Three Components to Learning Traditional Japanese Martial Arts

Below is an excerpt from an excellent article that was posted at The Classical Budoka. The full article may be read here.

It started off pretty innocuously. A student in a friend’s koryu martial arts class asked what kind of influence Shinto, the nativistic Japanese set of beliefs, had on their training. My friend composed a lengthy email about the subject, asking me and another peer for further comments.  We added quite a bit of our own opinions, which were then annotated further by my friend. In total, printed out, the discussion could have taken several pages’ worth of commentary.

Now, koryu practice is usually not meant to be a sit-down lecture on such esoterica, which is why I think my friend preferred to discuss it via email and printed notes rather than take up more time in the dojo better spent training with a partner in the actual techniques. But it highlights the fact that in traditional Japanese arts (and, for that matter, many arts and crafts of any culture), there are three components to learning the art, not just the “practical” experience of the physical techniques. In Japanese, these are defined as Do, Gaku, Jutsu.