Sakura No Kaze II
From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray
The second annual Sakura No Kaze (“cherry-blossom wind”) seminar was held in Surrey, BC, just outside Vancouver, on May 14/15. Bill Brown and I team-taught for the two days, alternating back and forth, sharing lessons that we’ve learned from our time in Japan training under Hatsumi Sensei. This included both unarmed taijutsu techniques as well as variations with the sword and the 6-foot bo staff. We also taught techniques from both the perspective of a defender using the technique against an aggressor, and also from the perspective of having the technique applied to you by someone else, turning the technique back upon them (this is known as kaeshi-waza, 返し技).
The turn-out was very g
ood despite the threat of rain, and although it did rain at times over the two days, there were hot, sunny breaks as well – a nice smattering of variable Vancouver weather. As many Vancouver-area Bujinkan groups do, we were training outside. At times, training jackets came off because it was getting hot, and at other times those training jackets were dripping with mud. The Vancouver groups are used to training outdoors in all sorts of weather. I had the same experience in my 5 years of training in Vancouver before moving to Japan – sun, rain, snow, mud, concrete, gravel, ice – we trained on and in it all.
It was so encouraging to see many old friends and new ones as well, the new generation who have come up the ranks in the 19 years since I began my training in the area. At the time I think there were only 2 or 3 Bujinkan black belts in BC. The Bujinkan community was very isolated from Japan. Few made the trip to Japan for training, and there were swindlers around who would take advantage of people’s ignorance, keeping them in the dark and taking their membership and grading fees and issuing their own certificates and membership cards instead of the official ones that are supposed to come from the Bujinkan office in Japan. Over time, people began to see other instructors and make their own trips to Japan, aided by the spread of information via the Internet since the mid-90′s. Now there are many instructors who have taken groups of students to Japan to train with Sensei, and the exposure of more instructors to the training in Japan has, over time, resulted in a much greater skill level than existed in the province when I first started out. It’s good to see – relationships between local training groups have developed and people are cooperating on hosting and organizing events and showing up to support each others’ seminars. Such inter-group cooperation was rare back in the ’90s. I felt a great sense of happiness when I thought of this as I looked around at the faces of the participants as the seminar came to a close. The Bujinkan in Western Canada has come such a long way, due to people’s efforts and sacrifice, and is developing it’s own history, one that I’m proud to be a small part of.
It was great to have the honour to be invited to teach here again.
Namaste, Arigatou, Keep Going!
Shawn
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Sveneric is one of the grand old men and one of the most experienced teachers of the Bujinkan. He travels frequently to Japan to receive more training, and hold many seminars all around the world. 
Rob is resident of Japan where he has lived for over five years. Rob is in a unique position to share insights from Budo Taijutsu. He works full-time as a movement coach, training people in the Zeropoint Training System , which includes injury-prevention exercise for adults, rapid body reconfiguration, and a number of movement and exercise courses for people of all ages and skill levels, not the least of which is working with leading Japanese schools to implement cutting-edge children’s educational, exercise programs.
As Hatsumi Sensei often says: “You cannot truly understand a technique until you understand its counter!” With this in mind, I will be showing the progression from co-operation to resistance, looking at how uke and tori would “counter” each move, then show how to use that counter to your benefit, allowing you todevelop your own “intuition” of the proper movement needed for any given moment. (This methodology can be used for any technique, but we will be focusing on Kihon Happo in conjunction with Soke’s chosen theme for this year.)
Steve has been training in Japan since 2001. He trains with Soke and the Japanese Shihan weekly. He looks forward to sharing his perspective on techniques and themes recently seen and discussed in Japan.
