Western Medieval/Renaissance Martial Arts

[Erik]

They're strange, no question. But likable and decent which is what really counts. This is what I meant by cutting the last strings that connect me to the meat-head jock world. Not the same group as Preston Scharf, Jason Von Flue, the Gracie guys, and so on (God, I miss them).

Some young guys, high school, who would benefit from the presence and support of older, confident role-models. I may have something healthy to give them.

The head trainer, Steaphen Fick, is pretty cool, though. He feels very easy to learn from and work with, thus far. Both physically capable and a scholar - he's done a lot of research, similar fun stuff to what I did in college, though with martial arts instead of social, economic, and religious movements.

I've done some dog bros locally and loved it. My kind of lunacy. I can't see the 2-hander or the pokey-sword (side sword or rapier) translating to 1-hand sticks, though. I wonder what lessons your pal managed to learn and transfer over.

Hey Russ - http://www.newstirlingarms.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=15

I met these people and they're very nice (I like anyone who takes to my little girl), professional, and organized. The quality of the wooden wasters is quite good. Swords are deliberately and carefully balanced. I personally vouch for them if you do wish to order a waster (wooden practice sword, the European bokken).

Dang, though, my shoulder is killing me. Lots of popping and cracking, AC joint feels weak, I hope I'm good to go for tomorrow. I'd soooooo like to go for a swim to get out the kinks....

[TonyU]

He did say some of the folks were kind of strange though

Well, Erik should fit right in then.

[David Craik]

It does look like great fun. I was just reading not too long ago of a fellow in NYC that teaches European swordsmanship. The difference between what he does and modern fencing reminds me of the differences between kendo and Edo period kenjutsu.

As Brian mentioned, though there were martial schools all over Europe their lack of a true ryu or iemoto system caused them to fall into obscurity. It could be too, that they weren't viewed as much as an art form or "way" to be preserved, as in Tokugawa Japan, but rather utilitarian activities to be eclipsed by the gun. You mentioned kata, Erik - they have kata? I'd always thought this was a purely Asian construct and the lack thereof part of the reason such European arts died out and had to be recreated.

Nice waster, by the way. I've taken a real liking to this, though:

http://www.newstirlingarms.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=4

[Erik]

Well, Erik should fit right in then.

I think I figured out why you're bald, at least in recently posted photos, Tony. It's all the other guys giving you the noogies before I can get my hands on you to noogie off whatever hair may be left....

Met a guy who weighs 400 lbs. Poor guy. This is not the BJJ crowd....

The way I see this is that the Asian MAs have preserved their lineage (or made up a lot of fake ones) mostly because there are fewer years between the obsolescence of non-gunnery fighting than there are in European culture. I wonder if ANY Asian MA now really resembles the original, "back in the day" arts. I'd bet that, had Asia converted to the gun in the way and at the time that Europe did, they would have similar problems of being "dead" arts. Hard to say. And thank God for Judo, Kendo, BJJ, and the other sport MAs. While they are recent constructs and clearly sports more than arts, they keep the MAs alive in modern times (though in a different form).

The European stuff has to be exhumed and re-learned as best as it can. There is no more Musketeer or Viking/Saxon warfare so, barring some apocalyptic change in the world, these arts will never fully recover. Part of the pleasure is in the anthropology (which is a real pleasure to me).

So, Kata. Partially what I meant was that I'm willing to eat my words about kata in public. I remember annoying the *@#(!&%$ out of Tony U by criticizing the practice. I don't feel I can have any credibility if I am unwilling to grow and learn, especially when Tony, Robert, etc., make a good case that challenges my beliefs at the time. So, this is why I used the work kata, specifically.

I have not heard the term mentioned nor seen anything quite like it at DEMAS. It's not even been a month yet but I don't see them practicing that way.

What does exist is solo practice. A 1+ meter sword is not part of our usual biological equipment (at least I have not been so blessed) so learning the feel is important. It's like an extra limb.

What I am learning is that the baseline of the practice is a series of guards and transitions. Imagine a state diagram (i.e. a bunch of dots connected by transitions). Each dot or state is a guard, or a position. A fencer strikes or parries or just repositions while moving from guard to guard. This can be practiced individually (and must be). To me, this is a kind of kata, though without the Japanese word. I'm trying to piece it together and make my own. Still learning the guards. Just learned 9 yesterday and there's still more to do.

Does that make sense, David?

One interesting thing is learning to use my left hand on the pommel to drive pretty much everything. There should be almost no power from the right hand/arm and the grip is meant to be loose enough that I can rotate the sword by twisting with my left hand. When used correctly, the longsword is surprisingly maneuverable.

[David Craik]

I don't believe there are many "fake ones" formed in Japan that are dated to this time. The documentation is too extensive, and the criteria for being considered a koryu too exhaustive. The Japanese, if nothing else, are hardcore documenters.

The West may be an entirely different matter, as far as Japanese arts go. While we may consider some mysterious Japanese sword master to have wound up in Muncie, taught a handful of students, and vanished or died leaving his otherwise unknown tradition and legacy in the hands of said students to be plausible, this generally does not hold up to scrutiny in the land from which it is purported to have originated. There is no more profit in it in Japan than claiming you come from a long line of Bunraku puppet theater or, hanging up a ring over your stage so that you may perform Dodoji with the requisite bell, a previously unknown school of Noh. All of these histories are assidiously documented, and people within the relatively small circle of old arts are well known to each other.

I don't think the difference between adoption of the gun and the obsolescence of swords of the west and Japan is quite as great as you believe. Nor especially important within the realm of transmission. Oda Nobunaga made very good use of guns of Portuguese design and yet he died in 1582, a time when swords were still being widely used throughout Europe. Within the Tokugawa collections there is a crossbow made with the Tokugawa crest on it, likely a gift. Yet I can find no evidence for individual-fired crossbows like this ever being adopted, despite their superior power and ease of use.

Japan was an odd duck. No siege engines, even those known 1000 years before. China had a staggering array of weaponry and even chariots that were known to the Japanese yet never adopted, even though the classical Chinese texts that describe their strategy specifically mentioned them and were studied in detail. Especially astonishing is that these chariots were used in China before Christ was born, yet for centuries the Japanese still had no wheeled vehicles. Some can be chocked up to the mountainous nature of Japan; but even along the Tokaido highway you walked or were carried by palinquin. Wheeled carts were nearly non-existant even in the 1600s.

The longbow was known and was a superior weapon in terms of power, yet the Japanese stuck to their yumi. The ornate and more protective handguards of the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British cavalry swords were well known and used in the conscript military, those that practiced kenjutsu stuck to their traditional tsuba. There seems to be a common theme throughout Japanese thought to seek to improve skill and tactics rather that work on the technology. It is rather like the reason that Cha-no-yu still does not use teabags. Even while guns, cavalry swords, and bombs were developed; the sword, the bow, and the spear were practiced for their own sake and for the sake of the individual's betterment. When you practice something for culture's sake, and for your ancestor's sake, then you often keep it just the way it is. Watching Aida at the Met is much the same as you would have seen in the 1800's...they do not add laser lights and guitar solos in order to make it more "entertaining".

There have been studies by expert koryu exponents to try to approximate dead koryu, based on not only surviving scrolls but studies of living arts that influenced the dead one. Perhaps the founder studied an art that still exists today and from his writings and known technique we can extrapolate what it may have looked like. From what I understand all involved realize that this is a "best guess" however. It is not like "Jurassic Park" where we can say "Yup, we have faithfully recreated a Velociraptor". We cannot faithfully create Choju Ryu despite our knowledge of Ittosai and any written materials that remain. Because it is unfortunately a dead art, and just like we caution that people interested in martial arts should not try to learn from books and videos, so it is with swordsmanship. You cannot divine nuances of movement and feeling from pictures and words. In some cases folks far more expert than I could hope to be probably could come close because of related arts and concepts common to an art at that time..but it ain't the same. It is well understood to be a largely intellectual exercise.

Your point about deviation over time (does it resemble the original art?) is well taken. But I think it is pretty damn close in many cases. Many of these arts were practiced for their own sake as they were founded in a time where battle on a clan or han scale no longer or rarely happened. They weren't founded based on an idea that you'd be a helluva lot better off with a gun, they are practiced as a link with those that came before, "Nakaima" - translated by Draeger as something like "the eternal present". Perhaps the difference lies not in technology or efficiency but in a way of thinking - and not a way of thinking which is exclusively Japanese or even Asian, either.

European weapon arts seem to have progressed by discarding previous forms in practice, and discarding previous sword designs. The Katzbalger, the Cinqueda, the Flamberge, and the Zweihander were all dropped in favor of newer designs driven by techniques, tactics, and armor of the times. In the US, you can hardly find a soldier or Marine that knows a damn thing about sighting in or loading an M-1 Garand, because it has long since been replaced. In Japan, the "chokuto" was supplanted by the "tachi", then it was the katana for hundreds of years within the sword arts despite military adoption of Western-style swords. And it is the katana today, practiced within a living tradition that stretches back unbroken and taught from one to the next for centuries. The preferred "niku" or "meat" of the blade and grind (polish) lines changed due to decreasing armor but the design is essentially the same. And there are kata that stretch back to when full armor was worn. This isn't "invention" or "recreation", it is a living tradition faithfully transmitted by flesh and bone - not pictures and written words.

[Erik]

I sort-of get your post, David. Will have to re-read.

I still think that, had Japan, China, or Korea, faced the arms race that Europe did, they'd spend their time practicing the evolving skills required to survive at the expense of cultural skills, which are a luxury. Add several centuries worth of evolutionary iterations and I'd bet you $20 (not much more, though) that the classics would fade some. I'm talking about Asia in general, not the meticulous note-taking Japanese only.

These guys do live sparring with beveled edges and padding and armor (full plate sometimes!). The coaches (one of whom did aikido, too) derive lessons from there, too, so it's not just air-fighting based upon a book. As for how true or effective their curriculum is, we'll have to see.

I don't know nearly enough to have an opinion yet.

And besides, it's fun. If it protects me from a stress-induced heart attack then it's protected me just as much as BJJ/Judo/Kickboxing/SanSoo has dealing with people who wanted to hurt me. Maybe more. That's good enough for me.

[David Craik]

I still think that, had Japan, China, or Korea, faced the arms race that Europe did, they'd spend their time practicing the evolving skills required to survive at the expense of cultural skills, which are a luxury. Add several centuries worth of evolutionary iterations and I'd bet you $20 (not much more, though) that the classics would fade some.

This may be true, though I would point out the arms race by the Japanese with China, Korea, and Russia. Not to mention the Mongols. All of which they defeated. Western weapons were adopted by military factions and the Japanese miltary when it was a unified state. Yet these did not phase out traditional practice. Nor did exposure to "foreign" designs make the traditional weapons any less fearsome.

Japan is quite unique among countries in that it was in a nearly constant state of war for decades at a time. Men were born into war, and grew grey-haired in war. The Sengoku Jidai lasted from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th. I can guarantee you the country was filled with men who not only knew which part of a sword goes where, but were quite familiar with guns. Yet the weapons did not change appreciably. There was hardly any "luxury", though it could be argued that technological development was restricted due to the internecine nature of their warfare. Either the weapons and techniques were effective for their culture and mode of battle, or these people were stupid and I highly doubt it was the latter. This wasn't only "culture", but survival.

If it's "good enough for you", then bravo, enjoy it. It wasn't my intention to pooh-pooh what you are doing.

[RickMatz]

I recently had a post on my blog about a BBC documentary series on what life was really like in medieval times.

[Jonathan Randall]

I recently had a post on my blog about a BBC documentary series on what life was really like in medieval times.

Thanks; it looks like a great source of information. BTW, here's the direct link to the episodes:

http://www.infocobuild.com/books-and...val-lives.html

[Mekugi]

I recently had a post on my blog about a BBC documentary series on what life was really like in medieval times.

Very cool, thanks for posting this. I love history....this looks very good.

[David Craik]

People have a very romanticized notion of the past, particularly the eras of "chivalry" and "bushido". Fact is, it was a pretty horrible, brutal time and if I were able to go back in a time machine I would insist there be some sort of cloaking device and that I return pretty quickly. Western and Asian history alike, we have notions of riding around and "fighting the good fight", yet nothing could be further from the truth. Many of our vaunted knights and samurai were nothing more than despicable b@stards.

[Brian R. VanCise]

People have a very romanticized notion of the past, particularly the eras of "chivalry" and "bushido". Fact is, it was a pretty horrible, brutal time and if I were able to go back in a time machine I would insist there be some sort of cloaking device and that I return pretty quickly. Western and Asian history alike, we have notions of riding around and "fighting the good fight", yet nothing could be further from the truth. Many of our vaunted knights and samurai were nothing more than despicable b@stards.

Yes, now that is reality David!