What Would Musashi Do?

What I’m about to say in the next few paragraphs will be considered by some to be blasphemous but understand that I’m not trying to offend anyone here. This is simply the opinion of a practitioner of low dan rank who may or may not ever gain another promotion but what I DO have is real- world-street experience in using martial arts to protect myself and others.  To say that I learned the hard way that technique alone was (and is) wholly inadequate to dealing with one or more attackers is an understatement. I was able to walk away from the fights which is more than the attackers could say but I only won in the sense that I didn’t get killed.

A little while ago, I was changing after class and as I walked into the dressing room, students from another school were also changing and I happened to hear a little of their conversation.  “If you have a gun, you are limited but if you have a sword and dagger, you have a lot more options.”  I held my tongue when I heard this to not be disrespectful but it also got me thinking about the statement and the fact that, 20 + years ago, you very well might have heard the same kind of thing come out of my mouth. When I was younger my training partners and I where all, more or less, influenced by various movies that led us to a dojo to study, and if we continued, to various books that we could get our hands on to seek the roots and techniques of the style.  That eventually led to the “classics” of martial arts like the Hagakure (Yamamoto Tsunetomo)Demons Sermon on Martial Arts (Chozan Niwa), and of course The Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi). I can remember those days as a kid/young teenager practicing in the dojo for “real life” scenarios which would lead to a debate of what would work and what wouldn’t; almost along the lines of; “What would Musashi (or insert your favorite historical martial artist) Do?’  Most of us who have grown up in the martial and budo arts I think have all gone through a type of progression in which we try to learn every technique we can get our hands on, study and practice the shit out of it, then walk around convinced that we are “Billy Bad Ass” on the street just waiting for someone to test us and our skills with the opinion that they are roughly about 1,000% better than they actually are.  Unfortunately for some of us, that test came and we found out just what the “techniques” were worth in real confrontation.   

Part of the problem I think goes toward the introduction of eastern arts to the western mindset which is kind of like putting the cart before the horse.  In the west, the idea of A to B to C is as ingrained into our psyche and literally taught that way in schools and universities during courses on logic, etc. The techniques of our various warrior arts are looked at in the west as the whole in breadth and width of the form; that and nothing else.  We concentrate so much on the “technique” that we completely miss the fact that it’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg which is to say about 10% and the other 90% remains unknown and even unnoticed to many of us. A couple of good examples that I can give is when I found the Bujinkan, it took a long time to even begin to unlearn what I had relied on and focus on the underlying principles of the movement itself that the technique came from. It took OVER A YEAR before I even noticed my sensei’s feet moving and recently I just noticed that I’ve probably been doing ukemi wrong as well.  In most dojo’s in the western world, technique has supplanted principle to the point that it has become a thing in and of itself and, because little or no thought is given to the underlying principles and ethics, the art of combat has fallen by the wayside and supplanted by a sport. It’s more often about “now you do this if they do that” rather than asking why you are in that position in the first place.  Often because of this attitude, you see practitioners gravitate toward “favorite” weapons and techniques and this attitude has even begun to enter the budo arts and attitudes practiced in the east. A good example of this is, several years ago, the Soke of the Bujinkan was being interviewed and during the question/answer section, the reporter asked; “so what’s your favorite technique.” Now many reading this involuntarily answered the question in their own mind.  The difference between a practitioner in the warrior arts and a sport is perfectly summed up by the Soke when he answered; “Why? Are you going to send someone to try and kill me?” That unwillingness to transmit even a small amount of information and learn how to move through all situations dependent on the circumstances/terrain/what’s available/and the environment.  If you walk down a city street in most parts of the world carrying a sword, even in Japan, I can guarantee you will quickly find out just how much you are NOT in a Tarantino next installment of Kill Bill and guys with guns will quickly become your foreground, background, and flanks.   

In Musashi’s day, the sword was the penultimate weapon of the nobility and he threw himself into the study of its’ workings to the point that, by the end of his life, not only was he undefeated in all his duels, but had moved beyond the sword and met his opponents with a bokken in hand; wood against steel; and still carried the day. Musashi went on to found a school of thought as an esoteric monk laying out his thoughts in the Book of Five Rings but was even then still constricted by the norm of his class utilizing the sword to exclusion of other weapons.  That said, if you go back and read his book again, what he keeps referring to is NOT the way of the sword, but the way of strategy which, to me, means not only learning how to move, but how to use whatever is at hand including a gun, knife, sword, brick, hands and feet, and the fundamentals of each items strengths and weaknesses. So in closing we come back to the question, “What would Musashi do?” The answer is simple; who cares?; dude lived around five hundred years ago but I will leave you with one of his more popular sayings; “Pay your respects to the Gods and Buddha but do not rely on them for help.”