I will share an article excerpt from something I read in an
INTERVIEW WITH YUKIYOSHI TAKAMURA
Aikido Journal 117, Fall 1999
How did you come to reorganize the traditional curriculum of Shindo Yoshin-ryu?
That is a very complex question. Let me see if I can explain it clearly.
Any martial art is really a set of concepts and ideas. Physical techniques are important but not the definiting elements of a style.
I have heard some people say that this is not true, that they have secret techniques.
So what!
I bet another style has techniques that are similar to their "secret techniques."
I would guess that what they actually have is more correctly described as secret concepts. All jujutsu traditions do similar joint locks because the joints in all human beings operate in the same way.
There really are no new joint locks. It's how they perform the locks that differentiate the styles.
The concepts used in the application of the locks are what are important. These aspects are what make one tradition different from another. They are often the okuden.
When I came to America I discovered that many traditional techniques were simply not applicable to the realities facing my new students. Jujutsu techniques in their original form were not intended to address these modern situations.
When I first started teaching, students began to ask me how I would deal with a boxer, or with a karateka and so on.
At first I was surprised because I was not sure that I had the answers. I had to carefully examine this. I realized that the answers were right in front of me. I was busy focusing on jujutsu techniques when it was jujutsu concepts that were the solution.
Techniques did not matter because they were guided by concepts. New techniques could be devised to address new realities while embracing the time honored concepts that form the arts core.
This would not be abandoning the art. This would allow the art to maintain its effectiveness and relevance to a new generation and era.
What do teachers who embrace a more classical approach to the martial arts think about this? I would assume that they are critical of your position.
They are free to have their opinions. I am free to have mine. I am not really concerned with what other teachers think because my authority to teach does not come from them.
My authority to teach and to make the decisions I have made came from my teachers. I am most concerned with the welfare of my students and living up to the responsibilities that have been entrusted to me.
I am comfortable with the reality that my students may actually use the art they are learning. The same cannot be said about the students of most teachers that embrace a strictly classical approach.
Many classical martial traditions in Japan are now just pretty dancing. It is so sad. They have not adapted their techniques to address modern realities. They cling only to antiquated forms and, in this process, often neglect the concepts which form a particular traditions core.
Some people wish to preserve the arts exactly as they were in olden times. This is commendable, but usually folly. With very fews exceptions, no existing classical school reflects even a fraction of the arts technical heritage as practiced in times past.
It is impossible for any teacher to transmit 100% of an art's traditions, yet many classical schools believe that the student should do everything exactly like the teacher in order to preserve the art.
Without the addition of an instructor's own wisdom, experience and, most importantly, technical innovation, the art is but a hollow shell of what it once was in just several generations.
Without the consideration of modern realities to challenge an art's effectiveness, it becomes a museum piece whose only modern relevance is that of a historical curiosity.
Remember that the ryu as they existed in the Warring States era were constantly changing and adjusting to the realities they faced on the battlefield.
Only when this period ended did the innovation slow. Many of the classical schools as practised today are, at their best, reflections of the way that tradition operated in one short period of its existence.
They are not an accurate reflection of its technical existence over its whole history.
The risk of classical thinking has many historical examples which should cause one to pause. Katsuyori Takeda (1546-82, son of Shingen Takeda and daimyo of the Azuchi-Momoyama period) clung foolishly to outdated techniques of battlefield engagement even though he was aware that its effectiveness was seriously compromised.
New strategies involving a devastating technical innovation, the tanegashima (musket), were employed by his enemies. His samurai were cut to pieces in rotating volleys of musket fire by Nobunaga Oda's foot soldiers.
One of the most impressive armies in Japan's history was efficiently decimated because its leader was unable to part with a strategy that he knew was compromised by changing realities.
Romantically drawn into doing things as they had been done succesfully in the past, he was defeated by his classical mindset. This strategy of old, and Takeda's failure to adapt in the face of overwhelming evidence to change, cost him everything.
I will not allow a similar flaw in technique or mindset to compromise my students' potential safety. My grandfather often emphasized that my jujutsu must really work.
That it must become my own jujutsu. And that someday my students' jujutsu must become their own. That was his legacy to me and it should be my legacy to them as well as him.
