Reflections on Budo
K. Chiba Sensei
Shihan, Chief Instructor of the
Chairman, Western Region United States Aikido
Federation (USAF)
Introduction by David Birt Sensei ,
Chief Instructor of The
Kazuo Chiba: Well, I liked
budo quite a bit, especially judo. One day I happened to find myself in a
situation where I had to fight a match with one of my seniors who was a nidan. He was a fine person who had taught me quite a
bit about judo ever since I first entered the dojo, and he had been good to me
in matters outside the dojo as well. He had a small body but he did
He used to beat me all the
time, but then, for some reason I won a match during a kachinuke shiai (match
in which the judoka keeps fighting until he is beaten; he is then replaced by
whoever beat him). He was mortified and said, "I can't beat you in judo
anymore, but I still have kendo!" (He was also a nidan in kendo.)
Then one night he showed up
at my place and told me to come out because we were going to have a kendo
match. Now, I had done judo and karate, but never kendo. I figured something
would probably work out, so I went along and we found ourselves an empty lot.
My sempai allowed me a handicap by letting me use a wooden bokken while he used
only a bamboo shinai. He was so fast that I couldn't even touch him, while his
shinai smacked into my body again and again. I ended up taking quite a beating.
That experience became one of
my first awakenings about budo. Disillusioned, I stopped going to the judo
dojo, and I began to think about things. It occurred to me that even if I
practiced judo as diligently as possible, established myself as a high-ranking
judoka, and had confidence in my judo abilities, chances were that I could
still be beaten by a shodan kendoka in a kendo match. By the same token, if
some kendo teacher were to don a judo uniform and come to my judo dojo, I could
probably beat him no matter how well-respected he was in the kendo world.
After thinking about that for
a while I concluded that something was missing, and that some mistake must have
been made; true budo must be something else. A budo practitioner, I thought,
should be able to respond under any circumstances, whether using sword against
sword, whatever. Such simple questions led me to begin thinking about the
nature of true budo.
Since I had no idea how to
find the kind of budo I was looking for, I stopped doing any sort of
Then one day in a bookstore I
picked up a book about
How old were you then?
I had just graduated from
high school, so I must have been 18. At the time O-Sensei was living in Iwama
so he usually wasn't at the Hombu Dojo. But I was prepared to sit in front of
the dojo until I was allowed to become an uchideshi. So I did, waiting to talk to
someone. It was the middle of February [1958], and it was cold. It seems the
people in the Hombu Dojo thought I was some kind of crazy person. Three days
later O-Sensei arrived from Iwama. Waka Sensei (the former Doshu, Kissho
O-Sensei said, "Budo
training is extremely demanding. Do you think you can handle it?" I
replied that I was very sure I could and O-Sensei said, "Very well
then." It was a very simple meeting.
You then spent about seven
years training as an uchideshi at the Hombu Dojo?
Yes, and there wasn't a
single day during that whole period that I considered "fun"—not at
the time, anyway. Now 1 look back on the experience rather fondly, but at the
time it was pure hardship! [laughter] Of course, it
was something I had chosen in order to realize my goal, not something that I
was forced to endure, so in that sense it was actually something of a luxury,
despite the difficulty.
You must have some interesting
stories about your experiences as an uchideshi....
O-Sensei was still in good
health when I entered the dojo. Over the seven years I was there I saw his
techniques change rapidly. After about a year I had gained enough command of
the basics that I was allowed to take ukemi for him.
Training with O-Sensei was
really rough! I regularly had the skin scraped off my elbows when we practiced
iriminage and the sleeves of my uniform were always caked with blood.
O-Sensei's techniques were so fast I could hardly take the ukemi. Even worse
than taking the ukemi was that even when he threw you really hard you had to
get right back on your feet and you weren't allowed to take your eyes off him.
You could feel it at the base of your neck when he sent you flying two meters
across the mat. His sword was also extraordinarily fast.
How would you describe
O-Sensei's "energy"?
It was like being pressed by
some sort of invisible force. O-Sensei used to tell us to strike at him with a
bokken at any time. Whenever he stopped and turned to speak to his audience
seemed like a good chance to do so, since he wasn't looking our way at all, but
even then nobody tried to strike him. He simply had no openings. He wasn't
looking at us with his eyes, but we could feel him holding us fast with his ki. It used to make me break out in an oily sweat, so that
I could hardly keep a grip on my bokken.
Still, as his opponents we
would keep at it, gradually trying to close the distance. Then, for an instant,
an opening would appear O-Sensei created small openings deliberately to help us
train our powers of perception. He wouldn't use people who couldn't demonstrate
an ability to perceive such openings.
The instant O-Sensei slightly
relaxed the intensity of his kokyu power we would rush in with an attack; but
he was already gone. For that reason it looked pre-arranged. Actually, O-Sensei
was already moving by the time we began our attack. We were just too slow or
lacked the ability to perceive it. I find that sort of thing extremely interesting.
O-Sensei said that true budo
should be executed so skillfully that it looks prearranged. He said it's not
budo if you begin your movement only after the strike is in motion. It's only
the real thing if it looks set up to outside observers.
Did O-Sensei teach the
uchideshi differently from the students in the general classes?
The content of the training
was exactly the same, but we uchideshi were also told explicitly that we were
not to train in the same way as the regular students. Our training had to be
much harder and more intense, not soft and easy. O-Sensei was very strict about
that.
The uchideshi rarely received
any kind of special technical instruction. Rather, the most intense part of our
training was interacting with O-Sensei in every aspect of his daily
life—serving as his personal assistant, accompanying him when he traveled,
preparing his meals and bath, massaging his back, reading to him, and things
like that. People who have never been an uchideshi may have difficulty
understanding the significance of this daily contact.
Please tell us more about
that.
We used to accompany O-Sensei
when he traveled to places like
Whenever there was a
staircase to be climbed we would push O-Sensei up from behind, and going down
again we positioned ourselves a step lower to offer a shoulder for him to hold
on to. Eventually we would make it onto the train. Occasionally there were
uchideshi who couldn't keep up, but O-Sensei would just get on the train and
leave anyway, so everyone had to do everything possible to keep up with him and
get on the train with the group.
Most of the inns we stayed at
had some arrangement consisting of two rooms and a toilet. O-Sensei slept in
the far room and the uchideshi crammed into the other. Now, at his age O-Sensei
usually got up five or six times during the night to visit the toilet and we
had to assist him. I couldn't sleep at all for the first two or three years,
because I could never tell when he was going to get up.
When he got up we would open the
door and help him into his haori ( a loose jacket
somewhat longer in the front, reaching to somewhere between the hip and the
knee), then escort him to the toilet, open the toilet door, and switch on the
light. Afterwards we helped him wash and dry his hands,
then got him back into bed and returned to our own room. Obviously you can't
get much sleep with that happening five or six times a night. Everyone would
lose eight or nine pounds during the week and we were pretty ragged by the time
we got home.
The interesting thing is that
after about four years I was able to sleep soundly. Somehow I would sense it in
my sleep whenever O-Sensei needed to get up to use the toilet. I would wake up,
jump out of bed, slide open the door and there he was!
Perfect timing, you know? A sort of wordless communication had developed. In
Japanese we say ishin denshin,
which means something like "communication as if two people had the same
mind."
This is the sort of training
that allows you to sense the intention of your partner on the mat. When you and
your partner face off holding swords, for example, the important thing is not
who is stronger and who is weaker, but rather how clearly you can grasp the
other's intention. To be able to move at the right time you have to be able to
see the openings when they appear.
I don't know whether this
sort of training was intentional on O-Sensei's part, but in any case it did
influence my technique in the sense that I became able to act in response to
the movement of my partner's ki and the timing of his
movement before I had even thought about it. Of course I can't do that all the
time.... I wish I could, then I'd really be an expert,
wouldn't I? [laughter]
What do you think is the most
important thing for people who are just beginning
People seek so many different
things in
These days there is more
diversity. Some people do it for health, others for the philosophical or
spiritual aspects—all of these are good.
The important issue today,
however, is that if you think of
In principle 1 think there is
no old or new in budo. We have the word "kobudo,"
which literally means "old budo." It's logical opposite would be
"shinbudo," or "new budo," but we
don't actually use such a word in Japanese, do we? The modern trend is for new
budo to become sport-oriented. It's probably okay to call these sports
"new forms of budo," but in the traditional way of thinking sports
really don't qualify as budo.
It's very difficult to say to
what extent these things are to be considered budo. But to my way of thinking,
there is no doubt that budo is what forms the roots of
Would you talk about that
from a technical perspective?
Within my limited experience
what captivates me most about
This element constitutes one
of
However, this essential
quality is not clearly manifested in the individual techniques so much as it
permeates the art as a whole and exists as a latent potential. It allows an
approach to an ethic sought by modern spirituality, in other words the "shinmu fusatsu" that
represents the highest ideal of Japanese budo—-"to kill not."
Aikido's essence as a budo is
by no means close to the surface, but those with a degree of insight should be
able to discern it. The
I think perhaps one of the
profound and fascinating qualities of
Doshu's approach to
Also, large, round, soft
movements, as well as ideas like spiritual harmony and unity are important, but
too much emphasis on them yields a one-sided or skewed approach to training and
cannot be said to embody the essence of budo. Those things also tend to lack a
certain degree of technical validity. They're more akin to leaves and branches,
and as such perhaps they are better interpreted as being symbolic of the
In this way, O-Sensei opened
a path for the many types of people who had in the past, for whatever reasons,
been excluded from the world of traditional budo—people with frail bodies,
people lacking physical power, the aged, women. He did
away with competition and in so doing created a way that adapts to the
capabilities and characteristics of each individual, drawing out their latent
potential, and allowing them each to find their niche and fulfill their own
mission in life. A world in which people can live together is created when
everyone is fulfilling their own potential in this way. That is my
understanding of O-Sensei's thinking.
It's an epochal way of
thinking about budo, isn't it?
Yes, but on the other hand
what I fear most is when those people who have been excluded from traditional
budo find a path in
Of course, it's also
important to keep in mind that if the leaves and branches wilt and die, then so
will the roots. So we really have to think of
I think the facts about why
and how O-Sensei created
I think what we would call a
"completed" budo doesn't really exist. (The same may be said of
philosophy or religion, or indeed of any human construct.) "My completion
of my budo," in other words, completion on an individual, personal level,
is as much as there is. O-Sensei completed his own budo, but that is not my
budo.
Similarly, I can't simply
give or transfer my budo to my students. At most I can invite them into my
experience to have them use it as a guide to completing their own budo. In that
sense budo is a rather solitary pursuit for everyone involved, because you
can't learn, lock-stock-and-barrel, what your teacher has achieved. The various
aspects of budo simply won't emerge for you in exactly the same form as they
did for your teacher.
That's not to say, of course,
that there isn't a need to establish basic teaching methodologies containing
theories, doctrines, training methods, and so forth.
In budo there are three
stages— shu (protect/maintain/observe), ha (break/
tear down), and ri
(separate/part from/release). In the shu stage you
absorb what your teacher has to offer and remain absolutely obedient.
Self-assertion, creativity, and independent ideas on your part are absolutely
forbidden during these years, however long it takes. You have to follow what
you are taught absolutely, without interjecting your own bias in any way. This
is often referred to as a form of "self-negation." Still, however
much you learn, it remains your teacher's art, not your own.
So you need the next stage,
which is ha, or breaking free of what you have learned. In doing so the entity
you call your "self" comes into play. It's a form of creativity, and
as such represents an affirmation of your self. During this stage you discover
your own personal characteristics, your own personality, in other words,
"who you are." You begin to sort through all that you've learned,
selecting and digesting what you need to create and complete something that is
your own. But this is not the end, for this kind of self-affirmation exists pri
Ri is the third
stage. Having negated your self in the first stage (shu),
then affirmed your self in the second stage (ha), in the third stage (ri) you have to negate even that
self-affirmation. Ri allows
you to drop out of the relativity that bound you in the previous two stages and
becomes a gateway to universality or completion.
In terms of technique, shu is a time for technical mastery in which you pass through
the bulk of the art's technical repertoire; ha offers an opportunity to
research and apply those techniques; ri
is the completion of something that is your own.
In terms of one's spiritual
or mental state, shu is negation of the self; ha is affirmation
of the self; and ri is
transcendence and dropping away from the Self-Other duality and a release from
obsession with specifics. All of these intersect and intertwine.
These days
Through my own limited
experience I've been able to touch a part of this world that I've just been
describing. However, interpretations of these things through the eyes of
someone who hasn't actually experienced them inevitably yield little more than
mechanical, dead descriptions. Even something like the concept of shu-ha-ri, for example, becomes absurdly skewed if you try
to capture it within some defined intellectual form. Shu-ha-ri
and the development these terms describe have aspects of a
dialectic. In fact, the existence posited by
The extremely modern quality
of
Aikido training involves
repetitive practice of forms over long years in order to establish a base from
which eventually to create something of your own. As such, it's important to
try to continue to think about how to do that within the conditions presented
by the training. Take kata, or set practice forms,
for example. As a matter of form we set up a contrastive relationship in which tori is
active and uke is passive, but in the sense that each
is training their ability to engage their autonomous freedom, there is
essentially no difference between the two. This can be broadened to include the
various seemingly contrasting aspects of life itself—life and death, youth and
old age, health and infirmity, happiness and sadness, winning and losing,
success and failure—and as such has deep significance as a means of conducting
one's life.
Budo's original and essential nature, which is deeply
connected with Self and Other hovering on the border
between life and death, inevitably arrives at the irrationality of existence.
However, within this irrationality is embedded an opportunity to awaken to the
source of one's autonomous freedom. Zen and budo find an affinity with each
other in that both are born of a recognition of the
irrationality of life, although they approach the problem from different
angles.
Even within Buddhism, Zen in
particular devotes itself exclusively to clearing away ideologies and dogma to
cut directly to the nature of existence. As such it is extremely practical, as
well as existential. For that reason it has significantly influenced the
spirituality of the warrior class in
By the way, rather than
pulling out things like Zen and budo one-by-one for comparison, I'd like people
to look instead at the underlying Japanese spirit that has absorbed and
assimilated them. This Japanese spirit has incorporated elements such as Zen
and budo, along with Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto thought, polishing each to
bring out its distinctive luster, nurturing them and allowing them to percolate
into each other to form a
Anyway, to return to my
point, I suspect that much of what happens in the dojo—throwing or being
thrown, for example, or the apparent winning and losing during tachiai (which we use in place of actual competitive
matches)—is more symbolic in meaning. In reality, the essential problem being
addressed is the response of individuals to various conditions confronting
them. So as the saying "victory in defeat" (makete
katsu) suggests, phenomenal world concepts such as
superiority and inferiority or winning and losing are not so important.
Surprisingly, people who have
truly arrived at such a state of realization seem to regard death itself as a
merely phenomenal occurrence. Take, for example, the Chinese Zen priest Bukko, who lived during the Southern Sung Dynasty [ca.
1127-1279]. He was invited to the
The nineteenth century
European existentialist thinkers, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Jaspers,
Heidegger, and Sartre (who eventually arrived at atheistic existentialism), all
searched for the grounds of existence/being to the abyss of nothingness. You
can see a parallel between what they did and Zen thought, which over thousands
of years has also perfected a capacity to respond to the irrationality of
existence. That these two emerged from completely different cultural contexts
suggests a commonality in a very deep-seated region of the human spirit.
Of course, Eastern and
Western civilization depart from one another in other respects. Eastern
thought, for example, is pervaded by the idea of the unity of mind and body,
which you don't find so clearly in Western thought. This is evident in Eastern
traditions such as Indian yoga, the magical practices of Chinese Taoism, the
Chinese
In
contrast. Western thought seems to
me to be essentially dualistic. It demonstrates little unity of spiritual and
physical activity, which puts it more into the realm of pure speculation. I
think this is a conspicuous difference between Eastern and Western thought. A
clear example of the differences between these two styles of thinking may be
seen, for instance, in the contrast between Rodin's
sculpture "The Thinker" and that sculpture in Koryu
Temple in Kyoto of a half-seated Bosatsu
(Bodhisattva), said to represent the figure of Prince Siddhartha before he
attained buddhahood. The difference in approaches to speculation
is quite evident when you compare those two.
Please don't misunderstand me
and think I am suggesting that the Eastern way superior. After all, since the
onset of the Industrial Revolution in the 1770's, the purely speculative
approach of the West has formed the basis of the applied sciences that underlie
our entire modern lifestyle. From the standpoint of human history, now more
than ever there is a growing need to integrate the two.
That's another reason why we
need to seriously consider how to approach disseminating and developing
The same may be said of the
whole of traditional Japanese budo. In all honesty, I think that if the goal
were simply to fulfill the physical activity requirements of modern people, then
there would be no real need for budo. Sports and other such activities would
serve just as well. But budo has qualities that go beyond mere physical
activity to offer contributions to society and I believe we need to think more
seriously about those.
I think Japanese budo,
including
Kazuo Chiba Profile
Born 1940
in