Traditional Japanese Martial Arts in the Modern World

Ellis Amdur is a long time practitioner of traditional Japanese martial arts, owns the Kogen Budo blog and is a prolific author. He was interviewed for a Spanish language martial arts magazine. Below is an except from the English translation, which may be read in it's entirety here.

Mr Amdur's books may be found here.

In his “Spirit of Place,” the great Lawrence Durrell wrote that man is the son of the landscape. The cultural niche in which the bujutsu schools arose is far from the current one. The times demand immediacy, a priori, practicality. Do you consider that, being as we are so far away in space-time from that primitive culture, we can arrive at an understanding of the depths of its philosophy, its reason for being, its most intimate essence?

Your question takes some things at face value that are not exactly true. Anything embedded within a culture is eminently practical—it is only when something is grafted into a culture as a fascinating alien subject that it is—or seems to be—unrealistic or impractical. The classical bugei were always pragmatic—just not in the way that people might imagine. What the reader should understand is that the bugei (these days referred to as koryū) were never the primary training methods for training military personnel for fighting in war. The Japanese, in the period that the bugei first appeared, fought in set-piece battles: mass-formations complete with fortifications and siege-craft. Their primary weapons were bow-and-arrows, spears and guns. Military tactics schools, which described how to train troops and outlined battlefield tactics, were separate entities from the bugei, although some of the older ryūha included limited elements of military tactics in their curriculum. Also, contrary to latter periods, the Japanese in the Muromachi and Azuchi-Momoyama periods were innovative rather than conservative, incorporating new technology as soon as they had access to it, both that developed within Japan as well as that made available from the West. For example, plate armor and gunnery were incorporated without hesitation, and before the country shut-down, the Japanese eagerly learned Western ship-building methods.

If the bugei were battlefield arts, as so often has been claimed, why, in the 16^th century and afterwards, did they focus on archaic weaponry such as the kamayari,  nagamaki and naginata that were rarely used on the battlefield even in the 14^th century? Why did they include chained weapons in their curriculum that were not even suitable for mass conflict? Finally, and most importantly, why was the sword the primary weapon of the majority of the bugei, when it was, at best, an auxiliary side-arm? Some may cite the number of ryūha with spears within their curriculum, but even when training with such weaponry, the majority of ryūha used the sword as uketachi (senior, teaching role) when practicing pattern drills (kata).

Rather than direct military training—though they would certainly assist in making a person skillful with hand-held weaponry, primed to be trained in whatever methodology best suited the needs of an army—bugei were actually the means of training individuals, comprehensively, in a social role: that of a bushi. It is a mistake, however, to translate this word as a “warrior.” Rather, it means “person of the warrior class,” a phrase that encompasses far more than functional battlefield skills. Rather, it denotes a caste of individuals who have a duty to serve their feudal lords, and rule the rest of the populace, both by force of arms and as an exemplar of certain values.

As a matter of fact, most of the bugei were not created in a period of war—they were developed in the Edo period. Even those who claim roots in earlier era were substantially changed in successive generations, something that is usually glossed over even by historians of classical martial arts, much less by the members of specific ryūha.

As society changed, so did the bugei. Increasingly, the bushi were expected to fulfill a role of armed bureaucrats, functionaries of feudal domains who retained power by controlling their citizens’ lives through a rigid Confucian social structure, maintained through almost total control of the means of violence. When one has such control, there is little impetus for innovation. There was, at that time, a much greater emphasis on the sword, particularly focusing on the potential for unarmored combat: duels and street brawls among bushi. Skill with a sword was also believed to be sufficient to maintain control over other elements of society, most of whom did not have access to swords, much less weapons of war. (During ikki, ‘peasant insurrections, when swords were not sufficient, the bushi retreated to the castle armory, and broke out stored muskets, which they kept in the thousands, to suppress the starving, overtaxed peasants, who were armed with farming implements).

As the Edo period waxed, however, more and more non-bushi were admitted to the bugei, both to accumulate social capital on the part of the students and for blatant economic reasons on the part of the teachers. In this period, kata practice, the mainstay of the bugei was increasingly regarded as lacking. It did not resonate so strongly with the more socially crude members of the peasant and merchant class, and in general, provided young men with no means to measure their power against others (which is the main interest of most young men). Competitive fencing developed and more and more, became the primary method of training—this suited the needs of the peaceful, authoritarian society within which the bugei were ensconced. What this means is that martial studies were both an emanation of the society in which they were embedded and a support of that society. Considering martial arts in the West in this light, the most clownish McDojo, the most utilitarian MMA gym and even the koryū dojo, all located in countries far from their origins, are one and the same, as each, in different ways, supports the same culture within which they currently exist—if they did not, they would be revolutionary, a threat to that culture, and would be eradicated (or irrelevant and ignored).

Let us take this question from another perspective, however. Bugei, these days, are alien, not only to those training in the West, but also those in Japan. We do not have the same bodies: few walk or ride long distances, we do not eat the same foods, suffer from and endure the same illnesses, nor do we labor with our hands. The meaning of life-and-death is quite different to us—we no longer have public executions, much less tortures. In previous era, the primary definition of immortality was one’s reputation and the continuation of one’s family line; a besmirched name destroyed one’s family and legacy. Social interaction, therefore, meant something profoundly different to those in medieval Japan than it does today. Finally, customs such as formalized etiquette and innumerable other rules were not, as they are now, something one adopts—they were as natural as breathing. We, on the other hand, don these behaviors like putting on clothes, removing them once we leave the dojo. In fact, were we to “act like bushi” outside of the dojo, we would appear to any sensible person to be a “live-action role-playing” simpleton, much like Don Quixote.

And yet there is a third perspective—everything in the bugei is relevant today, if one trains through to the essence. It is as if one penetrates a first shell, assuming the training and mind-set of an alien culture. At a certain point, you will penetrate an inner shell, where the principles and values are universal. To give one example, I cannot divorce the study of a traditional bugei with that fact that we are studying, at least in part, how to maim and kill others for the purpose of survival. I have viewed myself as remiss while teaching my European students Tenshin Buko-ryū, because the school focuses solely on long weaponry that would be illegal to carry outside one’s home, at least with the intention of using it as a weapon, and anyway, many of the dangers one will face in European countries are at close range, very likely when one is unarmed. Therefore, I developed a cognate discipline, which I call Iimori-ryū, basing it on the body-mechanics and tactical principles of Tenshin Bukō-ryū. It is a pure pugilistic system. However, rather than a “new” stand-alone martial art, it is intended to be integrated within one’s karate or aikidō, or other hand-to-hand modern martial art, so that there is a seamless connection between Tenshin Bukō-ryū training, and what people already do “hand-to-hand.”