My New Sword

I got a fricken sword!

And I'm super happy about it.

Because it's very cool, I'm learning how to use it, and now I can practice anytime I want.

But I'll need to get some kind of shoulder strap. Walking around Japan with a sword is definitely illegal. I can keep it in the bag shown in the first picture, but I need some kind of strap to hang it around my shoulder when I ride my bike to the dojo. That will make it comfortable and look less like a sword. Today after I left the dojo with the sword I wanted to get straight home with it, but unfortunately I had a lot of things to do on the way: get lunch, go to city hall, and go grocery shopping. The whole time I was trying to hold it in a way that made it not look like a sword, but I probably just brought more attention to myself. I wonder if anyone noticed.

So how did I acquire this fancy piece of equipment? From Sensei ... for a price of course: about $300. The dojo has had it for a while but nobody has been using it, so it worked out perfectly. I really don't know anything about sword quality, but I trust my sensei has endowed me with a sufficient blade.

I was worried about when I was going to get one because when I initially asked sensei where I could buy a sword he said the internet would be the easiest way (not many swordsmiths in the area). After that though, I ran into the other sensei (who I think is the head of the dojo) and he said he would see if there's anything he could find. I guess this was it. I had a feeling they might have something for me, so I brought the cash, and it all worked out perfect.

Now I have my own sword! I'm very excited about this.

And the practice as well.

Today was my second day and the time just flew by. An hour and a half just disappeared as I focused on working the movements of the sword with sensei and the other student. We start class by practicing swinging with a bokken and then after a few minutes go to the real blade. We start by swinging straight up and down from a neutral stance facing forward. Then we start swinging with a step. Today he showed us about diagonal cuts. Then we move into drawing the sword and going through the motions which must be the first kata or waza or something. From a standing position you draw, make a horizontal cut, then step forward with a vertical strike, then step back and sheathe the blade. After that we practiced the traditional bowing out with the sword, which may take me a couple practices to get. Then he showed us how to tie the knot of our string on the sword, which I'm fighting against just completely giving up. I don't know what it is about my brain, but I have serious issues with knots. I used to work in the tree service and making knots was a big part of the job, but one I could never get down. I guess this is my chance to get it right. That's what budo is about. None of us are going to get it right immediately, but all of us can learn.

So yeah, practice is super exciting and I'm really enjoying the teacher and other student, especially now that I have my own sword. Any good budo practice will have ups and downs, easy parts and hard parts ... but right now it's all effortless smiling fun. I'm interested to see how it goes.

Do we really need to struggle with our art? I mean, what's so bad about it being fun? Is it possible for one to practice a budo by simply floating straight up the mountain without falling into the valleys? That's an interesting thought, I'll give it a try.

I'm going to go over a few details of what we learned. I hope to do this after every practice so that I can process what I've learned, teach you about what I'm doing, and maybe hear back from you guys if you do it a different way. These things are learned on the second day and probably going to seem very simple, but that's because it's just the beginning. I'm sure there are lots of ways to do the same thing, and better ways as well, but this is where I am.

1.) When swinging the sword you need to loosen and flick your wrist for two reasons.

First, it's to relax your body and use forces other than just your muscle strength, making the strike more effective.

Second, it's so that your blade can reach the target as quickly as possible. If you're swinging so that your hands arrive before the sword, you're too slow and will get cut by the opponent. One must swing so that the tip of the blade reaches the target as quickly as possible. This was new info to me.

2.) You only need to cut with the end of the blade enough to slice, and when you do, you draw/pull the blade across the surface ... this is opposed to hacking through something. I was aware of this from the aikido sword work, but it's a super important thing to know.

3.) There's only one angle you cut at when it's not vertical or horizontal. All cuts, be it to the head, shoulder, waist, arm, leg ... they all follow one single line, so becoming familiar with that line is super important. We practiced doing this cut by aiming at an invisible opponents head and going diagonally through it, both from the left and the right.

4.) All cuts with the sword follow straight lines. Any deviations will reduce its effect.

5.) When sheathing and unsheathing the blade, you need to do so so that the blade does not cut the inside of the saya (sheath). So, this means that when we draw the sword, we hold it so the sharp edge faces up, so the bottom dull side slides across the bottom of the saya, and the blade doesn't touch anything at all. When you unsheath the blade, you are sliding the dull side of the blade across the inside of the saya (putting no strength into the movement) and you draw until there's only a couple inches of the tip inside of the sheath. At that point, you pull the sheath back and swing the sword which is practically already drawn.

It's hard to see in the picture below, but the blade is facing up, with the dull side on the bottom completely resting on the saya, this is how it should be when you draw.

 

This was big for me because I thought that you drew the sword straight into a swing. Perhaps that's what it's like for the masters, but if I try that I would completely cut up the inside of the saya and have a weak swing. What we are really doing is drawing the sword out of the saya, and then cutting.

...

There are certainly a lot of other things going on, but these are the main points I'm focusing on right now.

Sensei is really funny. He's a very cheerful big smiling chit chatty kind of guy when you first walk in the dojo, but you can also see him switch into his serious budo mode. When he teaches us, he acts very much like a teacher, treating us as equals, explaining things, and helping us to achieve results, and sometimes making jokes to lighten the atmosphere. I can't tell how good he is at iaido, but I can tell he's a great teacher. We flowed continuously through the entire practice though it was made up of many different parts. Part way through I thought, "Wow, he transitioned through that perfectly!" I wish I could do that in my English classes.

It's funny when I think of my other senseis in aikido and kyudo ... and they're all very different.

 I think my aikido sensei was the least teacher-like. 90% of our practice was physically doing the technique, and that's mainly how he taught us. He taught by doing, and for aikido I suppose that is most important. Certainly he would explain things the best he could, and tell us when we did something wrong, but a lot of times he would tell people they were doing something wrong but couldn't quite tell them how to do it right. Perhaps that's just part of aikido. But I also know he wasn't the most "teacher-like" of teachers.

My kyudo sensei in Toyama was an excellent teacher, but different than my iaido one now. He was a bit more authoritative/strict, like he would tell us to fix something, we'd do it wrong, and he wouldn't be satisfied until we did it right. But of course he try different methods to explain these things to us. But in kyudo you're essentially doing the movements all on your own, and doing things that viewers can't see easily, so it makes for a difficult time learning sometimes, I think.

Wow, it's strange to look back on it all ...

Anyway, time to get swinging!

Musings on the Five Element Theory and the Martial Arts

This is with respect to the Japanese five element theory: godai (earth, water, fire, wind, void), and not the Chinese five element theory (earth, wood, fire, metal, water) which is equally interesting, but not what I'm talking about here. I've been fascinated by such element theories since I was a kid. I'm not sure exactly why. Perhaps it has something to do with the creative categorization of the world. Perhaps it's the connection to nature, or the ability to dissect all phenomenon into parts which we can focus upon individually. Anyway, it's something often on my mind and thought I would share some of those abstractions with you here.

There are set specifics in this godai with characteristics of each element (basic info can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_elements_(Japanese_philosophy). I'm aware of these, but also let my imagination take hold and change them how I see fit. Maybe there's more than one way to see them. What is written below is pure unedited thought.

Earth:
Earth is simple, it's the physical world which we touch and feel and interact with. It is the stones and rocks and solid ground, it is also the trees and plants, and it is also the animals and humans. Lessons are immediate and effective: we touch, we feel, we know. It's cause and effect and the basic world all of us operate on together.

I think of karate. We punch and kick and block and move. We use our bodies to learn simple wazas and katas. It is simple empty handed techniques based on practicality. Danger comes, we neutralize and conquer or evade.

Like deer and foxes in the woods, we wake up, eat, live, die. We must survive. This is earth.

Water:
Water is intelligence. We utilize earth to survive and operate in the world because this is necessary. But water is a better way to engage the world, a smarter way. We see water's effortless movement, its purity, its patience and its immortality. We also see it overcome the solid earth. Water is cultivation and refinement. We are the stones that become polished by utilizing water.

I think of aikido and tai chi. By using softness, fluidity, and intelligent anatomical alignments, the muscles are not needed and one can overcome the stronger and faster. It's learning to breath through our movements and overcome somebody without using force generated by excess effort.

Fire:
Fire is fierce and consuming. It doesn't reason or pity, it just burns, and burns everything it can as long as possible. It is the harsh lessons of life that burn us with no regard for our safety. It is that which will overcome us if we do not protect ourselves against it. Even attempting to protect ourself against it we can be defeated. It cares nothing for feelings or abstract justice, it is chaos bent on nothing more than consumption.

I think of blades, like swords and knives. Think of this because of the intent to kill. One does not use a blade unless it's life and death, not unless the intent is to kill. Lessons learned by the sword are sharp and bloody.

It is the world of real violence whether we like it or not.

Wind:
Wind is ... difficult ... I think it is high technique, perhaps otherworldly. High, way high above the realms of humans and trees and animals and mountains is the world of the highways of the wind. It is an ever changing powerful world of wind, and to navigate it requires utilizing all of the phenomenon around at once. Wind is not simply one thing moving pushing through the air, but an ever changing world of displacement. The wind blows in a multitude of directions at different times. For birds, they do not simply flap their wings and fly, but soar and glide and dive. Motionless in the sky, hawks utilize a multitude of different kind of feathers each that react differently to the subtle changes of the wind. At the moment that hawk wants to dive, he but makes small changes and enters the flow of the winds to fall at lightning speed.

I think of archery. In archery we utilize tools to achieve goals normally unattainable by humans: shooting something from a distance. It requires intelligence of design and physics. It's utilization requires a find balance of using our bodies to manipulate the equipment while also getting out of the way as much as possible to let the machine move on its own. In kyudo, we must use our muscles intelligently, in a genius way, to shoot the bow at its full capacity.

Void:
Void is nothing, and yet it is responsible for nothing. It comes after all of the other elements as the most advanced stage, and yet it was there before all of them existed. All of the others were able to exist because of the void's existence, or non-existence. From this void comes the potential of our world. Then all of the phenomenon changes perpetually, and within the sinews of that change is the void, allowing for that change to come to pass. It is the beginning, the end, and the transitions. Because we talk about it, it is. But really, it's nothing at all.

I think of no-martial art. It is us interacting with the world, reacting to different phenomenon before the use of thought. Once thought emerges and is utilized, it is a child of the void. The void is us reacting to someone attacking us or stealing something from us. It is what we experience after un-learning a technique. It is responsible for what we do, and then it is the space afterward allowing for reflection and change.

Thank you for reading my ramblings!