Thread: Why no tsuba?
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Old 02-24-2012, 07:18 AM   #207
Fred Little
Dojo: NJIT Budokai
Location: State Line NJ/NY
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Re: Why no tsuba?

Quote:
Graham Christian wrote: View Post
Aha, a mistake! Yes, I suppose that must be Tamura Sensei then. Y ou got me, I will live in shame the rest of my life ha, ha.

No, seriously though, we still haven't found any shihan who never taught or learned bokken.

As I said, it's a no brainer to me that somewhere along the line they learned or tauhgt bokken also that being in the martial arts world and Japanese somewhere along the line they would have a sword and know quite a lot about it's use. I bet Yamada's got a samurai sword in his house.

Regards.G.
I believe Harry Frankfurt had some useful observations that are very much to the point, and which echo and amplify the unintentional hilarity induced by the use of the phrase "no brainer" above.

Quote:
It does seem fitting to construe carelessly made, shoddy goods
as in some way analogues of bullshit. But in what way? Is the
resemblance that bullshit itself is invariably produced in a
careless or self-indulgent manner, that it is never finely crafted,
that in the making of it there is never the meticulously attentive
concern with detail to which Longfellow alludes? Is the bullshitter
by his very nature a mindless slob? Is his product necessarily
messy or unrefined? The word shit does, to be sure, suggest this.
Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted,
or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may
not, but it is in any case certainly not wrought.
The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a
certain inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires
discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and
limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is
this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as
inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The
realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays
closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of
bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most
indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these
realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who — with
the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market
research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and
so forth — dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word
and image they produce exactly right.
Yet there is something more to be said about this. However
studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it
remains true that he is also trying to get away with something.
There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly
craftsman, some kind of laxity which resists or eludes the
demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent
mode of laxity cannot be equated, evidently, with simple
carelessness or inattention to detail. I shall attempt in due course
to locate it more correctly. --H.G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit