A Cautionary Tale

My wife was on Facebook the other day, and noticed a trend where people were asking ChatGPT to describe them as a warning to someone who might meet them. It's an interesting spin. 

I did it and have pasted it below. My kids think it's spot on.

If I were warning someone before they met you, I’d probably say:

“You should know what you’re getting into.”

He looks fairly harmless. That’s part of the problem.

He’s curious in a way that makes ordinary conversation dangerous. You can start with a book, a martial art, a quotation, or some apparently minor observation, and before long you’re discussing Stoicism, mimetic desire, craftsmanship, the nature of mastery, or what it means to live a good life. He doesn’t merely collect ideas. He cross-pollinates them.

He also has a very low tolerance for intellectual mush. If something sounds fashionable but empty, he’ll poke it with a stick. If something is genuinely useful, he’ll keep worrying at it until he has figured out how it fits with everything else he believes.

And beware of saying, “That’s interesting.”

He may ask why.

He has been practicing martial arts long enough that he has gradually stopped being particularly interested in martial arts as a collection of techniques. The deeper question has become what practice does to a person. This has infected the rest of his life. Walking the dog can become practice. Weightlifting can become practice. Reading can become practice. Writing can become practice. Apparently even slowing down can become a philosophical proposition.

He is also an essentialist, which means he is continually trying to remove things from his life while simultaneously acquiring books about things he absolutely does not need to know. Do not point out the contradiction. He knows.

He has a peculiar relationship with tradition. He respects it deeply, but he doesn’t worship it. His instinct is something like: learn the tradition thoroughly enough that you can eventually discover what you actually think. This makes him simultaneously conservative about fundamentals and rather independent about conclusions.

His blog has been running for more than twenty years, which should tell you something about persistence. He has accumulated a substantial mental attic in that time, and every so often he opens a trunk and pulls out an idea from fifteen years ago that turns out to connect rather inconveniently well with something he just read yesterday.

He is also liable to tell you about some obscure quotation he remembers approximately, from a book whose title he can’t quite recall, and then become mildly obsessed with finding the exact wording.

Do not underestimate the “mildly.”

There is another hazard: he actually likes thinking things through with another person. Not debating for sport. Not collecting agreement. Thinking. If you offer a useful idea, he will take it, turn it over, connect it to three other things, and hand it back considerably more interesting than when you gave it to him.

And if you happen to say something that really resonates with him, you may accidentally become part of a book he hasn’t written yet.

So, yes, meet him.

Just allow more time than you think you need.

And whatever you do, don’t casually mention that you’ve been thinking about the nature of mastery.

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

 

Classical Martial Arts and Police Work During the Shogunate

At Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, there was a guest post describing how classical martial arts was employed during the Shogunate by the constabulary. Fascinating stuff. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

“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.

Formal law codes had, for centuries, addressed various kinds of offenses, both civil and criminal: the Joei Code (1232), among various administrative regulations for matters regarding shrines, temples, lands and civil lawsuits also included processes for handling “crimes of killing, maiming, and wounding . . . serious crimes, such as treason, murder, banditry (sanzoku), piracy (kaizoku), night attacks, robbery, and the like” as well as more conventional beatings, forgery, and “abusive language,” that had a tendency to cause quarrels. (Conlan 2022: 47) This calls to mind what we might today call “disorderly conduct” or “provoking assault.”

The Joei Code and its principles were used as common law in the domains of regional lords (daimyo), or included in their house precepts.4  In 1459, the Ouchi domain published law on the walls surrounding the lord’s mansion, where they could be read by all. They prohibited, among other offenses, “wandering along major roads at night” “sumo wrestling at crossroads,” “taking women on the roadside,” (a reference to prostitution/sex trafficking rather than rape or kidnapping), and “wearing strange clothes, claiming that it is the style of the capital.” (Conlan 2022: 194) These were updated over time and in 1487 expanded, prohibiting carrying “[L]ong weapons (nagagusoku – ‘ referring to glaives (naginata), longswords (odachi), or pikes (yari)’  ), bows, and quivers,” although certain individuals were exempt. Apparently one could not walk with “flutes, shakuhachi, or other instruments” unless close to one’s residence, and there was a problem with “loitering” involving “people leering into the Ouchi mansions.”  “Night watchmen” were expected to know the law and enjoined to enforce it, for example, for the crime of killing soft-shelled turtles to use as hawk-bait, “the common rabble (honge no tomogara) if they are seen, or rumored to be, killing turtles, they shall be arrested or cut down at the place where it happened, according to the situation.” (Ibid: 194 -197)

In 1506, in the then-capital (Kyoto), law forbade theft, arson, armed assault, “quarrels,” sumo wrestling (again!), and the troublesome dancing (in the streets). (Berry 1994: 245 ) The Jinkaishu, a 1536 legal code of the Date house of Mutsu Province in northern Japan, codified practices for handling offenses including “violent contests;” or “when crazed drunkards kill people [and] claim inebriation as an excuse;” “cases where people impulsively quarreled, or were crazed at a banquet, and unpremeditatedly killed someone.” And, perhaps particularly interesting, instances where people “claimed that through skill they killed ambushers when in fact they ambushed their rival in a surprise attack.” Behavioral expectations are laid out for lords and retainers involved in violent altercations, assassinations, and other killings, including not abetting or harboring killers, tracking them down, searching locations for them, and capturing or killing them. There were punishments for when offenders were killed inadvertently, when captured suspects did not confess, or when personally performing arrests or cutting people down when there was not proper evidence demonstrating guilt. (Ibid: 206-215 ) 5  After the early years of the 17th century, Tokugawa shoguns began promulgating the Buke Shohatto, Laws for Warrior Houses, codes of conduct, laws, and expectations for the warrior class intended to establish the absolute authority of the shogun’s government – called the Bakufu –  over other domains. This was institutionalized in 1635, and from then daimyo were required to follow Bakufu law in enforcement and sentencing procedures, and were periodically checked on to ensure compliance. (Botsman: 15)

Maintaining order was an overriding concern, for “below the peace that was taking place at the national level with no wars there was still a fair amount of violence in Tokugawa society.” (Vaporis 2022: 235)  We learn from the Omurochuki (Diary of a Parrot in a Cage), the journal of the low-ranking samurai Asahi Shigeaki (1674 -1718), that some young, unemployed samurai killed for sport and material gain, in what was known as “‘street murders’ (tsuji kiri), passersby were killed with swords and robbed.” (Vaporis 2022: 234-235, 351)  6  At the same time. there was a conscious effort by the warrior government to ameliorate the general image of warriors as fiendish butchers carried over from the Warring States period, and to turn warrior-lords away from ideas of military conquest toward keeping civil order. “‘[T]he way of the warrior’ (budō) should be understood as an ‘instrument for killing evil.” The government “was to use it to ‘purify the realm.’” Warriors were now to be seen as benevolent, serving and protecting the public, as “the Tokugawa judicial system came to place considerable emphasis on what would today be called “victim’s rights.” It was realized that too harsh a system of punishment would interfere with the shogun being seen as a benevolent ruler. “[W]arrior officials in the Tokugawa period combined relatively lax enforcement and a tendency to turn a blind eye to minor infractions with the use of “flamboyant” displays of their own power – to pardon as well as punish. This made it possible to bolster warrior authority with the threat of terrifying punishment on the one hand, while also cultivating the goodwill of the general population on the other, with evidence of official flexibility, restraint, and mercy.” (Botsman: 41-42. 49) 7

As we see in newsfeeds today, turning a blind eye toward petty crimes was not without its downstream effects or its critics. By the 1720s, Ogyu Sorai complained that “houses are broken into everywhere; criminals murder, steal and commit arson; and in the middle of the night they lie in waiting in deserted places to rob people,” and remembered “the days when officials routinely cut criminals down on the spot” while lamenting a “dramatic decline in the warrior’s martial spirit.”  (Botsman: 86-87) No social strata was above reproach. In 1747, a mentally unstable Shogun’s hatamoto  murdered a man in the toilet at Edo castle. 8 Even daimyo were suspected of terrible crimes, including the lord of Mito domain Tokugawa Mitsukuni, when he was young man. “The Tosa samurai Mori Masana, while traveling to Edo in 1829 reported stories that the retired lord of Wakayama would go out at night with four or five attendants, enter people’s homes, and kill them. He is reputed to have killed hundreds of people this way.” (Vaporis 2022: 351)

Enforcing laws and bringing violators to justice fell to local lords following Bakufu law. In rural areas, village headmen and low-status warriors acted as constabulary; maintaining order, capturing or killing violators, and rounding up vagrants and beggars – a persistent problem that only grew worse over time – and putting down public disturbances and uprisings throughout the Edo period. (Botsman) This included duties during sankin-kōtai, the system of “alternate attendance” at the capital city, Edo, in which lords were required to alternate between a year spent residing in their domains with one in the capital. (Nishiyama 1997) Retainers of individual daimyo were required to staff guard-houses in the samurai neighborhoods of Edo and perform basic policing functions in their jurisdiction. Written guides were produced for warriors staffing neighborhood guard stations (tsuji-bansho ) in “how to handle unusual situations.”  These situations included corpses (murders or suicides), violent behavior, altercations and fights in front of samurai mansions, violence and injuries within the samurai residences, and attacks using swords. The expectations and other job duties for the guards were strikingly similar to the kinds of things seen in law and policy for law enforcement today: deserted children (a child under three is “deserted” but an older child is “lost”), fugitives, drunks and vagrants, illegal disposals and dumping, lost objects, unruly or dead horses, rescuing people who had fallen into moats, suspicious characters, accidents on the streets, and jurisdictional matters (for instance if a body is found on the border between two tsuji-bansho, the location of the feet — for men it was the left foot, and for women, the right — determined which jurisdiction bore responsibility). 9

Lower-status warriors were required to train in the necessary skills to fill these roles. Passin noted that upper-class samurai learned swordsmanship, horse riding, and archery “as a form of spiritual training,” while lower-class warriors “were taught jūjutsu, lancemanship, group tactics, and rifle.” (1965 p. 21) Michael Wert, in his study of rural swordsmen also pointed out that “martial arts and swordsmanship were practiced differently by different samurai status groups, with an inverse relationship between cultural capital value and combat efficacy.” High ranking samurai were not compensated for their training and their official schools focussed on swordsmanship to strengthen their warrior identity. In the Kaga Han, low-status warriors were “ordered by the domain to learn staff fighting and grappling (jūjutsu).” These samurai foot soldiers (ashigaru), “who used the arts directly in their duties” received compensation for training and “studied arresting techniques or staff fighting (bōjutsu), skills used in their policing roles.”  (Wert, unpublished manuscript: 6-7)

The class expectations relative to “peace officer” duties, and how they changed, were illustrated by Confucian scholar, writer, and politician Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) noting in his autobiography:  “when I was seventeen or eighteen, I accidentally dropped in my father’s presence, a torinawa, a finely wound green cord with a hook at the end used for tying people up, which I was carrying in my bosom.” His father noticed the item and said “Long ago, when I was in office, I used to keep this by me in my flint bag.  I thought that if I ordered men to seize  and bind some disorderly fellow, they might not have it in readiness. When I retired, I had no further use for it, and I kept it for tying up the cat. It is proper that a warrior should know every part of his duties. However, there are things which a man should or should not do, according to his station. This cord is not something you should keep about your person, and you are old enough to know better.” (Hakuseki, p. 48-49)

 

 

Martial Discipline

At the Okinawan Fighting Art, "Ti" blog, there was a recent post on martial arts training and discipline. And excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

The Secret in Martial Discipline

Turning Intention into Prepared Self-Defense

Mind sees the pathway
Hands repeat what thought has shaped
Calm arrives through skill

Wish is not armor
Practice gives intention form
Awareness stands guard

A conversational essay on intention, visualization, confidence, disciplined practice, and reality-based self-defense

Introduction

Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret presents a simple and attractive proposition: what we consistently focus on, believe in, feel, and expect can influence what we experience. Its best-known formula is “Ask, Believe, Receive,” supported by practices such as visualization, gratitude, intention, affirmations, and deliberate management of thoughts and feelings. Taken literally, The Secret goes further and describes these practices as working through a universal “law of attraction.” That metaphysical claim is controversial and is not established by mainstream scientific evidence. Yet several of the practical habits wrapped inside the philosophy can be translated into useful methods for teaching and practicing martial disciplines for civilian self-defense.

The key is translation. 

In a dojo concerned with self-defense, “attraction” should never mean believing that a desired outcome will simply appear. It can instead be treated as a discipline of attention: decide what kind of martial artist you intend to become, mentally rehearse appropriate behavior, build confidence through competent practice, notice opportunities to improve, and repeatedly act in ways consistent with the desired result.

In that form, The Secret becomes less a promise that thoughts control external reality and more a reminder that thoughts can influence attention, motivation, emotional regulation, practice quality, and behavior. Those factors genuinely matter when a student is learning to protect himself or herself.

1. Ask: Define the Desired Outcome

The “Ask” principle begins with clarity. In self-defense training, a poorly defined goal often produces poorly organized practice. “I want to be good at fighting” is vague. A more useful intention is: “I want to recognize danger early, avoid unnecessary conflict, remain composed under pressure, protect myself or another person when necessary, and disengage safely.”

That distinction is important because civilian self-defense is not primarily about defeating an opponent. It is about managing danger. The desired outcome should therefore include awareness, avoidance, verbal boundary setting, positioning, escape, proportional physical response, and post-incident judgment—not merely striking or grappling ability.

An instructor can apply the Ask principle by having students identify specific capabilities. 

• One student may need to improve balance and movement. 
• Another may freeze when confronted verbally. 
• Another may possess strong technique but make poor tactical decisions. 

Clear intentions allow practice to become purposeful rather than mechanical.

In traditional martial language, this resembles giving direction to shugyō—disciplined training. The student is not merely accumulating techniques. He or she is deliberately shaping character, perception, judgment, and physical capability toward a defined end.

Japanese Koryu Martial Arts Transmission

As a result of his excellent post, which I've posted an excerpt here; The Budo Bum recently published a guest post by Tobin Threadgill, who is a senior practitioner of Shindo Yoshin-Ryu. An excerpt from the guest post is below. The full post may be read here.

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I am honored to share this essay by Tobin Threadgill Sensei of Takamura Ha Shindo Yoshin Ryu, written in reaction to my essay Budo Isn’t Finished. I deeply appreciate him allowing me to share this here. P.B.

by Tobin Threadgill

Transmission of knowledge in a koryu budo can be challenging. No headmaster can transmit 100% of what they know. The headmaster must competently address this resulting vacuum of knowledge, or the compounding loss can cripple a koryu budo ryuha in only several generations.

The subject of evolution in koryu was a frequently discussed topic with my teacher, Takamura Yukiyoshi sensei. He believed a thorough understanding of this subject was necessary so that a koryu budo tradition would not degenerate into what he described as “empty or pretty dancing”. When I hear an uninitiated individual discuss the topic of koryu, I am often struck by their lack of context and/or familiarity with what they are observing. The most glaring misunderstanding is related to the purpose and function of kata. I assume that this misinterpretation is partially related to exposure to the solo kata (enrengata) performed in Okinawan Karate and its progeny. In Japanese, there are two different kanji characters both pronounced in kata. The differences are subtle, but the one used in Okinawan karate (型) implies something finished like a mold, pattern, or standard. The one used in most koryu budo, also pronounced gyo (形), implies something more subtle, like form, model, or configuration. In the context of koryu budo, kata (gyo) are repositories of knowledge in a different manner than that of Okinawan Karate. It must be understood that koryu budo kata do not necessarily represent actual fighting. They do not always have to be realistic because they are frequently vessels that contain, preserve, and give context to genri and riai (tactics, principles, and combat theory). Many observers outside koryu simply fixate on the particular movements they observe in the execution of a kata without any grasp of the purpose underlying the movements. It’s like an outside observer watching a boxer use a speed bag and then announcing that such training is pointless because such punching would never be practical. They simply don’t understand the what’s or why’s of what they are observing.

The Dan Tian

A central topic in almost all martial arts revolves around the DanTian (Tanden). 

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared recently at Thoughts on Tai Chi. The full post may be read here.

So, what is the Dantian in Tai Chi, and why is it important? Although this blog is now well over ten years old, I have never actually written a post dedicated to defining it. Sure, I’ve touched on the subject of the Dantian and offered brief explanations in various posts, but I’ve never given it a focused treatment of its own.

To be honest, I never intended this blog to cater to beginners. When I post something, I generally assume that most readers already have some familiarity with the basic concepts. Still, I believe the Dantian deserves special attention—and here’s why: it’s a concept that needs to be understood on multiple levels. So, let’s try to explain it in a simple and accessible way, without shying away from its inherent complexity.

The main challenge with the Dantian as a concept is that the term has come to be used for things it was never meant to describe. Or rather, it has been adapted in ways that stray from its original meaning and applied to ideas outside its traditional scope. Unsurprisingly, conflicting interpretations lead to endless, unproductive debates—which is exactly why I’ve been hesitant to write about it at length.

By now, the confusion surrounding the term has reached a point where it feels futile to tell people they are wrong or that they have misunderstood what the Dantian really is. Not only would that hinder communication, but it would also reinforce the very problem—because although different explanations may seem completely at odds, the traditional and modern understandings do, in fact, overlap to some degree.

First, it’s important to recognize that when most people talk about “the” Dantian, what they actually mean is the lower Dantian. The concept originates from old Daoist tradition, and more specifically, from the theory developed within Neidan (internal alchemy) philosophy and practice. In that tradition, there is not just one Dantian, but three:

• The Lower Dantian – located inside the body below the navel, where Qi is refined.
• The Middle Dantian – situated at the solar plexus, where Breath is nurtured.
• The Upper Dantian – located in the head, where Shen (spirit) is nurtured.

The exact locations of these points cannot be measured objectively, as they are experienced individually. The lower Dantian is something you learn to feel through relaxation. And while some claim the upper Dantian corresponds to the “third eye,” traditional classical Neidan literature simply describes it as being somewhere in the head.

A key aspect of the traditional understanding is that these three cannot be separated; they must be worked with together. In very simplified terms, we can reduce them to the triad of breath, qi, and spirit. As an old Tai Chi saying goes: “The qi sinks, the spirit raises.” Qi circulates through the breath, and the spirit calms down through breath regulation.

However, when the term is used in a Tai Chi context, people often use “Dantian” to refer to something else—namely, the body’s center, or a focal point from which movement is directed. It is frequently used in much the same way as the Japanese term Hara. Some practitioners use the Dantian concept and awareness of that area to develop fuller breathing, while others practice isolating it from the body, as seen in certain Chen-style philosophies on “Dantian rotation.”

So, when people casually refer to “the” Dantian in Tai Chi as if there were only one, they are expressing a very simplified view—one that covers only a narrow and specific aspect of the physical side of the lower Dantian.

Tension and Relaxation in Karate

At the Budo Journeyman, there was an interesting article about excessive tension, as well as relaxation in karate training, which applies in my opinion to all martial arts. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

No sports coach has ever said to his protégé, ‘you need to have more tension’’. If anything, it’s going to be the complete opposite.¹

I have seen this so many times. It’s a bit like driving with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time.

It’s not just a matter of agonistic and antagonistic muscles (like the paired cooperation of the biceps and triceps) it’s more than that. It’s about the body’s ability to create perfect concert in movement, without unnecessarily burning energy that would be better employed doing something else. This is what highly trained martial artists should be trying to achieve.

In this piece I want to:

· Explain how this is locked in to karate culture.

· Describe how it manifests itself at individual level.

· Outline what a headache it can be for instructors desperate to help students eliminate the problem.

· Have a look at some possible solutions.

Karate styles across the spectrum.

From my observations, some karate systems appear to have totally bought into the strength and tension hegemony. If you speak to representatives of those styles and ask some searching questions about this, they have answers that make sense at an expert level, but sadly the erroneous image is out there, well ahead of any logic they want to apply to it. Look at Sanchin kata in Goju Ryu and related systems.

The image of the sweating, panting tension-ridden karateka has seeped into the public consciousness; isn’t that what you guys do? That and yell ‘Oss!’ at each other?

Not really.

In Wado?

Some branches of Wado karate made efforts to escape the stranglehold of ‘strength/tension is good’. Others, seldom think about it and carry on as if the conversation doesn’t need to happen. In Wado, here we have the curse of ‘just making Wado-like shapes’, only stronger. It’s very low down the evolutionary ladder.

 

Boys will be boys.

There’s no getting away from it, largely, this is a ‘guy’ thing. Seldom seen amongst female karateka.

The origin of it is quite simple…

Guys have a model in their heads of what the THINK strength looks like.

 

Self-awareness and conscious intelligent engagement.

The default for any instructor, Sensei or whatever, is that you have to consider that you are dealing with intelligent and reasonable individuals, who mostly want to change. I say ‘mostly’ because I have met people who are (educational term) ‘advice resistant’. This just creates an extra barrier.

Based upon my experience, most of these individuals fall into these general categories:

· ‘I’m not doing anything wrong; this is just me showing my strength/spirit/energy’ whatever… If that’s the case, you’ve got a mountain to climb with this person. Plus, they are not really valuing your opinion – another problem that needs addressing.

· ‘Yeah, I know, I just get carried away’. Well have a little self-awareness and just self-regulate!

· ‘I know you keep saying that, I think I get it’ (but deep down you don’t, because you are not aware of what it feels like. There’s a reality gap that needs bridging).

You could apply that old learning trope of:

• Unconscious Incompetence: You don’t know how to do something, and you don’t realize that you don’t know it.

· Conscious Incompetence: You realize you lack the skill and notice your gaps.

· Conscious Competence: You can do the task, but it takes hard work and focus.

· Unconscious Competence: The skill becomes second nature and easy to do.

That would all be nice, but it’s never as simple as that. (Above definitions courtesy of AI Gemini).

Ultimately, it’s all about how you converse with your own body, often coupled with an inability to see yourself as others see you (particularly your teacher). On that last point, I have noticed than when a video recording is used for feedback, it can help to bridge the reality gap, but it’s not the magic bullet.

Budo: A Work in Progress

At The Budo Bum, there was an interesting article about Budo not being a "thing" with clean edges and a definite beginning and end, but an activity that is always adapting, evolving and growing. An excerpt is below. The  full post may be read here.

 

A lot of people imagine Japanese budo as a finished product. They think of it as the handed- down wisdom of old, dead guys, and that the only thing to do is preserve what they left us; that the old masters were geniuses living in unique ages of hand-to-hand combat that can never be equaled. Even the founders of recent styles such as Kodokan Judo and Goju Ryu karate are idealized as people whose skill level we can strive towards, but will never be surpassed.

Koryu and gendai budo aren’t static. Judo keeps changing and growing. People are constantly testing it and looking for ways to apply the principles that Kano Jigoro Shihan elucidated more effectively. Koryu aren’t finished and complete. Judo is not in its final form. Karate hasn’t stopped growing. No real budo is ever finished developing, growing, and changing. The old masters knew a lot, but no one knows everything. There is always something to learn, some incremental improvement that can be made. That’s one reason the older budo are 古流 koryu (old streams) and not 古石 koseki (old stones). They can change and adapt and grow new parts and lose old ones.

Budo systems are constantly changing and adapting. Sometimes they grow by developing new techniques or new applications. Sometimes they shrink by pruning things that are discovered to have weaknesses, or that no longer seem appropriate. Many koryu ryuha have stories of weapons that were once taught but whose lessons have been lost for some reason, good or bad. Modern budo systems add and subtract things all the time. Did you know that Kodokan Judo once had a weapons section that taught jo and naginata? It was abandoned after World War 2 in the effort to convince the Allies that judo was not a threat to anyone. It did exist though. And it could be revived if interest developed among judoka. Judo also added a major kata, the Kodokan Goshijutsu forms, in 1956.

In addition, there is no reason koryu budo systems should be frozen in the form they had on January 3rd,1868 when the Shogun relinquished power to the Emperor’s supporters. Nothing makes that moment in the history of combative systems special. Shinto Muso Ryu, one of the systems I’m most familiar with, has added weapons and kata to its curriculum since then.

 

Koryu budo absolutely have to keep engaging with the world around them to remain anything more than museum pieces for historical reenactors. This engagement can be anything. If you’re doing an iai system, that engagement may be invisible to most people. When I was an account manager dealing with -Toyota, GM, Honda, Chrysler (or whatever name they had at that moment), and Nissan, I used iaido in every meeting. No, I didn’t draw a sword and take the head off the guy across from me that I could sense was a threat (no matter how much I wanted to).

However, everything from my posture to my breathing to my mental state as I was negotiating contracts worth tens of millions of dollars could be traced to my iai and jo. I knew how to maintain a dominant body posture even when I was being attacked verbally and financially. My practice controlling my breathing and maintaining a calm, focused front in iai was critical to dealing with rampaging social bullies who liked to pound the table and yell during meetings because they thought they were being intimidating. It’s remarkable how quickly the table pounders settled down once their tactics were met with looks of boredom.

If the art is a sogo budo such as Shinto Muso Ryu or Takenouchi Ryu, perhaps that engagement is more direct. There is nothing stopping the leader of the ryuha from adding to it. Shinto Muso Ryu famously added a new weapon to its curriculum in the late 19th century, the walking stick. And in the mid-twentieth century, one branch of the ryuha added an entire new set of kata to add depth to aspects of the training.

Legacy Techniques in Koryu

At The Budo Bum, the author explored the question of whether the koryu (old classical) arts carried around with it the teaching of inefficient, ineffective techniques. My own inclination is to answer "no." The principles, strategies, etc; are all at work.

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

The efficacy and use of some techniques in various koryu have been questioned since at least the Meiji Era. Koryu are by definition “old schools.” Two or three hundred years from the founding, how can you be sure the techniques are still effective? How can you be sure they are consistent with what was originally taught? Have things been lost or changed to the point that they are no longer consistent?

My experience is that in well-maintained koryu, the techniques will be consistent, effective, and efficient. If they aren’t all three, then either something is being taught incorrectly, or the student doesn’t understand it well enough yet. I do see koryu that teach things poorly, especially in koryu that have become essentially fossils. These are koryu where the skeleton of the technique and kata have been preserved, but the knowledge that animates them has been lost, so people simply repeat motions without understanding them. There are a few of these around, and if you watch carefully, you can spot some of them at big koryu enbu like the one at Meiji Jingu every year.

Even in well-preserved, well-cared for koryu, things can get lost. Ellis Amdur of Kogen Budo has written extensively about reconstituting bojutsu of Tenshin Buko Ryu. They still had documents, but the practice had been lost. Koryu are living arts, and things are lost and added and rediscovered all the time. Not every teacher is a good teacher, so sometimes the transmission is weak. These things happen. In living koryu, as opposed to fossilized koryu, this isn’t an overwhelming problem. Senior teachers and practitioners should always be testing their understanding, challenging themselves and the art to be sure both are at their best.

Gendai budo practitioners often make the mistake of thinking that because koryu don’t have competitive sparring, there is no pressure testing. They couldn’t be more wrong. Anytime you have a two-person koryu kata, you have the potential for pressure testing. Ideally, each kata represents the optimal way of doing something. If you do everything correctly, the kata works. If your training partners are being honest, they will follow the logic of the kata, and attack where the best opening is. If the best opening they see is one you’ve left that shouldn’t be there, that’s where they will attack. This can make for an unpleasant surprise anytime you don’t do things well. A whack on the kote or do or men when you aren’t expecting it is one of the best ways of learning to close those suki (openings). I’ve collected plenty of small bruises because I left suki that shouldn’t be there.

This is pressure testing. Your partner isn’t breaking the kata when they attack into a suki that you left. You broke the kata when you created the suki. Your partner is following the logic of the kata and attacking the best target. It’s always possible that someone sees an opening that’s not part of the kata. The proper response to this is to talk with your teacher, and arrange to try attacking the opening so it can be tested. I’ve seen many “openings” in kata that I was learning, and I’ve discovered the hard way each time that they aren’t really openings. I just didn’t know enough yet to understand why that attack was a bad idea. Teachers of living koryu aren’t afraid of exploring and experimenting. Before you try something though, it’s useful to remember that the arts you are experimenting with are hundreds of years old, and whatever you think you’re seeing has likely been thoroughly explored during the previous centuries.

 

 

The Still Point of Kyudo

One of the things I have always liked about Kyudo as a Budo, is the stillness and settling which takes place before the shot. It's almost as if the shot is a side effect of the stillness.

In Chinese martial arts, there is a very deep practice of zhan zhuang, which is "just standing," which seems somewhat related to the stillness of kyudo.

At Zen's Sekai, the author, who has a background in both Japanese and Chinese martial arts, discussed this very phenomenon. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Wu Standing and Kyūdō: One Shot, No Arrow

Before discussing Kyūdō, it helps to clarify one term that may be unfamiliar: Wu standing.

What Is Wu Standing?

Wu standing (站樁, zhan zhuang) is a foundational practice in Wu-style Taiji. At first glance, it looks like simply standing still. In reality, it is a precise form of internal alignment and continuous expansion, practiced without visible movement.

There is:

No deliberate breath control No visualization No muscle-driven effort

The practitioner stands upright, relaxed, and structurally aligned, allowing the body to organize itself through gravity, balance, and awareness. The work is not to do something, but to stop interfering with how the body naturally supports itself.

Unlike seated meditation, Wu standing is trained fully embodied, under load, and in relationship to the ground. It is not about endurance or stillness for its own sake, but about discovering the point where effort drops away and posture sustains itself.

This is why Wu standing pairs so naturally with Kyūdō.

Wu Standing as the Complete Kyūdō Shot

In Kyūdō, the shot does not begin when the arrow is nocked.

In Wu standing, movement does not begin when the body moves.

Both practices train something far quieter and far more demanding:

Right placement before intention.

When viewed this way, Wu standing is not a meditation about stillness. It is Kyūdō before the bow appears.