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The Budo Odyssey: Living and Training in Japan

The Cleaning Cult (Part II)

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Mekugi
, 06-10-2011 at 23:57 (2345 Views)
"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 part of it. In general one can come to expect this when entering a dojo, and if you aren't put through a kind of rigamarole then you belong to a very progressive group or in the worst case: they see you as a visitor. If you go through it, do your part, act the junior and learn what is expected of you then you get to stay on to become a senior. Many times this rite of passage is welcomed as it lays one into the folds of things. The scrutiny of the instructor, the constant pointers and tweaks that take place and the frustration of not being able to do something properly and going over and over it again are in fact, wanted attention. More into it, everyone takes part in the cleaning; on wood floors they bend over, put the rag on the floor in front and run behind it hoping not to slip and fall on their heads. In a tatami room, one usually sits on the tatami and draws the rags towards oneself in a left to right motion, scooting backwards along the mats to reach the end. But almost always the juniors who get the rags and prepare for the ritual cleaning and they are the ones who are summoned to do the most menial of chores. So while in fact everyone does the cleaning, a pecking order is established by who delivers and who waits.

That being said, there is an extension of this within Japanese martial arts and while it serves to be helpful, it can also be detrimental. I personally like the idea of cleaning the dojo, and keeping it fit and tidy. I think there is a lot to be said for that. I've also experienced good things with initiation and for lack of a better term, what I call "weeding" during training: the tendency to go over and over something until it simply bleeds frustration, tears and sweat does have rewards. Yet, I have seen it backfire when it's propelled by hubris and inanity and it can drive people to leave the martial arts. There is a very slippery slope one can go down, that without particular care, can lead to a form of harassment by senior students- in the workplace it's called "ijime". By using their position, their right, the seniors can force the juniors to do things to humiliate them and many times get away with it. It's part of the group-think, and it has become a HUGE problem in the workplace. My guess is that it is bleeding in from society to other things.

This is comparable to Origami. You practice making perfect folds time and time again and then you are able to create something new. While scrutinizing the paper folds, working on the connection that they make with one another, you can create something other than a wrinkled up ball of waste-basket fodder. What is important is that each segment serves as a means to an end. Those means must be made clear, they must be detailed and the seniors must play their part in helping, not hindering. The complete lack of hubris is what this hinges on, IMHO, as the cogs in the system start to jam if egoism and sadism enter into the mix. The big picture must be maintained by the individual, the folds must serve the greater good to end up with a neat-o looking animal shape. If not one just folds paper endlessly without any point it is wasteful and eventually frustrates the folder.

In my mind's eye it's the inability to see the big picture, to look past the scrutiny and the treatment as an inferior that also becomes a problem. Just like in the cleaning scenario at my first job in Japan, people can tend to lose their way in the forest if they just focus on the bark of the tree (in this case, the bark around the trunks of the tree). By my reckoning there is a a generation of modern sports enthusiast budoka who train hard and long, without really understanding what they are training for. It becomes self serving and about "me". The same might be said of their teachers, who really don't get it either (worse, they do and they don't explain it), which places the odds against the student, only "getting it" with a fleeting moment of clarity in a the fog. It's discipline for discipline's sake because it's culturally expected and not because it serves any real or meaningful purpose. This is not unlike checking for dirt under the fingernails of a severed hand and then proclaiming "here's your problem" then handing the severed appendage back to it's owner. The whole thing can end up missing the mark.

I personally do not believe this is anything particular to Japan. It's a situation that bleeds into scenarios back home in the United States as well (and I suspect other places). There may be different reasons for it, however the problem seems to be fundamentally the same on a deep seated level. Many enter a school, get some training, leave and then start to assemble a group of students. Without that scrutiny from a trained eye, this leads to other problems, but that is best left for another time. The focus here is on the weeding. If one has not been properly "weeded", without a clear intention as to why, without any indication of being put under the microscope (in kata, this is called "Oyo" -application or "Bunkai" -dissection) there is a tendency to fit things together with the imagination. To those ends one binds things together which do not necessarily go together. The result is a hop-shod Frankenstein's monster, a porridge of bits and pieces. A few folds in Origami that really don't make anything. When that happens you lose track of the big picture. Sometimes it works out...sometimes it comes full circle, but many times it doesn't.

So what am I getting at?

Clean what needs to be cleaned with efficiency, do things with a purpose and above all think, think, think.


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Updated 06-14-2011 at 10:07 by Mekugi

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  1. Tripitaka of AA's Avatar
    Russ, have you ever spoken with a Sushi Chef? Perhaps you could confirm what I have been told; I heard a story that new entrants into a good kitchen can expect to wash the rice for the first five years (!). A mundane and soul-destroying task that is expected to be performed following precise directions without question. Only after this stage of the apprenticeship is complete, could the student expect to be trusted with anything close to the job for which they are training. It matches some of the stories in your article, but I don't know if it is apocryphal, or simply an old tale that has grown bigger for effect.
  2. Mekugi's Avatar
    I've have never had the chance to speak with one, but that would not surprise me. That sounds like a typical intern, I would suspect that they do all the cleaning and prep for the Sushi masa as well. However do not see how five years could be possible unless under a very special situation. I have a feeling there is probably more to that story, perhaps some of it drifting into urban legend, but it seems much more cool with the "five years rice washer" spin to it.
  3. AlexJK's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tripitaka of AA
    Russ, have you ever spoken with a Sushi Chef? Perhaps you could confirm what I have been told; I heard a story that new entrants into a good kitchen can expect to wash the rice for the first five years (!). A mundane and soul-destroying task that is expected to be performed following precise directions without question. Only after this stage of the apprenticeship is complete, could the student expect to be trusted with anything close to the job for which they are training. It matches some of the stories in your article, but I don't know if it is apocryphal, or simply an old tale that has grown bigger for effect.
    Apprenticeships run a little differently. To even get in the front door takes time (usually multiple visits), sometimes some connections, an honest understanding of WHYWHYWHY you want to do it, and, to some degree, to be liked by the guy in charge. The early stages of the apprenticeship may sometimes seem like menial work or a weeding out process. In some small ways it is those things. In truth, however, the tasks are made up of the most fundamental of basics that are so necessary to get right. Lets take sushi. It's true that for the first chunk of time for an apprentice he won't even touch fish. He'll be cleaning, he'll be washing and cooking rice, preparing rice, learning to tend to and sharpen knives as well as many other tasks. Eventually, after a few years of that, he will begin to be shown how to break down a whole fish but still no sushi or sashimi. A long waays into the apprenticeship the deshi will eventually be taught how to prepare the most basic yet important of dishes for a sushi chef: maguro sashimi. They will eventually move on to other things but the ultimate test of a sushi chefs skill is through his maguro sashimi. It is a seemingly simple dish yet, by far, the easiest one to screw up. There are no adornments or ways of hiding mistakes. The chef's skill will come through with his ability to prepare the most basic of dishes. This is why all those earlier tasks are so important. The inculcation of all those minor details (as well as a zealotry for understanding them) comes together and takes something basic and propels it into the extraordinary. The sushi chef knows that his ability to make maguro sashimi doesn't just come from practicing slicing maguro. It is the sum of all of his training, all of his understanding of the entirety of his art. So many arts and crafts of Japan start this way. Swordsmiths? Cutting charcoal. Swordpolishing? Books and oshigata. Noh Mask making? Tending to tools and drawing and, like the maguro sashimi, the most basic mask you learn is the simple woman's mask. Training begins with learning the woman mask, continues with all sorts of others masks, and ends with the simple woman mask. I met a potter who told me that the first year of his apprenticeship, besides cleaning and watching, was kneading clay. For a whole year, just kneading clay. All the steps have a purpose, big or small. Even with a task so seemingly simple or mundane as cleaning the dojo, as we progress on our journey we must always return to the same basic tasks or movements or practices; and depending on how we physically perform and mentally/emotionally understand these tasks we can be shown just how far we've come or if at all.
  4. Tripitaka of AA's Avatar
    Since I wrote that, I had a chance to check with my source (my wife, who was in the bathroom when I wrote my first post ).
    One of her closest friends at High School is the daughter of a Sushi Chef. Together, they both worked part-time at the restaurant. It was big enough to have several trainee chefs and they would chat during the quiet time between service. The Chef himself was the younger brother in a family of Sushi Chefs (should I call them Sushi Masters?), whose eldest brother had taken over the family business, which had a chain of restaurants (across Japan and also in Canada). He (the younger brother) had set up his own business with a small Sushi bar near a station, which earned enough to build a three-storey building for his second restaurant. The new restaurant had about 7-8 counter staff, with another 3-4 serving staff. The youngest apprentice chef was 15 years old, so spending 5 years on the rice-washing would only bring him up to the age when the university graduates are piling into the restaurant to blow their parents' money. Perhaps one of the unexpected things about these junior chefs, was their relaxed and chatty attitude. But since that is considered part of the role of the sushi chef - being a pleasant and talkative host - it all comes under the heading of work experience.

    Another oddity that came up when I was double-checking her memory banks. Although her friends father was definitely the Boss of the restaurant, and the only one to go to Tsukiji to buy the fish, she has no recollection of him actually cutting. She can't quite remember what clothes he wore, but she has a feeling that he wasn't actually doing any of the chef-work. We wondered whether he had possibly "graduated" from that part of the business, or whether he had always been a business man, a restaurant manager rather than a Sushi Chef. I suspect he was an example of the artisan that moved up into a non-performing role through choice. How would that match up to the traditional progress through other "arts"? I was reminded a little of the progress of a junior doctor, who works ridiculous hours to gain experience... then at the end of a successful career has become an administrator who never actually talks to patients at all.
  5. Mekugi's Avatar
    I wouldn't doubt the sushi chef's/manager's skill one bit. He was the overlord and taught those guys everything....I have nothing but serious respect for the craftsman of Japan...actually make that craftsman everywhere. IMHO they are the last of the thinking crowd...in the vein of "Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance" (which I dislike, but in a juxtaposition enjoyed many parts within the antidotes) and "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (a book I cannot recommend enough).

    Alex, that is one of the best posts ever. Awesome and thank you for blessing me with it man.
    FYI Alex is one of a few elite people in Japan actually studying an ancient craft...the Tsukamaki (sword handle wrapping). He's a true craftsman and let it be know that his work is quintessential to preserving the true spirit of Japan. Of course he'll show up and deny it...but I'll say it anyway. Plus he kicks my ass with the sword...
    Updated 06-14-2011 at 10:12 by Mekugi