Humans have a substantial capacity to rewire their minds to overcome the pettiness inherent in a mind gone awry, even when the pettiness is evolutionarily hardwired. I’ve seen a fascinating video of an experiment carried out by a primate research center that is telling of just how engrained some of our inclinations are.  In the experiment two Capuchin monkeys are kept in separate but adjacent cages. The experimenter walks up to one of the monkeys and hands it a grape. Now, grapes are apparently like crack to Capuchin monkeys. Needless to say, the monkey devours the grape and is ready for more. Next, taking exacting efforts to duplicate previous actions (control for all alternative explanations being essential to the scientific method) the experimenter picks up a cucumber wedge, walks up to the second monkey(who saw the first monkey get a grape), and hands it the cucumber wedge (Capuchins like cucumbers, but not to the same degree they like grapes). The second monkey eagerly jabs the food into its mouth without actually looking at it, and then does a spit-take as it realizes that it has gotten the shaft.  The action is repeated, and on subsequent occasions the second monkey won’t even take the cucumber wedge. In fact, when the experimenter drops the cucumber, the first monkey reaches through the bars and takes it. The first monkey is now able to enjoy both the grapes and the cucumber wedges because  the second money won’t eat the cucumber out of what we humans might call the “principle of the matter.”

The reason I’ve seen this video on more than one occasion is that this is the kind of behavior that fascinates (and, in some cases, mystifies or even mortifies) economists, and, in completing a Masters degree in Economics, it came up as a relevent topic of lectures and seminars on more than one occasion. One can probably intuitively recognize a similar proclivity in humans without the need for scientific evidence. I will nonetheless point out that there are behavioral economics experiments that result in similar findings consistently in human subjects. There is a construct in game theory called an “ultimatum game.” In the ultimatum game, a “team” of two players is granted an allotment of money – say $10 in $1 bills. The first player gets to determine how the allotment will be divided up, and the second gets to determine whether it is acceptable or not. That is, if the second player does not accept the division, neither player gets anything. Classic economic theory would predict that, unless the second player has good reason to believe he or she will play the same “partner” repetitively so as to be able to “teach” the first player to be fair and, thus, earn a higher expected value over the long run,  the second player should take any positive offer. Of course, in reality, like the Capuchins most people will summarily reject “unfair” offers.

Given the widespread proclivity to enforce fairness that is seen in both humans and lesser primates, it probably stands to reason that this tendency served human-kind well over the centuries. Or put another way, homo sapiens that were more willing to be finicky on principle survived at higher rates than those who were willing to accept the dregs. One can imagine a mechanism by which this works, the competitive impulse is heightened in those unwilling to settle for second best. The question is to what degree does this proclivity serve us today, and, in particular, when exercised as a rule of thumb that is essentially dictated by emotion. Humans have, after all, developed a capacity to rationalize, conceptualize, and strategize to levels unparalleled elsewhere within the animal kingdom. Are we best served by a sort of autonomic response in which treatment perceived as unfair causes a visceral emotional response that we act upon without taking advantage of our advanced capacity to consider the options and develop a well-thought strategic response? 

By now any reader who has gotten this far may be wondering what any of the preceding paragraphs have to do with martial arts. Fudoshin means maintaining a mental state in which one is unmoved by petty vagaries. One becomes imperturbable.  I’ve been reflecting a lot upon how the mind works recently, and how we are sometimes guided by gut level petty reactions rather than by sound reasoning or strategically sound impulses. Yesterday afternoon I caught the tail end of a re-run episode of the History Channel series called Warriors which described Miyamoto Musashi’s duel with Sasaki Kojiro. Musashi showed up late brandishing a makeshift suburito (i.e. a big wooden training sword) in lieu of an actual sword, and, in doing so, managed to infuriate Kojiro (some accounts indicate that Musashi added verbal insults to the contextual insult of being late.) Musashi ended up defeating Kojiro, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that Musashi’s calm demeanor pitted against Kojiro’s rage may have made the difference.

As we go about our daily lives, it is astounding how skewed our worldview is by our own conceptions of self. Psychologists have shown that most people consistently credit themselves for the good things they achieve, but are more likely to credit environment and other factors for the success of others. People’s minds imagine offenses that don’t actually exist, and sometimes act upon them. When I hear someone talking about how another person doesn’t like them or is mad at them, I often wonder how the offended person would feel if they knew the probable truth that the other person was indifferent to them and didn’t even give them any thought? A person is the center of his or her own universe, and often people imagine that someone is mad at them because they can’t fathom the truth that they are not even on that person’s radar screen.

I once read that human beings are believed to be the only species that can achieve the same physiological response from thinking about a traumatic event as occurs during the event itself. That is, just thinking about a past argument can give a person the same physical response (e.g. adrenaline dump) as when they were actually arguing. That is how powerful the mind is. Fortunately, humans can also observe their minds, reflect upon where their minds go, and rewire the habitual responses of the mind.

During Japan’s Feudal Era, warriors had to develop a wide-ranging expertise. There are classification systems such as Bugei Juhappan, or “18 warrior arts”, that suggest what proficiencies were considered essential for a warrior of the day. Of course, there is not just a single Bugei Juhappan, but variations from lineage to lineage, and other schools used other numbers to classify the number of weapons and methods to be mastered. The common use of 18 may be due to the fact that it is 2 X 9, and 9 was an auspicious number among the Japanese.

In addition to a well-rounded education that included knowledge of the Chinese classics and, often, Buddhist scripture, warriors had to be competent in unarmed combat (grappling and striking) [alternatively called taijutsu, jujutsu, yawarajutsu, koppojutsu etc. depending upon the school and emphasis], swordsmanship [kenjutsu], spearmanship [sojutsu], use of a staff  [bojutsu or jojutsu], halberd fighting [naginatajutsu], horsemanship [bajutsu], archery [kyujutsu], and various specialty weapons that might be associated with the school in question such as throwing blades [shuriken] or chain and sickle [kusari gama]. Furthermore, there were subjects of study that were essential for warriors who had strategic responsibilities that included strategy and fortification, but also involved knowledge of weather patterns and topography. Of course, it behooved all combatants to have some understanding of medicine and the care and treatment of wounds. Warriors employed as ninja had to master most or all of the above methods, but also had to practice skills necessary for infiltration / exfiltration and disguise /impersonation. As if these physical skills were not enough, there was the practice of meditation that was used to help foster the mental discipline and clarity required to be successful in combat.

Mastering the skills mentioned above is an impressive life’s work. There are certainly commonly concepts in the methods of using different weapons, and these may create synergies in learning. However, the fact remains that this was a lot of techniques to learn and a massive number of hours committed to practice. Having learned the forms, one has to develop the skills that will allow one to apply their principles under diverse and rapidly changing conditions. This comes with free-form training (randori keiko) and the practice of henka (variations on the form.) To only memorize and practice forms, over the long-term, has a disutility. This is not to say that there is not a time for that type of training (or multiple times for it over the course of one’s life), but certainly one doesn’t want to be so attached to the forms that one is incapable of recognizing or responding to novel forms of attack. My point is that memorizing the techniques, and even drilling them to the point they are second nature, is only scratching the surface of the lessons they have to offer, and, therefore, a large time committment is required. 

Low technology warfare involving unarmed combat, swords, sticks, spears, or halberds is not mastered on the same time scales as modern weaponry. As an Air Force Law Enforcement Specialist, over about 14 weeks split between Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Dix [Air Base Ground Defense training], I learned to use the Beretta M-9 9mm pistol, the M-16 rifle, the M-60 machine gun, the LAW Rocket, the M-203 grenade launcher, hand grenades, and Claymore mines. Of course, weaponry was only a portion of the course of study that also included many unrelated skills like traffic ticket writing and tent-pitching. While there was still a lot to be learned about these weapons and benefits to be gained from practice, I knew enough after those schools to have a better than average shot at lethally with all those weapons, and I doubt that doubling my time spent on each would have yielded much of an increase in skill (particularly where Claymore mines and LAW rockets are concerned). In 14 weeks of kenjutsu, a student may not have entirely mastered holding the sword, let alone significantly increased their odds of being able to survive in a fight with a similarly armed wild-eyed person off the street. Not to be too mathematical, but the learning curve for low technology weapons is much more shallow and takes a long time to reach a point of diminishing returns relative to modern weaponry.

A more relevant analogy may be seen in the difference between self-defense training and kobudo. In teaching self-defense one wants to present techniques that can be rapidly learned and memorized, are not complex in the slightest, and that may be remembered under duress by someone who is not diligently drilling their technique all the time. The idea with self-defense is to just increase the student’s odds of being able to get away from someone who is intent on committing a crime, but is not a particularly skilled adversary.  This is in contrast to kobudo, which takes much longer for the student to grasp the techniques, but the forms are designed to develop the skills necessary to survive combat against a highly skilled adversary who does not leave big openings, who has a sound state of mind, and who is capable of rapid adaptation and unconventional attacks.

Having taken the meandering path to the central question of this post, I’d now like to consider the question of the relative merits of breadth versus depth of study of kobudo in the modern era. As I ramble on about above, there were a lot of weapons and skills that a warrior had to master during the Feudal Era, but mastering them was the job of the samurai. While I realize that many samurai, during some periods, had significant bureaucratic taskings, developing these skills was the central job for many. There was, of course, also a sort of Darwinian elimination of all but the most capable of learning lessons quickly and effectively through combat (and, later, even through matches).

The question of interest here is whether those of us living in peaceful times and not employed as bushi are well served by trying to master the same broad set of skills, or whether it would be better to spend more time developing depth of understanding of fewer weapons or approaches to unarmed combat. While, to some degree, specialization and automation have increased humanity’s potential for leisure time, in reality most of us work demanding jobs and having a couple hours everyday on average for training and conditioning is probably the most that can reasonably be expected. There is not much of a career for kobudo practitioners today. Those who can make a living solely off teaching have usually been training a long time, so that career path is not of much help for students in their formative years who would like to devote a major portion of their lives to training. (Not to mention it seems to be quite difficult to make a good living off teaching kobudo under any circumstance. Success seems to require a large customer base, a status conducive to being highly-coveted as a teacher, and/or a willingness to compromise on the values of one’s martial art.)

With respect to kobudo, there are confounding factors that can exacerbate the issue of having too much material to do justice to in a modern life. For example, with respect to the schools I have studied, a number of schools funneled into one lineage due to a combination of lack of interest in old schools of martial arts after the Warring States period and the fact that such arts were forbidden for a time. The latter meant that only those willing and able to train in secret and in contravention of the law could pursue the martial arts. This has led to a vast and fairly diverse body of martial arts being taught to people, or at least myself, who could keep themselves busy indefinitely with a fraction of the material. It seems to me that Kukishinden-ryu alone offers a more than a respectable body of skills to spend one’s life studying. Kukishinden-ryu includes five scrolls of taijutsu techniques, bojutsu (6 foot staff), jojutsu (4.5 foot staff), hanbojutsu (3 foot staff), kenjutsu (sword), kodachijutsu (short sword), sojutsu (spear), naginatajutsu (halberd), a few juttejutsu (pronged truncheon) techniques. During the Warring States period, the precursor to this school could easily stand-alone as the course of study for serious bushi, but today it may itself be more than the typical student can master.  

Of course, the question of whether one should study many schools or fewer (or one) need not have one answer applicable to all. Some people may be able to devote enough time to training to make mastery of multiple schools feasible due to their personal circumstance, or they may have a gift for learning quickly. I tend to believe that, if one classifies disciplines as “prodigy” and “non-prodigy” arts, martial arts are theoretically “prodigy arts” (though in practice this may not be true for a reason I will discuss below).

Having most probably lost the reader, I will explain what I mean by “prodigy arts”. There are endeavors such as mathematics, music, and chess that are unified by the fact that there are a reasonably finite set of principles that govern activities in those domains, and from those few principles a natural order develops. Where these characteristics occur, there are people who will be talented at making the connections between the underlying principles naturally, and who can easily and naturally pursue advanced and complex work in the subject even without being greatly experienced. Thus we have musical geniuses and mathematical geniuses, but not political science geniuses, legal geniuses, or history geniuses. The former have a finite and interconnected set of unvarying unifying principles, and the later do not and, therefore, those arts require experience for mastery.

I think there are a set of fundamental principles that guide effective practice of the martial arts (e.g. keep your spine straight, don’t reach for something that is coming toward one, control the distancing, keep energy in one’s tanden (dantian in Chinese), etc.) I think a few rare people may pick up these lessons and how they are interconnected across different schools with great rapidity. However, there is an essential mental piece, and I am less certain that this is prone to prodigies. To become skilled in the martial arts there are mental skills that must be mastered that I tend to think require experience. High expertise requires shedding illusions, eliminating mental attachments, and fundamentally rewiring the way our mind responds to events that challenge the way we think of ourselves or that tend to cause stress or anguish. I cannot speak beyond my own experience, but this is a much more difficult nut to crack and takes far longer than mastering a set of kata and developing one’s own capacity for henka.

Young martial artists often pursue a short-cut to achieve a high level of awareness that involves developing an almost paranoid (not using the term in the clinical but rather the colloquial sense) mind-set whereby they practice scanning their environment for who might be trouble-makers, trying to anticipate the most strategic way to carry out every action, and running little scenarios in their heads about how threats might unfold. Ultimately, while this may allow one to be more aware and less prone to “zoning out” in one’s day-to-day existence, it is a rather low-level understanding of awareness. In essence, such people are practicing looking at the world through tinted lenses, when it benefits the warrior to see the world clearly. To imagine threats where there are none is not the goal, but rather to develop the capacity to be unperturbed by changing or unexpected circumstance.

I’ve gotten a bit off topic, suffice it to say that it takes a considerable investment to understand the mental piece of the martial arts in addition to the physical element. This is not to say that the physical and mental should be divorced. One should always be practicing the mental piece when one is engaged in physical training, but one should also practice the mental piece when one is taking a walk, shopping, a customer is venting, or one is about to drift off to sleep. Furthermore, I, personally, have found benefit to be had from zazen (seated meditation), outside of just practicing awareness and clarity in physical training.

I have gradually come to think there may be a great value in being more focused in my training. When I started to study this art, I was elated by the fact that there was so much to learn and practice. One never had to worry about getting bored because, with several schools constituting many forms and weapons, one could study for years and still be learning techniques unlike anything one had ever seen before. But in recent years my perception has begun to shift. Of course, I am no prodigy by any means, and so I may have different experience than many, but for me there is now a drive for a deep level understanding of just a fraction of these schools.

I’ve been reading a lot about the common history of Buddhism and Asian martial arts as of late. There is a body of literature on the subject because it presents an intriguing puzzle. Namely, how did the most pacifistic of the major world religions produce (or, perhaps more accurately, spread along side) what were among the most capable warrior arts of their day?

Some have written that martial artists were attracted to Buddhism, but Buddhism had little to do with martial arts. The first part of that statement is certainly correct, but the second part does not jibe with the historical record. It is true that warriors had good reason to be attracted to Buddhism. The state of mental clarity and imperturbableness that come from the practice of meditation and the Buddhist approach of non-attachment are of great benefit to a fighter. There are a number of ways in which cultivation of the capacity to not let the mind get stuck and to objectively observe the actions of the mind could lend an advantage. I recently read Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s Joy of Living, and in it there is a story about how the Rinpoche’s father once had a surgery during which the anesthetist had failed to apply a local anesthetic.  The story describes the elder monk’s ability to not only manage the pain, but later to defend the anesthetist against the surgeon’s rebuke. Needless to say, an ability to detach from pain to that extent would be of great advantage to a combatant.

However, the stance that real Buddhists didn’t actually have anything to do with the martial arts seems to be a view rooted in a modern-day experience without an understanding of the history. This is not to say that most Buddhists have ever at any point in history practiced the martial arts, but certainly there are groups who were at once monks and warriors and yet other non-martial artist Buddhists who benefited from the protection of warrior monks and lay Buddhist warriors.

I can imagine an outcry of objection to the preceding paragraph from individuals who have the luxury of being able to take the most extreme position on the use of violent means, and who apply their worldview to the subject. If you are a Buddhist in modern-day San Diego, Warsaw, or Osaka, you can go about practicing your beliefs and engage in the most extreme pacifistic position – because doing so is without cost. By this I mean to say, if you live some place where you are free to practice your religion without persecution and where life is reasonably safe, it is easy to say one should never – under any circumstance – engage in an act of violence. Day-in-and-day-out you live life without any cause to defend yourself, so the extreme of pacifism is a moot and cheap position.

However, this was not always the case for Buddhists historically. Like practitioners of other religions and philosophies, during some eras Buddhists lived and died at the whim of the present leadership. Take, for example, China’s Tang Dynasty. During the first part of this era, Buddhism flourished in China, but in the latter years Buddhists were savagely persecuted. As I understand it, the warriors of the systems that were the precursors of the Japanese schools that I study arrived in Japan from China during the late Tang Dynasty, and were presumably exiled Buddhists. Of course, one need not go back to the Tang Dynasty to see this changing of fates. The latter half of the 2oth century and Mao’s Cultural Revolution will do.

How does one reconcile the combination of pious religious practice and unvarnished whoop-ass displayed by Shaolin monks or the Souhei of Japan’s Mount Hiei (not to leave out the many other places in which Buddhism and martial arts were successfully conjoined.) To my mind, it is not that difficult.

Clearly, the use of injurious force to bend another to one’s will is fundamentally un-Buddhist. (Not to say it hasn’t been done by Buddhists, but it is inconsistent with the belief system. Buddhists are certainly not immune to the phenomenon witness among other religions of having “adherents” not practice what is “preached” in the scriptures, sermons, or lectures.) One can see examples of the rejection of force as a tool of persuasion operationally in the History books.  More than one leader went from expanding their Empires to, upon becoming Buddhist, stopping their warring ways. I have heard a Mongolian say, part in jest and part not, that Buddhism was the worst thing that ever happened to Mongolia. This referring to the fact that the country went from being the largest Empire of its time to a virtually unheard of backwater of a country, in part, with widespread adoption of the religion. As I recall, there was a king who ruled in South East Asia and, I believe, at least part of [then] India, who is an even better example of the way in which Buddhism has been known to quell bellicosity.

That being said, there is nothing in the above paragraph that suggests Buddhism and the martial arts should be considered incompatible. One of the most widespread and engrained beliefs about rights is that one has the right to protect oneself and others against violent attacks. Using damaging force to end attacks against oneself or against others in an attempt to restore peace and tranquility, is not the same as using force to damage or coerce another. At both an individual and state level, the right to self-defense is as universal a right as one is likely to find in the world. Without such a right, it would be hard to imagine an orderly and peaceful society in which people were free. The only way to keep immoral individuals from destroying or enslaving others would be through tyrannical oppression by the state. Of course, state tyranny would be akin to amputation to cure a twisted ankle (the cure being worse than the ailment.) In any liberal (used in the classical sense of the word and not the modern American meaning) society, police cannot be omnipresent and people must be both their own deterrent and first line of defense against the illicit use of force.

Questions do arise about the timing with which one can legitimately defend oneself. In the realm of international relations there was a lot of controversy on the topic of preemptive warfare during the George W. Bush Presidency. Interestingly, I have heard people arguing past each other on the subject because they are conflating two quite different concepts. Preemption consists of an action taken to interrupt a chain of events that constitutes a clear threat, and it is excepted by most as a reasonable extension of the right to self-defense. That is, if some one is yelling at you and then they cock back their arm for a haymaker, and you pop them in the face before they get the punch off, you are likely to be found in the right. At a state level think of massing troops on the border and putting up combat air patrols. This is not the same as preventive war, which is when on says: “This person is getting stronger and sounds more belligerent in their language, I better take them out before they do it to me.” Preventive war is rarely seen as legitimate, though there is a large history of it being done nonetheless. 

To let a person freely commit an act of aggression against others, if one has the capacity to stop it, is the antithesis of compassion. It is not only incompassionate to the innocent people who suffer at the hands of the aggressor, but also to the aggressor him or herself (who misses out on the ability to learn a lesson on karma.)

In summation, violence to force others to submit to one’s will – bad; violence as the only means available to resist an act of aggression in progress- good.

I should be clear, the preceding three paragraphs express my own personal philosophy, and are not necessarily consistent with Buddhist scripture. However, it should be noted that Buddhist scripture is not silent on the subject, and refers to examples in which it is appropriate to use “skillful means” or ”the expeditious”. As I am not a Buddhist scholar, I will not engage in the quoting of scripture, but will say that one can see some examples cited in the scholarly literature (e.g. See: McFarlane, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 17(4))  An example was the case in which a monk who assassinated a Tibetan king in 842 CE was justified because of the great persecution the king was engaging in against the sangha (Buddhist community.)

When I was young, before I started school, I was supposed to wear Forrest Gump-esque braces on my legs, primarily, at night as I slept. However, I’m told I developed a Harry Houdini-like capacity to escape the unwieldy devices, and, inevitably, the morning found the braces laying at my bedside.

By the time I started school I seem to have lost the need for the braces. My legs were adequately strong to get me about, and I did not have any readily apparent disruption to my ability to walk. In my final year of high school, and then more regularly when I entered the military, I began to practice budo.  Because strong flexible legs are the cornerstone of martial arts practice, my legs became sturdy,  mobile, and capable of fairly agile motion.

However, I believe that I overcompensated for my childhood infirmity through the exercise regime I performed in secondary school, throughout my time in the military, and in college. When I was a young enlisted serviceman, I lifted weights religiously for a number of years and focused particularly upon my legs. I did this until I had legs that were often described as being  treetrunk-like, and were noticably out of proportion than my upper body - which is not to say I was not beefy in the upper body. Also from high school, through four years of enlisted military service, and into my undergraduate college experience, I ran habitually. During the time I was stationed in England, it was not uncommon for me to run six to seven miles a day, usually five days a week.

Eventually the arduous exercise regime was replaced by occasional long walks and calisthenics, but, mostly, the continuing practice of kobudo. I packed on pounds though remained fairly active.

In the past couple years a chronic and deteriorating back injury has led me to become more aware of my body and the structural anomalies that are at the core of the injury – structural problems that I suspect go back to my childhood. However, because I did a lot of stretching and had an active lifestyle, they were not as readily apparent as they might otherwise have been.

I went to the doctor, and X-rays showed arthritis in my back. This was not a surprise. I believe I had figured out at least a significant portion of the problem. With a left foot arch not as developed as the right, my left leg was, in effect, shorter. As I move around, this caused my pelvic girdle to cant sloping downward to the left, and gradually wearing away the cartilage between the vertebrae in my lower spine. Of course, I also display all sorts of weird muscular asymmetries, such as the knob of one of my ankles is about twice the size of the other and, laying down, one of my feet lies naturally on its outer (pinky-toe) edge, while the other sticks up in the air at about a 45-degree angle.

This, of course, being compounded by training in a martial art that, while it is outstanding for body awareness and suppleness, involved frequently being dropped several feet onto my coccyx. It is an odd paradox that in one sense the practice of budo has extended my mobility because practicing movement keeps the body flexible and mobile, but, despite years of habituating ukemi (methods of receiving techniques as safely as possible), the practice has also exacerbated the deterioration.

Even without childhood maladies such as mine, systemic injuries (which I would define as long-term deterioration resulting from how we move relative to how our bodies are structured / conditioned) are common in the martial arts. It seems like most every American I know who has trained for a decade or two in kobudotends to have bad knees. This is likely in part due to the lack of acclimation to the low movement and massive amount of getting to ones feet from a position close to the ground that is involved. It is also common for individuals to use the knee joint in a manner other than it was intended. That is, people often rock over their knees with their knee pointing in some direction other than that to which their foot is pointing. This, of course, strains the knee by putting a torque on a joint that is only meant to operate one way – like a hinge.

The question to what degree I can reacquire good health and rebuild my body to eliminate the systemic ailments is crucial and all-consuming. This will no doubt require building even a higher level of body awareness, and having awareness in everything I do to eliminate habituated forms of motion that are detrimental. I have begun to practice tai chi, and have cut my kobudo training back to relatively slow and relaxed solo training in the fundamentals  in which I am  re-evaluating how I do the most the most basic and essential techniques.

I’ve caught a portion of two different episodes now of Spike TV’s Deadliest Warriors, and, I’ve got to say, it is one of the dumbest concepts for a television show that I’ve ever seen. There are interesting little factoids to be gleaned, but you could just as well get them from a show like the History Channel’s Warriors that has a bit of intelligence about it.

The episodes that have appeared so far include include “Apache versus Gladiator” and “Spartan versus Ninja”, which, interestingly, feature mock contests between groups that are completely unalike in objective and character. I am waiting to see an episode called “Marine Sniper versus Kali Knife Fighter” in which they try to draw general conclusions about who would win divorced from the apparently inconsequential context (such as whether the contest is at 1500 feet or 2 feet away.) Spartans were, of course, battlefield troops that fought as a unit in mass campaigns and ninja were covert operators who, as a general rule, tried to avoid combat unless absolutely necessary.

If there is one take-away from my diatribe, it is that warriors are all optimized to the opponent they face and the environment in which they face them. Periods of war create a greatly sped up condition of natural selection. This is not to imply that only the weak or incompetent die in combat. For on any given battlefield at any given time, nearly any outcome is possible. (I say “nearly any” because, for example, a ninja entering into battle with a Spartan in ancient Greece would require a violation of the laws of physics as expressed in Einsteinian Relativity’s prohibition on backward time travel.)However, because of the large numbers involved, those whose methods, weapons, or strategies grant them slight greater probability of victory are likely to be copied in a way that zeroes in on optimality. Of course, this selection process does not invariably apply. Consider the Gladiators, I assume that they didn’t get to choose their weapons, and, therefore, had little capacity to optimize them.  Instead they were likely provided with weapons by people whose objectives were not necessarily related to creating the most effective fighter.

The whole thing seems like it was probably dreamt up by computer gamers with nothing better to do. They’ve got  Excel spreadsheets to choose their winners.

Don’t get me wrong. Perhaps, we can outsource war to these guys, and they could make determinations without any violence taking place. “Terribly sorry Osama, but you don’t have a chance against American SpecOps.” They report.

“Oh… I see… well then, I’ll just have to give up, but, let me say, I still dream of a day when there will be death to all Americans.” Replies Osama Bin Laden.

Finally, what’s up with the commercial in which a Kung Fu artist of some variant is showing how a ninja would use a certain weapon? Could it be that results just might be confounded by having someone who knows nothing about the fighting style in question making the cuts and thrusts off which you are generating the numbers that go into the spreadsheets?

I recently picked up a copy of Kaibara Ekiken’s Yojokun, which has been translated by William Scott Wilson. The book contains a series of precepts aimed at increasing one’s life longevity and level of health. Kaibara Ekiken was a samurai and physician who lived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Given the time period in which the book was written, it is intriguing how much of the advice jibes with modern medical beliefs. This advice includes admonitions to avoid eating too close to bedtime, to avoid smoking, and to be active.

It is, as is admitted by the translator in the front matter, a quite repetitive book. However, many of the points bear repeating in that they are good advice which is all too rarely put into practice. The topics cover nutrition, medicine, exercise,  and sex.

The nutritional guidance covers a wide variety of subjects. Some of the precepts are timeless. For example, it recommends that one avoid eating to the point at which one is full, but rather to stop while one still has some hunger. Alternatively, some of the nutritional admonitions are rooted in the beliefs of the time and leave the modern reader scratching his or her head, and wondering why exactly one is not supposed to eat chicken and garlic in the same meal. Like the nutritional prohibitions of the Bible or Koran, most of the suggestions are probably based on the proclivities and practices of the time, and are not  particularly relevant in the modern world. Of course, the advice is grounded in a more holistic approach to medicine that was practiced first in China and then emulated by the Japanese, and, while it may not appear to make sense, may prove beneficial in practice for reasons that are not readily obvious.

A central reiterated theme with respect to medicine is that one should not rely on medical treatment for acquiring a good state of health. That is, one should not take accupuncture or moxabustion as a means to keep one healthy, but rather as a way to treat illness when healthful practices have failed to keep one well.

As is common in writing based on Traditional Chinese Medicine, the advice on sex primarily suggests that most people need to have a lot less of of it (including self-gratification.) As I am approaching 40, I was disheartened to read that 40 year olds should only ejaculate once every 16 days or so. The idea is that semen is an  important element of chi, and excessive release translates to decreased vitality. No doubt this advice would be treated with a mix of acceptance, rejection, and skepticism today depending upon the quarter in which it was received. I did recently read a post reporting on a medical journal article suggesting that excessive ejaculation  in men from age 20 to 40 was correlated with a higher incidence of prostate cancer, but I don’t know how valid this is.

While the book doesn’t spend a lot of time on exercise per se, it does put a great deal of emphasis on activity. In fact, it suggests a more spartan regiment of existence than is generally called for  by today’s medical experts. In essence, one should sleep less and sit or lie down idly almost never. I did hear a news story the other day about a study that suggested that the 8-9 hours recommended nightly allowance of sleep typically made is bunk. This study found that most people- who don’t have insomnia- get a perfectly adequate amount of sleep – even if they only sleep five hours a night.

This book is a worthwhile read for those interested in traditional approaches to health and well-being enhancement.

This blog was moved from www.shoshinbudo.blogspot.com, and will soon be continued at www.shoshinbudo.wordpress.com.

There is a well-known story about the founder of the Masaki-ryu school of kusarifundo-jutsu (weighted chain techniques) being a guard at the Edo (presently Tokyo) Castle. Apparently, he developed the techniques with the weighted chain because he was seeking a weapon that would allow him to deal with criminals and ne’er-do-wells, be they armed or not, in a way that did not shed blood. At issue was a need to avoid defiling the gate, which was considered a sacred location.

The jutte (truncheon with a prong/hook) is another weapon that is associated with less lethal application of force. This weapon was used by Edo era police officers who were occasionally confronted with the task of bringing armed warriors to justice. The jutte came to be integrally associated with law enforcement, and, I have read, even functioned as does a badge for current police officers to identify them as authority figures.

The need to avoid bloodshed is a reality that faces current law enforcement and even, in limited but growing instances, military personnel. Of course, less than lethal force requirements only apply against non-lethal threats as far as US law enforcement or military personnel are concerned. This makes the situation a little different than the Edo era guards and officers who I understand were more bound by these requirements – even when faced with sword-wielding attackers.

I should distinguish between two requirements for clarity’s sake. The Edo castle guards, as I understand it, were trying to avoid bloodshed, but I have not heard or read anything indicating that they sought to avoid being lethal. (e.g. If you wrap a chain around some brigand’s neck and throw him violently over your back you may succeed preventing bloodstains on the gate without keeping the criminal still alive.) On the other hand, the Edo town police were supposed to keep suspects alive (if, perhaps, badly beaten down) for their “hearings.” If any one knows whether this understanding is correct or not, I would be interested to know.

There is also a good deal of difference between present-day authorities and those of the Edo era in terms of the level of technology available. I have visited Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland on a couple occasions. Aberdeen is the site of a wide variety of testing centers used to put all manner of weapons, vehicles, and equipment used by both the military and by non-DoD customers through its paces. Among the non-lethals I was shown were various projectiles such as bean-bags and rubber bullets, stun-gun like devices, and gas grenades. However, these were still at the low-tech end of the spectrum compared to devices in development such Area Denial Systems based on millimeter wave technology (only good for running the opposition and off not for detaining them.)

The Edo era Japanese did develop some interesting tools given the technology available such as clothing entanglers attached to long pole-arms. This type of tool allowed them to keep a samurai outside of sword reach while taking them under control. There was, of course, also an old-time version of the current CS gas riot control agent that could be blown out of a specially-designed box.

I am currently working on a concept for an article on Jinen ryu juttejutsu, kusari fundo jutsu, and tessen jutsu that considers the strategy of dealing with an armed opponent with non-lethal force. This is an challenging position to be in, and I believe requires intense will.

Strategy is a term defined in many different ways depending upon the interests and perspective of the user. Traditionally, the military use of the word defines planning at a certain level of analysis, and its point of reference is tactics and, in some cases, operations. In other words, strategy from this perspective is a set of plans and high level intermediary goals intended to achieve victory in a war (or some other grandiose level of engagement.) On the other hand, tactics are concerned with battles, or other lesser forms of engagement. (Operations, when the term is used as it was by the Soviet Army, describes a level in between tactics and strategy.) In an academic environment, strategy is defined as a “game” or interaction in which the decision-making of more than one “player” determines the outcomes achieved. This is the game theoretic approach to strategy. Game Theorists distinguish “games of strategy” from “games of skill” in which the optimal outcome is attained by doing an action the best in absolute terms (i.e. one needn’t concern oneself with the opposition’s actions just with doing the action the best one can), and “games of chance” in which probability has a hand. A foot race is a game of skill. One merely needs to be concerned with running as fast as one can, and not with what the opposition is doing (I know track and field athletes will balk at this simplification.) [A fair game of] Roulette is a game of pure chance. In other words, the outcome achieved depends upon a probability distribution. Chess is a game of strategy in that there is no optimal game for one player devoid of knowledge about what the other player is doing.

Combat is a game of strategy carried out at the speed of instinct. Whereas chess, even played against the clock, is a game of thoroughly conscious thought; we know that conscious thought is like the deadweight of a chain and anchor around one’s neck in a fight. The question at hand is how one carries out a game of strategy at the speed of instinct?

I believe that first and foremost this involves developing a good intuition with respect to recognize critical distances for a variety of opponent body types and against a variety of types of weapons. The first layer of strategy then becomes dominating the distance to one’s advantage. The only way do develop this intuition is to train against a range of different opponents and to do so both against unarmed opponents and those with weapons. This must be done until there is no need to think about or consciously gauge distance.

There are a variety of strategies that are embodied in kata (practice techniques) that can be drilled the point of becoming instinctual. One is creating a false impression of an opening. One fools the opponent into attacking in a manner that does not really serve them well by facilitating a belief that one is vulnerable. A second is to repeat the same action a number of times to lure the opponent into an inappropriate anticipatory act. The first time an attack is done, the opponent has no reason to anticipate what might come next, but after the second similar attack (an over-thinking opponent) may begin to think he knows something – for example, that another attack will come next as an opponent would never do the same thing a third time or, conversely, that it will be the same attack. By the time the third attack done in the same manner comes around, the opponent may begin to think he has seen the sum total of one’s bag of tricks, and, at that time, be drawn into wrongly anticipating the next attack. It is important to note that stratagems based on deceit can be too obvious to work. It is true that, with limited reaction times, an opponent may fall for something they wouldn’t if they had had the ability to contemplate the situation more thoroughly, but a skilled opponent will have developed the instincts to avoid falling into glaring traps.

The bottom line seems to be the need to engage in a lot of both kata and randori (free form) training, and to do them both with a high level of awareness and recognition of the importance of the mind. One does what one drills, and so it is important to engrain sound principles into one’s movement. However, it is also important ensure one can apply principles in uncertain circumstance. It may be best to apply these two types of training in a progressively increasing ratio of randori to kata (i.e. starting with little or no randori and steadily increasing the proportion of free form training over one’s training lifetime.)

For the most part, the modern study of strategy, which is embodied in game theory, has little to offer by way of relevant lessons for a martial artist. After all, the domain of game theory is advanced mathematics, and it is supremely cerebral. John Nash, who many of you may know as the crazy guy Russell Crowe played in “A Beautiful Mind” and others may know as the man who extended Von Neumann’s concept of equilibria to non-zero-sum games, once said that [paraphrasing] ‘Game theory is like string theory, a mathematically elegant theory in search of empirical support.’ Also, I think Thomas Schelling, another Nobel Prize-winning Game Theorist who is considered the architect of Mutual Assured Destruction, said that the problem with eloquent mathematical solutions is that if the other player(s) is/are unable or unwilling to do the math, then the result one finds to be optimal may not be realized. However, there are concepts from game theory that are worth contemplation. One of these concepts is that it is often the case that both sides may end up with outcomes that are less than optimal simply because of imperfect information. One classic example of this is the prisoner’s dilemma in which two conspiring suspects could both get off Scott-free if they only had confidence that the other would keep his mouth shut. Because they can’t, they roll over on each other and end up with the worst possible joint outcome. While this may be of little value in combat, it may be of value before combat.

As I have now rambled inexcusably off topic, I will quit here for the day.

I had an epiphany of sorts while sitting in a park in Beijing. Seeing a spry old man doing tai chi, I realized I could not imagine still being capable of training as an octogenarian – even in as slow and low-impact a martial art as this man’s style of tai chi. Furthermore, I could not imagine many of the martial artists I know training at that age. Myself and most of the martial artists I know are in their 30s and 40s, and, though some have developed impressive powers such as the ability to tell when it will rain beforehand (albeit from the shooting pains in their knees), most seem to suffer from premature aging. I, myself, have joints that on occasion produce sounds not unlike dry gravel being rolled around in a wet sock. It is clear that the practice of martial arts can take a considerable toll on joints and bones.

Besides acting their age (i.e. adjusting their training to their stage in life), there seems to be a great deal inherent in the culture of various Asian countries that help keep older martial artists spry – rather than disabled. These factors are not necessarily directly related to the martial arts, but they form a context within which these martial arts developed and are practiced in their nations of origin.

In Japan, a lifetime of getting up from low seated position builds up joints, muscles, and connective tissue in a manner that is hard to duplicate for people who move off the floor by the time we are in kindergarten and only return for events such as tornados and bank robberies. Even spending a couple hours a day doing seated techniques (suwari gata) is not likely to compensate – particularly if one begins this practice as an adult when the skeletal system is mature and connective tissues have lost their pliability. Chinese people often squat in place rather than standing, and this too makes a life-long habit of working the legs through their full range of motion. Moving through the full range of motion seems to be quite important to developing a combination of flexibility, endurance, and strength.

There are other parts of this cultural context that serve Asians well such as the Japanese fondness for hot baths, a more holistic view of health and medicine, and a tendency toward a lean diet with less fatty foods and less refined sugar. I have been reading about Traditional Chinese Medicine as of late. It is interesting, while a fair amount of what I read does not seem to literally jibe with anatomy and physiology as modern science knows it, it is clear that that there is an understanding of the interconnectedness of body’s systems based on centuries of observation and practice.

Of course, the value of cultural context can be seen in mental as well as physical aspects. Buddhism emphasizes the value of living in the moment and non-attachment, both of which are invaluable in the martial arts. These issues, of course, do not tend to be a major point in Western religion or philosophy.

I’m not entirely certain what my point is here. It is certainly not that one needs to forsake one’s own culture in order to practice budo. However, I think just being aware of how a broader cultural context influenced these martial arts is useful to the ability to make subtle beneficial changes in one’s life that may extend one’s training life.