Crossing the Threshold

At Budo Journeyman, there is an interesting post about the generations of Japanese martial artists who were active as the transition was being made from the traditional classical martial arts (koryu) into modern(ish) budo.

An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here. 

A theory that there was one snapshot in Japanese history that created a uniquely fertile environment for martial art growth. A historical ‘perfect storm’.

I am grateful to my friend Carl O’Malley for prompting this train of thought.

1890’s or early 1900’s Japan. Otsuka Hironori (then known as Otsuka Ko) was just a boy, but he remembered distinctly first-hand experiences of the remnants of the then defunct and disenfranchised samurai class.

In his book he mentions a certain Mr Suzuki Yoshio, who he described as a seventy-five year old samurai; an elderly warrior from a different age, who had been obviously dramatically and suddenly made obsolete and virtually unemployable as a result of the restructuring of Japanese society in the 1868 Meiji Restoration.

Otsuka Ko describes Mr Suzuki’s demeanour; his look of distrust; even a small boy could be seen as a potential threat. Reading between the lines, for me there seems to be more than a hint of toxic hyper-vigilance, as well as a man being out of his time.

Similarly, Otsuka’s mother’s uncle was another elderly relic. Whether he lived with the family or nearby, I don’t know, but Ebashi Chojiro was a retired/redundant martial arts teacher of the Tsuchiura clan, then based in Ibaraki and disestablished in 1871.

Ebashi’s presence in the youngster’s life was not insignificant. I mention this because these characters were on the tail-end of the historical social circumstances that swirled around the young Otsuka and his extended family.

As he was maturing and growing up, Otsuka’s cultural references, his markers of identity, of who he was, where he came from and where he might go to, gives us a picture of an individual pulled in two directions; the historical past and the modernising future.

A personal reflection.

Now, you might say that doesn’t make him unique… because, aren’t we all in the same boat?

If I look at my own situation.

I was born just thirteen years after the end of WW2; my grandparents were Victorians (granny was born in 1888, the year that Jack the Ripper was prowling the streets of Whitechapel) massive generational differences there.

To a lesser degree than Otsuka’s, like everyone from my generation, I think I can also map out my own life into two distinct epochs:

Internet age and Pre-Internet age.

There is nothing insignificant about those two eras and, in a way, I feel fortunate to have experienced both of them.

But, to return to the martial arts theme.

Otsuka and the other Japanese martial artists crossing the eras.

As mentioned, it was Carl O’Malley who proposed the idea that maybe the Japanese martial artists from that particular timeframe had something special that was not available to the later generations.

As a kendoka; he suggested that younger kendo practitioners had only ever known the modern iteration of kendo as a sport. Whereas for those who trained in kendo in the very early 20^th century, it is possible that a large percentage of them had experienced the older forms of kenjutsu, with the blade and the bokken, (not the shinai), and everything that entailed. They would have had Koryu (‘Old School/Tradition’) roots. They were swordsmen first and sporting kendo practitioners second.

Time for some concrete evidence.

First example; Nakayama Hakudō (1872 – 1958).

Here we have a perfect model of a swordsman who bestrode both eras. Look at the years…

Nakayama is cited as started his sword training in a traditional Ryu (Shindō Munen-ryū) in 1891, (this was the school founded in the early 18^th century by Fukui Hyōemon Yoshihira, a man who sharpened his skills through duelling in death matches). But, he was actually learning some aspects of swordsmanship from the age of eleven.

Nakayama’s training in the Old Schools would have been very traditional, but based on the deadly serious business found at the edge of the razor-sharp sword.

Nakayama’s dedication to the sword art inevitably involved the bold move of modernisation and significant revision of the older material through kendo and Iaido. My brief description does him no justice – for a fuller story, follow this link: https://www.budokanworld.com/theforgottenlineage