even permanent injury, even when oaken weaponry was used, but that was usually because the skill level of one individual was far greater than the other, or the two individuals mutually, perhaps unconsciously, came to an agreement to take things only so far. Of course, with safety equipment, such as body armor and shinai, one could fight an entire day (and many did) without injury. Nonetheless, one always ran the risk that if the loser of a controlled match didn’t accept the outcome, he could escalate, and in the context of Edo society, attempting to disengage at that point would be viewed as cowardice. A wonderful example of this is shown in the movie The Seven Samurai.

Without one’s identity and that of one’s martial tradition on the line—and without the possibility of death—it was not taryū shiai. Strictly speaking, you were in a situation where you were engaged in mutually-agreed upon violence, intending to use all the skills and power that your school bequeathed you, and you accepted the possibility that you may die either by misadventure or a deliberate act on the part of the other person. You also accepted the possibility that you might kill the other person. Taryū shiai was like being in a gambling game when you stake your home on a single throw of the dice.

How can you trust another person when they frame things in a context of personal destruction, defeating not only you, but your ryūha, and then, conceivably, broadcasting that victory to the world? How can you trust their agreement to whatever rules or parameters you come up with? As the challenger, how far are you prepared to take things if you are losing? If you win, are you prepared for revenge on the part of the other individual or his students? And are you prepared to accept any legal consequences, both criminal and civil, that may occur after such a bout; that was a given to bushi in the Edo period. If you can answer these questions in the affirmative, then this is taryū shiai. If not . . .

If, however, you were to respond, “This is modern times, and no one would do those sorts of things,” then you have irrevocably altered a medieval practice according to your tastes, in essence, saying, “I want to win a match, and build up my ego or reputation, without fundamental risk.” In a typical story of earlier times, Saito Denkibo, the founder of Ten-ryū, was assassinated by the vengeful students of his thirty-eighth victory—they surrounded him and filled him “as full of arrows as a hedgehog has quills.” What is most notable about this is nowhere in such contemporary stories is there any criticism towards the vengeful students of a defeated individual. That is what you took on when you challenged someone in a true taryū shiai.

If someone means to aggrandize their reputation and ego against me; how can I trust anything they say, given that they’ve already promised to try to destroy me? My point here is that, the only way to import a dangerous complicated archaic cultural action into modern times requires you to either warp the custom according to your own personal taste or  truly hold to those old principles. And it should not be incumbent upon the other person to try to figure out which it is. Therefore, from the (medieval Japanese) perspective that I was educated, I teach my own students that were anyone to demand a taryū shiai, I expect them to treat this exactly the same as a threat against their life, that someone has announced the willingness to kill them.

Some people may object that with protective equipment, one can enact taryū shiai without the threat of death or even injury. Let me underscore: that is wonderful training; I’ve done it many times. It’s great competition, and it may serve to really make you, as well as your ryūha, stronger. However, such encounters can easily devolve into a game or live-action role-play. For a modern example of the same thing, I know an individual who bragged to me that a Navy Seal once participated in his local paint ball competition. He claimed that he ‘shot’ him several times, and that the Spec Ops professional admired him as being his superior. Superior at what? Certainly not combat—a paint-ball range in Greece is not the hills of Afghanistan. 10

Even with real weaponry, even without explicit rules, it is still not necessarily taryū shiai. Although I have crossed oaken and steel weaponry with people in freestyle situations, both with and without body armor, and have even been injured in this process, we had an unspoken, but clear understanding just how far we could go. Without any explicit verbal agreement, we would strive to abort attacks within that fraction of a second that we were aware that the other person could not adequately defend themselves. For example, at the moment I knew I would strike someone with a wooden weapon:

• I opened my hands rather than closing them, so full body power was not transmitted through the weapon.
• By locking my shoulders, I arrested the weapon’s forward momentum.
• Even as I struck them, I twisted my body, so that the blow was glancing rather than direct.

Others have done exactly the same for me.

In fact, I have never  struck/cut someone, or the weapon they use to shield themselves, with full power in a freestyle match usng a wooden or metal weapon. [Kata, at least the way we practice it, gives us an opportunity to do so, in circumstances where it is not a given that someone will surely be injured or killed.]

Therefore, I do not regard what I have done as true taryū shiai. What, then, were we doing?

(試し合い) Tameshi-ai

Tameshi-ai (試し合い ‘Assessment match’) may appear to be the same as taryū-shiai. The different is that the primary concern is to improve oneself and one’s own ryūha rather than it is about destroying the social standing or dōjō of the other person. Tameshi-ai can happen within one’s own dōjō, and it can occur amongst those from other ryūha. This can vary from ‘hard training,’ to something that is actually hand-to-hand fighting, albeit with rules, implicit or explicit.

I have engaged in tameshi-ai with various levels of intensity with individuals from about five or six different ryūha. I definitely wanted to defeat them. I definitely didn’t want to be beaten. But they were not my enemies. The primary reason I participated was to hone my own skills, or respond to someone else who challenged me with that in mind. Any time I lost (and such a shiai might have multiple engagements), I took those losses back to my own training: in earlier days, I consulted with my own teacher about what I did wrong; since I left Japan, I’ve done so on my own. 11

On one occasion, both of us wearing kendō armor, I acquitted myself quite well, with  naginata, kumiuchi and chigiriki, but in sword-against-sword engagements, I lost more than I won. Over and over again, I kept getting my wrist struck by my opponent’s fukuro shinai. If one regards each engagement as a separate fight against a separate opponent, I had my arm severed five different times. My instructor was only a little interested in how I won: he focused almost exclusively on this single waza. He was angry with me for losing (the line between taryū-shiai and tameshi-ai is ephemeral indeed), but he felt responsibility for this happening, which made him even more angry. In the only time in twenty-one years that he ever apologized to me for anything, he said, “Moshiwake arimasen. Kote no koto o oshienakatta.” Essentially: “I’m sorry. I didn’t teach you the essence of the wrist,” (as in ‘attack of’ and ‘defense against’). We got up the next morning at 6 AM and he spent half a day teaching me this one point, essentially a gokui of our own school.  My opponent and I both agreed to a second engagement, again with a variety of weapons and this time without protective armor; we both felt that without the element of fear, we were reacting unnaturally. This time, not only could he not ‘cut’ my wrist, but I ‘cut’ his several times—I defeated him using our version of his own specialty, (not to say the next time might be different yet again, were he to study how he lost at this point).

Another interesting moment occurred in the same match—my school had a particular technique that was ubiquitous among our various weaponry, a very aggressive feint to the head, followed by dropping to one knee to cut the opponent’s leg. With asymmetry (a long weapon such as naginata against sword), this technique is very powerful. During one engagement, I decided, per our kata, to test it sword-against sword. I was a fraction of an inch from my opponent’s knee when he planted the tip of his fukuro shinai so deeply in my eye-socket that, coupled with my instinctive reaction, it took me off my feet. In retrospect, I recognized his technique as one I’d seen in his school’s gokui, though in their publicly-presented kata, it was directed against another target entirely. Taking this back to my instructor as well, we decided that, in this case, the flaw was in the technique itself—my opponent’s ryūha had prepared for such an attack as ours by utilizing and coordinating a ‘panic’ last-second reaction into a counter that would even work against an armored enemy, stabbing into the eye through the hole in one’s mempi (‘face mask’). Our response to this data was to discard all the sword-on-sword kata with that technique. It is no longer part of our curriculum. Why train in something that was proven to be flawed?

In short, tameshi-ai is a testing and enhancement of one’s skills (as well as those of the person you are facing). It can be rugged, it can be dangerous, and conceivably, one could get seriously injured or even die (in the example I described above, I managed to flinch backwards at the last micro-second rather than continuing my forward attack, probably saving my eye). However, even at its extreme, it is a fight-without-rancor. 12 

With tameshi-ai, there are ‘rules:’ they are sometimes merely an implicit understanding on how hard and heavy to go. As one of my own teachers put it, “We are trying to kill each other, but let’s try to not injure each other in the process.” This can be mis-perceived by one or both participants, and things can easily escalate. Japanese culture is one of nuance—of grey areas. Tameshi-ai can shift into taryū-shiai or even shinken-shobu. For example, what if one is engaged in a tameshi-ai and the other person fights ugly—a deliberate cheap shot, for example, breaking the rules that are either open or implied, and rather than disengage, you take it as a personal insult that you will not accept? Or, even if that wasn’t the intention of one person, it is taken as such by the other. Or the person starts acting disrespectfully, and you realize that, because of your control, they perceive you and your school with contempt, something they will announce to the world—you see yourself as defending the honor of your ryūha, your teachers and/or yourself, and from this point, it becomes a taryū-shiai. Or they are simply trying to hurt you—because they lost their temper, got scared, or simply are a malevolent human being—and it becomes a fight.

Paradoxically, then, when I have engaged in tameshi-ai, it is with individuals whom I respect and whom I do trust. Yet even when I do accept to participate in such an engagement, I am fully prepared for my trust to be violated; part of such training is a moment-by-moment assessment, within the engagement if, in fact, we are still within the aegis of tameshi-ai or if things have changed into something else. One of my instructors, who did engage in taryū-shiai, exactly as I have described in the last section, once said to me (while in his cups—he never said anything complimentary to me while sober): “I hate to admit it, but you do things better than me. You are getting as valuable  information for our ryū as I did, but you manage to stay friends with people in the process.” 13

Perhaps, at this point, a reader might ask: “What ryūha did you engage with in such contests?” I follow a perspective described to me in a discussion with a senior member of Kashima Shin-ryū. Kunii Zen’ya, the 18th generation headmaster of the school, was well-known, if not infamous for his taryū-shiai (again, the distinction between taryū-shiai and tameshi-ai is as much intent as anything else). Each of his matches is recorded within the annals of the school, as a means of teaching the strengths and weaknesses of their methodology. However, when Kunii was asked publicly who he fought, his reply (my decade-old paraphrase here) was something like: “Announcing who I defeated would be budō. I am practicing bujutsu. Budō is a self-centered pursuit, and this is true whether one is doing modern budō, which is like Western sports,  competing to enhance your reputation or if you want to get yourself enlightened. I have done what I have done for the sake of Kashima Shin-ryū. Improving my reputation at another person’s expense, at another ryūha’s expense, is a selfish act, and not for the sake of our school.”

(手合せ) Te-Awase

Te-awase (手合せ lit. ‘linking hands) is sparring. In modern terms, this means ‘live training.’ This can be serious or enjoyable, it can be dangerous or not, but it is, unambiguously, training. That’s all. To be sure, no one wants to lose. In te-awase, however, we willingly go out of our comfort zone; perhaps we try something new, something different, even if it means ‘defeat.’ Of all modern martial arts, I think that BJJ understands this best.

A wonderful example of te-awase is described in my essay, Steal the Technique. Of this event, I write:

I recently met with a peer – a training brother who shares one ryūha with me, but trains in another, completely different. We were ‘comparing notes with bokken,’ so to speak – not at the level of shiai, but by what could be termed te-awase (‘crossing hands’). We were studying things from tsuba-zeriai, when one’s two swords are crossed (in our case through powerful mutual attacks), with each of us striving to achieve an advantageous angle, a deflection, an application of power . . . .something— to open up the opponent’s defenses to cut him. I was doing this repeatedly, and my friend was taking this seriously—every time I succeeded, he ‘died.’ This was not an ego problem; it was underlining a survival issue, and he, as a professional, rose to the challenge. On several occasions, just as I was about to cut/strike him once again, my friend lashed out with a reflexive response, a cut that came from an angle I didn’t imagine a cut could come.

He wasn’t even trying to ‘beat me,’—we were not competitive in the slightest. It is simply that he perceived something that was, implicitly, a danger to his life, and he responded with techniques engrained in him from his training in his own ryūha. These are what I refer to as ‘pseudo-instincts,’ trained responses that emerge without thought or preparation. I was able to counter these cuts at the very last fraction of a second to avoid my head being stoved in. Just barely. His training provided him with responses to the threat I presented. In these instances, I considered myself as having lost, because my deflection was purely defensive, not defense-and offense in one. Were he a little faster, or a little more powerful (and formidable man that he is, this is sure—next time he will be more dangerous), I might have been injured or even killed. And because he had a momentary advantage, had we continued in each of these particular engagements, he might have overwhelmed me with subsequent attacks.

Whenever an event like this happens in my training, I spend some sleepless nights. Without choosing to, the experience infests my consciousness. I kept feeling the wooden sword a fraction of an inch from my head or neck (on one occasion, it literally touched my skin just as I interposed my weapon in-between his weapon and my neck), I saw the blur of motion through the air, I felt the sudden change of pressure between us as we moved. What I do NOT do is imagine counters. That’s equivalent of watching a boxing match and thinking you see a hole in one of the boxer’s defenses, imagine your jab or straight getting through, when the world- ranked competitor in the actual ring is unable to do so. I simply re-experienced my own near death over and over. From the sleeplessness recurrence of the experience comes sleep itself, and in odd and inchoate ways, it appeared in my dreams: a wasp flying towards my eye; standing next to a tree that begins to topple on top of me; a piece of paper flying on the windshield as I drive, blocking my view. And the result? I was home, several weeks later, practicing with another training brother from another discipline, and something had coalesced. We were working out some innovative sword training of our own, and not only had I somehow ‘unconsciously’ worked out responses to the attacks of my previous training partner, I had actually incorporated some of his technique into my own. With one experience, I learned how to fight with a sword at a different combative spacing that was, hitherto, my preferred engagement distance. I haven’t lost whatI knew before. This new information has seamlessly woven into my body.

I would add: there is absolutely no way that merely re-enacting kata would have provided me with the knowledge I acquired. I needed someone to ‘break open’ the structure of my world. This is only possible through some form of live training, against someone who will not—in fact, may be incapable of—moving in a way according to one’s own engrained expectations. The question for all of us is how to do this as twenty-first century individuals, treasuring the tradition of the past while making it live today in a manner that befits men and women of integrity.

Footnotes

1 I believe that bō no te served peasants and craftsmen as a training methodology suited to their class and culture just as bugei did for the warrior class. Both made people fighting fit, familiarized them with the manipulation of weaponry and at the same time, inculcated values appropriate to their culture. By the mid-Edo period, these two types of training merged in rural areas. For example, in some of the dramatic kata with chained weaponry of the Kiraku-ryū and Araki-ryū, one sees obvious similarities to bō no te.

2 As a small example of this, it is amazing to me (and sometimes really entertaining) how differently people respond in free-style training against knife, when practicing against a wooden/blunt metal replica as opposed to a Shock-Knife. With the latter individuals go into a panic mode, as soon as the blade sparks. And the ShockKnife just hurts, as opposed to a real blade, where the stakes are much higher still. I should mention that some individuals do not change their demeanor in the slightest, and focus solely on properly neutralizing the threat posed by the ‘electric blade.’

3 One of my associates, Don Gulla, viewed an autopsy of a man who had his heart obliterated at close range with a shot-gun blast—there was simply a fist-sized hole where his heart once beat. However, before he dropped dead, the man had continued to fire his own gun for a minute—with no heart.

4 The reason the account explicitly notes ‘blade upwards’ is that this is a killing stab—when a single-bladed weapon is stabbed and withdrawn blade upwards, the wound exponentially widens. Even today, in Japanese jurisprudence, if an individual stabs another blade-upwards with a knife, their sentence is increased, because they are viewed as having conscious murderous intent. (Untrained people tend to stab with a knife, holding it the same way they do when they are cutting vegetables).

5 As can be seen in the link to this Wikipedia article on Araki Mataemon, which I discovered while writing this essay, my memory was essentially correct. Current conventional wisdom describes Araki defeating two individuals, and additionally, he had an ally in doing so.

6 Ishu-uchi was the most fraught, legally. If, for example, one killed another because of an insult, one would have to legitimize this to legal authorities, defining it as a kind of ‘self-defense,’ because there was no way to accept such dishonor on behalf of one’s lord, one’s family or self. If the authorities did not agree, one preserved one’s honor, at that point, through seppuku.

7 I can imagine several very interesting research projects concerning duels in the Edo period. As there were very strict laws concerning such acts, there are likely to be accounts, as well as statistics, among the records of various feudal domains, including:

• The legal applications for duels in various feudal domains, including the numbers, the reasons, and the results.
• Orders from feudal lords to execute individuals whose duel was not viewed as within legal bounds, with the reasons and an account of the actual fight.
• Court decisions regarding violent deaths—particularly amongst bushi—would be most interesting, as this would give a clear picture of how inter-personal violence was regarded in this era.

8 I discuss one of the most prominent of these factional disputes, the Ikahojinja Jiken, between the Maniwa Nen-ryū and the Hokushin Ittō-ryū in Chapter 13 of Old School

9 There are diaries of various individuals that record their own challenges to various dōjō. What is striking is how amicable most accounts were, more tameshi-ai than dōjō-yaburi, and how many individuals would record such things as winning ‘three bouts and losing two.’ See the section on tameshi-ai later in this essay.

10 It’s about this time that some readers will cite the Dog Brothers. One of my students is a member of the ‘pack,’ and I helped him prepare for a match using a bokken vs. a Chinese spear. Another has competed a number of times in a European organization quite similar and he entered my dōjō by having an unarmored match with me, using leather-covered shinai. But these are not taryū shiai. They are the epitome of tameshi-ai, which I will describe in the next section, as exemplified in their own motto, “Higher consciousness through harder contact.”

11 My teacher and I agreed that the first engagement, above all, was the most important—therefore one used one’s most powerful techniques. As is so typical in Japan, things can be more than one thing. For me, the first engagement approached taryū shiai. After that, with my opponent ‘dead,’ there was room to experiment.

12  Although from another culture, a perfect example of tameshi-ai are the frequent episodes involving the Malaysian-Chinese taijiquan teacher, Lei Bei Lei.  About this same man engaging with Donn Draeger, Michael Belzer writes: “I trained with Donn at the dojo several times, and afterwards, listened to stories from his latest expedition. I heard about a tussle he had with a ‘combat taijiquan’ man, Lee Pit Lai (Lee Bei Lei) . . . . Apparently, (he) started to push Donn, so he responded with a foot sweep that unbalanced him and got his attention. I heard later that the two of them ended up in another skirmish that knocked a sink off the wall.”

13 This is a point that I believe the practitioners of HEMA understand with much more depth and ease than members of traditional Japanese martial arts. There, it is a matter of course to research things in that manner; it can be both ferocious and fun at the same time.

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