Neil Mori's thoughts on Tai Kai
One of our older members came out of 4 years of hiding to come join us at Tai Kai! These are his thoughts
When Sang Kim Sensei asked me to write about my experience at the 2015 East Coast Tai Kai and I
started writing my thoughts down, I didn't realize it would end up taking up 5+ pages on MS Word. The plus side is, if you manage to read over all my jibber jabber, you're bound to find something at least somewhat useful. I'll start by giving you an idea of my background. I'm a lefty who fenced foil and epee in high school and undergrad. Then I decided I was tired of the restrictive nature of western fencing (single hand, along a narrow linear plane), and more importantly, although I liked competition, I got sick of the sport/scoring aspect and how it diminished the significance of my actions and the substance behind the art (ie flicking, making just enough contact to set the scoring machine off), which is why when looking for a similar interest I quickly passed over Kendo. I picked up Battodo during med school after seeing a demo by Byakkokan Dojo at one of NYC’s festivals, where upon seeing the varied aspects to the curriculum and depth of meaning from Kim Sensei’s explanations of what was being done and why, I immediately realized that's exactly the art I wanted to practice and be a part of. Something that wasn't just about hitting things and scoring points, but executing an action for a real purpose, and all the culture, mindset, and philosophy that went behind it.
In terms of experience, I trained at Byakkokan under Kim Sensei (and sempai Henry and Dan) on and off during med school for about 2 years. There was definitely a period of time when I was going to class consistently once a week, but I wouldn't say I went weekly for 2 years. We visited Genbukan Dojo a bunch of times where Kim Sensei also teaches, and I tested there to reach Nikkyu in Seizan Kai. I went to batto camp at Ron Duponte's place in the Poconos a couple times, a Sakura Matsuri with Drawdy Sensei's dojo, a West Coast Tai Kai (I think, possibly just seminars/shinsa) in Orange County, and the East Coast Tai Kai one year when we hosted it in Newark. That's about as much as my memory recalls. One of my biggest regrets is being too preoccupied with the financial costs and fear of failure to not have tested and competed more, in retrospect especially given the few opportunities I had. I quit going to class about 4-5 years ago b/c I had to focus on finishing up med school and deciding what to specialize in, then did an externship and started residency in GA.
Although I missed practicing and the company tremendously, even when things got more stable for me, I was hesitant to get back in, out of concern of how long I had been out of the loop. Now that I live in the ass end of GA, I don't really have the option, as there isn't a legitimate school of anything close to Battodo nearby (just double-checked with Elder Sensei). I brought my gear down with me the last time I visited my folks in NJ, but since I stopped going to class, I only swung my iaito about half a dozen times and only touched my shinken to re-oil it.
That being said, upon starting my third year of residency and discovering that I actually had some
weekends off and flexibility in choosing vacation time, I quickly realized where my priorities were in terms of what I wanted to do with my free time. I missed Battodo, and the people, and everything else about it. I regretted losing touch with it more than I thought. What's that? The 2015 East Coast Tai Kai is a mere 6-hour drive from where I lived? And I can actually get the time off to attend? It was a no-brainer. But it's been so long, will I remember anyone? Will they remember me? Will I remember anything about gearing up, the kata, the cuts, the terminology, what to do during all those fancy formal things we do in between (like bowing in, warm ups, and bowing out)? Will I even get through the mat if I cut? Will I bring shame to my dojo and all the time I trained there by how little I remembered? I had no idea, so I signed up for every beginner class they had.
Despite the many years it had been, upon getting in touch with Kim Sensei, he was very enthusiastic
about seeing me again and very encouraging about me going to practice again. He made every effort to make me instantly feel at home, as did so many of the guys I met, old and new. Unfortunately I didn't get to see Henry, Kyle, Dan, and some of the other guys I knew from NYC, but meeting the new Byakkokan crew was great. And the Genbukan Dojo guys, I can't believe how well they remember me and how open and encouraging they were despite all the years it had been. And not just them, but people from DC, FL, and the west coast that I barely met and still so quickly their presence, friendliness, and my respect for their talent and personalities came back in a flood. It's amazing how briefly I met most of these guys, both from the past and over this Tai Kai, and how memorable they still are. I've had colleagues, bosses, teachers, distant relatives, family friends, friends from school, neighbors, girlfriends, and others that I've spent way more time with that have become distant memories in a mere 5 years or less.
But sword art folk are a different breed. In such a short amount of time I had gotten to know so many people so well, which is pretty impressive for someone who still deals with social anxiety to
some extent. And they were all awesome. There wasn't a single person I didn't like at that Tai Kai.
Basically what I’m saying is that hands down the best part of the Tai Kai was the people, as if I even need to mention that. Pretty much every Sensei talked about that in their closing remarks. It's like what that Delta operator says at the end of Black Hawk Down (read the book and you'll realize the real story is more amazing than the movie) about why they do it, it's about the men next to you.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s talk about something practical. What was it like getting back into practicing after a 4+ year hiatus? Mostly terrifying at first. Not out of concern for safety or any crap like that, but b/c of the internal, and my assumed external, expectations of how I should be performing given my training experience, and my fear of not delivering that or otherwise failing miserably. With the time you put into training under a Sensei, there’s an expectation to deliver to a certain degree. Obviously your skill will go down the further you’re out of practice, but that doesn’t get as much attention as how much time you trained with them for, b/c many of us reach a point where we are expected (or assumed to have the desire) to keep these skills sharp regardless of what life throws our way. Just think about how fast Kim Sensei was back to practicing after his brain surgery (an amazing and inspiring story all its own). The last thing I wanted to do was bring shame to the dojo or otherwise make it seem like Byakkokan Dojo doesn't know their shit. Especially training under Kim Sensei, there's an exceptionally high level of expectation that goes with that.
Having not even touched my uniform since I quit, I only realized my stuff was wrinkly as shit when I
whipped it out for the first time on Day One of seminars. Crap, definitely shoulda ironed that. Your
appearance, and your presentation/behavior in general, counts for a lot in Tai Kai and says a lot about you, and always you are a reflection and representation of your dojo. Your uniform, however old and worn down, should be kept in the neatest, cleanest condition possible. Ok, putting on gi, easy. Putting on obi, uhhh, how do I make a knot out of this again? Putting on hakama, the belts... Aw crap, I really don't remember how to put this stuff on. Or do I? Instead of wasting time trying it out and
running the risk being late to the first seminar, I asked for help from the guy suiting up next me, who ended up being Boyer Sensei. I shoulda looked all that stuff up. My hesitation with training beforehand without supervision was that I would reinforce bad habits. Maybe that was an excuse I made for myself, but there's definitely some truth to that. That being said, there was no excuse for me not to spend some time reviewing the basic info (Femal Sensei has a great website that goes over a lot of the basics, toyamaryu.org). B/c as I soon discovered, the knowledge and memory to do so much of what I did at the Tai Kai was there, floating around somewhere between my hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. It just took a little kindling of that knowledge/behavior to get back into the rhythm doing something I had done 100+ times before. One try and boom, oh shit, yea, I DO remember how to put this stuff on.
Definitely didn’t need to ask for help a second time.
And so much of the Tai Kai was like that for me. Relearning instantly, or realizing that I knew all along. I wish anatomy, neuro, and all this other crap I learned in med school came back to me that easily. Obviously things get more complicated when we talk about executing the task. Knowing how to make the cut and making the cut are very different. That’s where all the practice and supervision comes in. And that’s one of the great things about this art. Seeing even Yondans and above still working at perfecting actions they’ve been doing hundreds of thousands of times for years and years. Although my execution was beyond sloppy, the fact that I remembered so much knowledge about Battodo, more so than my knowledge from many med school courses, says a lot about the kind of teaching I got under Kim Sensei. It wasn’t just about what he taught, but HOW he taught. Everything had a reason (and unfortunately even in modern medicine, there’s still a lot of “all this evidence shows it works this way, but we don’t know why or how”). When you know the reason behind something, even when you're out of practice and the muscle memory and everything else that goes into technique has atrophied, you can still build on that foundation of logic. For example, I'll never forget that Toyama Kata 8 is to execute the prisoner sitting in seiza in front of you before he can react to just reading his own death sentence, so your goal is to draw quick and wide across your body, bring that kissaki up along the left side of your head to get it above you as fast as possible, then strike down fast and hard like a dodan to their head.
Another example, in Toyama Kata 3, I know you're tsuki-ing just under their ribs to get their heart, so you draw and tsuki with the blade flat, parallel to the ground to minimize the likelihood of it getting
caught on the ribs, with the kissaki moving up to reach the heart from the lower position it starts at.
Compared to the force you put into your tsuki, you pull out with even more force, like a 40/60 ratio if I’m not mistaken, b/c the pressure from the bleeding and internal organs you ruptured makes it harder to come out than coming in (a that’s-what-she-said joke is in there somewhere). Then you block in a
way that their counter doesn't take your head off. Too close to your head and you'll still get nailed. Too far in front and they'll break through. Too far back and you'll miss catching their blade. Block with your kissaki pointed too high and their blade won't slide off. Block with the ha instead of having the mune face them and it'll mess up the block and fuck up your ha (thanks a lot Hollywood for making people think you block with your edge. Also what's with all the upside-down carry/display of swords/saya!
Ughhhhhh. I mean I know they did that for tachi, but when do you ever see those in modern films?).
How do I know I was remembering this stuff correctly? B/c for the most part (and please correct any
errors I made) these were the same things Hataya Sensei was reinforcing throughout his seminars. My body and actions may not have done I wanted them to, but I still remembered WHAT I was supposed to do and WHERE my body/blade were supposed to end up.
Despite so much of the knowledge coming back to me, in no way was I disappointed that I took beginner classes. The only thing I regret is signing up for the novice cutting competition, which I changed to Shodan-and-under upon actually reading the description of the event (designed for noobs learning to cut for the first time). Even having only cut just 4 mats before the competition, I was glad I switched and, although I still have a long way to go to get back to where I was, I wasn’t disappointed with my performance. As I explain below, time spent going over the fundamentals is never wasted, but you should always push yourself in terms of competing. That’s how to advance (or in my case get back up to speed) the fastest. The experience may be less useful if you go up against opponents light-years ahead of you (ie if you’re a Shodan trying to get into a Yondon competition, although I feel like Kim Sensei has been in that position before). But outside of that, you should never be hesitant to compete at or above your skill level. Fear of failure should not deter you from that. Don’t judge your performance based on how close you came to winning or not, judge it based on how well you did for your skill level and how much you learned from the experience.
Fundamentals (kihon), like footwork, grip, posture, nikutske, chiburi, noto, and the 8 basic cuts you do in suburi, are the foundation for everything else you develop and if you don't have your fundamentals down, the rest will be shit, or at the very least much harder to pull off as you find some way to work around your flaws w/o optimal efficiency. Even the basic of the basic in Battodo is so opposite our natural human instinct/movement/behavior/etc that there are infinite ways to fuck it up in some small or huge way. Unfortunately these fuck-ups often get ignored or compensated for, and as a result they end up slowing your progress or restricting your full potential later in your training. If you want to perform the best, make sure you have your kihon down cold, and make sure it’s practiced, retrained, polished, and maintained with a vigilant mind.
The very nature of how and why Toyama Ryu was developed (the basic history is a quick interesting read if you haven’t) shows us the importance of the fundamentals before all else. Again, knowing the reason/meaning/significance behind why you do your actions a certain way counts for a lot, especially so with kihon. In jodan no kamae, you keep your arms wide open as to not hinder your field of vision, secondarily to maximize your threatening presence/size, as does keeping shoulders back, back straight, chest up, chin up. You keep the monouchi at a 45 degree angle so it's close enough to strike quickly but not so close as to prevent gathering enough momentum for an effective swing, and it also helps provide a threatening presence/size (although this varies somewhat based on style, some are taught to angle the monouchi more parallel to the floor to hide the length of the blade from your opponent). Extend your arms and push the kissaki forward when you cut. Always, always, always you want to be pushing that blade with the tip going first, that's how you generate the right momentum in your swing to cut and get the most reach out of your blade. Throughout your cut, keep your blade with the ha facing the floor for kesa, for gyaku kesa the opposite, b/c the way your blade cuts is more like a shaving action than chopping (except for sui hei). And always, zanshin, zanshin, zanshin!
Two exercises Tim from Genbukan mentioned that he learned from a seminar by Femal Sensei seem
extremely helpful for strengthening kihon, and I'm definitely gonna try them out first chance I get (again please correct me if I misinterpreted something). After the class did suburi, Femal Sensei said
something like “whoa whoa whoa, let’s take a step back, you all need to work on your basics”.
Exercise 1- Suburi on one foot. With the back leg lifted, you had to focus a shit ton on your balance. As a result, once you’re back to your normal 2-feet stance, wow look how much more effortlessly stable you can be when you cut.
Exercise 2- Change your grip by exaggerating the wrist bend of both hands so they’re maximally extended, so basically in chudan no kamae all you can see is the back of your wrists. What
this does is reduce your ability to put your hand/arms/shoulders into the cut and forces you to use your core, as you should be doing. The less you use your core, the more your wrists will hurt. When you go back to normal grip, look how much better your cuts are. Again I haven’t tried these myself or gotten direction directly from Femal Sensei, and I may have misinterpreted Tim, but from an anatomical PoV it makes sense.
Regardless of what level of training you’re at, you’d be surprised how much knowledge about the
fundamentals you still don’t know. It’s always worth seeing kihon taught again by your Sensei or when given the opportunity to be taught by multiple competent Sensei (thanks again, Boyer Sensei). You may just find something you’ve been doing slightly off, completely wrong all along, or just didn’t fully understand. Something I definitely didn’t know until Hataya Sensei’s seminar this week (unless it was mistranslated) was that the our cuts are called kesa b/c kesa is also the word used for the collar of our gi, which rests on our chest along a 60-degree angle down both sides of our neck.
And that’s what our cuts in kata are supposed to be, 60-degree angles, more steep than tameshigiri 45-degree cuts. It never occurred to me to learn where the word kesa came from, even though like over 80% of our cuts are some type of kesa.
Speaking of which, knowing nomenclature and what it represents is way easier to learn, remember, and pick back up when you break it down to understand its etymology/meaning, just like with Latin and anatomical parts. And just to be clear I have never had any classes or other studying of Latin or
Japanese, but even so it ends up being useful b/c of how much we pick up along the way or gets reused. For example, any uncertainty about what your koiguichi is will go away when you break it down by learning it's called that b/c koi means fish and guichi means mouth. Rokudan giri has 6 cuts (roku), and knowing that they’re the combination of cuts from Shoden Seitei Kata 1-3 in order means you’ll never forget the pattern. If I took the time to learn/think that nami means wave (and gaeshi means return), I probably wouldn't have mistakenly called that cut mizu gaeshi.
Another thing I noticed was that sometimes I would fight my brain/body’s attempt to relearn by
misinterpreting what I was seeing in front of me. For example, watching Hataya Sensei do Toyama Kata 6, I remember thinking, how the heck does that footwork go again? When I tried to emulate him, I failed miserably. I guess I never practiced the later Toyama Kata quite as much, but why was Kata 6 so hard for me to pick back up compared to the others? Sure, it’s technically more complicated compared to 7 or 8, but still, this seemed very unfamiliar. Did I really just forget it all or never learn it well to begin with? Whoops, I later realized I was mirroring Hataya Sensei instead of copying him, and was turning the wrong way. I was watching with my eyes instead of my brain, which remembered some familiarity of that kata and was telling me something was off. Once I figured that out, the steps made a whole lot more sense and came back to me at least somewhat to the point where I could follow along without sticking out like a sore thumb.
All in all, getting back into Battodo was another reminder that the brain is a pretty amazing organ. I
wouldn't have gone into psychiatry if there wasn't so much uncharted territory in this field, specifically the relationship between brain and behavior. All this stuff you thought you’ve forgotten, comes back to you in a flash and grows like wildfire. Again, knowledge by itself only takes you so far. Otherwise everyone could become an expert in a martial art by reading a book. That is why we practice, and the more we practice (as long as the wrong actions are not being reinforced) the better we get. The more meticulously accurate criticism and correction your Sensei provides, the sooner and farther your practice will pay off. Knowledge is the core, and practice is what sharpens the edge. I’m looking forward to resharpening mine every chance I get. Thanks for reading.
-Neil
When Sang Kim Sensei asked me to write about my experience at the 2015 East Coast Tai Kai and I
started writing my thoughts down, I didn't realize it would end up taking up 5+ pages on MS Word. The plus side is, if you manage to read over all my jibber jabber, you're bound to find something at least somewhat useful. I'll start by giving you an idea of my background. I'm a lefty who fenced foil and epee in high school and undergrad. Then I decided I was tired of the restrictive nature of western fencing (single hand, along a narrow linear plane), and more importantly, although I liked competition, I got sick of the sport/scoring aspect and how it diminished the significance of my actions and the substance behind the art (ie flicking, making just enough contact to set the scoring machine off), which is why when looking for a similar interest I quickly passed over Kendo. I picked up Battodo during med school after seeing a demo by Byakkokan Dojo at one of NYC’s festivals, where upon seeing the varied aspects to the curriculum and depth of meaning from Kim Sensei’s explanations of what was being done and why, I immediately realized that's exactly the art I wanted to practice and be a part of. Something that wasn't just about hitting things and scoring points, but executing an action for a real purpose, and all the culture, mindset, and philosophy that went behind it.
In terms of experience, I trained at Byakkokan under Kim Sensei (and sempai Henry and Dan) on and off during med school for about 2 years. There was definitely a period of time when I was going to class consistently once a week, but I wouldn't say I went weekly for 2 years. We visited Genbukan Dojo a bunch of times where Kim Sensei also teaches, and I tested there to reach Nikkyu in Seizan Kai. I went to batto camp at Ron Duponte's place in the Poconos a couple times, a Sakura Matsuri with Drawdy Sensei's dojo, a West Coast Tai Kai (I think, possibly just seminars/shinsa) in Orange County, and the East Coast Tai Kai one year when we hosted it in Newark. That's about as much as my memory recalls. One of my biggest regrets is being too preoccupied with the financial costs and fear of failure to not have tested and competed more, in retrospect especially given the few opportunities I had. I quit going to class about 4-5 years ago b/c I had to focus on finishing up med school and deciding what to specialize in, then did an externship and started residency in GA.
Although I missed practicing and the company tremendously, even when things got more stable for me, I was hesitant to get back in, out of concern of how long I had been out of the loop. Now that I live in the ass end of GA, I don't really have the option, as there isn't a legitimate school of anything close to Battodo nearby (just double-checked with Elder Sensei). I brought my gear down with me the last time I visited my folks in NJ, but since I stopped going to class, I only swung my iaito about half a dozen times and only touched my shinken to re-oil it.
That being said, upon starting my third year of residency and discovering that I actually had some
weekends off and flexibility in choosing vacation time, I quickly realized where my priorities were in terms of what I wanted to do with my free time. I missed Battodo, and the people, and everything else about it. I regretted losing touch with it more than I thought. What's that? The 2015 East Coast Tai Kai is a mere 6-hour drive from where I lived? And I can actually get the time off to attend? It was a no-brainer. But it's been so long, will I remember anyone? Will they remember me? Will I remember anything about gearing up, the kata, the cuts, the terminology, what to do during all those fancy formal things we do in between (like bowing in, warm ups, and bowing out)? Will I even get through the mat if I cut? Will I bring shame to my dojo and all the time I trained there by how little I remembered? I had no idea, so I signed up for every beginner class they had.
Despite the many years it had been, upon getting in touch with Kim Sensei, he was very enthusiastic
about seeing me again and very encouraging about me going to practice again. He made every effort to make me instantly feel at home, as did so many of the guys I met, old and new. Unfortunately I didn't get to see Henry, Kyle, Dan, and some of the other guys I knew from NYC, but meeting the new Byakkokan crew was great. And the Genbukan Dojo guys, I can't believe how well they remember me and how open and encouraging they were despite all the years it had been. And not just them, but people from DC, FL, and the west coast that I barely met and still so quickly their presence, friendliness, and my respect for their talent and personalities came back in a flood. It's amazing how briefly I met most of these guys, both from the past and over this Tai Kai, and how memorable they still are. I've had colleagues, bosses, teachers, distant relatives, family friends, friends from school, neighbors, girlfriends, and others that I've spent way more time with that have become distant memories in a mere 5 years or less.
But sword art folk are a different breed. In such a short amount of time I had gotten to know so many people so well, which is pretty impressive for someone who still deals with social anxiety to
some extent. And they were all awesome. There wasn't a single person I didn't like at that Tai Kai.
Basically what I’m saying is that hands down the best part of the Tai Kai was the people, as if I even need to mention that. Pretty much every Sensei talked about that in their closing remarks. It's like what that Delta operator says at the end of Black Hawk Down (read the book and you'll realize the real story is more amazing than the movie) about why they do it, it's about the men next to you.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s talk about something practical. What was it like getting back into practicing after a 4+ year hiatus? Mostly terrifying at first. Not out of concern for safety or any crap like that, but b/c of the internal, and my assumed external, expectations of how I should be performing given my training experience, and my fear of not delivering that or otherwise failing miserably. With the time you put into training under a Sensei, there’s an expectation to deliver to a certain degree. Obviously your skill will go down the further you’re out of practice, but that doesn’t get as much attention as how much time you trained with them for, b/c many of us reach a point where we are expected (or assumed to have the desire) to keep these skills sharp regardless of what life throws our way. Just think about how fast Kim Sensei was back to practicing after his brain surgery (an amazing and inspiring story all its own). The last thing I wanted to do was bring shame to the dojo or otherwise make it seem like Byakkokan Dojo doesn't know their shit. Especially training under Kim Sensei, there's an exceptionally high level of expectation that goes with that.
Having not even touched my uniform since I quit, I only realized my stuff was wrinkly as shit when I
whipped it out for the first time on Day One of seminars. Crap, definitely shoulda ironed that. Your
appearance, and your presentation/behavior in general, counts for a lot in Tai Kai and says a lot about you, and always you are a reflection and representation of your dojo. Your uniform, however old and worn down, should be kept in the neatest, cleanest condition possible. Ok, putting on gi, easy. Putting on obi, uhhh, how do I make a knot out of this again? Putting on hakama, the belts... Aw crap, I really don't remember how to put this stuff on. Or do I? Instead of wasting time trying it out and
running the risk being late to the first seminar, I asked for help from the guy suiting up next me, who ended up being Boyer Sensei. I shoulda looked all that stuff up. My hesitation with training beforehand without supervision was that I would reinforce bad habits. Maybe that was an excuse I made for myself, but there's definitely some truth to that. That being said, there was no excuse for me not to spend some time reviewing the basic info (Femal Sensei has a great website that goes over a lot of the basics, toyamaryu.org). B/c as I soon discovered, the knowledge and memory to do so much of what I did at the Tai Kai was there, floating around somewhere between my hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. It just took a little kindling of that knowledge/behavior to get back into the rhythm doing something I had done 100+ times before. One try and boom, oh shit, yea, I DO remember how to put this stuff on.
Definitely didn’t need to ask for help a second time.
And so much of the Tai Kai was like that for me. Relearning instantly, or realizing that I knew all along. I wish anatomy, neuro, and all this other crap I learned in med school came back to me that easily. Obviously things get more complicated when we talk about executing the task. Knowing how to make the cut and making the cut are very different. That’s where all the practice and supervision comes in. And that’s one of the great things about this art. Seeing even Yondans and above still working at perfecting actions they’ve been doing hundreds of thousands of times for years and years. Although my execution was beyond sloppy, the fact that I remembered so much knowledge about Battodo, more so than my knowledge from many med school courses, says a lot about the kind of teaching I got under Kim Sensei. It wasn’t just about what he taught, but HOW he taught. Everything had a reason (and unfortunately even in modern medicine, there’s still a lot of “all this evidence shows it works this way, but we don’t know why or how”). When you know the reason behind something, even when you're out of practice and the muscle memory and everything else that goes into technique has atrophied, you can still build on that foundation of logic. For example, I'll never forget that Toyama Kata 8 is to execute the prisoner sitting in seiza in front of you before he can react to just reading his own death sentence, so your goal is to draw quick and wide across your body, bring that kissaki up along the left side of your head to get it above you as fast as possible, then strike down fast and hard like a dodan to their head.
Another example, in Toyama Kata 3, I know you're tsuki-ing just under their ribs to get their heart, so you draw and tsuki with the blade flat, parallel to the ground to minimize the likelihood of it getting
caught on the ribs, with the kissaki moving up to reach the heart from the lower position it starts at.
Compared to the force you put into your tsuki, you pull out with even more force, like a 40/60 ratio if I’m not mistaken, b/c the pressure from the bleeding and internal organs you ruptured makes it harder to come out than coming in (a that’s-what-she-said joke is in there somewhere). Then you block in a
way that their counter doesn't take your head off. Too close to your head and you'll still get nailed. Too far in front and they'll break through. Too far back and you'll miss catching their blade. Block with your kissaki pointed too high and their blade won't slide off. Block with the ha instead of having the mune face them and it'll mess up the block and fuck up your ha (thanks a lot Hollywood for making people think you block with your edge. Also what's with all the upside-down carry/display of swords/saya!
Ughhhhhh. I mean I know they did that for tachi, but when do you ever see those in modern films?).
How do I know I was remembering this stuff correctly? B/c for the most part (and please correct any
errors I made) these were the same things Hataya Sensei was reinforcing throughout his seminars. My body and actions may not have done I wanted them to, but I still remembered WHAT I was supposed to do and WHERE my body/blade were supposed to end up.
Despite so much of the knowledge coming back to me, in no way was I disappointed that I took beginner classes. The only thing I regret is signing up for the novice cutting competition, which I changed to Shodan-and-under upon actually reading the description of the event (designed for noobs learning to cut for the first time). Even having only cut just 4 mats before the competition, I was glad I switched and, although I still have a long way to go to get back to where I was, I wasn’t disappointed with my performance. As I explain below, time spent going over the fundamentals is never wasted, but you should always push yourself in terms of competing. That’s how to advance (or in my case get back up to speed) the fastest. The experience may be less useful if you go up against opponents light-years ahead of you (ie if you’re a Shodan trying to get into a Yondon competition, although I feel like Kim Sensei has been in that position before). But outside of that, you should never be hesitant to compete at or above your skill level. Fear of failure should not deter you from that. Don’t judge your performance based on how close you came to winning or not, judge it based on how well you did for your skill level and how much you learned from the experience.
Fundamentals (kihon), like footwork, grip, posture, nikutske, chiburi, noto, and the 8 basic cuts you do in suburi, are the foundation for everything else you develop and if you don't have your fundamentals down, the rest will be shit, or at the very least much harder to pull off as you find some way to work around your flaws w/o optimal efficiency. Even the basic of the basic in Battodo is so opposite our natural human instinct/movement/behavior/etc that there are infinite ways to fuck it up in some small or huge way. Unfortunately these fuck-ups often get ignored or compensated for, and as a result they end up slowing your progress or restricting your full potential later in your training. If you want to perform the best, make sure you have your kihon down cold, and make sure it’s practiced, retrained, polished, and maintained with a vigilant mind.
The very nature of how and why Toyama Ryu was developed (the basic history is a quick interesting read if you haven’t) shows us the importance of the fundamentals before all else. Again, knowing the reason/meaning/significance behind why you do your actions a certain way counts for a lot, especially so with kihon. In jodan no kamae, you keep your arms wide open as to not hinder your field of vision, secondarily to maximize your threatening presence/size, as does keeping shoulders back, back straight, chest up, chin up. You keep the monouchi at a 45 degree angle so it's close enough to strike quickly but not so close as to prevent gathering enough momentum for an effective swing, and it also helps provide a threatening presence/size (although this varies somewhat based on style, some are taught to angle the monouchi more parallel to the floor to hide the length of the blade from your opponent). Extend your arms and push the kissaki forward when you cut. Always, always, always you want to be pushing that blade with the tip going first, that's how you generate the right momentum in your swing to cut and get the most reach out of your blade. Throughout your cut, keep your blade with the ha facing the floor for kesa, for gyaku kesa the opposite, b/c the way your blade cuts is more like a shaving action than chopping (except for sui hei). And always, zanshin, zanshin, zanshin!
Two exercises Tim from Genbukan mentioned that he learned from a seminar by Femal Sensei seem
extremely helpful for strengthening kihon, and I'm definitely gonna try them out first chance I get (again please correct me if I misinterpreted something). After the class did suburi, Femal Sensei said
something like “whoa whoa whoa, let’s take a step back, you all need to work on your basics”.
Exercise 1- Suburi on one foot. With the back leg lifted, you had to focus a shit ton on your balance. As a result, once you’re back to your normal 2-feet stance, wow look how much more effortlessly stable you can be when you cut.
Exercise 2- Change your grip by exaggerating the wrist bend of both hands so they’re maximally extended, so basically in chudan no kamae all you can see is the back of your wrists. What
this does is reduce your ability to put your hand/arms/shoulders into the cut and forces you to use your core, as you should be doing. The less you use your core, the more your wrists will hurt. When you go back to normal grip, look how much better your cuts are. Again I haven’t tried these myself or gotten direction directly from Femal Sensei, and I may have misinterpreted Tim, but from an anatomical PoV it makes sense.
Regardless of what level of training you’re at, you’d be surprised how much knowledge about the
fundamentals you still don’t know. It’s always worth seeing kihon taught again by your Sensei or when given the opportunity to be taught by multiple competent Sensei (thanks again, Boyer Sensei). You may just find something you’ve been doing slightly off, completely wrong all along, or just didn’t fully understand. Something I definitely didn’t know until Hataya Sensei’s seminar this week (unless it was mistranslated) was that the our cuts are called kesa b/c kesa is also the word used for the collar of our gi, which rests on our chest along a 60-degree angle down both sides of our neck.
And that’s what our cuts in kata are supposed to be, 60-degree angles, more steep than tameshigiri 45-degree cuts. It never occurred to me to learn where the word kesa came from, even though like over 80% of our cuts are some type of kesa.
Speaking of which, knowing nomenclature and what it represents is way easier to learn, remember, and pick back up when you break it down to understand its etymology/meaning, just like with Latin and anatomical parts. And just to be clear I have never had any classes or other studying of Latin or
Japanese, but even so it ends up being useful b/c of how much we pick up along the way or gets reused. For example, any uncertainty about what your koiguichi is will go away when you break it down by learning it's called that b/c koi means fish and guichi means mouth. Rokudan giri has 6 cuts (roku), and knowing that they’re the combination of cuts from Shoden Seitei Kata 1-3 in order means you’ll never forget the pattern. If I took the time to learn/think that nami means wave (and gaeshi means return), I probably wouldn't have mistakenly called that cut mizu gaeshi.
Another thing I noticed was that sometimes I would fight my brain/body’s attempt to relearn by
misinterpreting what I was seeing in front of me. For example, watching Hataya Sensei do Toyama Kata 6, I remember thinking, how the heck does that footwork go again? When I tried to emulate him, I failed miserably. I guess I never practiced the later Toyama Kata quite as much, but why was Kata 6 so hard for me to pick back up compared to the others? Sure, it’s technically more complicated compared to 7 or 8, but still, this seemed very unfamiliar. Did I really just forget it all or never learn it well to begin with? Whoops, I later realized I was mirroring Hataya Sensei instead of copying him, and was turning the wrong way. I was watching with my eyes instead of my brain, which remembered some familiarity of that kata and was telling me something was off. Once I figured that out, the steps made a whole lot more sense and came back to me at least somewhat to the point where I could follow along without sticking out like a sore thumb.
All in all, getting back into Battodo was another reminder that the brain is a pretty amazing organ. I
wouldn't have gone into psychiatry if there wasn't so much uncharted territory in this field, specifically the relationship between brain and behavior. All this stuff you thought you’ve forgotten, comes back to you in a flash and grows like wildfire. Again, knowledge by itself only takes you so far. Otherwise everyone could become an expert in a martial art by reading a book. That is why we practice, and the more we practice (as long as the wrong actions are not being reinforced) the better we get. The more meticulously accurate criticism and correction your Sensei provides, the sooner and farther your practice will pay off. Knowledge is the core, and practice is what sharpens the edge. I’m looking forward to resharpening mine every chance I get. Thanks for reading.
-Neil
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