This discussion recently came up in the mentors' lounge and with the permission of Sukerkin with whom I had the conversation, I have reposted it as a topic here. I wanted input from both western and eastern sword art practitioners, which is why I didn't post in the Japanese sword section.
Can a sword art (or any art really) cease to be transmitted due to a dearth of students (worthy or otherwise), sleep, and reawaken after all with any first hand knowledge of it have been dead for more than a generation?
My own thoughts on the subject are above. To me, a reconstructed art is inherently a new and different art, even if it is meticulously researched and painstakingly reconstructed. I am willing to consider it an offshoot, but not the actual art. Now, that said, that is not a value judgement of the new art; it may be very worthwhile to practice. But it is a newer art in my opinion.
Thoughts?
Can a sword art (or any art really) cease to be transmitted due to a dearth of students (worthy or otherwise), sleep, and reawaken after all with any first hand knowledge of it have been dead for more than a generation?
It's a typical koryu reaction that the art does not need the student, the student needs the art.
Which begs the question, if there are not any students at all learning the art, what happens to the art? I understand the attitude, but I don't agree with it. In order to survive, the art does need the student. It may not need many students or more than one school, but if literally nobody is practicing it, it ceases to exist when the current practitioners die off.
On the art not needing the student philosophy, I reckon it is in part founded on the somewhat nihilistic Zen-like assumption that it if there are no students worth teaching it to then it is better that it sleeps. The art will not change for the student, the student must adapt to fit the art - I know that doesn't fit with modern cultural ideals of the individual being paramount but these arts grew in a very different soil.
Well, now you're qualifying the student. Really the art doesn't need just any students but specific types of students.
As to whether an art can sleep or if it simply dies, I suppose it depends on how you feel about reconstructing arts that have ceased to be practiced for long enough that that there haven't been any living practitioners for more than a generation. Look at the people who have worked very hard to reconstruct dead European sword styles; they had to do everything from scratch and either had to figure it out or try to match what they saw in old manuscripts to things practiced in other sword arts that are still living.
It is very hard to do and it is questionable as to how true the reconstructed art is to what the art looked like when it was practiced. At least with extant koryu, we can now record video files of them and photograph actual masters (rather than relying on artists' renderings), but you still have to assume that what was left behind for you to reconstruct is the entirety of the art. Not everything is commited to pen and paper; some things are kept out intentionally and other things simply don't make the trip. Or manuscripts do not survive.
While I don't feel that it is impossible to reconstruct an art, I do feel that the reconstructed art is inherently an offshoot of the art it reconstructs rather than being the art itself.
Only telling you like it is for koryu arts, Dan. All those other modern ******** styles can do what the hell they like :makes sure Master Ken moustache is glued on right: .
So if a Japanese koryu sword art literally ceased to practice because the last surviving practitioners agree that they will teach no more due to having no students worth teaching, and two hundred years later, an historical group with only kendo experience finds a few manuscripts and pictures and try to piece it back together, are they practicing that art? Would you consider them legitimate students of that art? Could anyone technically be considered a master in that art?
That is essentially what happened with a number of European styles; the styles ceased to be relevant and ceased to be practiced. People with modern fencing experience and perhaps experience in a non European style reconstructed old arts that nobody had practiced for more than a generation. I highly respect the work they've done and consider the finished product to be worthy of study. But I view that product as a representation rather than a continuation of the original.
So far as I know, another "koryu" perspective is that if you don't have a teacher with a lineage, you aren't legitimately practicing the art. If that is correct (if it is not, please tell me), then from a koryu perspective, the art can only be continued or die.
My own thoughts on the subject are above. To me, a reconstructed art is inherently a new and different art, even if it is meticulously researched and painstakingly reconstructed. I am willing to consider it an offshoot, but not the actual art. Now, that said, that is not a value judgement of the new art; it may be very worthwhile to practice. But it is a newer art in my opinion.
Thoughts?