Diane Skoss is the founder of Koryu
Books and currently holds a 4th dan in Jiyushinkai aikido, a 4th
dan in JAA, and also has experience in many koryu including Shinto
Muso-ryu Jo, and Toda-ha Buko-ryu as well as many gendai budo
including judo, jukendo, and tankendo.
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For many women, self-defense is at least one reason for taking up a
martial art, and so most, at least in my experience, choose an unarmed
art such as aikido, karate, or judo (I'm confining myself to Japanese
arts because that is where my experience lies; I'll leave it to
exponents of the arts of other countries to see if any of these
observations hold true for them). Weapons arts that include kata
practiced in pairs such as kendo, naginata, or jodo are not usually
seen as vehicles for learning self-defense--after all, what good is
knowing how to defend yourself with a seven-foot-long naginata if you
are unlikely to be carrying it with you all the time?
Good teachers in any of the modern unarmed Japanese martial ways know
better than to promise female students instant, fool-proof defense
techniques; I used to explain that the real value of aikido was less
in teaching skills that enable you to fight back than in inculcating a
posture and way of moving that discourages attack, since studies have
shown that victims are often carefully selected for their apparent
vulnerability. Technical proficiency, on the other hand, takes years
and a serious commitment to training to develop.
You'd imagine then that a fourth dan with over ten years in aikido and
a year or so of judo, would feel reasonably secure in her
skills. Well, I sure didn't! Faced with the realization that the
longer I trained the greater my responsibility to share some of what I
had learned with other women, I had to ruthlessly assess my own
abilities. What I discovered was doubt; not the little niggling
variety, but the sort so large as to be almost certainty--if push came
to shove, I simply did not know what I would do or how I would fare
(despite my experiences in actual match training). How, I wondered,
had I failed in my training?
Five years later, and after seven years in weapons arts (jukendo,
tankendo, jojutsu, and naginatajutsu), I think I've found an answer,
at least for myself. It was not I who had failed in my training, but
my training that had failed me. For a number of reasons, unarmed
training hasn't been nearly as useful as weapons training in teaching
me the skills I'd need to actually defend myself. Today, I am utterly
confident that if I were attacked I could and would act, with a
reasonable measure of success, to defend myself. 1
So why did weapons arts work so much better for me? Well, one thing
that I learned in my aikido training was that despite the claims of
the instructors ("See, the weak can overcome the strong"), when
training with men of a similar or higher level, power does count. A
lot. Of course, our ultimate goal is to "release" general physical
power and to rely instead on the relaxed, precise application of the
right amount of force from the right direction in the right place at
the right time. The trick is to learn how. Women often find this
initially easier to achieve than men, since our self-images are less
likely to be bound up with our actual physical strength, but even
though we are doing it "right" we often find that we still can't truly
succeed in applying unarmed techniques on larger, equally skilled men.
This discrepancy in power, especially when we know we are doing it
"better" than the guys, can be extremely frustrating. All we learn is
that when push comes to shove, you've got to be very, very good indeed
to overcome a stronger opponent. This doesn't inspire a lot of
confidence in one's self-defense skills.
The constant struggle against power and frustration can also sidetrack
one from the study of the subtle details that are the real key to
useful defense skills, and we get wrapped up in the notion of "making"
techniques work. Looking back on my years in aikido, I find that what
I learned were some magnificent and often beautiful patterns of
movement that I could easily apply to someone less skilled or smaller
than myself. But I lacked a thoroughly internalized vocabulary of
principles that could be instantly shuffled and recast to respond to
any situation and any opponent. I believe this is one of the most
significant advantages to be gained from training in weapons arts.
So how does this work? First of all, any weapon is a great equalizer,
a "force multiplier." All of a sudden, differences in reach, weight,
and height, don't matter as much, given the constant of the
weapon. Women with weapons can easily be as strong as men. It doesn't
take much muscle power to make a lethal strike with a jo; it does take
an understanding of what I call "patterns of principle."
Although these principles of relaxation, observation, distancing,
initiative, line and trajectory, timing, balance, targeting, and
volition were talked about to varying degrees in the aikido dojos I
have trained in, what we actually practiced most of the time were
patterns of movement. I have found patterns of principle much easier
to actually see, feel, and analyze in weapons training. The clarity of
the trajectory of a rapidly moving weapon seems especially suited to
demonstrate principle.
For example, when facing an opponent who is wielding a jo, it is easy
to see who controls the center line. The location of the leading end
of my opponent's jo in relation to my body is clear; if it is even a
fraction of a centimeter off, I may well be able to slip past the
weapon and drive my own attack home. This is, of course, also entirely
true when facing an unarmed opponent, but accurate perception of that
line, which is far less obvious, requires a significant amount of
training experience.
Distancing and timing, or maai, is also easier to see and internalize
when working with weapons, especially those of sword length and
longer. One is physically farther from the opponent at the critical
combative engagement distance, which is a clearly defined, visible,
and relatively consistent relationship between the ends of the opposed
weapons. In unarmed arts maai is defined by the relative reach (and
speed) of the opponent and varies dramatically from encounter to
encounter; it can take years to learn to assess in the very short
amount of time it takes to close the distance. While there are still
variations in reach based on individual body size and proportions when
using weapons, they are generally offset by the constant of the length
of the weapon itself and the fact that it simply takes more time to
cover the greater distance. Learning to make accurate judgments can
then be refined by working with weapons in various combinations,
sometimes with radically different inherent maai, such as when using a
kusarigama against a naginata, or a tanken against a juken. Once your
understanding of the relationship between a specific weapon and maai
becomes intuitive, it is not particularly difficult to adapt to
unfamiliar situations. In my experience, however, the constant
variation of distance in unarmed arts makes it much more difficult to
achieve a "feel" for maai. It can also result in inappropriate
standardization "for teaching purposes" that often leads to a rigid
belief that "this technique can only be done this one correct way"--a
position entirely antithetical to learning principles and how to apply
them.
Observation skills are also more quickly and keenly sharpened in
weapons training, in my experience. There's nothing like the prospect
of a sword connecting with your forehead or a nine-foot-long spear
punching you in the ribs to encourage you to pay close attention to
every nuance of an opponent's moves. The danger of striking and
injuring bystanders (or being hit while waiting for one's turn to
train) also increases when using weapons. Sensible practitioners
quickly develop three-hundred-sixty-degree antennae. Although
awareness is an essential part of all the unarmed training I've ever
seen, the consequences of failure have always struck me as being more
much dramatic in weapons arts.
I'm not foolhardy enough to argue that ALL useful self-defense
principles are more easily learned in weapons training--obviously,
off-balancing (kuzushi) is studied in much greater depth in judo or
aikido. Nor do I advocate relying only on weapons training--we all
need to know how to fight on the ground and should have at least
rudimentary grappling skills. What I do propose is that a few years of
good weapons training before taking up an unarmed art might well
shorten the time it takes for women (or men, for that matter) to reach
a level where they can confidently rely on their skills for
self-defense.
1
Since I first wrote this article, I've actually had a chance to
verify one important aspect of this. At the 1997 Meiji Shrine
Demonstration in November, I demonstrated Toda-ha Buko-ryu
naginatajutsu. On the first technique, my foot slipped on the grass
and I sat down. My only thought was, "Gotta get out of here quick,
`cause this is a bad place to be." I scrambled up and out from under
the descending cut and countered with a cut of my own. While the
situation was not one of life or death, my reaction did demonstrate an
ability to act appropriately and without delay, both important
elements of dealing with a real attack.
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This article first appeared in Bugeisha #4, Winter 1997.
This article reprinted from Koryu.com with permission.
Copyright ©1997 Diane Skoss. All
rights reserved.
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