Uncategorized

Japan is obsessed with cleaning. They make Mr. Clean look lazy. There is a serious "cleaning cult" in Japan, or should I say "Cultish Cleaning". This probably spans from religion and anyone versed in Nihon-ron would point there first. Shinto, the homogeneous religion of Japan that co-exists and shares turf with Buddhism, is more than likely the culprit as within Shinto there is a obsession with purity and cleanliness.

However, I am willing to say most of this as ...

"The Cleaning Cult" (continued from Part I)

So what does this have to do with anything??

Right....so here's the warp and woof of it. There is a Japanese cultural tendency to put one through the paces of a business, club or martial art. There's much more of a "fraternity" feel to the whole process than what I experienced in the West. Although it is true that there is a "Frat" feel to the martial arts as experienced in the Western world, in Japan this more an integral ...

In the past few years I have seen a lot of people present their credentials in Japanese martial arts accompanied by a picture of them with the head teacher, as proof of their authenticity. While this is fine and good most of the time, and they are most likely akin to "family pictures" I have found that there is sometimes a darker underbelly in doing this. That reason is fraud, one that is sometimes propagated by the Japanese school not being careful about pictures being taken and under what circumstances. ...

Right now the buzz around Japan is the tremendous earthquake that devastated Tohoku (thusly named the Tohoku Daijishin). We're living geographic history. I have witnessed Mt Saint Helens erupt and now I have been in one of the biggest earthquakes on record. Needless to say, there was (and still is) a great amount of fear in Japan, the Fukushima power plant disaster, the tainted water, the fear of an aftershock ...

Some people claim to know what koryu bujutsu is. They have read a great deal on the subject, seen a few (perhaps many) videos on it from BAB, perhaps they even ventured to Japan to train and attended an embukai or two. The despite the volumes of information one can read on the subject, the videos, the seminars or the trips to Japan, there are very few people who actually have an actual understanding of what koryu bujutsu or kobudo is. Those that do however could not describe what they know in it ...

Tags: bujutsu, etiquette, koryu, training

Categories

Uncategorized