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.
