Martial Arts Training in Japan: A Guide for Westerners

Introduction

A very senior teacher of aikido, the way of harmony, was once asked, Sensei, what is the thing you like most about aikido? His instant response was The name.

The name for martial arts in Japan is budo, literally military way, and often is loosely translated as the way of the warrior. Taking a hint from the aikido sensei, we should pause to consider the meaning of the name of the art you are going to Japan to study.

Bu (war), the first Chinese ideogram or character, is a stylized image of a halberd-like Chinese weapon on the right and human efforts to repulse the weapons on the left. But literally bu means to stop the attack and suggests that the best way of stopping attacks is to live in peace, with the ability to defend that peace. The second character, do, depicts an image of a sailboat carrying its passenger to his or her final destination. It suggests a method of self-cultivation; a way or path, or a vehicle that takes you where you want to go. The teachers in any good Japanese martial arts school will expect you to practice budo, not some form of sport boxing or wrestling. Probably most of you who would seek to go to Japan for further martial arts study already know this; however, I mention it because I feel it is important to remind a student of the profound nature of martial arts practice as perceived by high-ranking Japanese teachers.

But which is the budo for you? Once I overheard a new student ask my tai chi ch’uan teacher, Chan Poi Sifu, which martial art was the best one. Teacher Chan replied, Right hand, right foot. Left hand, left foot. Block. Punch. Kick. All the same. Then, pointing to his head and his heart, he concluded, The only difference is here.

It is also true that all roads lead to Rome, they just start at different points. Some people feel comfortable with an art in which they can wrestle with one another or spar on a regular basis and they start there. Others would find an art with an emphasis on competitive fighting to be distracting, even immature. Some aspiring students are attracted to the arts of the famous Japanese sword, while others wish to study kobudo and learn to manipulate the ancient farm-implement weaponry of Okinawa—the nunchaku (rice flail), tonfa (rice-grinding-wheel handle), kama (sickle), bo (long staff), sai (three-pronged wheel pin), and jutte (policeman’s baton). Other less well-known kobudo weaponry include the use of sea-turtle shell as a shield and spear-head as a bladed weapon, and the martial use of the boat oar, or ro.

The point is to pick a road and begin the journey. Rome will be at the end of it somewhere, but that’s not the important point. The nature of the journey—the Way—is the primary concern.

The most popular Japanese martial arts in terms of numbers of students are karatedo (the way of the empty hand), judo (the gentle way), kendo (the way of the sword), and aikido (the way of harmony). These four warrior ways are also the most widespread and visible around the world. Most who travel to Japan to study martial arts will probably practice one of the four major arts. That being the case, I will offer a brief history of each art, a description of its physical appearance and practice goals, my observations concerning who would most and least benefit from the practice of that art, and instructions on how to find a suitable dojo that will serve your interests. I will also include information on training in iaido (the way of drawing the sword), jodo (the way of the staff), and naginatado (the way of the halberd): three archaic weapons arts that are widespread in Japan, but relatively little known outside that country. Finally, I will discuss training in ninjutsu (the art of stealth).

Another important question to ask yourself is What is my purpose for going to Japan to train in the martial arts? What do you want from your experience in a Japanese training environment? Personal challenge, knowledge, a good workout, meditation, aerobics, self-defense training, traditional art experience, self-confidence, a chance to experience a living history? Any traditional martial arts dojo will touch on all of the above topics over time. At the same time one can find teachers, martial arts styles, and schools that naturally—or because of commercial considerations—cater to a particular martial arts training approach. There are many: the physical intensity of judo; the meditative effects of iaido; the flow of aikido; the surge and snap of karatedo, the auditory and physical clamor of kendo; the stateliness of kyudo (traditional archery); the esoteric mysteries of ninjutsu.

Studying a completely different art from the one you train in at home might also be worth considering. It is an ancient dictum that creativity is stimulated by contrast. You might consider practicing more than one art. You are probably not going to be training in Japan long enough to fundamentally affect your mind/body, but you could take the opportunity to more broadly educate yourself. Most advanced martial arts teachers are, in fact, ranked in more than one art. To really know what you are doing necessitates knowing what you are not doing ... and why. Bonsai (the culturing of miniature trees), ikebana (flower arranging), sado (the tea ceremony), and go (Japanese chess) are also excellent ways to polish the warrior soul.

Don’t dismiss these arts as being unfitting to the training of a budoka, a student/practitioner of the warrior way. The mental tension created in the warfare of the go board can be exhausting. For me, the practice of the tea ceremony was the most mentally and physically draining art I practiced while in Japan. The very precise kata (prearranged form) of the tea ceremony, its slow and measured pace, the ritual requirements of guest and host, both at the physical and verbal level, would leave me exhausted. This reveals more about me during the time I was in Japan than the tea ceremony itself. I would have preferred practicing karatedo kihon waza (basic technique) in full kiai mode than spending the same two hours under the intense scrutiny of the tea sensei. The power and elegance of karatedo gave me energy, while the precision and dignity of tea took it from me.

That experience taught me something about myself as a budoka. When I could disengage my logical mind from the acts of my body, the training would produce energy as a by-product of practice. Practicing basic karatedo techniques leaves one no time or energy to think. But with the tea ceremony, I was trying to make my body act with the precision required while my mind was full of Remember to do this and not that and Let’s see, do I rotate the bowl three times or two times before sipping, and I hope I’m not making too much of a fool of myself. Another way to put it is that until you can see the relatedness between the tea ceremony or a game of go and the martial art you practice, you are not practicing your martial art at a very high level.

The lesson here is universal and sounds almost mystical, but really is not. The mind has to cease discursiveness for the body to learn. When the two are vying for position, the result is that you are working against yourself, with the effect of simply exhausting your energy. You are working for perfection of an act that when done correctly you will never witness, such as a judo throw, the shot of an arrow, a correctly timed combination in kumite (sparring; literally: exchange of hands). Experienced martial arts sensei will tell you that they often experience spontaneous techniques which seem to occur when the discursive mind is not paying attention.

Occasionally, when teaching aikido, I will invite my demonstration partner to attack freely. Sometimes my response is conditioned by decades of aikido practice and is usually a basic technique—and sometimes the defensive technique I use seems to come out of nowhere! I see the attack come, and the next thing I see is the attacker on the dojo floor. If the technique felt right—a condition I cannot define—I clap my hands and invite the students to practice the technique. As they begin, I study my senior students to find out what I just did, because in a very true way I was not there when it happened. If you hang around to congratulate yourself on how good you look in kata, you will progress much less than if you rid yourself of the ego observer. Even as I write this, it sounds like so much mystical drivel, but it is not! It is the natural outcome of sound practice over time.

My aikido sensei described the experience of spontaneous technique as being possessed by the spirit of his deceased teacher. I remember thinking, Interesting, the sensei believes in spirit possession. Many years later, when I experienced this sensation personally, I understood what he was talking about. However, I did not see it as literally being possessed by a spirit, for my cultural and educational background made that assumption too much of a reach. It did occur to me that aikido was literally shaped by the experience of its founder, Ueshiba Morihei Shihan, and an experience of spontaneous technique was, in a manner of speaking, an act of being possessed by the master’s art. Where else did the spontaneous technique come from? My body and mind had been molded over many years by continuous training in the basic techniques of Ueshiba Shihan’s art and when it found expression in my creative acts as an aikido teacher it was as if Ueshiba Shihan, who had become one with his art, was present in me through his art. My aikido sensei called this type of experience the miracle of hard training.

Karatedo: The Way of the Empty Hand

Karatedo has a wonderful story of origin. The orthodox account is that karatedo originated in India. The martial arts of contemporary India at this point in their evolution, however, look much more like kung fu, with its complex animal forms and great variety of exotic weaponry, than the austere art of modern karatedo. Kung fu does not, in fact, point to a particular type of Chinese martial art but, as the literal translation of kung fu (effort) suggests, to any skill derived over time through hard training. It may be said that kung fu is at least partially derived from India and that later karatedo evolved from an ancient branch of kung fu.

The ancient story tells of Bodhidharma (Japanese: Daruma; Chinese: Tamo), the twenty-eighth patriarch of Buddhism, and his arrival in China in the sixth century A.D. on a mission to revitalize Chinese Buddhism. In the company of his Sherpa guides (traditionally described as eighteen in number), Bodhidharma briefly visited with Emperor Wu and then moved into residence at the monastery of Shaolin-szu (Japanese: Shorinji), Temple of the Young Pine Trees. (Some versions of the story claim that he founded the famous Shaolin temple.) Finding the resident monks too weak to follow his rigorous monastic regimen, he taught them a style of martial art which he derived from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste of India, combining an emphasis on strong diaphragm breathing, characteristic of Indian yoga, with an evolving admixture of the local kempo, or Chinese methods of unarmed combat.

The connection between Buddhism and warrior arts seems contradictory at first glance. However, it should be remembered that Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was a member of the warrior caste of India and, in fact, won his royal bride in an archery contest.

Over time, the Shaolin martial arts adapted to local conditions and it is suggested in the common explanation that karatedo developed in the south of China, where the short, stocky agricultural workers with their strongly developed arms and upper bodies developed the Shaolin art in a direction that would come to be recognized as contemporary karatedo.

The story then moves to Okinawa, the main island of the Ryukus, the chain of islands that stretches south from Japan to Taiwan. Okinawa had long been a point of contact between Chinese and Japanese cultures. It was here that the te, or strong hand techniques (striking, punching) which had evolved as a regional style in Okinawa over centuries, began to mix and blend with the kempo of China with its more rounded and flowing techniques. The evolving combination was called T’ang Hand after the great Chinese dynasty that had such an impact on the development of Japanese culture. The Chinese characters for T’ang Hand were later read as "Empty (kara) Hand (te)."

The early karatedoka of Okinawa developed, in addition, the art of kobudo as they came into continual hostile contact with Japanese samurai clans (particularly the Satsuma clan of southern Kyushu) who raided Okinawa for countless generations. To this day, one sees kobudo weapons, such as the nunchaku, sai, tonfa, and kama, in traditional karate dojo.

In 1917 Funakoshi Gichin, a renowned Okinawan educator, was invited by the Japanese Ministry of Education to give public demonstrations of karatedo in the main islands of Japan. His first trip was so successful that he returned in 1923 to take up permanent residence. In 1936 he inaugurated the first karate dojo in the main islands of Japan. It was called Shotokan, or Shoto’s House. The name came from Funakoshi Sensei’s pen name, Shoto, which means wind through the pine trees. Today, Shotokan karatedo continues as one of the major karatedo styles.

Influenced by Professor Funakoshi, martial arts practitioners established dojo for various karatedo styles. Okinawan Miyagi Chojun founded the Goju style. Yamaguchi Gogen, a Japanese student of Master Miyagi, created his own version of the Goju style. Otsuka Hironori combined jujutsu with the T’ang Hand and arrived at his Wado style. Around this time the T’ang Hand reading was dropped and the Empty Hand adopted, perhaps because of growing Japanese nationalistic sentiments against China. Although some of the old masters of Okinawa resented the name change, it fit not only the nationalism of the times but also the Zen thrust of karatedo. Master Funakoshi explained it as follows (Williams, 1975:132):

As a mirror’s polished surface reflects whatever stands before it and a quiet valley carries even small sounds, so must the student of karate render his mind empty of selfishness and wickedness in an effort to react appropriately to anything he might encounter. This is the meaning of kara or empty in karate.

Japanese karatedo has come to incorporate philosophies important to the Japanese. Whereas modern Japanese karatedoka may philosophize about Zen, and no mind, and satori (enlightenment), the Okinawan stylist, for the most part, was simply trying to hit and kick as hard as possible and incorporated philosophical underpinnings such as ki (intrinsic energy) and hara (the emotional, spiritual and physical center of the body) to assist in that primary objective.

The later history of Japanese karatedo is well documented because it is relatively modern; however, the orthodox origin tale involving Bodhidharma, the Shaolin temple, and the Sherpa guides may be wild history, as one of my Japanese teachers called it. I was first introduced to this concept while being taught the oral tradition of the origin of the Komuso Zen sect.

One afternoon, Hanada Shihan sat me down in the zendo (meditation hall) of Saikoji and told me the story of the founder of Komuso Zen, a wild Chinese monk named P’u-hua (known as Fuke in Japanese). Fuke was a compatriot of the great Chinese master Lin-chi (Japanese: Rinzai), the inspirational source of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism that developed in Japan during the Kamakura period.

After setting the stage, Hanada Shihan, obviously enjoying himself, told the story of Fuke. Rinzai loved Fuke although Fuke was considered by his fellow monks to be crazy. He slept in the fields or in the barns, rarely washed, took no disciples, and was constantly interrupting Rinzai at his important work as head of a large T’ang-dynasty Buddhist monastery. For example, one day Rinzai had invited some of the local dignitaries to the monastery for a pleasant meal. As the mayor and his staff enjoyed the fine food and stimulating conversation of Rinzai, Fuke showed up uninvited. He turned over Rinzai’s table and addressed the dignitaries with, Ho-yang is a new bride. Mu-t’a is a Ch’an granny, and Rinzai is a young menial, but he has the eye. He then left the room. The irate guests raged against the lout Fuke, but Rinzai only said, There goes a truly enlightened being.

Young monks, on hearing that Rinzai had announced Fuke to be an enlightened man, sought out Fuke for his mentorship. Fuke, true to form, simply rang his bell in their faces every time they asked him a religious question