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Koppō & Kaname: The How and the What of Bujinkan Martial Arts

Shawn GrayMay 30, 2012

From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

Time has flown by since my last blog entry, and I’d like to thank the readers who took the time to share their comments here on the blog and share links to it on Facebook. Your feedback indicated that there’s still an interest in the personal histories of people who’ve devoted significant chunks of their lives to train at the fountainhead of Bujinkan martial arts in Japan, and at the same time several readers mentioned resonances with their own martial quests, creating new links and points of comparison. In the time since, life has continued to be challenging and exciting. Taxes, Training and Translation work have occupied much of my time, and I also made the decision to close down my guest apartment in Noda as of the end of April. (There were a number of reasons for the closure, but rest assured, the original guest apartment in Abiko is still available.)

Right after making the apartment move, I left Japan for six weeks to visit family and instruct at a number of Bujinkan seminars in Canada (“Sakura No Kaze” in Vancouver, and then at Bujinkan Manitoba in Winnipeg) and the U.S. (Bujinkan Sanami Dojo, Austin, June 9/10, and in Denver the following weekend). During the Q&A session at the end of the seminar in Winnipeg this past weekend, there was a question about the differences between the concepts of Koppō (骨法) and Kaname (要, also pronounced Yō). Afterwards, the seminar host, Adam McColl, asked if I’d write a blog post about it, and so here we are. :-)

The Bujinkan training theme of the year in 2000 was Kotō Ryū Koppōjutsu (虎倒流骨法術). The regular way of writing Koppō uses the kanji meaning “bone (kotsu) method (hō),” due to the characteristic use of the body’s skeletal structure in Kotō Ryū. Kotsu and Hō combine phonetically to make koppō. In his own characteristic style, Sensei often used a double meaning of kotsu that year to convey an important aspect of the year’s theme. It happens that, in Japanese, the kanji for kotsu meaning bone (骨) can also be used to mean “knack, skill, trick, secret, or know-how.” Sensei used this double-meaning to emphasize the importance of gaining an intuitive understanding of how a technique works – the knack or trick to applying a given technique well.

It’s interesting that now, twelve years later (one cycle of the Chinese zodiacal calendar – both 2000 and 2012 are years of the Dragon), Sensei has chosen Kaname as the theme. I went into some detail about the meaning of Kaname in a previous blog post, and I won’t repeat all of that here, but the relationship between the two terms Koppō and Kaname is an interesting one. Whereas Koppō relates to how a technique works, Kaname relates not only to how a technique works, but to its essential, defining characteristics. Koppō relates to method, Kaname adds the element of essential identity – it includes not only the way of applying a technique, but the essence of the technique itself.

Another important point to note is that the name of the training theme for 2012 includes the word Mamoru (護), which means to protect. Another reading for this same kanji is Go, as in Goshinjutsu (護身術), “self-defense“. In the name for this year’s theme, the kanji are written together as Yōgo (要護), meaning “to protect the essence.” In the previous post on Kaname, I discussed various things that essence can mean in this context, but in comparison to Koppō, the method to a technique’s application, Yōgo tells us that not only is it important to be able to make a technique work, but that there are essential points that are necessary for it to work properly, and that although variation, or henka is an indispensable concept, there are certain defining characteristics that are to be preserved. Although we can make (or even “force”) a technique to work, its essence is lost if the essential points are not preserved. To learn budō properly, we must not simply fall back on henka as soon as we run into difficulty – to do so would be laziness. We should take the time and make the effort to learn the techniques of our art correctly and thoroughly, discovering, understanding, and integrating the essence of each waza so that we can not only practice Bujinkan budō properly, but also, as teachers, responsibly preserve its essence as we transmit it to the next generation.

Path to the Heart of the Flower (II)

Shawn GrayApril 12, 2012

From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

In Part I of this article, I wrote about how I became involved in Japanese martial arts and the reasons for my growing interest in all things Japanese. I arrived in Japan in August 1990, the 45th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. My 1st month in Hiroshima was a time of adjustment – and many social faux pas (which continue to this day!). In time, I took over the majority of English classes offered by the small English school where I was working, which was run by an American Christian missionary and his family. In fact, I myself had come to Japan on a “religious activities” visa, sponsored by an American missionary organization and the small country Baptist church in which I spent most of my youth. The church had a history of almost 200 years–and I was its 1^st ordained missionary. :-)

I still hadn’t realized at the time what a monocultural environment I had come from. Most of the people who lived in the rural Canadian province where I was raised are of Anglo-Saxon descent-there were very few people of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds (although that has changed a lot in subsequent years, from my understanding). But for me in the 80′s, I knew almost noone who wasn’t a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. There was one Black girl in my elementary school (who had been adopted by a Caucasian family), and the 1^st Asian person I met was when I was around 15 years old. The 1^st Japanese person I met in my life was when I was 19 years old, a few months before I left to go to Japan. She had married a French Canadian man in the city where I started college, and keen to talk to our anthropology class about Japan. When she found out I was about to go to Japan, they invited me over to their home for dinner. Wow–a real-life Japanese person! How exotic! (And Buddhism, wow – you mean there’s more than one way to look at the world?? :-) )

Now I was on Planet Japan. People still had 2 arms and legs, but so many things were so very different from the small country town where I grew up. But I was open-minded and hungry for knowledge and experience -I began to carry around a dictionary and notepad with me wherever I went. When I heard something I did not understand but sounded useful, I would either look it up on the spot, or make a note of it to look up in the dictionary later. I would try to do this with at least one or 2 words per day, and then use those words in real situations as many times as possible that same day. This is how I learned Japanese. I never studied the language in school.

The summer in Hiroshima is unbearably hot-especially for Canadians. I grew up playing ice hockey on frozen rivers. Here, temperatures were in the high 30s centigrade, but the worst thing was that humidity. By 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning, you were already covered in sweat. I got used to walking around with my clothes sticking to me like what felt like “saran wrap.” Not the easiest thing to get used to. The weather very slowly began to improve by September, and since I was now into the swing of things with my work schedule, it was time to get my Japan martial arts training under way.

Through my karate instructor back in Canada, I got the contact details for the closest instructor in my style (Chito Ryu). Kanao Sensei lived 2 hours away by train, in the city of Fukuyama. Since that was too far for me to travel in time for regular weeknight classes, he agreed to meet me on a weekend. His cousin spoke some English, and was the facilitator for our 1^st meeting. Kanao Sensei was a 4^th Dan at the time, which in our style meant that he was a senior instructor. There were no easy black belts in our style. In fact, if you weren’t Japanese, you weren’t even allowed to get a black belt in Japan in Chito Ryu.

Kanao Sensei graciously agreed to teach me on the weekends. I would take the train two hours to Fukuyama and he would teach me at his home, in the garden behind his house and in his car garage if the weather was bad. Sometimes I would stay overnight and we would train both days. We did a lot of Kata training, and a lot of Makiwara training, which involves punching a target over and over, and over and over, and over and over, hundreds of times. For untrained fists like mine, the target, a post or tree, was wrapped with rope made of rice straw (Maki = to wrap; Wara = straw – sometimes thin boards were substituted, as shown in the photo below). After a few dozen strikes, my tender knuckles would split and begin to bleed, and after a few hundred repetitions, the straw rope would be covered with blood. Sometimes this was followed by knuckle push-ups on the concrete floor of the car garage. Kanao Sensei didn’t seem to mind getting my blood on the floor of his garage, and I would often go back to Hiroshima with my knuckles covered in bandages, which made for great conversation in my English classes the following week. Call it masochistic if you will, but it certainly did foster a spirit of determination, focus, mental control, and perseverance.

Kanao Sensei worked at the Fukuyama City post office, and without really realizing what was happening, before I knew it I was postmaster-for-a-day, and was interviewed by the local media, appearing in the local newspaper (photo below – Kanao Sensei is on the far left). There weren’t many foreigners around those parts in those days, and it appeared that they found me to be just as exotic as I was finding everything about this new country to be. It was quite an experience for a 19-year-old with only half of a college education, from a town of 3,600 people on the other side of the world, and as life goes, it was shaping my future much more profoundly than I could have guessed at the time.

Having now become used to my work schedule, and having established a relationship and training regimen with Kanao Sensei, the next thing to do on this great adventure was to track down Masaaki Hatsumi, the legendary ninja master. I say “track down” because it was still before the Internet, and ninja masters were not advertising. I had no address, no phone number, no connection with anyone who was training with Hatsumi Sensei. All I had was a couple of books by Stephen Hayes, and the only location mentioned in the particular books that I had was the historical region of Iga, currently known as Iga-Ueno, in Mie Prefecture, about 6 hours by train from where I was living. And so, once my schedule allowed it, in October of 1990, I set out for Iga in search of Masaaki Hatsumi.

Path to the Heart of the Flower (I)

Shawn GrayMarch 26, 2012

From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

February 9^th was the 20th anniversary of my first day of training in the Bujinkan. I mentioned it on Facebook, but was encouraged to write a series of blog articles about a bit of my martial arts history and how I found the Bujinkan and made my way to Japan to train with Hatsumi Sensei – to approach the heart of the flower that is Japanese martial arts, budo. I’ve always found it fascinating to hear stories of the adventures of my Sempai here (Mark Lithgow, Michael Pearce, Mark O’Brien, Andrew Young, and Mike L) and, now in my 17^th year in Japan myself, I thought it would be fun to look back over the years, and in remembering, share some of that with the readers of my blog.

Black Belt Magazine – Feb 1984

Like many of us in Bujinkan, I was originally attracted by the ninja image. It was 1984, the same year that I started karate practice. In the small town of 3,600 where I grew up in Eastern Canada, there was a Chito-Ryu Karate club, which I joined after 9 years of ice hockey. I quickly came infatuated with Japanese martial arts and would frequently go to the magazine rack at the local gas station to check for the latest issues of martial arts magazines. It was on one of these visits that I found Black Belt Magazine, Feb 1984 issue. I was young. I was impressionable. I was hooked.

But how was a young New Brunswick lad supposed to access this ninja training? I was in junior high school. I couldn’t go to Japan. I couldn’t even go to Dayton, Ohio. But I could join the Shadows of Iga Society and Robert Bussey’s Warrior International as a correspondence member, so that’s what I did. I also got hold of some Japanese split-soled tabi boots and shuko hand claws and spent a lot of time running around in the woods climbing trees and sneaking up on unsuspecting neighbours and making blowguns from copper pipe. Luckily, I survived. Sometimes that rather surprises me.

I kept up with my karate practice quite seriously, entering and coming home with trophies from a number of provincial tournaments. I was invited to go to the Canadian national championship tournament, but it was held in Vancouver, 4,000km away, and I was in high school. I entered a local college and took liberal arts courses, and in my second year was presented with the opportunity to take a year off my studies and go to teach English in Japan. It was a dream come true, needless to say, and in August 1990 at age 19, I got on a plane and flew to the other side of the world, from a town of 3,600 to a city of 25 million.

I somehow managed to find the people that were meeting me at Narita airport. They had come by car to pick me up, and I remember that traffic was absolutely gridlocked all the way back to Tokyo. A trip that would take an hour by train took us six hours by car. After having already traveled through a 15-hour time difference in 24 hours, it seemed to take forever. We finally arrived at the organization’s Tokyo headquarters in Shinjuku, where I stayed for the first 3 days for an orientation program. Shinjuku is one of the major Tokyo metropolitan centers and one of the biggest train stations in the world, and having come from such a small town it amazed me that I had to look straight upwards to even see the sky. There were so many skyscrapers and so many people and so much concrete and so many wires and lights and sounds – I was at first afraid to even go exploring outside alone because I thought I’d get lost and never be able to find my way back (most of the streets in Japan don’t have names). The city seemed to go on forever. This wasn’t like visiting another city, or even another country. It was like visiting another planet entirely. Planet Japan.

Atomic Bomb Memorial, Hiroshima

After the 3-day program in Shinjuku finished, I boarded a Shinkansen high-speed bullet train bound for Hiroshima, where I had been placed to work as an English teacher. The ride took around 5 hours from Tokyo back then, I think (it might be a little quicker now). The train sailed along so quickly and smoothly it felt like I was riding in an airplane. I was going to be one of the first occupants in a newly-constructed apartment building that was going up near the place I’d be working, 30 minutes out of central Hiroshima by bus. Since construction wasn’t finished yet, I stayed in an apartment in downtown Hiroshima for the first month – right across the street from Peace Park, ground zero for the atomic bomb that had been dropped there 45 years before. I could see the famous bombed dome monument from my kitchen window, and would often go walk through the park to sketch, practice my haiku, or just people and pigeon watch. When I saw something interesting, I’d sketch it or write about it in a journal. (I didn’t blog it. I didn’t Facebook it. I didn’t Twitter it. It was pre-Internet, and life was good.) Peace Park also had an international cultural center where I could get travel and tourism tips in English, and also watch news on TVs with English subtitles. I remember taking the 30-minute bus ride in to Tokyo to keep up with the first Gulf War (the Bush’s first attempt at Hussein) on their TVs. They also had a library with a lot of English books about Japan – but you couldn’t check them out, you had to read them in the library. It was here that I discovered Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director Yukio Mishima, and with my interest in Bushido, the way of the Samurai, I was fascinated to discover that his failed coup d’etat and suicide by ritual disembowelment occurred literally 2 hours before I was born. (The things that fascinate 19-year-old Bushido enthusiasts!) The library also had a copy of Yoshikawa’s Musashi, the life story of the famous samuraiwarrior. It was quite a thick book, and since I couldn’t take it home with me, I went back again and again, gradually working my way through it. I was completely enamored with bushido, the samurai code of honour.

One of my first memories in Japan, while settling into my English teaching schedule and still living across from Peace Park, was of one of my neighbours – an interesting American guy named Richard (no, that’s not him in the photo, that’s me, trying to teach English). After I’d been there some time, Richard announced that he was going on a trip to China and asked me if I’d look after his place while he was away. Turns out while he was in Hong Kong he found out that there was a film production looking for extras and he applied and got a part in the film. The movie was Kickboxer with Jean Claude van Damme. (Richard is the reporter who interviews “the champ” after the match right at the beginning of the film.) I wasn’t much of a movie buff and didn’t realize what a big film it was until later. I later moved out to my apartment in the suburbs and we eventually lost touch, unfortunately. I should look up his name in the movie cast members and see if he’s on Facebook. That would a riot. (I wonder if he signs autographs…) Another interesting memory was the time that he told me that he was going to be away for a couple of days to go talk to someone regarding a misunderstanding that he was having with a gangster who thought he was seeing his girlfriend. I was supposed to call the police if he wasn’t back in 2 days. I hadn’t even been in Japan a month yet and already I was making such interesting friends. :)

I soon got into the swing of things with my weekly schedule of English classes – class size varied, but I think overall I had 90-100 students per week. After the work schedule was sorted, I started getting to know my way around my new neighbourhood bit by bit and began to explore the wonderful, exotic treasures of Japanese culture: go,(the board game), sado (tea ceremony), shodo (calligraphy) and, of course, budo, Japanese martial arts. The first thing on my list for that last activity was to make contact with my karate sensei – and the next was to track down the ninja master Masaaki Hatsumi.

(To be continued in Part II…)

Thoughts on Kaname

Shawn GrayMarch 5, 2012

From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

I was asked today to write something about Kaname in advance of a seminar I’ll be giving at Bujinkan Manitoba on May 26/27. The following are some thoughts I put down based on my experience of feeling and hearing what Sensei has been teaching on this subject this year.

Kaname (要) is a word that means “essence,” or “essential point.” It refers to that which is necessary for a thing to be what it is. For example, each technique from our Nine Schools has something about it that makes it unique. For Ganseki Nage to be Ganseki Nage, and not Omote Gyaku, there are things about it that make it distinct. Those things are the “Kaname” of Ganseki Nage, the things that make it what it is, distinct from other techniques, the things that comprise its essential character.

Hatsumi Sensei used to talk a lot about Kyusho. Early on, he talked about how important it was to know the Kyusho points, and about how important it is to practice hitting them accurately and effectively. People were taught the names of fixed Kyusho points found in various Ryu Ha, and diagrams of the locations of these points on the body appeared in books. Later, Hatsumi Sensei emphasized that it is important not only to know where the fixed Kyusho are, but to realize that other people also know where they are, so they can be protected or used against you. Being fixed in place, they become common knowledge, something that is easily referenced by anyone with an interest in the human body. Later on, Sensei would emphasize that it’s important to be able to create your own Kyusho at will, rather than being tied into a fixed idea that a Kyusho is a fixed location on the body. The idea of Kyusho became more to do with taking advantage of openings that the opponent gives you, or that you create, regardless of whether or not the openings happen to coincide with a set “pressure point.”

Now we are talking about Kaname, and in this I think Sensei is taking the Kyusho idea one step further to apply to any factor in any situation rather than any point (fixed or not) on the body. So not only are there Kyusho on fixed points on the body, and not only can new ones be created on an as-needed basis, but any of the factors in a given situation, in a given moment, can be used to create the optimal outcome. In Budo techniques, these factors generally fall into what I call the Kihon No Goshin (基本の五心) – the 5 Essential Basics: Distance, Timing, Angling, Balance, and Force.

When working through a technique, at any given moment in that process, there is a key essential factor (which is likely one of the Kihon No Goshin, or a combination of two or more – but it could also be something else, like the placement of an elbow, or that a hand is in a certain position at a certain point in order to guard against a potential attack at that point) that must be employed in order to produce the optimal result. The more this does not happen, the less efficient and the less effective things become. It’s the same thing in life.

Shiraishi Sensei often says, “Constantly ask yourself, ‘What is the most important thing that I could be doing right now?‘” At any given moment in our lives, there is Something that we could be doing that is most in line with who we are and what we need to be doing at this moment (both at this moment in time and at this time in our lives) in order to accomplish that which we are here to do. That Something is the Kaname of that moment, and the less often we do that Something each moment, the further away we grow from being Who we are meant to be. In Taijutsu, the Kaname is the essential point that makes a movement work, its functional essence, and in life, the Kaname is the Essence of Who-You-Are – your true inner self, your ultimate identity.

In Taijutsu, the Kaname is dynamic, always changing, always flowing from one point to the next. It is not optimal to do the same Something each moment. It is not optimal that every technique be the same. It is important to be able to constantly adapt with the Kaname, to be able to recognize it when it appears, and follow it where it goes. In everyday Japanese, the word “Kaname” is often used with 2 other characters to read, “Kanjin Kaname” (肝心要), “the essential point.” When the characters are changed to 神心神眼 (normally read as “Shinshin Shingan”), they can also be pronounced “Kanjin Kaname,” but with the meaning of, “divine mind, divine eyes.” In other words, divine mind and insight reveal what the Essence is.

In training this year, we are looking at ways of recognizing the Kaname in Budo, at ways of seeing where it is going, and at ways of learning how to learn to ride with it as it constantly flows and changes. Taking the lesson beyond the walls of the dojo, there is always Something optimal that we can be doing to grow and evolve with the changes that Life presents us, the essential point of every moment.

Shikin Haramitsu Daikomyo – May each moment bring you Great Light!

Hitsumon Bujinden (必問・武神伝) – A New DVD from Hatsumi Sensei

Shawn GrayJanuary 29, 2012

From The Magick & The Mundane » Bujinkan by Shawn Gray

I’d like to start this blog by thanking the readers who have expressed their appreciation for the posts I’ve made thus far. Thank you for your feedback and letting me know that you’ve found what I’ve written to be helpful to you. My intention was to make one entry per month, but last summer became very busy, and that continued right through the end of the year, so that whenever I would prepare to write an article, I’d think to myself, “Is this really the most productive thing that I could be doing right now?” The answer most often was, “No.” And so the blog went quiet for a few months – but in the meantime, I’ve kept an active list of interesting topics that I want to write about, so these will gradually be coming out in the next little while.

What I wanted to write about today is the latest DVD set from Hatsumi Sensei. Last summer, I received a handout at Hombu Dojo that asked Bujinkan instructors in Japan to speak with their students and see what questions they would like to ask Hatsumi Sensei. The questions could be about anything – directly related to training or not – and we were told that Sensei would discuss the questions received on a DVD. This DVD set (2 DVDs, 2 hours each) was released for sale at Daikomyosai 2011, and is entitled, “Hitsumon Bujinden (必問・武神伝): Wisdom Necessary for Quest.”

In evaluating this 2-volume set, my opinion is that although the production quality is lacking in some aspects, the content more than makes up for it.

In speaking of production quality, I’m referring to the spacing and punctuation of the English text on the DVD case, as well as in the subtitles in places. Simple things like having a space after a period can make a big difference when it comes to the impression of the quality of the product. The quality of the translation is also not 100% in some places. The production company was on a tight timeline to have the product ready for sale at Daikomyosai, but were behind schedule, so the Japanese text (transcribed from the video by a Japanese native) was sent to the translator later than originally planned, and the video content was not sent to the translator until the day after the translation was supposed to have been completed. When the translator checked his translation of the text against the video, he realized that the Japanese transcriber had made a number of mistakes and omissions, leaving out things that Hatsumi Sensei had said, misunderstanding things Sensei had said, and using incorrect kanji characters for words that sound the same (for example, using the kanji for Banpei (番兵, sentry), when what Sensei actually says on the video is Banpen Fugyo (万変不驚)). The translator made recommendations for changes in these cases, but not all of these were implemented by the production company, ostensibly because they were too strapped for time in regard to their target release date. The result is that the English subtitles appear a bit disjointed in places (and in a couple of places even include numbers, where the video editors mistakenly copied in parts of the time-stamp code from the original video).

All that being said, the content of what Sensei talks about in these DVDs makes them well worth having. Sensei discusses many things related to training, as well as many teachings and philosophical ideas. Some things he talks about he hasn’t spoken openly of before, to my knowledge, like details of his family background and upbringing, which was not always smooth. It struck me how well he processed his own background, and how he turned it all into positive, into good. Sensei refers to this as using bad experiences as fertilizer with which to foster a positive life. It occurred to me how essential this processing of negative experiences in our lives helps us grow spiritually. Aside from any considerations of enlightenment, perhaps it is the degree to which we process negative life experience and turn it into good that is an indicator of spiritual advancement. Sensei seems to have answered the big questions of his own life. Each of us have our own questions that need to be answered as well.

Although Sensei is in interview mode, the DVDs don’t just show him speaking – there are still shots and video footage of his early life, training with Takamatsu Sensei, and his work as an advisor for film and TV programmes, in addition to scenes from training seminars, Taikai, and Hombu Dojo down through the years. I feel that the photos and video give a wonderful overview of Hatsumi Sensei’s martial arts career, and that what he talks about in the interviews provides valuable teaching and advice for life – both for training in the Dojo and in living daily life.

This is one of my favourite DVDs with Sensei to date – highly recommended.

Shawn