The Nanten Staff - Take that!

One of the distinctive sights of winter in Japan, and particularly in Kyoto, are the bright red berries of the nanten bush (Nandina). They are often planted just by the front door of houses and are used in the New Year decorations known as kadomatsu that can be seen outside businesses, department stores and some larger residences during the New Year period and sometimes as much as a couple of weeks after that.

My first encounter with nanten gave me a rather different impression - I had come across it years before I came to Japan in the book Zen and the Art of Calligraphy by Omori Sogen and Terayama Tanchu, now out of print but worth getting hold of if you’re interested in that kind of thing, in the form of the staff wielded by the Zen teacher who took his name from it – Nakahara Nantenbo (1839-1925). It's hard to believe, but information about that kind of thing was hard to get hold of in those days. The mental image of a fierce Zen practitioner and his nanten staff stayed with me, but it was only quite recently that I came across a picture of him and what might be his staff. I had imagined it would be something like the one in the picture below, but in fact that might not be the case.

An earlyish picture of the famous priest
with quite a fearsome looking staff.

He was known for his unstinting efforts to preserve and revitalize the Rinzai Zen tradition but is perhaps better known in the west for his calligraphy and Zen paintings. Like Yamaoka Tesshu, the swordsman, calligrapher and statesman, he produced huge numbers of works, although unlike Tesshu, he professed no skill in the art. He was similar to Tesshu, too, in the ferocity which he brought to his practice, regularly engaging in Dharma combat with other priests reportedly chasing the losers out of their temples. He and Tesshu had something of a rivalry, and though Tesshu may have practised under him, they were also reported to have taken part in Dharma battles with each other, with neither giving an inch.

A picture by Tesshu of Nantenbo teaching his
charges. (From Stevens' The Sword of No Sword')

As Tesshu's picture (and Deishu's verse) suggest, Nantenbo was also famous for his liberal use of his staff as a part of his teaching and it was this staff, cut from a 200 year old nanten bush he came across in his travels, that earned him his sobriquet. It was also the subject of his most distinctive paintings. The photograph below may show the staff. 

An older looking Nantenbo, but is that
his staff?

Perhaps, staff is a misnomer. I have seen it described as a shippei, which is a priest's stick that looks something like a riding crop. In any case, the one in the photograph has similarities to this depiction:

In this painting of his staff, the resemblance to the photograph is clear

However, his paintings are often titled ‘shakujo’ (although it is unlikely he gave them titles himself), which is a priest’s walking staff. The photograph near the top of the page looks more like a walking staff, and you would certainly remember if you'd been hit with it. Later in his career, he retired his famous staff, apparently giving it into the keeping of Empuku-ji, where it probably remains to this day…or so I thought, before finding a reference to it in a couple of catalogues from the late eighties from the museum of Zuigan-ji, where Nantenbo was, at one time, abbot. This is also the temple that was founded by the famous warrior Date Masamune, (see here for more information), and from which Nantenbo retired his abbotship after the famous statue of the warlord was damaged by an acolyte. It was also after this incident and a subsequent period of self-reflection that he retired his nanten stick from service, so the connection with Zuigan-ji seems more likely. It does suggest a problem with the photograph – he apparently retired the staff around 1893, when he was in his early fifties, but he looks much older in the lower picture. Perhaps that is not his nanten staff after all.

Another version  – this one uses the more usual vertical format. These paintings were typically accompanied by an
inscription saying something like  "If you speak or if you don't, you get 30 blows of my staff in any case."

Coming from a samurai family and having a strong, somewhat unruly nature, it might not be surprising that he kept company with martial artists and members of the military (including the famous generals Nogi Maresuke and Kodama Gentaro, both of whom were students of his). One of his notable students, Deiryu, was introduced by his brother’s kendo teacher, and in the early 1870s, Nantenbo was actually in command of a local militia (albeit one consisting of clergy, doctors and Confucian scholars), apparently training them in the use of the sword, spear and bow. Although not overly tall, he was powerfully built and also unusually strong. It was reported that he had travelled through the country during the 2nd Choshu Expedition (1865) and had shown he could take care of himself on several occasions.

He also had at least one ardent kendo practitioners amongst his students. A certain Yoshida Masahiro related the story of studying under him to improve his kendo. After a few months during which he made no headway with his study, Nantenbo told him he should give up kendo (meaning that he would get nowhere if he couldn’t figure this out). Nantenbo had apparently set him a kind of koan by striking a small bell and (presumeably, although the account I read was not clear, asking him something like "Does the sound come from the strike or the bell?). Yoshida spent a further 3 years before he had a sudden realisation while getting on a bus, that there was no separation between the strike and the sound, and thus in kendo there was no separation between the striker and his opponent. For Yoshida, those 3 years were very tough, but he makes no mention of the methods that Nantenbo used, except that he struck the bell 6 times. It must be noted that for a kendo student, especially in those days, being struck in training would not have been anything to note. This may have been in Nantenbo's later, 'gentler' days.

So much for Nantenbo's staff. I would like to track down a picture of it – if I'm successful, I will post it here.    

When the going gets tough... a kiai shugyo

Kogan Gengei - Zen monk, student of Hakuin.

A bull fears nothing, and when he sits, he really sits; when he moves, he really moves—the ideal behavior of a Zen adept. A bull additionally stands for the mind; uncontrollably wild at first but capable of being tamed, harnessed, and eventually set free to roam contentedly wherever it pleases. 

John Stevens 'The Appreciation of Zen Art'

Some time ago I wrote about the hard training methods that developed in or were promulgated from the Meiji period (1868- ) onwards. Whether these were an authentic continuation or re-creation of the experience of bugeisha in the past is a moot point. The information I could find pointed to a strong influence from sources outside the martial tradition. 

One of the traditions I described, popularised by the Ichikukai (One-nine Society) and labelled in a general way as misogi, seems to have developed from a Shinto base and developed a fierce, Zen inspired overlay (with nods to the teaching style of Yamaoka Tesshu), involved continuous ringing of a hand bell while chanting, and which lasted for a period of several days. Tohei Koichi, the famous aikido teacher engaged in this training.

A variant, or at least, a very similar style of training is described by veteran budo practitioner Roald Knutsen in his book Rediscovering Budo from a Swordsman’s Perspective. Knutsen, whose personal experience tends to pre-date many of the current crop of writers on these kinds of things, sees this kind of training relating to Shingon mikkyo, and suggests connections through to the roots of bugei, likely renewed by individual practitioners in their personal travels and connections with esoteric teachings such as those of the yamabushi.

Much of this kind of training involves sleep deprivation, pushing trainees to the point of physical exhaustion, and fasting – mainstays of esoteric training the world over. While it is true that the founders of several ryu-ha did, indeed, withdraw to undergo shugyo in shrine precincts, emerging with new or consolidated insights and understandings of their arts, going on to found their own styles, one wonders about the extent to which these experiences were characteristic of or necessary for bugeisha as a whole.

Knutsen includes a lengthy description of a kiai shugyo similar to the ones I described conducted at the Ichikukai. It is based on the reminiscences of three budo masters of the author’s acquaintance. While there are differences – the principal one being that the chanting described in other descriptions of the misogi of the Ichikukai has been replaced by kiai – it is recognisable as essentially the same practice.

   Early on the first morning the students knelt in formal line with a few domestic dojo members behind forming the second row. Each visiting student was handed a small handbell, or ‘kane’, to hold in his left hand. they were required to throw out their arm to sound the bell and shout a loud kiai – ‘Ei – the movement timed by the slow beat of the large dojo drum. This exercise was repeated endlessly at the same measured tempo for two hours before the practise ended. That first day they had two more sessions, a total of six hours. Needless to say, their arms became very heavy and tired; their voices, too.

   They were in the dojo the next morning before dawn and the practice was the same but for one detail. Instead of kneeling they were now required to sit in the posture known…as ‘tate-hiza’ or half kneeling, with the left foot tucked underneath their buttocks. The handbells felt twice as heavy as the day before and the pain and the fatigue soon came flooding back, only to become considerably worse as the long day wore on. For most, their voices were cracking and try as they might they found it impossible to shout to the satisfaction of their superiors. At the second period, the dojo master clapped his hands and several young girls, all Kendo or Naginata students, came in and knelt behind each bell ringer, and gently with the tips of their fingers lightly tapped up and down the taught straining muscles of their necks, backs, and shoulders. On and on they rang and tried to croak out the kiai, cajoled and exhorted by the senpai, having to draw deep on their reserves of determination at least to get through to the end of the day. Finally, after almost drowning in the warmth and luxury of the temple bath-house, they sought their futon to sleep, exhausted.

   The third day was exquisite torture. By now, quite apart from their stiffened limbs – arms, legs, shoulders, backs – and the weight of those nightmare bells, they had no voices left, just raw throats that could raise, at best, a faint croak. the girls’ gentle tapping, far from relieving their tired muscles hurt like the devil, too…..

……

   The fifth morning came and most felt better for their rest although somewhat stiff. They assembled in the dojo and put on their kendo armour before continuing with the usual kiai training, but this only lasted for an hour. Then, facing them on the senior side were a number of tough-looking senior yudansha. A violent practice followed in which there was no way in their present condition they could hope to hold their own. Each of the seniors seemed to be harder than the one before … and the practices were interminable, but at last the drum called a halt. The dojo master now announced that they would all be required later to fight one-point matches, success or failure depending on the result. They were then dismissed.

Both my Kendo informants recalled the prospect of these matches as daunting and, in each case, their respective opponents looked uncompromising and hard. With little or no reserves left within them, this situation was close to facing a deadly enemy on the battlefield; desperate in the extreme. While each steadied himself for what was to come, the senpai reminded them of the teaching:

‘Don’t look with your eyes; see with your mind!’

All three masters recalled that they took standing ‘rei’ towards their opponent, they followed it with a great kiai – and the senpai at once struck the drum to signal the match was at an end!

…..

R. Knutsen: Rediscovering Budo from a Swordsman’s Perspective pp98-100

To finish with, another swordsman's perspective:

Yamaoka Tesshu – the calligraphy reads:

Asking for

The inner secrets of kenjutsu

Is like asking me

To brush an ink painting

On the sound of the wind.