The thing is, kata training is alive if done right. At a certain level, the students just go through the motions. When they get that down, then sometimes the teacher will pair up with a student and throw in other stuff. If the students try it on their own, some of them tend to cut corners in an effort to count coup on each others. I started training my folks in what I call "joseki" training and showed it at my last seminar in Wisconsin. I am going to try to pass it along to more folks in the Bujinkan so they can add something to their training.
Originally Posted by Mekugi I've been kicking some things around a bit lately. Namely, "live" training as compared to kata or "static" training. How would you bridge the gap here? This is my question too, is it not possible to do kata training so that it addresses Don's issues? If the kata, weapon or unarmed, was studied or trained in a certain way, would it not address this issue? And then would such an approach develop skills that would be applicable in "live" training? Armstrong often discussed the idea that a kata would teach you a skill or principle you would use in the form, a skill or principle you could use in any form, AND a skill or principle you could use anytime. If we study the form, how far do we go within the structure of the form before we're not doing the form any more? I know that sounds sort of dumb, but that is what we have been seeing with the forms we have been studying. But, as far as "live" training, if I understand what Mekugi is saying...for years we have been playing with a knife randori "drill/scenario" that our teacher showed us before she passed, I need to hook up with Don to show him what we have been doing and get his feedback. Of course, the above paragraphs are academic: How does one make this happen? Oro Valley Dude
I've been kicking some things around a bit lately. Namely, "live" training as compared to kata or "static" training. How would you bridge the gap here?
Great article!
I like this article, I feel training with weapons is very important for over all good self defesne skills, while most don't carry weapons by training with them you learn that anything can come a weapon when needed.
Great post Don. Just got around to catching up on my reading and your post was the first. Thanks!
Damnit Don....this is seriously a good one...this is true for everyone studying at distance. Seriously, replace "Bujinkan" and "Hayes" with anything and it holds water.
Good read Don. Five Stars way up.
Remember those days. In 92 I remember a non black belt arrived (forgot the kyu rank), got his Shodan in (Nagato"s Class), then a Second the next day in Ishizuka's, then by the end of the week he was a Fifth Dan. Every time he was asked what grade he was he was honest (ie told what he just got). In Japan of course the belts are just that black, rank has nothing to do with it. If you get the knock on the head and the Boss misses the first time then welcome to the club. I was 22 when I got the knock and I tell you it was fun. The Boss tormented me for several months (he would say nan dan Aaron Kun and it would be yon dan desu. You coming to the Daikomyosai, yes I would say, I will take it to the floor he would reply with a Grin. Luckily it was to my hip as I just fell to the left and the sword stopped an inch above (in the days when that was enough). I think about two years later in the end of days of Alex it was to the floor. Anyways interesting stuff. Need more students in japan training (I remember the ratio was 1 Japanese with every 100 Gaijin). Which is the sad nature of the art, all the good ones are in their 60's or so. Look at Sumo half the Champions there are Russian. At the K2 and other fighting styles. That Japanese guy with the Blond hair was good though.
Originally Posted by Don Roley Nope. But I have had people who support Hayes try to say they could not see the curve. If you want to see a straight blade, you probably will. However, to your earlier question as to whether this photo was what caused Hayes confusion, I kind of doubt it. I now know that an American company was trying to peddle a straight sword to ignorant folks as a ninja sword in a magazine Hayes read before he moved to Japan. That is my suspicion at the moment, subject to change as more information comes in. Now they can just hold a ruler up to the screen spanning from the handle to the sheath tip. It's curve is obvious. Gahead! Doit!
Great post Don. That closed up a lot of little ends. Excellent.
Hi Don, long time and all. Re straight blades I believe the reference is to the shinobizue which is a cane sword. Plus the Boss had a few straight blades with saw teeth where the Ninja used as a terror tactic. He also had curved with this type. I remember this due to helping him move house in 91 and he had two truck loads of weapons to off load. Got a free Ramen which he wolfed down as always. His technique was to throw cold water in and literally off he went and I still had to wait for mine to arrive. Anyways Steve was an interesting bloke and I had a couple of sessions with him and the Boss in the day and the Boss talked off improvised weapons re straight blades, ie shinobizue or the fish trade blades which were also saw blades. They use these to cut up the big tuna. Anyways hoping all is well with you and looking forward to seeing you back in japan.
Someone went through old issues of Black Belt magazine and found the following. New for '73 As the title says, someone came out with a sword for sale in America just after Andrew Adams book came out on the ninja. So we know that someone was selling a sword to the public in America before Hayes ever went to Japan. That is probably where he got the idea. Again, we have yet to find a sword for sale in Japan at that time, nor any reference to the ninja using straight swords in Japanese sources about the subject or popular media. So where did Hayes get the idea of straight sword? We know that he could have seen it for sale in an American magazine before he went to Japan. Since his first trip to meet Masaaki Hatsumi was only about three weeks long and he was teaching the art after that, it is natural to assume he was looking for any information that he could. He has recently said that he got the idea of the straight sword from Masaaki Hatsumi. However, aside from the denials Hatsumi has made to that, we can't find any reference to Hatsumi mentioning the straight bladed sword in any of his works in Japanese. Nor can we find any reference to Hatsumi saying so in the books in English he had greater control over like those from Kodansha. Other authors in English that wrote about the ninja before Hayes like Donn Draeger and Andrew Adams also fail to make even a mention of the ninja sword being straight. Since both of these authors knew and used Hatsumi as a source, we would expect them to pass along something the learned from reading or talking to him. We have found pictures of a straight bladed sword being peddled as a ninja sword in an American magazine, but before Hayes we can't find a mention in English or any language like Japanese. In 1987, Ninja magazine ran an article on the ninja sword by Hatsumi translated by Masaru Hirai where there is a brief mention of the ninja sword being straight. Some have said this is the proof we need to say Hatsumi said that the ninja used straight swords. However, aside from the lack of any source in Japanese and the denials from Hatsumi and other Japanese there at the time Hayes briefly trained in Japan, there are other reasons to conclude that this reference to a straight blade was an explanation added in by the editors at ninja magazine and not part of the original Japanese. The section in question is almost exactly like the section in "Ninjutsu, History and Tradition" which at the time (1987) was widely thought to be by Hatsumi, but we now know that it was put together by Hayes and commentary added to make it easier for Western audiences to understand. Unless you have gotten to an advanced level in another language and/or done some translations it is probably natural that you do not understand just how unusual a similarity like that is. People might think that if someone writes two things somewhat similar and it is translated by two separate people then they will sound almost the same. It is even more natural to think that if two people translate the same exact source that it will sound the same in both versions. No. In advanced Japanese class our assignment was often to translate some piece of text at home and then in class we would all read our versions out loud to compare and contrast how people chose to phrase certain things. If there were 30 people in class, there would be 30 different versions. I am not talking about mistakes. If you look at a translation dictionary you usually find more than one word given as an option. Factually there is no difference between the following two sentences, I was in a rush so it is pretty crude. I was hurried so it is rather rough. And those are not the only two ways I can state the same thing from the same source. When you throw in the idea that one translator is said to have not been a native speaker of English it can vary even wider. So if there are two translations done by two separate people, one not even a native speaker of English, the tone and style of them should vary quite a bit. Instead, one is almost the same as the other, only being abridged. This is a huge red flag. They should differ quiet a bit more, but the only real difference is that one leaves out some stuff. In terms of tone, style, etc- in short the type of thing that is about as unique as a fingerprint they do not differ. Recently, Hayes wrote the following on his blog. As I have said from the beginning, my first books were based on the stereotype of ninja as known by Japanese people. I bought a straight-blade ninja sword (mid-1970s) in a kendo shop in Tokyo. I watched my teacher do demonstrations with straight swords. Like steer-horned viking helmets or white "good cowboy" hats in old movies, it was the predominant stereotype; a straight sword was the "ninja sword" of Japanese legend. But there are several logical errors in that. If Hatsumi was pandering to a Japanese misconception, then why are the only references we can find to him saying that the ninja used straight swords appear in written works for non- Japanese audiences? If it was pandering to a Japanese misconception, there should be references in Japanese and not English. Instead we have the opposite. If the idea that the ninja used straight swords was common, then examples should be... well... common. Yet the video clips I linked to of Japanese television all show ninja using curved blades. A poster I only know as Tsukuneru reported that he sat down and looked through nearly 30 movies and not one had the ninja using a straight blade. If the idea was common enough to be pandered to, then we should expect just as many ninja movies using straight swords as movies about vikings having horned helmets. The only series we know of that has the ninja using straight blades are the later version of the Shinobi no Mono series. And that is a tale in itself. Hatsumi was an advisor for the first movie. He was not an advisor after that even though it spawned a lot of sequels. In the first movie, the blade the hero uses is clearly curved when viewed from all angles. But it is shorter. From what I learned while living in Japan, Hatsumi said that the sword the hero used had to be shorter than normal. He showed things like the reverse grip that really relies on a shorter blade. The swords used in films in Japan are not metal. They are thin pieces of wood covered by a thin sheet of metal. This allows someone to actually be hit by accident and not be clobbered like he was with a baseball bat. It also lets the actors use the lighter blades quicker. The problem is that they do not hold up well. After a few smacks with another sword they have to be retired and new ones brought in. Places like Toei studios that produce both TV series and movies go through thousands of long prop swords a year. They seem to have the machinery and such to produce them quiet easily to meet demand. However, because of the length thing, they could not do that for the sword the main character uses in the Shinobi no mono series. They had to produce ten or so from scratch by hand for every movie. It is easier to make a straight sword if you are carving it out of wood. By the last movie when Hatsumi had not been advising for years, the blade was still short, but now straight as well. It should be noted that Hayes would know that Hatsumi had been an advisor on the first movie. We have not been able to find any other movie from that general time where the ninjas use straight swords. So far, they all use the same curved swords the movie studios produce in great numbers. The company selling (making?) the straight bladed swords was based in Los Angeles. I mulled over moving there when I made my move back to the states because of the large Japanese community and support network they have. Aside from bookstores and markets, they have a theatre that shows subtitled Japanese movies in Little Tokyo. That movie house has been around for decades. The significance of that is, if you could not read or speak Japanese in the early 70s you were limited to a few sources like Draegers book and movies. Sure there were a lot of television shows, even animated shows, on Japanese tv back then with ninja running around with curved blades. But that time was not just before the internet, it was before VHS! So people could not see Japanese television and were limited to movies, and not all of them, just the higher quality ones worthy of subtitling and sending overseas. So how many movies that were identified to be about ninja were probably shown at that movie house in LA? Probably only the Shinobi no mono series. And as we have discussed, Hatsumi told them to make a short sword and by the later episodes they had cut corners so much that they were not only shorter, but pretty darn straight. So what if after Andrew Adams came out with his book in 1973 some folks in LA decided that they could make and market a straight bladed ninja sword and profit from it? There was not a word in any of the sources like Draeger or Adams that said that the blade was straight, but if they saw the same movie Tsukuneru has they could have made that conclusion. Heck, they probably would not be too worried about accuracy if it meant making a buck. In 1975 Hayes goes to Japan and starts training, but only for about three weeks. He did not get a lot of training done, but was eager for more knowledge. Again, he could not read or speak Japanese but was running a commercial dojo for his living, part of which was teaching ninjutsu. If he saw a sword labeled as being a ninja sword, I think in his shoes I would show a great amount of interest and spend the money to get one.
Originally Posted by Mekugi Is it me, or am I the only one that can see the sori in this pic? Nope. But I have had people who support Hayes try to say they could not see the curve. If you want to see a straight blade, you probably will. However, to your earlier question as to whether this photo was what caused Hayes confusion, I kind of doubt it. I now know that an American company was trying to peddle a straight sword to ignorant folks as a ninja sword in a magazine Hayes read before he moved to Japan. That is my suspicion at the moment, subject to change as more information comes in.
Another pic from Kore ga Ninja Da...a different "shinobi-to," but still in the same chapter...the sori is obvious here.
Another pic from Kore ga Ninja da....the previous sword is worn upside down in the belt, making it look straight.
Posted so the kids can play along at home. From "Kore ga Ninja da" - The infamous "straight" sword up close. Is it me, or am I the only one that can see the sori in this pic?
Here's what I am getting at: The tsuka is curved but the shadow of the saya on the white background in the photo makes the sori look straight. The same sword is worn on page 119, and the placement in the belt and angle makes it look straight as well. I believe it's being worn upside down in t he belt that makes it look this way. However, on page 118 the "ninja-sword" obviously has the proper sori....albeit a different sword. Maybe this is what started it?
Originally Posted by Mekugi Don, do you have a copy of Kore ga Ninjutsu Da? Look on page 125. Yes I do, and that exact picture has been discussed. It is curved, but from the angle it is easy to think it might not be. The absence of any mention in the text about the sword being straight, even though it says how long it was and the typical shape of the tsuba, is rather telling. I would expect a mention or a correction of the common idea, but there is just nothing about the sword being straight.
Don, do you have a copy of Kore ga Ninjutsu Da? Look on page 125. BTW that copy of Black Belt is HILARIOUS!!
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