Japan Trip - NinZine 3.0

Norikae: Change Your Mindset

kumafrMarch 17, 2013

Do you think Hatsumi sensei is reading my blog? we can think so because in today’s class he gave us the next level to understand the Henka article.

I was asked to begin the class with some taijutsu technique. Uke attacks with a fist at short distance and by moving up and down, left and right you pull him down softly at your feet once uke’s balance is broken. Quoting Noguchi sensei in class today I would say it was a juppô sesshô technique. Hatsumi sensei did many henka around that, not using force at all, grabbing the fingers, crushing the nails having uke dance like a fool with pain. At one point he turned to me and said: “Norikae!”. Totally taken by surprised I said the only logical thing: “nani?” (what?). Sensei explained that the new taijutsu he is developing these days the key was to understand the possible changes that could be done and not to be lost in the way.

Softly he did many “henka” taking uke’s balance only by holding a finger and controlling him seamlessly. As my friend Sven would say the technique “is not about power it is about control”. Sensei added ”this is moving like a butterfly”, it was soft and light at the same time but very powerful. To keep the control with these soft movements was the spirit of woman self defense which we will study during the taikai.

乗り換え norikae or 乗り換える, norikaeru is a verb used when transferring trains or changing buses. If you take the wrong track you never reach your final destination. Norikae is the keypoint to develop proper control of the opponent. Once again there is no strength at all (he repeated many times again 力じゃない, chikara janai, don’t use strength). Having no preconceived plan of action you move like a butterfly from one control to the other, never stopping until uke is defeated. But if you make one mistake, i.e. miss a connection, you end up dead. To reach this ability one must have developed a powerful taijutsu and, he added, this is the most difficult expression of taijutsu, .

Let me illustrate this 乗り換え ”transfer, change” concept with an example. Mistakes are always possible and the results can be dramatic. If during your meal you use tabasco instead of ketchup you might get quite surprised after the first bite. On a side note and speaking of tabasco, sensei said that you could put some chili on your nose to peek into the eye of the opponent. This way of thinking is also ninjutsu.

Full awareness leads to instantaneous changes and adaptation to uke’s reactions. Then strength is not necessary. Whatever move you are doing it can be wrong but if you don’t dwell on your mistakes, learn from them, and regain advantage over uke, it is good. In any situation you have to decide fast and often there is no time to think. You have to become so good that you surf on the best possible wave of action.

Ninpô taijutsu is a tool and your choice of action will determine your fate. But as it is the case with any tool there are always several options. A tool does not have 識 shiki, consciousness; you do. A lighter for example is a simple tool: it can be used for the fireplace, cook your food, or burn your house. Because you have shiki you don’t destroy everything. This is norikaeru.

If we dig deeper, 乗り換える norikaeru has also the meaning of “changing one’s mind”. You must be capable of changing your course of action at any moment. The quality of your listening to uke’s reactions makes the correct norikae.

This is why Hatsumi sensei’s techniques are so difficult to get. But the difficulty does not lie in the movements per se. It is based upon the awareness to adjust, in a blink, to uke’s reactions without thinking or using any strength. What sensei has been teaching today is indeed for me a new paradigm. I understand now why he was saying last year that this “goshin jutsu” was the hardest way to learn how to fight.

This is linked with 縁の切身ない, en no kirinai (don’t sever the connection) that we studied a few years ago*. By keeping the control and the contact with uke we are able to move freely and to defeat him. By understanding what sensei was teaching today we become able to 乗り代える, nori kaeru, “ride on the change”; and to 忍びの理科得る, shinobi no rika eru: “obtain the science of ninjutsu”.

*search for it on this blog, several entries

Japan Trip April 2012 – Diary

kumafrApril 24, 2012

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

I came back yesterday from a fantastic trip and I hope you have been able to share with me the things I trained in Noda.

I have been asked in Japan why I was writing so much*. It is to share with the community some of the knowledge we get in Japan with Sôke and the shihan. I hope it will help you to wait for your next trip.

These texts* and these pictures are my attempt to give a fair image of what is happening in Japan. This is why I have added many pictures to these texts.

I took many pictures and not all are good but please see them as a training documentary. Pictures being forbidden during training, you will mainly have pictures taken before and after the class. As today someone asked me to put a link here to access the pictures uploaded on facebook during my trip you will find them below:

The first album contains the first 10 days (over 500 pict):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3395318174028.144619.1601937800&type=3

and the second one only the last day (around 100 pict):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3464131334314.145724.1601937800&type=3

Enjoy and comment them if you feel like it.

*All the texts in this blog were uploaded in April. If you want to read them again, click on “April 2012″ in the home page and they will appear.

Ultimate Teaching

kumafrApril 22, 2012

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

Today was my last class with sensei during this japan trip and it was a very nice class where we could train also with long weapons. As sensei was coming a little late I was asked to begin the class and when sensei arrived, we started by a three tsuki attack demonstrated by an American friend.

From there I got lost as sensei used no strength at all and was playing with uke as if uke was unable to see that he was going to die. Shawn Gray, after being sensei’s uke, commented that each one of the uke nagashi was piling up on top of the previous one, and that he became aware of his loss of balance only when it was too late.

Sensei’s movements reminded me of some form of “kotonoma”, 空と海は (verb, sound) and “kokyû”, 呼吸 (breathing) demonstrated by Ueshiba sensei in his Aikido videos. Friday night he insisted to pay attention to the breathing of the opponent and to our own breathing too. If you hit uke while he is breathing in you increase the power of your hits. This is why you must take your time and wait for uke to breath in. If you rush to do the technique you will be less efficient. Timing is essential (kaname?).

When Hatsumi sensei is moving his body turns into the “chûshin”, 中心 (pivot, center) of everything. Even though he didn’t speak about “shinrabanshô”, 森羅万象 (all things in Nature) today, he was expressing it in each one of his movements. He was the “shinrabanshô no kaname”, 森羅万象の要, the center of the whole creation.

Whatever his uke was doing he was speeding up the destruction process. Like in the theme of 2007 ”kuki taisho”, 九鬼大笑 (the laughter of the ninth demon), tori has no fear. If uke attacks, he dies; if he doesn’t, he lives. That is his call. What was really amazing was to see how easily sensei, with very little movements of the whole body can deal with the opponent. It took me quite a long time (gracias Hector) to figure it out, and even when I got close to get it, I was miles away from sensei’s movements. Sometimes I find it frustrating to attend his classes. You see the technique, you understand it, and you are incapable. This can be quite depressing.

His movements are so subtle that if you don’t pay atttention to everything at the same time, you don’t see them. As Shawn said later, the motion of sensei’s hands is catching his attention and the body movements were getting his balance totally unnoticed. When facing sôke, you are drawn into a sort of “uzumaki”, 渦巻 (whirlpool) feeling, from which there is no escape. It is interesting to watch but it is scary to feel it. There is no strength at all and uke falls because he cannot be standing up anymore. From the observer’s perspective it is as if nothing is applied to him. It is magic!

Each point of contact between tori and uke (today mainly the elbows) turns into a kaname as sensei keeps pivoting softly using his legs to do that. He spoke again about kaname, explaining it to be the highest expression of taijutsu. Once you can find the kaname everywhere there is nothing impossible. But what is impossible is to understand it solely at the intellectual level.

He said that this cannot be understood or acquired by “researchers”, it is coming from real experience, this is not mental. Over the years how many times did we hear him saying out loud: “don’t think!”. He also said: “there are too many researchers in the bujinkan and the kaname concept is out of their grasp as long as they keep their knowledge at the intellectual level. It was like what he told us about kuden on Friday night: “kuden cannot be written, this is why it is an oral transmission”.

Sensei repeated again that understanding his words or the movements were not important: “if you get out of the class with the feeling you remember nothing it is ok because I teach the jûgodan”. I hope I was not the only one totally lost.

Feeling this kaname action through the body is teaching the mind. I went to ask him to demonstrate it on me and when he did, it was like fighting a “puff of smoke”. There was no information sent to me, nothing. I felt like falling into the kûkan.

As not so many people attended the class today, we applied these techniques with sword, bô and naginata and it was nice to learn how to use the space available. With a weapon or not, when facing sensei you are not afraid, you are simply frozen. You stop moving because it is comfortable and safe. We don’t use the weapons, we use our taijutsu with the help (hojo?) of the weapons.

The sakki test ended the class and I went to his house where I joined Sayaka Oguri, Lubos and some of his students. Sensei showed us many new swords he got recently including one that belonged to a Togakure general (yoshitaka?) with the togakure crest on the scabbard. Another tachi was wearing the shingon crest, and the blade was engraved with the Fudô myô sword on one side and three bija letters representing Fudô myô, Marishi ten, and Dainichi nyorai. He also showed us a very nice tantô in an orange scabbard that looked like a big caterpilar. He also showed us a beautiful kyoketsu shôge, 距跋渉毛 with the sword and dragon of fudô myô on one side, and the double edged sword with a vajra tsuka on the other side (you can see the pictures of those weapons on facebook).

We were departing when sensei asked us to the new storage room next to his house. It was like entering an antique shop! Various types of weapons and pieces of art are there, waiting for an hypothetic museum. What caught my eyes were the few long yari that he showed. Each blade was around 80 cm! No wonder why the yari was considered to be the most dangerous weapon of all. I read somewhere from an archeological study that between Muromachi (1333) and Meiji (1868), death by swords only accounted for about 20% of the casualties, and the majority happened after the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603). The yari was the weapon of choice of the samurai, and the Japanese yoroi was initially designed to fight it.

Before leaving sensei, and after thanking him for the time he spent with us, he gave Lubos and me two omamori from the Kashima Katori shrine from the Miyagi prefecture that he signed with his martial name.

It was indeed a very nice day today, thank you sensei. I am sure we will speak about it with Lubos tomorrow as we are sharing the same flight back to Europe.

Sayonara

Shinrabanshô

kumafrApril 21, 2012

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

In each class with sensei I wait for “the word” that will give a new turn to my taijutsu. Last friday night at the honbu the word was “shinrabanshô”, 森羅万象 (all thing in nature, the whole creation).

I had the privilege to open the class. On a fist attack, you slide to uke’s left and take his hand, rotate the body leftward while pushing up on his elbow, therefore extending his arm. The left hand controls uke’s left shoulder. This turns naturally into a kind of Ô gyaku and uke falls at your feet still in control.

After a few tries by everyone, sensei did it “his way” on me and I got the feeling that he vanished in front of me. In fact when I was asked to explain what I felt, the only word that came to mind was “nuku” (see http://kumafr.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/1012/).

Sensei is moving slightly before you have the time to get him. His moves are not fast they are just in tune with everything, this is when he began to speak about “shinrabanshô”. The “whole creation” is one with him and his actions are so natural that the time you see them it is already too late. I insist here on the fact that a movement being natural is not “human”, it is a manifested yûgen (幽玄) action of “elegant simplicity”. As everyone was lost, he reminded us that “I’m teaching at fifteenth dan level”.

Then he went on explaining this idea of “”shinrabanshô”. I must say that most of it went passed my level of understanding and I began to feel bad. But then he said that understanding was not important (good for us, gaijin and Japanese altogether), the kaname is to “hear it”.

He added that the vibration of the words (like in a sutra or a prayer) is the thing that only matters, the meaning is secondary. Prior to the class I was speaking with Maria Somera (Mexico) and Craig Olson (Canadian resident) about the translation of his book “Chihayaburu kami no oshie wa tokoshie ni tadashiki kokoro mio mamoruran”* to Spanish. At one point Craig said that the last sound of the last word “mamoruran”, the “an” was similar to the buddhist “a un”, the end and the beginning of things. And this is exactly what sensei was told us that night: “sound is life and this is why the sound is more important than the meaning”.

Sensei added that we should not try to remember the things he says or do during his classes as long as we attend the class. “if you put it in writing, it loses its power of creation”. I understand what he said but I wanted to share it with you in writing anyway.

To me this was the first time I truly understood what a kuden is. As you know the meaning of kuden (口伝) is oral transmission. For years I have been wondering why a kuden would be written. It must be, so that the sôke would be able not to forget it. Yesterday I understood that the kuden is a natural expression of life and that, if you have the level, your connection to the divine will find a way to express it through your words.

In the kûkan created by nuki waza, the sakki is revealed, this is the kaname of Hatsumi sensei’s teachings these days.**

* The “Chihayaburu” is said by the bujinkan teacher prior to the “shikin haramitsu daikomyô” at the beginning and at the end of the class. Here is the text in Japanese:

千早振る神の教えはとこしえに正しき心身を守るらん - chihayaburu kami no oshie wa tokoshie nitadashiki kokoro mio mamoruran. There are a few websites giving some explanations on the meaning of it but I advise you to get the book by Craig which covers this prayer/Mantra in more than 100 pages as he spoke a lot with sensei when writing the first edition of the book. A short and maybe inappropriate translation would be: “With a pure heart the kami will guide you through a happy life”, but there is much more in the book.

**note: we did also many techniques during this class, but I will explain that in a future post.

Happô Biken

kumafrApril 19, 2012

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

Today I gave a class on biken jutsu at the honbu and we studied the kukishin sword. The two hours passed so fast that we didn’t have time for a break as we use to have here in mid class.

It was nice to dwell gain into the waza of the school as we mainly apply the kankaku of the various schools into our classes with sensei and the shihan. This is what sensei explained to me over lunch last Sunday.

Since we entered the world of Juppô sesshô in 2003, everything we do now is based upon the taijutsu with weapons using the “flavor” of each style and mixing them together. what we study now during class with Sôke is not anymore the waza but something we can call 風味の技 (fûmi no waza), a flavored technique. Last year for example we did a lot of sword techniques with the fûmi of Shinden Fudô ryû. But beginners need to have a from to start from and the kukishin biken jutsu (and the togakure biken jutsu) are there to give them that. So it was nice to review the techniques again.

The kukishin happô biken is quite complete with 9 techniques divided into 3 sets of 3:

tsuki komi, tsuki gake, kiri age
kiri sage, kinshi, kochô gaeshi
shi hô giri, happô giri, tsuki no wa

Each one of these basic techniques is then completed by a set of 9 sayû* gyaku; and a set of 9 henka. Which makes a theoretical total of 27.

What I understood last year in April when training with sensei is that we can see the sayû gyaku (左右逆 - left right reversing forms) as how to apply the basic form to the left or to the right of the opponent. Each sayû gyaku contains in fact more than one or two forms. Then the henka (変化 - beginning of change/end of change) is how to apply the basic form while moving forward or backward. Here again you have more than two ways of doing each one of them.

So from the 9 basic forms listed above with the added sets of sayû gyaku and of henka, we get an infinity of possibilities to adjust the technique to the fighting conditions. Maybe this is the reason why Toda sensei told Takamatsu going to challenge Ishitani, sôke of the kukishin: “don’t use sword techniques against Ishitani sensei as his kukishin biken jutsu is much more powerful than our togakure happô biken”.

The reason why I separated the basic forms into three sets is that if you study these techniques carefully you will notice that they do not apply on the same timeline. The first set is used when you react after the attack begins (nijigen no sekai); the second set while the attack begins (sanjigen no sekai); and the third one before the attack begins (yûgen no sekai).

Also in each group you will see that the first technique of each group is a ten (going up); the second one a chi (going down); and the third one, a jin (going to the opponent). These groups (tenchijin and up/down/forward) actually define a matrix of actions that can be adapted through the sayû gyaku set and/or the henka set.

Maybe this is what sensei meant also by naming it “kukishin ryû happô biken”.

*note: sayû is the Chinese pronunciation of hidari migi.

DVD: I recorded the basic techniques and also their tachi version on video. Those interested can find them on www.budomart.com