From Lowry, Dave, Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American
Samurai, Shambhala Publications: Boston, MA, 1985. ISBN 1-57062-115-2.
Dave Lowry is a martial artist who writes about the art with gentle and detailed narrative, scholarly depth, and a reverent poetry. This excerpt is from a book that describes his early training under the tutelage of a master of the Yagyu Shinkage ryu style. But it's not a day-to-day description of exercises that underlined his training, although he describes some of his training in detail. It's a narrative about a young boy's coming of age. It's a history lesson about the ancestry of his school. It's an American's view of the Japanese way of thinking and living. It's also a gentle reminder by example that the arts of the bugeisha1 are necessarily an intertwined composition of skill and philosophy, linked by rigorous training of body and mind. Amidst the martial arts bookshelves that groan with books of techniques, "secret" arts, and sure-fire tricks for winning tournaments or mastering this or that, Lowry's books (The Sword and the Brush, Persimmon Wind (the continuation of Autumn Lightning), Moving Towards Stillness, Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword, and Jo: Art of the Japanese Short Staff) read with an integrity that can only be found by those who have been tempered by the necessarily circular journey along the path to mastery and who have struggled with the contradictions that form this path. I highly recommend his books to any practitioner of the martial arts who wishes to gain a better perspective of their place within these traditions and a sense of the learning that remains past the overrated ranking systems that are associated with the martial arts today.
Idris Hsi
May 29, 2000
...The philosophical and the practical: my education as a student of the Yagyu Shinkage tradition seemed to be an endless combination of both that were distinct at one level of examination and then merged and flowed together at another. In the dojo, the sword was an instrument for taking a life and so I trained constantly, learning to use it to cut down an enemy, a study not any the less detailed despite the fact that it would almost certainly never be put to use. More than once a bokken was splintered as Sensei made every effort to impress upon me the need for the buegisha to maintain the exacting standards of the feudal bujutsu, keeping in the forefront of my practice an accent on correct form and action. While a throw in judo could be adapted to the practitioner's body or style of attack once he had learned it well, the techniques of the bujutsu, as a historically true legacy of the past, had to be preserved precisely as they were taught. As much as possible they had to be practiced as they were centuries ago; to do otherwise would be as unthinkable as sawing the arms off a Windsor chair to make it lighter to move about. To infer that this was the ultimate aim of the Yagyu Shinkage ryu, however, would be a very limited view of the classical martial arts.
Kotaro Sensei was at the dining room table, writing a letter to a friend
back in Japan one day. Normally when he wrote letters in Japanese,
he used a felt-tipped pen to make the syllabic shorthand of modern Japanese
writing, but because this correspondence was more formal, Sensei was writing
in the much older kanji characters of Japanese script with ink and
a soft bristled brush. There is a maxim in the bujutsu, ken,
shu,
ichi,
a reminder that the katana and the brush are one and the same in practice
and the swordsman must wield his blade with exactly the accuracy and artistry
with which he employs a brush to render the intricate characters of calligraphy.
Sensei's characters, like his swordsmanship, were adroit and flowing, unconsciously
expert. I sat in the chair beside him, watching, and when he had
finished the letter, he handed me his brush and told me to show him what
I had learned from the calligraphy books I had been looking through.
"Satsujunken," I brushed on a sheet of clean paper,
my strokes drawn too carefully, without the ease of my teacher's and showing
it in their slightly off-balance structure and clumsy spacing.
"What's this mean?" Sensei stretched back, propping
his chair up on its rear legs, folding his arms across his chest.
"Satsujinken," I said, "The sword that takes life,
the sword that kills."
Sensei pursed his lips. "Important for the bugeisha
to have this kind of sword?" he asked.
I nodded.
Kotaro Sensei leaned forward and brought the chair
back down on all its legs. He took the brush from me, swirled it
in the wet ink that was pooled at the end of his little square inkstone
and beside my characters he wrote katsujinken, "the sword that gives
life."
"This is even more important, I think," he said.
"Katsujinken, satsujinken" is an adage that has
been brushed on inspirational scrolls hung in Yagyu ryu dojo and on certificates
and teaching licenses awarded to its bugeisha. It is found in the
treatises written by Munenori and others. More importantly than anywhere
else, katsujinken, satsujinken must be inscribed on the hearts of the practitioners
of the ryu. In a way, it is at the very core of what the Yagyu tradition
is all about.
Satsujinken, the sword that destroys human life,
was a common enough weapon among the bujutsu exponents of old. When a disciple
apprenticed himself to a ryu to learn kenjutsu, his aim was almost invariably
to make himself into a more efficient fighter. Upon reaching this
level of skill, the majority were content to remain there as nothing more
than technicians. Their intent was to win, or at least to avoid dying,
so they trained to be better than anyone they might happen to meet in combat.
If they were successful in the endeavor, they prevailed and survived.
If not, they died. Many a swordsman achieved his fame not through
the defeating of a string of opponents in spectacular dueling, but from
having the circumspection to challenge only those he was reasonably certain
of beating, avoiding industriously the rest. It was not a wholly
inadvisable course for the professional martial artist to take, for the
stakes were terribly high. When he was drawn into a fight, the bugeisha
was fully aware that there could only be one of three conclusions: he could
kill his opponent, he could be killed, or both he and the opponent could
be struck down in the same instant. (It was, incidentally, the latter
in which the bugeisha often met his end, for the fractional space and timing
between life and death were so awfully close as to be inseparable.)
To kill, be killed, or to die in a mutual
slaying -- these were the choices for the bugeisha. Had they remained
the only outcomes possible in his life, he would, no doubt, have assumed
a role in history no better than that of any other warrior of any other
culture. He would have been a purveyor of death. But from the
swordsmanship of the Yagyu Shinkage school, with its foundations sunk deeply
in the ancient mysticism of Shinto and Buddhism and its structure buttressed
by the pragmatic earthiness of Zen, arose a different alternative to the
bugeisha's dilemma. Instead of the purely physical conflict with
an opponent, the masters of the Yagyu ryu understood that the real conflicts
of existence come within oneself, in the soul and the psyche of a man as
he grapples with his own mortality -- and morality -- in the dark corners
of his self that no opponent could ever reach. These were the inner
fields of battle, swordsmen of the Yagyu style of fencing were taught,
where the life of the bugeisha was won or lost, for it was in that secret
place that he forged for himself either just another life, or a life that
was worthy of living.
To strike and kill an enemy was, for men like Yagyu
Munenori, simply an implementation of technique. It was karma that
decided victory or defeat. It was the art of the sword in its basest
capacity. But the challenge presented by the self was another matter
entirely. Throughout a man's years on earth, his spirit is destined
to be assailed by the doubts, the fears, and the desires that will never
leave him in peace unless he overcomes them. For the corporeal opponents
of flesh and blood and steel that he faced in duels, the Yagyu bugeisha
reserved his satsujinken, the sword that took life.
For the battles that went on inside, though, he
needed a much stronger weapon, with a keener blade perhaps than even the
mythical sword Susa-no-o-in-izumo snatched from the belly of the eight-headed
dragon so many centuries ago in Japan's past. This is the sword he
calls katsujinken, the sword that gives life.
The transformation of the sword in the bugeisha's
hands from a weapon that takes life to one that grants it is a long and
arduous process. The process cannot even be attempted without an
immersion into the fundamentals of swordsmanship that force an exponent
to come face to face with an opponent often enough so that eventually,
it is hoped by his sensei, he will come to face himself. The method
is not easy, particularly because every encounter leads only to further
challenge. For every question answered about myself through the rigors
of the bujutsu, another score arose.
There were moments in my training, too many to count,
when Sensei's bokken came slashing at me and I thought with the merest
periphery of my consciousness about the parry and counter. The center
of my attention was taken with my own limitations, and I wondered how much
more I could take. From the moment I had stepped into the dojo, I
began a struggle with the boundaries, imposed by my mind, that threatened
and bullied at every step to overwhelm me. "I wasn't meant for this,"
the voice inside me would cry. I was a Westerner. I wasn't
strong enough to take the punishment. I fought a dozen duels with
myself for every cut I made with the katana. Sometimes I won, sometimes
not. The nights when I won over myself and pushed back the limitations
a bit, I would jump down under the stone bridge in the park on my way home,
full of confidence and contentment, rubbing my sore muscles briskly, reveling
in the whole specialness of being a part of the classical martial arts.
But there were other nights, many others, when I crept down under the bridge,
tucked my arms around my legs and stained the knees of my jeans with my
tears. The weariness that made me stop beneath the bridge in the
park was often not a physical one, for the bujutsu were making me decidedly
healthy, free from most sicknesses or even minor sniffles and colds.
I would have to pause to rest and put my head in my arms because of the
fatigue of my spirit and the horrible, shameful thought that I could go
no further.
I cannot say exactly why I didn't quit. Maybe
it was because after a while I came to feel that I wasn't involved in the
struggle alone. There wasn't any illuminating flash of enlightenment.
It was just that gradually I grew to suspect, and then to believe, that
I was another link in a chain that I could not really add to or detract
from; I could only take my place along with all the rest who had preceded
me in the ryu. It was a feeling that was germinated after one of
the few instances when Kotaro Sensei spoke to me at length about the philosophy
of the bugeisha.
During the day, intent-faced dance students in leotards
and leg warmers flexed and bounced in the huge, cathedral-ceilinged room
that was off the main gym of the university, a building larger than a basketball
court with nothing in it but a wooden floor, ballet barres along one wall,
and the pungent odor of rosin and sweat. In the evenings, it was
empty and occasionally we left the dojo to go and train there. It
was on such an evening, thick with the heat of August's summer, that Sensei
and I had performed kata.
The basics and middle level kata were instinctive
now; I ran through their motions with the assurance that came from constant
repetition. Even when Sensei changed the sequence of the movements,
switching from one kata to another without warning, I could keep up and
respond to his actions correctly. Blows that once would have knocked
me completely off my feet I could now absorb and deflect, and return with
a focused attack of my own. Even when his movements went beyond the
kata and became spontaneous, I could successfully counter many of them.
He would flick the sword up at my hands -- in theory, a small, rapid stroke
that would have chopped off my thumbs and rendered me incapable of holding
the sword and making further defense -- and I could smack the wooden blade
aside before it reached the target. I would come back, faking a slash
at his head, then stabbing with the point of my bokken aimed at his chest,
then executing a vertical cut. Sensei's parries, while they weren't
exercised to even a half of their fullest capability, let me know that
I was making progress, moving from the position of the beginning student
into the realm of the matured swordsman.
When the smothering swelter of the dance room became
too much for us to continue, we stripped out of our hakama and jackets,
showered, and then we went to perch on the high steps of the gym, lazing
on the smooth coolness of the limestone. We were like a pair of plantation
barons surveying our domain, except that instead of cotton fields, below
and in front of us spread a wide green lawn, the hedges, and the sidewalks
of that part of the campus. On the opposite side of the lawn, a street
of sedate old houses seemed to squat and sprawl gratefully beneath the
shade of enormous trees that gave out their shade in a limp and listless
way during the height of the day's humidity, awaiting the dark that was
now coming, to breathe into their limp leaves a draw of rejuvenating night
air.
Our walk from his house on the quiet street to the
university took us by a small cemetery. Sensei had been describing
to me the gravestones that were in cemeteries in Japan, how their tiered
construction was a representation of the five elements -- earth, air, fire,
metal, and water -- that symbolized the cosmos in Taoist lore. We
resumed the subject again after training, but we were both hot and lethargic
from our session and the conversation dwindled. From behind the clumped
crowns of the trees a cloud ballooned up. It was bright white around
the edges, catching the last rays thrown out by the setting sun.
Its fat belly was gray and expanding, not as a threat yet, but as more
a suggestion of the storm it presaged. As other clouds followed the
first, each equally ponderous with the portent of a summer thundershower,
a hesitant burst of wind stuttered across the campus. It dried the
dampness of the shower that still clung to my shirt and I drowsily stretched
and yawned. The breeze seemed to stir Sensei into thought and he
started to speak again, apparently with our earlier conversation still
in mind. His words were measured and carefully selected and as always,
I was surprised at how well he could express himself in English when he
wished to do so.
"The Americans say of the Japanese that we 'worship'
our ancestors. I suppose in a way we do, but differently from worship,
we believe we are part of our ancestors. If we do or do not do a
thing, it is influenced by how we believe our ancestors would view it."
Another gust skidded over the campus, bowing the
smaller branches of the trees, kicking up the dust that had collected along
the brick-lined streets near the university.
"American society is well meaning," Sensei said.
"Americans can be kind and generous. They are sometimes simple thinking;
they want so much to be equal to one another in all ways. But they
have built a civilization on that principle, so it isn't so bad at all
for them." He was quiet for a moment, slotting his thoughts into
sentences. "If there is anything that Americans don't have, it is
a feeling . . . a sense of the past. They learn about the
past in history books and it is something that affects them in an unimportant
way, they believe."
There was a rumble, very faint, that could have
been thunder when Sensei spoke again. "The swordsmanship we do, that is
nothing. What is cutting with a sword? If I have an atomic
bomb now, it will melt your katana and you, just push a button from a thousand
miles away."
"We keep the Yagyu Shinkage tradition alive for
another reason than fighting. Because it is like --" he paused, reaching
for the right word, "it is like an antique that is living.
Because we have the ryu, we have something of the past. We can depend
on it. All the bugeisha in the old days, they are just like us.
Same problems, they loved and hated, just like we do. Since they
went before, they are an example for us. We must never forget that
we are a part of them."
What Sensei was explaining to me was nakaima,
the "eternal present," the timelessness that links the classical martial
artist with those who have preceded him. In the kata and rituals
of the bujutsu, the spirit of the bugeisha's philosophy is retained through
the successive generations like a precious heirloom. This connection
gives to the bugeisha of the present the forbearance to create for himself
a life that perceives quality in simple things, that encourages him to
face others as honestly as he faces himself, that allows him a sense of
purpose and stability in a world constantly changing. Because his
present is so deeply nurtured and fortified by the ways of the past, his
character is polished by it and he is refined into a person of value to
his society, a possessor of the life-giving katsujinken. He becomes
a man of shibumi2.
The clouds were lowering, too full of rain to bear their burden so high
in the sky. And the breeze was stronger now, rocking whole branches
when it struck, whooshing away the humidity, leaving the air fresh and
moist. It was time for us to go home, Sensei said, before the rain
came, so we gathered up our bokken and the bags that held our training
clothes and walked down the street as the shadows of the sunset were lost
in the dark of the coming storm.
Sensei was right. In an hour or so, it would
begin to rain.
