Book Review: Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword

I suppose that some may wonder--rightly, I guess--why on earth I would read a book on the use of the traditional Japanese wooden practice sword, the bokken or bokuto. It is not as if I'm ever likely to come within shouting distance of the traditional Japanese sword arts, and one would think that there would be little relationship between its skills and those required in Okinawan karate, my particular interest. However, in my opinion, those thinking so are wrong. One need not delve very far into the somewhat nebulous history of the Okinawan combative arts to realize that Japanese swordsmanship has had substantial influence on Okinawan techniques and execution. Even before the Satsuma clan invaded Okinawa and Sokon Matsumura earned his menkyo (certificate indicating proficiency in the techniques of the ryu or permission to teach, possibly both, I suppose) in their Jigen-Ryu system of swordsmanship, it seems indisputable that Japanese sword techniques had a profound influence on the hereditary martial art of Okinawa's ruling Motobu clan, sometimes referred to as Motobu Udun Ti, and although one might question just how much influence the techniques of Motobu Udun Ti had on Okinawan technique prior to the last century, there is absolutely no doubt that Seikichi Uehara, the first non-family member to inherit that art, was part of at least one research group that also included such notables as Sian Toma and the remarkable Seiyu Oyata, who was primarily responsible for introducing close-quarter grappling techniques called tuite and pressure-point techniques called kyusho-jitsu to the Western world, and it seems likely, therefore, that Uehara--and Japanese swordsmanship--has had at least some influence in some quarters of the Okinawan karate world. And since, as mentioned, no less a luminary than Matsumura--probably the single most influential Okinawan karateka of the nineteenth century, bodyguard and instructor to the Okinawan king--was a skilled Jigen-Ryu swordsman, one is not entirely unjustified in surmising that his karate, too, was at least somewhat influenced by Japanese swordsmanship.

In our little practice group, the bokken occupies the place held in some systems by the chi-ishi and stone locks: auxiliary training equipment that develops a very particular type of power and movement peculiar to the needs of that system. It seems to me that we have certain elements of footwork in common with those of the Japanese swordsman, and the way we deliver a punch seems distinctly reminiscent of the way the sword is handled. Of course, there is a very distinct effect on one's physical fitness as well. As Mr. Lowry notes in the book (suburi, by the way, is practice with the bokken):

It is only fair to warn, though, that suburi is an extremely strenuous exercise.

Just the act of swinging the bokken up and down without any force is likely to bring on stiff and sore muscles. This author has conducted seminars on suburi training on occasion, with classes filled with strong karateka or judoka, all young men in their early 20s, black belt holders with the strength and conditioning of professional athletes. Even so, at the end of the session, they were all pitifully tired and sore. "It was like jumping rope," one of them said, "with a lead chain for a rope."

Suburi training involves quick footwork and light, fast body shifting, but it also demands strength and a focusing of physical power, cutting with the bokken in a solid, well-connected movement. Because of this duality, its exercises can be geared for emphasizing whatever specific activity one wishes. There are several movements requiring constant motion in different directions, and these can be performed lightly and smoothly a number of times to increase stamina. Other actions, like the basic cuts and strikes, are simpler, and a great deal of power may be applied in learning them, to develop strength.

Practice with the bokken, then, is a useful adjunct to our bare-handed training, and it was with this in mind that I picked up Dave Lowry's Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword. Mr. Lowry is singularly well suited for the task of writing such a book. He is probably the Western World's most well-known exponent of traditional Japanese swordsmanship--and by "traditional Japanese swordsmanship," I mean not the relatively modern discipline of kendo, but the older combative samurai arts, the koryu--and has cross-trained in other martial arts, including, if I am not mistaken, Judo, Aikido, and Japanese karate (Caveat: modern Japanese karate is distinctly different, in my opinion, from the original Okinawan article). The book has been out for about twenty years now, and as far as I know, has never gone out of print.

It is a simple book. If all you do is read the text, I suppose a fairly fast reader could get through it in an hour or two. Of course, since you will constantly be looking from the text to the pictures, and then--presumably--to your own posture, the reality is that it will take just as long to read as it takes you to develop the skills you seek. The first few sections--the introduction, "Origins of the Bokken," "Training with the Bokken," and "Selecting the Bokken and Equipment" are, as you might expect, largely devoted to background information and the sorts of things you need to know to get started. In the process, Mr. Lowry passes on some interesting information and stories from Japan's feudal background and a fair amount of personal opinion. The stories and the history are interesting, and Mr. Lowry's passion for the subject comes through in his opinions, for some of which I cannot personally find much enthusiasm. For instance, he seems much concerned with identifying with the old samurai, and I find that I cannot. I have enjoyed stories of their bravery and single-mindedness in combat, and I have great admiration for their battlefield arts and desire to add some small part of that treasure-trove of skills to my personal inventory. But I am not a samurai, and I find that I simply don't have their attitude. The things that I admire about them are also things that I find present and admirable in my own cultural background.

The rest of the book consists of instruction, given via text and photographs. First is kihon, or fundamentals; then uchi kata, or striking methods; then renraku waza, or combination techniques; and then kumitachi, or techniques with a partner. Instruction is given for details ranging from the proper way of gripping the weapon to proper stepping methods. Much of this information is interesting, and for the most part, it is clear and easy to follow, with only one caveat necessary: it sometimes seems--looking at the text--as though a photograph is missing. I don't know that this is so, but part of me wonders if it is not a fairly difficult thing to avoid in the creation of such books. The upshot is that sometimes you have to dig a little for useful information. For instance, when looking at the information on naname okuri ashi (oblique advancing step), one is left clueless as to how long the step taken is to be. Clueless, that is, for about ten pages, for when giving instruction on shomen uchi (cutting down, or the overhead cut), we find

This method of stepping is exactly like that of naname okuri ashi, except that the movement is straight to the front rather than at an angle.

together with a photograph illustrating the length of the step! This kind of thing occurs more than once throughout the book. The information does seem to be all there, but sometimes you have to flip a few pages to find it. It would probably be worthwhile to give the book a thorough reading from front to back before actually picking up a bokken and trying out some of the techniques.

I think it is likely that most people will probably not end up mastering all the material, as it simply may not be necessary to achieve their particular goals. For instance, I don't anticipate trying any of the kumitachi, or partner drills, anytime soon. I am mostly interested in the effects the handling of the weapon has on my management of my body's mass and momentum, the way my punches are thrown (I have made mention of the peculiar way punches, or tsuki, are thrown in our system more than once. I don't wish to go into the sort of detail that would amount to me giving instruction that I am in no way qualified to give, but I will just say here that those interested can, between the material in Kiyoshi Arakaki's excellent The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques and the material on pages 40-41 of this book, gain considerable insight. At least if you give it any serious thought.), together with some of the physical fitness benefits. For my purposes, gaining a grasp of some of the basics and practicing shihogiri (cutting in four directions) is probably sufficient.

Overall, I would recommend the book as a good start for anyone interested in gaining some of the benefits peculiar to practicing the art of the sword, and especially for those interested in some of the older Okinawan systems, or aikido.

But It's Not All That Linear...

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As a preliminary remark, I don't pretend to be an expert. I am a student, an almost unnoticeable member of the RyuTe Renmei, which is Taika Seiyu Oyata's organization. I do not speak on behalf of him or the organization, so take this for what it's worth.

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I picked up, at my local library, Dave Lowry's The Karate Way. In the introduction, he told this story:

Please consider the case of a martial artist of my acquaintance, a man who lived for more than two decades in Japan and trained in a classical combat art there. He is thoroughly conversant in Japanese culture and language; he eventually was given latitude in teaching authority that, in a conservative art such as his, is quite rare. After going back to his home country, teaching, and gaining several students, he returned to Japan and, almost by accident, he came to the dojo of another teacher of the same art who is senior to him. The sensei looked at the man's technique as he performed some of the most difficult and advanced parts of the art's curriculum. The man was hoping for some fine-tuning, some polishing of detail. Instead, the sensei looked him squarely in the eye and said, "You don't know how to hold a sword."

This is a watershed moment in the life of anyone devoted to something like a martial art, someone who has spent painstaking effort and decades in training and teaching. The ego goes into full-power drive. And it is not just the ego; there is a natural skepticism: "Look, I didn't just stumble into a dojo last month. I've been at this a long time. I have credentials, a license to teach. I am highly respected in the community of martial arts practitioners who are expert in these old systems. You don't reach that level without some skill if you are a complete idiot or entirely incompetent."

My acquaintance was at a crucial moment. It was a moment where you laugh in the face of the sensei, confident he is wrong, and go on about your business, or you nod politely, say "thank you," and make a graceful exit before going on about your business. Or you take a third choice. It is this third choice that is intitially most painful. It is the choice that, as an experienced climber, you suspect may be difficult and challenging but which, in this case at least, is the right one to take. You take a breath and say, "OK, show me how to hold it."

The man did just that. He has not regretted the decision.

This reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a few days. Every so often, I'll read a post about how "linear" and "power-oriented" karate is (or, to use the good Mr. D. Rat's phrase, "crash and bash") and anymore, I just want to cringe.

You see, before I started with RyuTe, I had studied Taekwon-do with teachers various and sundry around Tulsa and Stillwater, Oklahoma. Back when I studied it, you could scarcely tell the difference between Taekwon-do and Shotokan, so similar did they appear, except, of course, that TKD placed considerably more emphasis on kicks. Things have changed, but this is what it was like back then.

I was almost up to shodan--first-degree black belt--when I visited a "Ryukyu Kempo" class (that being the name Taika's art went under at that point in time)--and promptly threw TKD under the bus. Why? Because, basically, it was as though they looked me in the eye and said, "You don't know how to throw a punch." I mean, I thought I knew how to throw a punch. I had a brown belt in one TKD association, and a red belt w/black stripe in another. I was, like, six months or less from black belt. But instead of saying (figuratively), "I do too know how to throw a punch!" I chose to listen and learn. It was as though the mother of all light bulbs had turned on over my head. Here was the fearsome combat art that I had read about, had thought "karate" was, but that never seemed quite as fearsome wherever I studied. I could see--heck, anyone could see--how this stuff could put an attacker on the ground in a second or two. This was karate, the karate of legend, the stuff people talked about in hushed tones, back in the old days.

If you don't know Taika's story, here it is, in a nutshell: He'd been a member of the Japanese military in his teens, was slated to serve as a kaiten pilot (his death certificate had already been mailed to his parents) when World War II ended. Shortly after the war, whilst working for the Americans delivering food to isolated people, he ran into an old man wearing the old bushi topknot. I will not go into detail--you can easily find the story in more detail elsewhere--but the upshot is that this old man was one of the last living people to have practiced the old Okinawan martial arts before the Meiji Restoration. He was not a teacher, and neither was his best friend, who also, because of Taika's family background, took him on as a student.

Taika had them all to himself for the last several years of their lives.

Some people seem a little incredulous at Taika's story. It seems too much of a coincidence, too fantastic a story that the preservation of the real, old-time Okinawan martial arts should come down to such a very small handful of people (I am not trying to rule out people like Uehara Seikichi here), that most of the "karate" you see in the world these days just isn't that much like the old stuff. But I don't think you'll have many doubts if you ever get to experience a RyuTe class. Like I say, it's intuitively obvious that this is the right way, the way the technique is supposed to be performed. It's simple, it's relaxed, it's effective, it's--well, it's not at all like "karate," but exactly what you hoped and dreamed karate would be like.

Here, take a look at these clips again. Certainly, they are not all there is to RyuTe, but there is enough there that you can see that while there are linear techniques and powerful strikes, linear crash and bash just isn't all there is to it. Anymore, it just makes my skin crawl to hear karate described in such terms, because that's not what it's supposed to be like.

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I originally wrote that Taika had been trained as a kamikaze pilot, but I was graciously corrected by a more senior member of the RyuTe Renmei. I linked to the Wikipedia entry on kaiten because I was pretty sure that most people would be quite unfamiliar with them.

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