Iai – more than drawing the sword

From a scroll of the Sekiguchi Shinshin ryu (1810), showing iaijutsu
practiced on a very interesting looking striking dummy. (From this website.)
   

The art of iai seems to be one of the most understood of the Japanese martial arts. It dates from at least the 16^th century, and probably before that, and yet it falls into that uncomfortable ground of not being quite one thing or another. Is it for use in combat, or is it primarily a tool for self-discipline?

Of course, the comparatively modern discipline of iaido has as one of its stated aims the refinement of the character of the practitioner, but there is some contention about the whole discipline, based largely on the fact that the principle form of practice involves starting in a kneeling position known as seiza. Given the importance of this position in most forms of iai, it has always been something of a mystery as to how it developed.

There have been all kinds of explanations, some of them quite dubious, as to the origins of iai. For example, it has been explained as a battlefield art. It has also been claimed that there was no time that samurai would have the opportunity to draw their long swords from the waist when seated on tatami, it is essentially of no practical use.

When we think of samurai not wearing longswords indoors,
this is the kind of situation  (from Kawagoe City Museum)
that comes to mind. However, this was not always the case (see pictures below).

Although iaido (and some more traditional styles as well) are quite far removed from their ostensible purpose, i.e. drawing the sword, cutting down an opponent and returning the sword to its sheath, the direction in which it has developed – as a tool for polishing the self ­– does, in fact, owe something to elements that were an important part of the practice from the start.

Along with the physical practice of wielding the sword, it has a mental component that is vital – one might even say it is the basis of iai.

The ability to influence the opponent, to control him, before coming to blows, is at its heart, as earlier practitioners were keen to point out:

The founder of the Suio ryu, Mima Yoichizaemon Kagenobu wrote in the early 1600s:

The essence of our tradition, and the attainment of an unassailable position, comes from cutting down our opponents while the sword is still in the scabbard, stifling our opponent’s actions and achieving victory through not drawing the sword.

Similarly, Matsura Seizan, master of the Shingyoto ryu echoed these ideas some 200 years later:

(Iai) is not drawing the sword. When you match i (being or presence) with an opponent (ai comes from the word au, which means the spirit of opposition)… it is called projecting the spirit to give victory… the potential of drawing the sword and cutting down the opponent is present while the sword is still sheathed.

This aspect does exist in all bugei, but iai offers a particularly concentrated form of the practice. Starting in seiza highlights it even further. It becomes far more than drawing the sword.

However, I would not totally rule out the practical nature of iai from seiza. Watching the NHK TV drama Yae no Sakura recently, I was struck by just how threatening and dangerous things could be when men wearing swords meet in the small rooms of the inns and lodging houses frequented by the samurai in the Bakumatsu period (1860s). It is easy to see how skill in iai, both in the sense of drawing the sword as well as being able to control your opponent, would be very useful.

Being able to draw the sword from seiza, perhaps the most difficult and disadvantageous position from which iai is practiced, must have conferred a degree of confidence that carried over into other situations, not to mention the technical skills it helped to develop. After having practiced in this position, almost any other position, especially standing, is much easier.

It is a TV show, but this is the range at which iai might be used.

Kyoto was a rough city in those days ­– there were a number of highly visible assassinations as well as many of less well-known people. Secret political meetings were held in small rooms (with tatami, and swords) and the way you held or wore your sword was a matter of personal preference rather than agreed decorum. When violence erupted, it could be sudden and bloody.

This picture, taken in 1863, shows the guard
assigned to the Dutch delegation in Nagasaki.
Note the mix of modern and older weapons, and
for the sticklers for historical accuracy, note that
the centre figure is seated on tatami, in seiza,
with his sword thrust through his sash.

Perhaps it is a throwback to this era when, in the early 20^th century, iai was promoted strongly by a number of well-known practitioners whose teachers had personal experience of those troubled times. Although the mood of the times had changed, it doesn’t require any stretch of the imagination that an art that had proved useful was passed on into more peaceful times.  

The Confucian Swordsman II

Confucius, from the recent film of the same name

It's difficult to generalise about neo-Confucian writings on the sword - they need to be read, and then pondered over. Their rationalist approach has a certain clarity, but it also demands some work on the part of the reader - all the more so as the idiom in which they are written is unlikely to be familiar to most readers nowadays.

Part of the difficulty lies in the use of terms in unfamiliar ways: 'principle', 'virtue' and 'filial piety' are all terms we recognise, but they also seem strangely out of place in a work about swordsmanship. Obviously there is a moral dimension to learning and teaching martial arts, but it has become almost second nature to reject formulations that promise success to the virtuous and doom for the unjust as unrealistic.

For these to make sense, the reader has to be able to perceive the way they correlate to the practical concerns of sword use. The ability to do this is partly dependent upon ones own experience in these arts, but this is part of what makes the writing valuable.

Fact or Fantasy?

The danger of this approach is that it can fall in to the trap of wish-fulfilment or creative imagination, somewhat in the manner in which authors have taken famous Chinese/Japanese texts, comparing and combining various translations of the originals to give new versions, supposedly more relevant 'for our times'. While there may be some merit in this approach, I doubt it gets us any closer to the meaning of the originals, which is what interests me.

The neo-Confucian texts were not meant to be coded, secretive works which would reveal their knowledge only to chosen initiates (and even Yagyu Munenori's Heihokadensho, which has a good deal of neo-Confucian content as well as the more often noted Zen aspects, makes a point of pointing out which terms are coded) - they were meant for a far wider readership. This means they should be accessible to readers today.

This, in turn, requires a little knowledge of the conventions of the genre. Some of the works are fairly self-explanatory, (e.g. Joseishi Kendan) while others use terms that were actually key concepts in a wider discourse, and thus have additional connotations which might not be immediately obvious.

Filial Piety

The latitude allowed for interpretation of these concepts can be found in the writings of some of the major thinkers of neo-Confucianism in both China and Japan. A good example is ‘filial piety’ – certainly a concept that seems more at home in a moral text than one about swordsmanship. When a writer says something like:

You should simply adopt an underlying attitude of loyalty and filial respect.  - Kimura Kyuho

are we justified in applying it in a wider context? One of the early figures of Japanese neo-Confucianism, Nakae Toju (1608-1648), had this to say about it:

What gives birth to Heaven, to earth, to human existence, and to all things is nothing but this filial piety.

Nakae Toju

(Even as basic an education as those offered in the village school, the terakoya, taught: “…it is the beginning of filial piety to take care and preserve yourself from injury.”)

Clearly it means more than just taking care of your parents – in the abstract, it is a statement of relationships. Seeing it in such broad terms enables us to apply this kind of reading to these works across the board.

Interestingly, there have been some voices in the field of Confucian studies (e.g. Robert Eno) that recognise that earlier Confucian writers (Confucius and Mencius, for example) were referring to something like this in their writings - 'right' was a psycho-physical state as much as an ethical construct. the insistence on the importance of doing things the right way was to entrain this state, rather than to enforce conformity.

Wild beasts

Another concept that appears intermittently, and somewhat confusingly, is that of ‘wild beasts’. It can be found both in Tengu Geijutsuron and Kenjutsu Fushikihen, as well as the Kenpo Sekiun Sensei Soden, written by Odagiri Ichiun and seems somewhat out of place – it is used as a pejorative term for those schools of swordsmanship that emphasise techniques - until we realize that it was a metaphor used to describe those who engaged in all manner of activities without regard to ri. Of course, this has a moral dimension, but it also allows a practical interpretation to the term, depending on how we interpret ri in swordsmanship.

And in English…?

Although there were many, many works in the Japanese martial tradition that were shaped by the currents of neo-Confucian thought, very few are accessible to the English reading public. (It must also be said, that they have received, on the whole, little sustained interest in Japan, either… at least in recent years.)

For the interested reader, I recommend Tengu Geijutsuron, translated by W.S. Wilson in The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts, and Joseishi Kendan and Kenjutsu Fushiki Hen, both of which are in my The Samurai Mind. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t regard Tengu Geijutsuron as terribly authoritative in the deeper areas of sword practice, but it does provide a philosophical justification of bugei practice along neo-Confucian lines. Kenjutsu Fushiki Hen provides a rebuttal to some of the points in Tengu Geijutsuron, and is written with knowledge of the earlier work. It is, importantly, claiming to represent authentic teachings of a swordmaster, and is thus a sort of companion to Tengu Geijutsuron – they both touch on many of the same points and the authors appear to have had a similar grounding in neo-Confucianism, though we do not know the extent of their learning.

Minagawa Kien

We are on firmer ground with Matsura Seizan, the writer of Joseishi Kendan. Seizan was the student of a well-known Confucian scholar, Minagawa Kien, and was himself known as a scholar as well as a swordsman. He embodied many aspects of neo-Confucian ideals in himself and his writing. Rather than explain a theory of how swordsmanship can embody the universal principle, he display in his writing several of the over-riding concerns of his schools of thought, such as education and the doctrine of kakubutsu chichi – the importance of investigating diverse areas to gain a greater understanding of the way in which the universal principle underlies everything.

His work includes passages on numerous aspects of daily life which he ties in to the discipline of swordsmanship. Though this might at first glance seem to be merely an intellectual exercise knowing that he was also a master of the sword requires us to assess it in a new light. The no-nonsense advice he gives further reinforces this – where he does directly refer to Confucianism, the impression he gives is very far from the empty theorizing of an armchair swordsman – which criticism is often leveled at Confucians, either explicitly or by implication.

There are also, as I mentioned above, neo-Confucian currents in Yagyu Munenori’s Heihokadensho, which has been translated by both Thomas Cleary and Wilson. It is an interesting exercise to read it with an eye to these, rather than the more often noted Zen aspects.

An underlying theory

Finally, neo-Confucian thinking gives us a theoretical justification for the study of martial arts: this is ri, the underlying principle (of life, the universe and everything). Because it is underlying, it is also connecting – the search and discovery of it in one area can affect our performance in other areas because they all share the same principles. This became a powerful (though unstated) component of the modern budo disciplines, and provides, at some level, an answer to the question, “How does this discipline make me a better person?”

Perhaps this is what separates this school of thought from other theoretical currents that informed the bugei. Neo-Confucianism is fundamentally concerned with life, with being a part of society, and pursuing one’s way within these boundaries. And that’s what makes it so rewarding to read.

The Confucian Swordsman I

Kano Eitoku - Scholars playing weiqi (go in Japanese)

Preamble
Confucianism often gets a bad rap - in its Japanese context it is characterised as a form of not so enlightened paternalism, intent on preserving the hierarchical authority and keeping women and peasants in their place.

The trouble is, that even as I read decidedly anti-Confucian works like the Tao of Pooh (or was it the Te of Piglet?), I couldn't help sympathising with the Confucians - the ideals ascribed to them, though a little outdated, seemed to me more attractive than the muddle-headed approach of the bear with very little brain. Nobility, loyalty, humanity - they don't sound too bad.

Meanwhile, Zen, of course, has received a lot of attention with regard to it's role in various arts and ways. Too much attention, many would say. This is not to deny that it did have influence in a number of fields, but perhaps not as much as its supporters would like to have us believe. Part of the problem is that many disciplines share the same vocabulary and related or analogous concepts. So, while Zen is cool, (Daoism even more so), Confucianism is straight-laced and conservative - anything that sounds interesting is habitually ascribed to Zen, and anything connected with hierarchy, paternalism or empty theorising, is blamed on Confucianism.

A little balance?
In terms of Japanese martial arts, Draeger had some interesting things to say about neo-Confucianism, chiefly dwelling on the role of the Wang Yangming school (O-Yomei in Japanese), with its emphasis on action, on the main figures of the anti-government movement which culminated in the overthrow of the Tokugawa government in the 1860s. For Draeger, an ex-marine, the philosophies of action seemed attractive (he was also a populariser of the theory of Zen influence in Japanese martial arts), but he didn't touch on the deeper influence of neo-Confucian thought in the disciplines themselves. However, even his description O-yomei neo-Confucian sounded suspiciously like a Zen substitute.

The first work available in English that did look at this issue on its own terms was a translation of the Tengu Geijutsuron (a translation from German into English, as it happens - although William Scott Wilson's far better version is now available). The title, Zen and Confucius in the Art of Swordmanship alerted the reader to the subject matter, although rather misleadingly, threw Zen into the mix- probably out of habit. Unfortunately, for the sake of our understanding, the original writer seems to have lacked the authority of a real master of the sword. An enthusiast he may have been, but he appears to have only partially understood some of the deeper aspects of the art. That his work was criticised by his near contemporaries, and on quite specific points, also attests to its popularity and influence on other writers.

It does, however, provide an interesting counterpoint to the better informed works, and can be usefully read with them.


So, why look at neo-Confucianism anyway?
Firstly, because it did influence classical Japanese martial arts, and this influence has stayed with them, in one way or another until the present day. Gaining an understanding of these influences can help us understand a little more of the arts themselves.

Secondly, Neo-Confucianism offers an interpretive framework that is firmly rooted in its own time, and yet is also fairly accessible to us in the present day. Its thinking is recognisably rational and, more-or-less, logical, rather than mystical or religious, and it seeks to explain with reference to the everyday. A number of writers used it as such, knew what they were doing, and so provided us with authentic perspectives of these martial arts when they were in a very different state than today. The terms and the analogies they use may be unfamiliar, but they are open to analysis and exploration, making the study of works written from this perspective to be quite rewarding. They appeal to our understanding, but the best of them stand as something more than theoretical interpretations.

Finally, due to their concern with life and living, they situate the practice and ideals of martial arts within daily life, providing a perspective on issues that are still very relevant to practitioners today.

Secrets in daily life - the Joseishi Kendan

A statue of Seizan in Hirado, his sometime domain, near Nagasaki.

This is the second of the works that I translated in The Samurai Mind, and it is one that is rather different from Neko No Myojutsu, and well worth taking a closer look at.

The Joseishi Kendan is a bit like a garage sale, but though it might be a bit messy and confusing, there's something for everyone. It consists of a host of assorted notes and mini-lectures arranged with apparent disregard for notions of order, but all of them concerned, to a lesser or greater degree, with swordsmanship.

It is not clear if Matsuura Seizan, the Joseishi of the title, wrote it himself or if it is an assembly of notes and assorted writings someone else (presumeably one of his students) put together at a later date. There is certainly evidence of some editing by someone other than Joseishi, but there is also enough written in the first person to believe that the editorial comments are later additions.

Seizan, was a man of many parts - a retired daimyo, Confucian scholar, educator, essayist, and swordsman, and about whom I have written  elsewhere. It is always interesting to gain insight into people's lives and the role their arts played within them. In the world of martial arts, there seems to be a tendency to laud the biggest and the baddest, with little regard to how they lived, and how their opinions and lifestyles relate to our own. Seizan is particularly interesting because of the depth and well-roundedness of his own life, and much of this is reflected in his writing.

As an enthusiast, he was concerned with the intersection of everyday life and swordsmanship - he is surprisingly modern in his use of examples from everyday life to illustrate his points, showing how insight could be obtained from a variety of sources. Along with this is an often recurring theme - he reminds his reader that although there are secrets, they are nothing special, but rather constitute a continuatio of the practices of everyday life. Some of his examples are easy to follow, others are more abstruse, but a single thread runs through them - the importance of attention and awareness.

His interest in the commonality of a variety of phenomena is also part of Neo-Confucian teachings of the Zhu-Xi school, which stressed that 'truth' or ri, the 'principle' (of life, the universe and everything) can be discovered through wide and varied study - the opposite of Zen and Wang Yangming Confucianism, which propose finding the truth within ourselves

To give you a flavor of the way he writes, here he is talking about kyo-jitsu. This is a complex notion that includes aspects of empty-full and false-true dichotomies, but like that other famous duality, yin and yang, it doesn't equate directly with bad and good. In the account given by Ota Chuubei about Yoshioka Seijiro's death, kyo and jitsu are used to explain the dynamics of the endgame of the fight, but they can be used in other ways, too, and are also important technical terms in the teaching of bujutsu.

In the past, once I heard someone say you should think of kyo-jitsu in terms of the opening and closing of doors or sliding screens. This is because the kind of person who throws them open and slams them shut is someone who is empty inside. However fast they go in and out, someone who opens and closes them carefully is full inside, he said. Accordingly I made up my mind to follow this injunction. Beyond that, I understood little of its benefit. Having reached my last years, thinking about this I see it has increasingly become an everyday part of my swordsmanship. I put this here as something I hope people will think about.

Saya no Uchi - principle and practice

From Ratti & Westbrook's Secrets of the Samurai

One of the attractions of the Japanese martial arts are the esoteric sounding concepts it contains. One such is saya no uchi, which literally means 'within the saya' and is a shortening of a phrase which can be translated as 'victory is obtained while the sword is in the saya'.

It is an interesting concept, but like many others, it is open to a variety of interpretations. The principle differences in this case lie on either side of the line separating the classical martial arts and the more modern disciplines. Whatever we call them, we can see quite a large difference between the older disciplines which claim their primary focus is combat, and the more modern ones, especially those that have positioned themselves as modern budo. Their aims and philosophies also colour their interpretations of concepts such as saya no uchi. The differences are sometimes slight, but they are telling.

If we look at the mindsets at the two extremes of these positions, the differences are quite clear. This is a description of the aims of modern iaido:

"Iaido does not actually mean overcoming an enemy, but overcoming one's own self. The only and the most dangerous opponent in iaido is the practitioner himself. Victory in iaido consists of a forgiving heart and avoidance of fight. Iaido means training toward human perfection. In it there is never a murderous intention to kill another human being. It is said that with endless practice the practitioner learns to understand his place in the universe."

(From a Musoshinden-ryu site)

 

Contrast this with the opening line of Hirayama Shiryu's Kensetsu (Sword Theory), written at the beginning of the 19th century:  

  My swordsmanship is for slaying the enemy brutally. 

With such different perspectives, it is no wonder that concepts contained in both arts are interpreted differently. In iaido, the normal interpretation of saya no uchi is that it means winning without drawing the sword; a victory of the spirit. It is held out as a kind of ultimate goal. How exactly this is to be achieved is not clear, but it is sometimes held to be a kind of moral position - the ability to win without fighting.

This is in sharp distinction to the stance taken by combat oriented arts, in which it refers to the positioning that puts one in a winning position prior to the fight. Rather than winning without fighting, it is attaining victory before fighting. On an individual level, this might involve extremely subtle movements, but could easily be extrapolated to large scale conflicts involving armies. Sun Tzu expressed just this concept when he wrote:

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

We might be justified in regarding it as a strategic or tactical principle, in fact. However, in the classical martial arts, such principles were not left as theories, but were taught through concrete techniques and applications, though often ones in which the mental aspect was also vital. Matsuura Seizan, writing in the early 19th century, alludes to this in his Joseishi Kendan:

I will tell you the key to learning this: the potential of drawing the sword and cutting down the opponent is present while the sword is still sheathed. Even as you glimpse an opportunity as the opponent moves, that cut is already present in the sheathed sword. 

Which is to say, the sword is in operation even though it is still in the saya. The technicalities of this are another thing entirely, but those who are familiar with this from personal experience will recognize the truth of Seizan's explanation.

That is not to reject the value of resolving conflicts without fighting. In fact Seizan gives an example of this from his first meeting with the man who was to become his teacher in Confucianism, Minagawa Kien. This was a man not particularly known for his swordsmanship, a scholar, in fact, but who wore two swords as men of his class did in those days. Seizan, who was young and serious about his swordsmanship, made fun of Kien for wearing swords despite his scholarly demeanor. "What would you do if I attacked you now?" he asked. Kien was not in the least perturbed, but replied that every time he picked up his swords he did so with the resolution to use them, and so he was perfectly prepared to use them now, if necessary. If Seizan wanted proof, he had only to attack him and he would show him. Seizan backed down and was forced to admit that he had been defeated by the strength and sincerity of Kien's commitment. This is much closer to the saya no uchi of budo, but Seizan doesn't comment on whether he regarded it as an example of the concept or not. I rather think he didn't, although he does say how impressed he was with Kien.

I will take this chance to recommend my book 'The Samurai Mind', published by Tuttle and due out next month, which includes translations of Seizan's Joseishi Kendan and Hirayama Shiryu's Kensetsu. It is by me, of course, which is another good reason to check it out.