The Wagtails Sing - when nature meets a sword school

 

Seen in a shop window - Wagtail on a Lotus Leaf
attributed to Sesshu

The traditional Japanese calendar was a complicated thing. In addition to the 12 months, auspicious and inauspicious days (still consulted, especially for weddings) there were also 24 months or mini seasons and also 72 micro seasons. I don’t know how widespread the observance of these micro seasons was – I imagine more so in literary circles…or perhaps only there, and knowledge of them is certainly not part of everyday life nowadays, but occasionally something happens to remind you of them.

Passing by an antique shop last month, I caught sight of an unusual painting – a work in ink depicting a wagtail on a dead lotus leaf. There is something about good sumi-e that draws you in, a living quality in the surface of the paper, the subtleties of the ink, the effect of age and decay as well. And it was clear that this was an old piece from the color and quality of the paper. The signature declared it to be by Sesshu, the doyen of Japanese painters, regarded as both the root and the highest exemplar of the style – I could not say if it was genuine, but it certainly looked to be at least 400 years old to my eyes.

Sesshu's signature...it must be genuine!!?

The age itself gives a work a certain frisson, and the subject was of interest, too, wagtails being an almost daily sight on the edges of the city. While not common (I don’t remember having seen an example before) the theme is not without precedent. In particular, there is a work by Muqi (J. Mokkei) of this subject, which I suspect became the model for this motif. Of course, unlike several other works of his that served as models for themes in Japanese paintings (his dragon and tiger, long-armed monkey (gibbon)), artists could see the subject for themselves and, perhaps, felt no need to copy his composition.

Muqi's verson of the wagtail on 
a withered lotus leaf (Courtesy of
the MOA, Tokyo)

The wagtail and the dead lotus are both symbols of the turn of the seasons as summer gives way to the early days of autumn, but the display of the painting was more deliberate than that. Sekirei Naku (wagtails call) is the name of one of the micro seasons (September 13-17), and wouldn't you know it, that was exactly the time the painting was on display. Those more attuned to the lore of Japanese poetics would, no doubt, have realised this straight away.

The wagtail itself is a common bird throughout Japan – certainly in Kansai. Their distinctive movement not only earned them their name in English, but lent its name to a sword technique that is particularly associated with the Hokushin Ittō-ryū and from there it came into kendo. There it seems to have become a descriptive term for an up-and-down movement of the tip of the sword (kissaki), with no clear consensus on the precise usage. However, it is still preserved in the Hokushin Ittō-ryū.

Sekirei no ken, as the technique is known, relies on the sensitivity of the kissaki and the ability to threaten an attack that cannot be accurately predicted. This may involve subtle movement of the tip of the sword, directing the i of the wielder, thus giving it its name. In kendo, this has become an up and down motion with the general aim of confusing the opponent.

The Hokushin Ittō-ryū is not the only school to make use of this kind of movement of the kissaki - an up-and-down movement was also used by the Kage-ryū, for example. In fact, it would probably be safe to say that every well-developed school of swordsmanship had teachings on the use of the tip of the sword, and there are probably more similarities than differences between the different schools. But the Hokushin Ittō-ryū is the only traditional school I know that uses the imagery of the wagtail for their technique. 

(Written on the last day of 'The ground starts to freeze').

This is the mokuroku (transmission document)
 awarded to Sakamoto Ryoma, a famous practitioner
of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū

Senki — the spirit of battle

Senki by Miyamoto Musashi, Shimada Bijutsukan

Calligraphy held an important place in the arts in both China and Japan. Indeed, it was probably regarded as the primary visual art, certainly more important than painting. It gained by the importance of the message it transmitted, but didn't suffer from the taint of craftsmanship. Practised by emperors, nobles, priests, statesmen and generals, as well as literati of various stripes, it also benefitted by being an art with an immediate practical application, and one that allowed expression, both of skill and sensibility, without necessarily possessing artistic talent.

As Japan adopted the Chinese writing system, it is no surprise that Chinese calligraphers were regarded as the chief exemplars of the art. These calligraphers are still revered today and fine examples of their art can be seen in various collections in Japan. (A minor spat ensued earlier this year when Taiwan loaned a famous work by Yan Zhenqing (J.Ganshinkei) to the Tokyo National Museum despite pointedly refusing to allow it to travel to the mainland. See here for more details).

Like many things adopted from China, Japan added its own twists, one of these being the fashion for displaying short pieces of calligraphy — often only a few characters — a fashion commonly associated with Zen.

One of the characteristics that is often identified with the practice of calligraphy is the development of the student's character. As an art which is dependent on copying models as the primary mode of practice, it has been said that this helps the student imbibe some of the character of the model.

In a similar vein, there has long been a fashion for reading the artist's character through the shape and flow of the characters her or she produces. Modern scholarship places more emphasis on the uses calligraphy was put to in the roles and institutions for which it was written rather than this impressionistic approach, but nevertheless, when faced by the power of a piece of art, there is something to be said for such impressions. Subjective though it may be, the individual response to a work of art is at the heart of art appreciation. I have been taken aback on several occasions when coming upon a powerful work unexpectedly, particularly, I might add, in the case of Yamaoka Tesshu — he was so prolific that his works do, indeed, turn up where you are not expecting them.

Not so Miyamoto Musashi – or not often, anyway.

The piece above — Senki — is one of his more famous pieces. This pairing of the two main characters, tatakau (fight, battle) and ki (energy, spirit) seems to be unique to Musashi. The line below it is from a Chinese poem  by Bai Juyi (Po Chü-i; J. Hakukyoi), taken from the Wakan Roueishu (A Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Singing), and elucidates the main two characters.

The chill current holds the moon as clearly as a mirror.

The chill current (the slow, inexorable flow of a broad river) is generally taken to represent Musashi's mindset: cold, unstoppable, and ever moving, yet which reads perfectly everything the opponent thinks or does.

There is a rather long (for this kind of thing) analysis (in English) of this work in terms of character on the website of the Japanese martial arts magazine Hiden. It is written by a calligrapher and aikido practitioner, William Reed. Although I feel it rather overanalyses, you might find it an interesting read. The following is one of the more interesting observations:

Thick strokes mix freely with thin strokes, and internal spaces are well preserved, which further reinforces the impression of a sword master who could remain calm and effective at the edge of life and death. Musashi knew how to be close enough to safely penetrate the opponent’s space and deliver a fatal strike.

In any case, the work itself deserves a close study, however you may interpret it. An interesting perspective on Zen calligraphy is that interpretation of calligraphy does not tell you about the character of the artist, as much as that of the observer. This, too, may be true, but for myself, I find the more I look, the more I see.

Miyamoto Musashi, A Life in Arms

A review of William De Lange's account of the life of Miyamoto Musashi.

Of all Japanese swordsmen, Miyamoto Musashi is the best known, and his life story has been told in one form or another any number of times, both in print and on the screen. Many of these retellings have been coloured by Yoshikawa Eiji’s fictional account, a blend of fact, creative interpretation and fiction, which continues to exert its influence, and this is despite the years that have passed and the increased availability of documentary evidence of various aspects of Musashi’s life.

Much more of this is available in Japanese than in English, although in the past ten years or so, there have been a couple of notable works in English which sought to dig deeper into his life, and although both of these took some trouble to use historical sources, the Yoshikawa story was floating there as a shadow in the background – a kind of template from which to begin.

Perhaps this is not surprising as the story is so well-known, and Yoshikawa himself researched the subject quite deeply… of course, as a novelist, he was more interested in the story than in strict historical accuracy, but in tying together the available accounts, favouring those that fitted his story while ignoring those that didn’t, he created a work that has become common background knowledge and a starting point for almost everyone in the field.

A new biography, Miyamoto Musashi, A Life in Arms by William de Lange, comes at Musashi’s life from a different perspective. Based directly on historical documents, it gives us us quite a different picture of Musashi’s life. De Lange has already published two volumes giving translations of two of the principal source documents on Musashi’s life,(reviews here and here) but this is something different. Drawing on these, as well as numerous other sources, he builds up a new version of the swordsman’s story, enlarging here, filling in there, and covering much ground that will be totally new for many.

In any work of this kind, much must be left to the judgement and imagination of the writer, and de Lange handles the details and conflicting storylines drawn from these sources with assurance, weaving them together to form a narrative that is both fresh yet also faintly familiar. Parts of the story do, indeed, form some part of the familiar tale – Musashi’s visit to Kyoto and the duels with the Yoshioka family, the visit to the spear wielding monks of Hozoin and the duel with Sasaki Kojiro – but it adds detail to these and fleshes out Musashi’s time after this in far greater detail than most accounts – I found the information on his time in the Akashi/Himeji region and his relationship with various small lords of the area particularly interesting, showing the degree of fame and influence he had obtained at a reasonably young age, and also lending ammunition to the opinion that he was fighting on the side of the Tokugawa forces both in 1600 and 1615 (although more direct evidence of this is also presented) as all these daimyo were firmly in the Tokugawa camp.

 

Meiji Period portrait of Musashi prepared
for battle. Shimada Bijutsukan, Kumamoto

The story that emerges is, in many ways, more nuanced than previous tellings. We see Musashi as a man in some demand, a swordsman who has built a reputation, partly through his service on the battlefield and the connections he made in military campaigns, but who remains determined to retain his independence. Building on his connections, including his father, with whom he stayed close until the latter’s death, he became well-known and sought after, teaching and providing a variety of other services in the military line, including looking after the heir to Lord Ogasawara during the Shimabara campaign. He was well respected, that much is certain, and mixed with the high and mighty, but like a well-respected academic who refuses tenure, he never entered permanent service.

It is the part of the biographer to offer his/her own views and insights into the motivations of his subject, although it is understood that these are, to some extent, interpretation, not fact. In this case, de Lange was working from documents that provided little or no direct indication of Musashi’s inner life, and so he has had to apply his own interpretation more liberally than would be necessary  for many other subjects. Some of these are quite insightful and provide a fresh and interesting take on the subject. He deals in some depth with Musashi’s relationship with his father, and speculates that Musashi’s refusal to become a feudal vassal owes much to the effect this state had on his father, who was ordered to execute one of his own students for a minor lapse in protocol. The subsequent sense of shame and guilt, he suggests, overshadowed the rest of his life, and engendered in Musashi a determination not to make himself beholden to any such authority himself.

At other times, although perhaps necessary for the sake of the narrative, the mixture of facts drawn from historical documents and feelings placed in the mind of the protagonist can be a little jarring, and momentarily calls into question the line between the two. Those familiar with the author’s previous books will be aware that there are plenty of contradictions between these (and other, later) accounts, and although the author has generally steered a good course between them, in this account he chooses those which suit the narrative, rather than arguing the case for his choice; if you are familiar with some of these other possibilities, their omission can, at times, seem rather glaring, but what the book sacrifices in terms of completeness, it gains in clarity. This is a minor point, however, and the well-referenced text generally clarifies the sources of most of the information.

Given the choice to rely so heavily on historical accounts. it is not surprising that the book sometimes feels a little sparse, despite its 159 pages of text and another 95 of back matter – it is not the author’s place to embroider the evidence too heavily – but that is a small price to pay for a book that lays out this hard-to-come-by information so clearly. It is certainly a valuable book, and one that has grown on me with subsequent readings. True, there are one or two places where I would question the author’s interpretation, but that does not lessen it’s value, and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone with more than a passing interest in the area.

The flowers of Yagyu: coded language and layers of meaning

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.

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/

Although I am wary of allowing such intellectual enquiry to effect my actual practice, it can allow us a deeper understanding of the thoughts and ideas of earlier generations of practitioners of bugei and the way they regarded their own arts.