It is the beginning of April, and cherry blossom
is just appearing. In a week or so, it will be falling, which brings to mind
this verse from Yagyu Jubei’s Tsuki no Sho, a verse which, incidentally, Jubei
credits to the priest Takuan.
The fine rain that dampens my clothes
Is
invisible, yet I see it;
The blossom that falls earthwards
Is inaudible, yet I hear it.
This is part of the ‘secret’ teaching of
the school – teaching which was revealed only to advanced students. Like most
secrets, it means little if you don’t have some understanding of the concept it
is illustrating. In this case, it is describing the kind of awareness necessary
for performance of the more advanced techniques.
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| A Yagyu tsuba: hanaikada design (flower raft) |
In modern times, intellectual
understanding, the ability to talk about or explain, is common currency; even
beginning students of martial arts can read up on information and often
consider themselves to be (rightly or wrongly) as well or better read than
their teachers (though whether this knowledge is accurate is another matter.)
In traditional ryu-ha in the pre-modern
era, knowledge and skill, were far more closely connected. Knowledge was closely guarded; not only was
it given out with the care now reserved for industrial secrets, it was often
hidden in code, some of which was simply obscure phrases that had no apparent
meaning to outsiders (the waters of the
West River from Yagyu Shinkage ryu is a good example) or using alternative
characters or pronunciations to give yet more meanings. In addition, meanings
could be layered, so that deeper meanings of concepts were taught the further
one progressed in a ryu-ha.
Another way in which teachings were
structured was to widen the scope of their application; Miyamoto Musashi’s
writing on small scale and large scale strategy is comparatively well-known,
but as information on traditional ryu-ha becomes more widely disseminated, it
seems that this was the norm – many schools included higher level teachings on
military tactics, strategy, and a range of other applications that extended
beyond hand-to-hand combat. Very few of these would appear to exist in usable
form nowadays, and the quality must have varied from school to school, even in
those days. This kind of teaching was reserved for students of higher social
and or military rank, as well as the most advanced students of the ryu-ha.
(Many of these worked in advisory capacities, and thus while they would offer
their services, their deeper teachings were kept secret).
It is likely that the nature of these
advanced teachings also informed the lower levels of the curriculum, and may
account for the somewhat arbitrary seeming nature of techniques at these lower
levels.
Some of this language is jargon –
professional language to refer to concepts that are out of the normal run of
things; some is specifically meant to hide or obscure meanings from the
uninitiated.
The Yagyu Shinkage ryu offers many examples
of both types in its documents and teachings, but it seems particularly given
to hiding meanings. (Compared to Miyamoto Musashi’s writings which, for the most
part, are fairly straight-forward.) Perhaps the most well known are setsuninto and katsuninken – the killing sword and the living sword. Nowadays, these
are generally given moral/philosophical implications connected with using a
sword to kill or using non-lethal means to end a conflict. Indeed, Yagyu
Munenori did refer to them in this way; the original and primary meaning,
however, was technical, and (roughly speaking) referred to the extent to which
one controlled the opponent’s technique or allowed it some freedom.
Other terms are introduced and explained in
increasing detail in documents. One example in Tsuki no Sho is the concept of suigetsu, which merits a number of
sections including ‘The true suigetsu’, denoting deeper levels of meaning
regarding the concept.
The Yagyu Shinkage ryu also had specific ways
of writing or pronouncing common terms. Heiho (兵法), commonly pronounced
hyoho, and used to refer to bugei or martial arts in a general sense (as well
as strategy and tactics), was written as平法(heiho) when it was
used in reference to attacking with the sword; it was pronounced as iwato, which can be written with the
characters for one, eight and ten. The strokes used to write these characters
are the same as the lines of the strokes used for the principle attacking sword
cuts:一八十Furthermore, the characters for
heiho/hyoho兵法 could be pronounced yokehazusu, which meant to avoid/slip
aside, as this was a major part of the strategy of the style.
Other ryu-ha might use the same terms, but
with different connotations. The Tenshin Shoden Katori ryu also writes heiho
using the characters 平法, but the meaning is ‘art of peace’ rather than
‘art of war’, denoting the philosophical stance of the school with regards to
the use of its teachings.
Confusing to say the least. The Yagyu
Shinkage ryu was a very public one: as principal sword instructors of the
shogun, as well as spymasters and advisors, their teachings were widely
disseminated, and so the need for secrecy was likely greater than for many
other schools, but it seems that ryu-ha with much lower profiles employed
similar means to encode their secrets.
To take but one example, the Katayama Hoki ryu
included among its teachings the short scroll entitled Heiso Jirinden Furoku,
written by Katayama Hisayasu in 1647, which explicitly explains concepts of
individual iai kata as they relate to issues of behaviour concerned with the
administrative roles many bushi had. (https://archive.org/details/HeisoJirindenFurokuenglishVersion)
Other documents in the tradition also
explain the meanings of kata name with respect to tactical and behavioral
considerations, and make for interesting reading.
http://katayama-ryu.org/en/
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