Hey Dave,
Hmm... okay... if it was including something it classed as Aikijujutsu, that really limits what it could be (realistically, Daito Ryu, in the US, it could be Yanagi Ryu from Don Angier... that would be more likely to have iaijutsu and kenjutsu than Daito Ryu would), none of which are actually koryu, and are highly influenced by modern approaches, particularly some Aikido groups approach, who go pretty hard in that sense.
Yeah, as said earlier, that's more a trait of various gendai budo than koryu bujutsu, realistically. It may have been a koryu-influenced or derived school, but sounds like it was much more of just a strict modern school.
Ha, I hear you... I'll come back to this, though... been doing some nostalgic reading recently...
Fair enough, and hope I can help clarify some things for you... at least, as I'm seeing them presently, and what I'm doing in my own dojo that may give you some pause for thought.
Ha, tell me about it... I visited one Bujinkan dojo where the instructor was saying that the kata and densho meant nothing, and there was no reason to even look at them, the next said that the kata were the only thing worth training, and everything in between... of course, the question as to what the kata being discussed actually were is where my current questioning is directed...
Yeah... look, you gotta remember that this is me putting it all together (to this degree) after some 30+ years as well... but it's more the fact that I am independent, the fact that my teacher got me to always question, and look both beyond and behind what was being said, and, very importantly, my study into the types of arts that the Bujinkan was often described as being that lead to where I am now. There are other aspects, but it'll sound a bit arrogant if I actually put them down, so I'll leave it the external influences for now, ha!
Good! That's the part to hold on to.
I'm not about to second guess your reasons, and if it was right or not... but I would suggest that those reasons do need to be yours. You need to be able to square away your values with what you're presenting in order for it to have value in the first place... I'll go through what I'm currently doing, how I'm doing it, and how I square it away myself in the next part... you may get some ideas and ways to think about your own journey from it. Who knows? You may end up even more invigorated in your practice and teaching!
I get what you mean... I've certainly run the gamut over the years in terms of what I thought I was doing... and we both know (of) people who sit on all points of the spectrum that way! Those that will forgive or excuse anything, those that talk of some kind of elite secret side of the art that no-one ever sees, all the way to those who see nothing but the worst examples, and dismiss the approach and arts altogether. To that end, I think I'd like to cover my own background (as pertains to my perception of the art), what stages I went through, and what my thinking is currently... I'm also going to go through some of what I see as the realities of the modern Bujinkan (if it exists... we'll get there) that many seem to not want to face...
I started training in 1993, but had been interested and reading pretty much everything I could from close to a decade prior (just to indicate how precocious I can be, I started trying to read books on martial arts, with an emphasis on "ninja" from when I was about 6 or 7 after seeing a "ninja movie", including reading and re-reading Andrew Adams' Ninja: The Invisible Assassins by constantly taking it out from my local library when I was 8-10 years old...), and, at that stage, was convinced that Hatsumi and the Bujinkan was the only way to go. After all, he was the head of 9 different schools, he was a ninja (a real one!), and everyone agreed he was legitimate (that I had seen). He was in all the Hayes books, everyone who was credible came from him (Charles Daniel, Bud Malmstrom, Steve Hayes, Jack Hoban, all of whom had books that I had devoured), so of course that's where I was going! I remember being offended at the idea that this guy, Tanemura something or other, was not only claiming to be also a grandmaster of ninja arts, he was using the same names for the schools that Hatsumi was the legitimate head of! How dare he be so brazen! And so obviously fake, not even coming up with other school names so he could trade on Hatsumi's fame and credibility (a short amount of research later, and I came to some understanding of who Tanemura was... but to a 15 year old who had just read a number of books that all said Hatsumi was the one and only, it was a bit of a shock)!
In my area, there were a couple of schools... a Kevin Hawthorn Ninja School (their head dojo was just a couple of suburbs away), and a couple of Bujinkan dojo. I visited each (the KHNS one was... interesting!), but the only one that impressed me was the one in Doncaster, taught by a Siang Teoh (a not inconsiderable influence was a recent edition of Impact Magazine, in which there were some angry responses to an article querying the standards in the Bujinkan... the arguments were ludicrous, but the author of the article came across as someone concerned with protecting the art
Ninjukai Taijutsu). Mr Teoh was one of three instructors in Melbourne at the time teaching under the banner of Wayne Roy... he was a larger Islander individual, but moved fast and light, with everything he did seeming crisp and deliberate. I watched the class, and was asked if I had any questions... and boy, did I! I wanted to know which ryu the techniques of the class had come from (not that I had the first clue what that would even mean... I had no idea of what differentiated each school, other than the largely inaccurate simplifications that Hayes had put out, where Gyokko used the fingertips, Koto attacked the bones, and so forth), among other similarly uninformed questions... but I was humoured and answered, and I'd made my mind up. This is where I was going to study. I enrolled the next week, and began my study. I would bring my gear to school on a Thursday, keep it in safe storage, walk to the train station after work, go to my then-girlfriends place for an hour, then take a bus for half and hour, and walk another half hour to get to the class, which would run for two hours, before being picked up and driven home (for reference, 18 is the legal driving age here, so I was a few years off that). This continued until that dojo folded a year and a half later, at which point I moved to the dojo in the city (a 40 minute train ride and 20 minute walk).
I progressed through the kyu grades well enough, with Wayne Roy himself coming down to Melbourne a few times a year for seminar events, at which grading opportunities were held (this would change later, but is how it was in the early/mid-90's), becoming a brown belt (we used white [10th/9th kyu], green [8th-5th kyu], brown [4th-1st kyu], and black [shodan and above] as belt colours) and senior in the class. At this point, I was invited to begin joining in the Black Belt Class (Senior Class), in part because Mr Roy was no longer as frequently coming down, so gradings had stopped (he wanted to maintain the Brown and Black Belt gradings himself, but handed responsibility for White and Green belt ranking to the individual instructors around '96), in part because I was about the same size as my teacher, and had developed decent ukemi (he really liked throws, and I seemed to be able to land safely no matter what the throw was), and, likely, the main reason was just to make up numbers. Regardless, I was having a blast... I continued to pursue the idea of the individual schools (we were having yearly focus' on individual schools from 95, whereas Dan holders could specialise in a particular ryu from at least the beginning of the 90's), and hounded my teachers for anything they could (or would) give me. In this way, I got my first versions of the densho lists and techniques for each of the schools, starting with Charles Daniel's translations, and continuing from there. I also continued to get any book I could get my hand on, including this little handbook sized publication of the "Ten Chi Jin Ryaku no Maki"... something not overly known of even then (I would later learn that this text was trained by a few groups around the world... Charles Daniel had been using it since about 85/86, giving a copy to his senior student, Chuck Dervenis, Hayes also used it from around that era, Richard Van Donk began using it circa 88/89, but we'd been using it since 1981, when Nagato gave a copy to Wayne Roy on his leaving Japan following his first trip, telling him to use that as a syllabus... it turned out that this handbook version was a privately published edition from a former senior in our dojo without our permission), and began pulling it apart to see what I could square up with the various densho lists and kata I now had.
I would get whatever videos I could, the early Quest ones, all the Tai Kai and Daikomyo Sai, a brilliant bootleg of a series of seminars that Charles Daniel taught covering much of the Kukishin Ryu Dakentaijutsu, Shinden Fudo Ryu Jutaijutsu (not Dakentaijutsu... in 1992!), and what was originally thought to be Gikan Ryu, but turned out to be Asayama Ichiden Ryu Taijutsu Yokohama-den. But here is where the first couple of cracks appeared... my teacher, seeing how keen I was, didn't want me to be too "starry eyed" when it came to the art and personalities involved. We'd been burned pretty badly over the years prior with the first Australian Tai Kai debacle, a major betrayal and defection of our New Zealand group, and a series of dojo storming events that had occured, with it seemingly becoming increasingly the Bujinkan versus the Wayne Roy schools (with the Bujinkan side headed here by Ed Lomax, but the directive seemingly from Japan), despite the fact that we were not only still very much a part of the Bujinkan, we were the largest group in the Southern Hemisphere. Still, Hatsumi can't have anyone else have any kind of influence that isn't him, so the perception of "empire builders", which, anywhere else would be considered "successful schools" was the crime leveled at all major school groups, including us. I was given a tape to watch, with the admonition "Watch, don't bother copying it, it's not worth it... this is to show just how bad a 10th Dan can be." Needless to say, I copied it (I was greedy for information, don't forget!), but the warning was right... I really shouldn't have bothered. It became an example to show how baseless (in the actual ryu-ha) some teachers methods are, I showed it to my training partners to highlight these warnings. The video is Richard Van Donk's Combat Ninjutsu (which I note he's still selling!), in which RVD states that he made the tape as a result of Hatsumi telling him he needed to so people could see the "real" ninjutsu... try as I might, though, I could find nothing at all that even related to anything I'd been shown in class, taught by my teachers, or recognise in the densho kata that I had. RVD would say that the idea was to apply "multiple strikes... 7, 8, 9... in response to every one strike of your opponent", but I'd been taught that the essential rhythm of the art was either 2 or 3, with 2 being a disrupting strike and a finishing follow up, and 3 being a block/receive, followed by the disrupter and finisher. This is held up in the the various kata of the ryu, with virtually no exceptions, and highlighted to the extreme in Koto Ryu... so what on earth was Van Donk going on about? Hmm... Further conversations with my teacher would lead to comments regarding Hatsumi along the lines of "well, there's been 34 headmasters... there has to have been some bad ones in there, right?".
Time went on, and I got my Shodan in 1998 (we were still with the Bujinkan then), but it was pretty obvious that we were approaching the art in a different fashion, with more structure and a focused syllabus compared with anything I'd seen as I visited other dojo. We didn't do much in the way of henka, we would have kata separated into particular contexts and tactics (grappling defences that involve striking, and ones that involve throws, strike defence that feature blocks, ones where you strike first as in Koto Ryu Chuden and Okuden kata, weapon defence as evasions, weapon defence as weapon taking, and so on). These kata were done with the tactical focus in mind, and there was a lot of discussion about the defining characteristics of different martial systems (rhythms, preferred angles, contexts, weapon engagement choice, and so on), giving me a framework to be able to look at an art and get a good sense of what it was aiming to do, how, and, most importantly, why. This also helped me get into my head that the arts should, by definition, be different... I would delve into the histories (as presented ) of each school to get a sense of the context, I would make charts showing what fists and kamae were from what schools, how they would use each (and how frequently), what kind of attacks would be encountered, and so on, all with the aim of understanding what made Gyokko Ryu different to Kukishin Ryu, or Togakure Ryu, and so on. We left the Bujinkan officially at the beginning of 2001 after a request for support from Japan regarding the attacks from fellow Bujinkan members went unheeded and ignored (actually, was used to attack us more in an even more overt way, with Hatsumi reportedly giving the letter requesting the support to one of the Japan residents who, for the record, had never interacted with us, never met Wayne Roy, and never been to Australia, with instructions to spread it around...), and, I think unsurprisingly, I stayed with my teacher. A couple of years later, Wayne Roy actually moved to Melbourne for about 8 months, so we had him as a guest/regular teacher for a while... which also gave many opportunities for a range of questions and conversations, as I began to learn to teach from him.
It was also at this time that Chuck Dervenis' infamous Pammachon letter, (which can be found here
The authenticenty of the Bujinkan) came to public awareness, with more pointed conversations occurring... it seems that Mr Roy's image of the 'infalible Asian master' in Hatsumi was cracked when he saw a book of Hatsumi's showing pistol and knife fighting... in which he did some pistol defences by passing the gun across his own body. I had already become rather skeptical in my viewing of much of what Hatsumi was saying and doing by then (I would regularly watch the Daikomyo Sai videos by watching the demonstrations of the basic form, then just fast-forward Hatsumi and whatever he was doing... the major turning point was when he was telling students at one of them that the Bujinkan martial arts are incredible... they work on a different level, including the idea that every action has an equal and opposite reaction... telling them that this was from Einsteins Theory of Relativity, for which he got a Nobel Prize... so all the Bujinkan people have the equivalent of a Nobel in martial arts, as they all understand this part of advanced physics! Except... it's not Einstein, it's Newton's 3rd Law [well, a basic version of it, at least], Einstein didn't get the Nobel for his Relativity work, he got it for his work with photoelectric forces, and none of what he said had any basis in reality... but everyone applauded and accepted it!), so none of this was a big culture shock to me, but the reaction to Dervenis' article showed me that there were plenty of people who had never even considered the idea of Hatsumi as anything other than the second coming of I don't even know who!
Quite sadly, this persists to today... as I said, I've been doing some nostalgic reading over on MAP recently... and it's quite amazing just how badly the faithful there twist themselves into knots defending anything and everything that Hatsumi does or doesn't do... including convincing themselves of some kind of secret training that is accessible to a very, very select few, despite there being absolutely no evidence for it (Dunc again repeats some of it above), to justify staying in an organisation where almost everyone is seen as being terrible. "Well, sure, the senior Westerners are all terrible, because they didn't 'get it', only the Japanese Shihan have (and Doron), because they're the only ones who trained the schools properly... Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu isn't what I want to learn, I study the schools with a master as a deshi because my teacher did a lock on me that was better than someone else, so they must know the real arts not the thing that 99.99999999999999999% of the organisation studies...", even when the people in question say "No, we always trained this haphazard way, with Hatsumi never doing a kata the same way twice, and no real rhyme or reason, just a jumble of techniques and ideas all thrown in together", because that doesn't match the narrative they've created for themselves. At the end of the day, if the senior Japanese guys are genuinely that much better, if the percentage of people who get genuine skill is that small, then there is something deeply wrong with the teaching methodology. To say anything else is to be absolutely, and willfully, blind to reality.
The simple fact of the matter is that Hatsumi is a consummate performer, and plays the role of eccentric Eastern mystical teacher to a tea... he found his audience, and he caters to them, telling them all what they want to hear, and buying their loyalty by feeding their ego. There is literally no other reason to extend the Dan range to 15, then bring in the idea of Dai-Shihan, Gold Medals, and all the other bizarre "attaboys" that got added other than to make people feel good. It's not a matter of "growing into the grade", because it's pretty obvious that no-one was growing into anything... they were just graded higher. The lack of defined requirements and expectations then also lead people to be able to shape the art to match whatever expectations they may have already had... you want it to be a modern self defence art? Sure! You want it to be traditional? Okay! You want mystical and exotic? Go for it! You want devoid of anything cultural? Why not! You want it to be historical, classical arts? Yeah, okay! The problem, of course, is that it can't possibly be all these things... a cake cannot be a pork roast, even if both are food... which leads to many shaping their perception of the art based on their desires more than what it actually is...
Hatsumi, also, sadly is rather poorly informed in a number of major areas. This isn't an issue, except he's taken as being a credible source of information in these area... and these areas include combative reality, traditional and classical martial practices, and history. I get the push-back that will get, but an objective view of what he has said and how he has presented things will show them to be accurate statements. His biggest positive traits are his creativity and his charisma. Sadly, he has allowed the wholesale swallowing of anything he says, combined with the perceived authority from his position as Kancho of the Bujinkan (which itself derives from the various sokeships claimed), and the, let's be plain, complete ignorance of the vast majority of Bujinkan membership, to permit him to basically make up anything he wants at the time, without any real resistance or pushback... such as telling the membership they are equal to a Nobel holder in something completely inaccurately cited and applied. This leads to members stating that "an embu is a theatrical performance, often very dramatic, for an audience" when that's the complete opposite of what an embu is... or not recognising more historically authentic and accurate as being genuine... or thinking that someone with cleaner form is necessarily "learning the real art" (look, you can learn and develop incredibly good, precise form just doing Budo Taijutsu, or you can be sloppy doing a proper ryu-ha, the equation of one with the other is again just an example of justifying something without knowing or recognising what it is). Combine this with his denigration of classical arts, how he views their training ideas (without actually knowing them), the refusal to teach the schools in any systematic manner, and more, how some people think he is actually going against his own values and beliefs I have no idea... but it's how they justify what they perceive as "better skill" in someone like Kacem Zhougari( honestly, he's just cleaner... there's nothing "better" there besides that).
Of course, none of this is to say that Hatsumi isn't a highly skilled martial artist in and of himself. His sense of distance and balance, especially when it comes to the control of that in his training partners/uke, is quite incredible. If he wasn't, the Bujinkan wouldn't have grown to the degree that it did. He's also highly creative, a trait to not be undervalued, particularly when looking at someone as charismatic as Hatsumi is, which leads into his not wanting to be boxed into a singular way of doing things (which is what he thinks koryu do... kinda, but not really), so he always wants to do things differently each time. That's great, within context, but has lead to some real issues in the Bujinkan's methodology... by always changing how he does things, his uke never really know what is coming, or how they're going to have to receive things... so they end up throwing the attack, then just waiting for what happens next, whatever that ends up being. So, not only do we have a lack of consistency in the kata themselves, but a lack of consistency and awareness of the actual role of uke in the first place... don't get me wrong, Bujinkan people tend to get quite good at ukemi, but not at the role of uke... I was reading a senior members facebook post here in Australia who was stating that the role of uke was to make the teacher/performer look good, and not challenge them... it has been put up a few times, with 158 and 98 likes on repeat... and 344 on it's original posting in August, 2018. He has multiple other posts on being uke, including saying "it's your role to die", and others, all of which (to me) indicate a complete lack of understanding of the actual role... it's most commonly the teaching role (and, yeah, I get the symbolic "death" that your student can "live", but the idea of just going in thinking "I'm going to die now" is the antithesis of martial training), and is there to allow the tori side to have reason... without a threat from uke, there's no reason to do the technique... the same teacher also talks about embu as "theatrical entertainment" and similar... all of which is simply symptomatic of the problems I was seeing in the Bujinkan approach.
At this stage, I had taken over the role as the Melbourne Instructor under Wayne Roy's Jyukutatsu Dojos, and was following the direction that he was setting, with a focus on modern applications and traditional practice (the two are absolutely not the same thing, and anyone who says that adaptation for modern application is not needed has exactly zero credibility with me when it comes to understanding of both real world modern violence, and the structure of traditional techniques), while at the same time personally working to come to an understanding of the various arts and texts such as the Tenchijin. In 2016, however, Wayne Roy announced that he was retiring from "traditional martial arts" at the end of the year, and disbanding the Jyukutatsu Dojo organisation. We had three primary options... we could join one of the "big three", we could continue as independent ourselves, or we could close up shop. I reached out to a few Bujinkan instructors, visited some dojo, personally re-joined the organisation (in order to travel to Japan and train at the hombu largely, but also as it was one of the last instructions Mr Roy gave me), and ended up putting the matter to the students. Unanimously, it was decided to remain independent... but I still had my Japan trip to go through before any official decision was made.
I visited Japan at the end of 2017, spending the first few days in Kitakyushu and training daily with Kajiya-soke of Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu, then heading back up to Tokyo for the remaining 10 days of my trip. Over that time, I trained with the Sugino dojo in Tenshinsho Den Katori Shinto Ryu (both of these koryu I'd been training for a while at this stage), as well as traveling up to Noda to train at the hombu. I took classes with Darren Horvath (who was acting as my guide at the time), Noguchi-sensei, Nagato-sensei, and Hatsumi-sensei. The final weekend was a gasshuku in Katori with the Sugino-dojo, including a visit to Iizasa-soke. Over the course of a few weeks, I attended some 16 training sessions, with 6 instructors in three arts, and met or trained with/under three different soke... and, bluntly, Hatsumi was the least impressive of them all. The class was ludicrously crowded, there was no room to even attempt anything that was shown, and what was shown was devoid of any semblance of structure or meaning... just Hatsumi playing with a basic set up, and using a lot of space that was unavailable to anyone else. The class also stopped halfway through for him to sign calligraphy and souvenirs, something I wasn't a fan of... but the other Bujinkan classes also had their own issues. Honestly, Darren's class was the best. It was simple, had some form of structure, and was the most sparcely attended, giving the ability to actually work on something. Noguchi was next, where he came in with something to work on (we went through Takagi Yoshin Ryu, Koto Ryu, and Ten Chi Jin Ryaku no Maki), although none of them were actually the ryu/proper kata themselves. Instead, Noguchi would have an idea he wanted to cover (in Koto Ryu, it was a pressure to the side of the knee to unbalance uke, in order to knock them down, and every kata was adjusted to incorporate this idea, the Ten Chi Jin kata were adapted similarly, with seated kata done standing as "no-one sits like this anymore"), but Nagato's classes were something else... he would ask who had recently gotten their Godan, have them all demonstrate "something" (not necessarily a kata, but just whatever), which he would then riff on, using the newly minted Godan as his uke. Later, he would bring out a weapon, such as a hanbo, and start exploring ideas there... again, no kata, no school, just riffing. But my biggest issue with those classes were the breaks.
About 40 minutes in, we stopped for tea. In the middle of a martial art class. At which point, Nagato would take questions, or offer some kind of advice... which is where the wheels really fell off. In the classes I attended, he suggested that a good idea for your health was to spend a few minutes each day staring directly at the sun. He cited someone that he said had done it for years, and claimed to do the practice himself, before saying that "maybe you should start with a few seconds, then build up to a few minutes at a time". He also spoke a bit about the tea he was drinking, saying it came from South America, and a student there who was suffering from cancer started to drink it, and now their cancer was gone... he said that he wasn't saying that it was a cure, but he was certainly drinking a lot of the tea... this, alone, is enough to disregard any advice given for me. The other side of this whole experience was in Hatsumi's class... but we'll come back to that.
So, I returned to Australia, and the decision was made to be an independent dojo, taking on the name Jukuren Dojo (using the same first character from Jyukutatsu Dojo, Wayne Roy's organisation, and meaning "Matured Skill"). I re-organised our syllabus to reflect my take on the material, using the Tenchijin as the basis for our grading requirements up to Shodan, with Dan grades given the opportunity to work on individual ryu-ha. Of course, I was still working with my older interpretation of the schools, although I'd been playing with alternate versions (working with the videos of Kaminaga Shigemi demonstrating Ueno-den Koto Ryu as a project back in the mid-2000's, presenting it as a study as part of the Wayne Roy dojo, but as a separate idea), but hadn't really had the time to go through things in the way I wanted to. Then, 2020 (and beyond) happened.
Not sure how much you know of the global effects of the pandemic, but Melbourne eventually became the single most locked-down city in the world. It was almost two years of rolling lock-downs, meaning that, other than sporadic moments, there were no classes that could run, and most businesses were similarly affected. I work in retail, so we stayed open for web and phone orders (we were in store, but no customer allowed in), with restrictions as to how many people could be in the building at once, leading to more limited rosters. While this was quite a frustrating time overall, it gave me a lot of time to refocus on how I was looking at the schools... and that has lead to a major change in the way I teach and train them. I have used the existing alternate lines (mainline Takagi Ryu, Hontai Yoshin Ryu, Moto-ha Yoshin Ryu, as well as Shingetsu Muso Yanagi Ryu as references for Takagi Yoshin Ryu, mainline Kukamishin Ryu and an Ueno-related line of Kijin Chosui Ryu for Kukishin Ryu, Ueno-den Koto for Koto Ryu, and so forth), as well as a much closer examination of the written techniques (as seen in Hatsumi's various books where the kata are actually listed as translations from the Densho themselves), and my understanding of the structure and traits of classical Japanese arts to, essentially, reconstruct the schools entirely, creating what I refer to as the Jukuren-den lines of these schools.
When I say I'm reconstructing them, that's exactly what I mean, by the way. I'm starting from the point of view that I cannot actually rely on any of the Bujinkan performances of the kata as being accurate. I've already stated that I don't believe Hatsumi got most of these schools as anything more than written transmissions, and, instead, got basically the fundamental movement and mechanical ideas for his interpretation of them from Togakure Ryu and Gyokko Ryu (the first two schools he got ranked in by Takamatsu in 1960). This explains why all the schools have their kamae interpreted as variations on "weight back, lead hand extended, rear close to the body", when a weight back stance is almost unheard of in actual Japanese arts; but it makes perfect sense in Togakure Ryu... it's also interesting to note that the uke nagashi (knuckle block, backfist method of receiving a strike) is only found in Gyokko Ryu, but has been adapted to the other ryu-ha in the Bujinkan, and so forth. I mean, there's no reason for the various ryu-ha to all use the same manner of blocking, and an examination of other lines and the written material supports this. I also took out almost all straight punch attacks, as they are virtually non-existant in most classical arts... low punches, sure, but not to the face... that's almost always a hammer fist or hand-edge strike down (like a sword attack)... then we have the reports from the senior-most Japanese instructors that Hatsumi never took them through the schools, but simply taught as today, with no progression from stage to stage, and no major emphasis on "this is from x-ryu, this is from y-ryu, here are the distinctive characteristics" and so on. In fact, a senior US teacher once asked one of the gents involved in the Quest series of videos that covered each individual school and weapon if they were given some kind of personal or different training in the schools in order to do the kata correctly on the videos... the answer was "No... sensei just brought the densho, we read it, then filmed what we thought it was saying to do. We would ask sensei if that was right, and he would say 'yes, that is fine', before filming his variations on what we did". All of this means that, if you want to do the kata the Bujinkan way, you can, but understand it's not the ryu, it's Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu. If you think that's the way the ryu does things, you simply aren't correct. I'll give a couple of concrete examples...
Nichi Geki is the first kata of Shinden Fudo Ryu Dakentaijutsu's Ten no Kata (the first section). Its common performance involves uke grabbing you in kumi-uchi as you stand in shizen, then you position your left palm between the knuckles of uke's right hand and your chest to create space. Uke steps across in front of you with their right leg, pivoting to the left to attempt to throw you forwards with seio nage, and tori steps back with their right leg, turning side on, and raising your right (open) hand to extend uke backwards and begin to unbalance them. Turn back towards uke, bringing your right hand towards their face, then step behind them with your right leg, and throw them back with a type of rear seoi nage. Stomp down to finish.
However, the way it's written in Hatsumi's book is as follows: The opponent is holding the left cuff with the left hand and the right hand is on the chest. You are the same. The opponent suddenly advances with seoi. The right hand is extended to the rear and the hip region comes in. This would become a throw if nothing is done. Keeping the five fingers of the right hand half open, strike the face of the opponent, and drop the hips. The right leg moves around to the opponent's right side and effectively throws. Kick in to the opponent's right side with the right foot. Assume zanshin.
So, you can already see it's quite different... for one thing, there's no space with the hand between the knuckles and palm... you both begin in a form of kumiuchi... the hand is open to actually strike, not just extended and lifted... additionally, the standard form is convoluted, involves twisting actions that don't suit the rest of the school, and is a very awkward way to prevent a throw, or affect one yourself. So, how do I do it? Well, firstly, I think there's a bit of confusion as to which parts of the written technique refer to which side... as well as what particular throws are meant. Let's look at the original (written) again.
The opponent is holding the left cuff with the left hand and the right hand is on the chest. You are the same.
So, we're both in kumi uchi, holding the sleeve around the wrist, not the elbow.
The opponent suddenly advances with seoi. The right hand is extended to the rear and the hip region comes in. This would become a throw if nothing is done.
All of this refers to uke. Seoi nage, it should also be noted, refers to a throw over your back, and can be done forwards or backwards... the simplest way this makes sense is to have uke break the grip of tori's right hand, and extend it back behind tori as uke steps forwards and past on the left, then continues to step behind (with the hip) with their right leg in order to perform a rear throw (seoi nage).
Keeping the five fingers of the right hand half open, strike the face of the opponent, and drop the hips. The right leg moves around to the opponent's right side and effectively throws.
This is tori. As uke attempts to come in past with the throw, tori steps back slightly with their right leg (dropping their hips) to prevent the throw, and strikes up to uke's face with their right hand (palm to the jaw, fingers slightly curled to drive their head up and back), then the flow is reversed by stepping past uke with their right leg, maintaining the pressure to drive uke to the ground ("effectively throws", as in "in effect, throwing them back and down", rather than "performs an effective throw").
Kick in to the opponent's right side with the right foot. Assume zanshin.
The momentum to effect the throw/takedown has tori step again with their left foot, then kick with the heel to the ribs of a downed uke. Release, and step back to remain in zanshin (I would also be remit if I didn't mention that I have re-added the beginning and ending of each schools kata... for SFR, that means starting at a distance, and having both parties approach each other with three steps, and ending by taking a few steps away and maintaining zanshin... these are, again, core aspects to a ryu-ha, and entirely absent in Bujinkan training).
We could also look at the Kukishin Ryu Rokushakubojutsu... a kata called Ke Age (Keri Age). This kata is done on Hatsumi's video by having uke stand in seigan with a sword, and having tori with a bo stand in ihen no kamae, then releasing the right hand, and simply throwing the bo over to strike the ground. Uke retreats (leaps) out of the way, tori changes feet and recovers the bo, then releases the left hand and again throws the bo over in a big action to strike the ground. Uke again leaps out of the way, and this is repeated on the first side again, as the kata repeats. Hatsumi then explains that this is to do with the Kukishin Ryu bo, which has a series of iron rings at the ends, and these rings are used here to adjust distance by stopping your hand at various rings.
Here's how it's written in his book: Ihen no kamae. Flip the right end of the bo to strike down to the opponent's head. Repeat five times. On the fifth time, release the left hand and strike up as though kicking. Strike in to the left side of the opponent. (It should be noted that the pictures accompanying this kata involve the same one-handed throwing action).
The problem, of course, is that the way it's done in the video is idiotic. There is no understanding of the uke side (more properly uketachi or uchidachi), who just stands as a target, and the action from the bo side (shibo, to be formal) is wide-open and exposed. So, how is it done that works with Kukishin methodology? The staff isn't thrown over... the right hand is slid to the centre, and the staff is rolled to strike down repeatedly. The swordsman is constantly trying to get in to cut, not just leaping away, and the final actions are similar to the spear and naginata methods, where the weight is shifted by sending the (left) leg forward as the left hand releases, and the staff is pulled back in preparation for the final strike. In this way, the pressure is consistent from both sides, but as this is part of the Chugokui section (not divided in the Bujinkan), the staff has to constantly push forward, with the sword aiming to cut down if there's any break. I also haven't gotten into how the kata start and end, or the differences in the kamae and mechanics... but, sufficient to say, I haven't seen any of the actual schools mechanics in any Bujinkan example I've ever seen.
That takes me to the idea of what is in each school... for example, the 9 kamae for bo we are all familiar with aren't used in Kukishin Ryu bojutsu... they're from the Kijin Chosui Ryu Bojutsu (Shoden, Chuden, Okuden)... the Kukishin form of Seigan is very different, with Chudan being closer to the standard Seigan... the "tucked under the arm" one simply doesn't work there (same with naginata, that's completely wrong as well)... Kukishin Ryu sword doesn't have any Kasumi no Kamae... there's no Hira Ichimonji in Gyokko Ryu... and so on. By taking all of this into account, I have come up with what I feel is a far more accurate representation of the schools themselves. Of course, the standard question there is, how can I disagree with the actual soke of the school? Because he's not, and hasn't ever been in any meaningful way other than on paper. The schools died when Hatsumi got them (if they existed previously at all). For that matter, the Bujinkan doesn't exist anymore either, other than in paper form for a loose collection of groups of dojo. So let's cover that as well.
In Hatsumi's class in 2017, a number of announcements were made for those who were unaware of them (the first announcement had been a couple of weeks earlier). The first big one was that the hombu was no longer issuing membership cards, or kyu rank certificates (the first idea was no rank certificates at all, but Hatsumi was convinced by others to continue to provide Dan ones for at least the image of consistency). Instead, all members were told to align themselves with a Dai-Shihan, and continue to rank under them, by becoming a member of their individual dojo. This would be okay if there was a limited number of them, but that's not how the Bujinkan has ever operated... in fact, the idea of having multiple dojo under the direction of a singular head has been seen as a cardinal sin in the Bujinkan (the accusation of "empire building" that was used to destroy Wayne Roy's schools, Steve Hayes' schools, Brian McCarthy's group, and the large Spanish organisation Pedro ran... him being the only one that stayed with the Bujinkan), so that meant that most dojo needed to have a Dai-Shihan close by. One of my old juniors, someone who is one of the stiffest and least-knowledgeable people I've known, who left when we wouldn't rank him up every 6 months, is a 15th Dan Dai-Shihan... and still using the material he got from us in the mid-late 90's... the first person I met in Japan was a lovely young lady named Tracey... I asked who she trained with, as I wasn't familiar with her, and knew of a number of the seniors in her area of Canada, and she said she ran her own school... cool... she was given Dai-Shihan status along with 10 or so others in that class... which showed me how meaningless it was. But that's who would now be the "new Bujinkan"... a huge number of basically independent teachers of wildly varying quality around the world linked by a singular name, but little else. This, more than anything else, was the end of the Bujinkan, as it no longer even had a central authority in that sense (interestingly, Richard Van Donk would make a video to this effect some six months or so later... his critics would say that it was showing his betrayal, as they saw it as him removing himself from the Bujinkan, when all he really said was that it was Hatsumi's direction, so he was following it...).
The next big step, which took place as we moved out of the pandemic, was the selection of a new list of soke. As mentioned, the schools were, in effect, dead, as, at no time whatsoever had Hatsumi ever actually taught them as distinct schools, despite giving out licences in the early days (as well as bizarre things like "Menkyo Kaiden" in "Tachijutsu"... what!?!?), so had not ever acted as soke for the schools. Instead, he had used the schools (and the perceived authority that comes with being the head of some of them) to create his own personal, creative expression known as Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu... honestly, more power to him for that, but it needs to be seen for what it is. Catch is, he then appointed new soke... and separated the schools back out again. We have Noguchi taking over Koto Ryu, Nagato with Shinden Fudo Ryu, Ishizuka with Gyokko Ryu... each of which are in their 70's at least... Kukishin, Takagi, and Togakure also given out... as well as Gikan, Gyokushin, and Kumogakure, schools that, for all intents and purposes, only ever existed in name. But none of these new soke had been taught the schools in a progressive manner, or as a distinct school separated from the framework of Budo Taijutsu, so what were they actually soke of? Things they didn't know? Things they weren't taught? And did it mean they then didn't teach or train the parts that weren't from their ryu-ha? What does that leave the new soke of Kumogakure Ryu? Did Nagato stop teaching Sanshin, Kihon Happo etc, as they're from Gyokko Ryu, not Shinden Fudo Ryu? No, each simply continued teaching as they did before, meaning that each of these new soke aren't even teaching the schools they're ostensibly in charge of safeguarding and transmitting... they're all still just teaching Budo Taijutsu. Some are even now awarding rank in their schools (Sean Askew now holds a Menkyo Kaiden in Koto Ryu, awarded at a seminar last year that he hosted with Noguchi, in much the same way that Hatsumi gave the same rank in Togakure and Gyokko to Manaka and Tanemura... no basis in study, just because it's what he could officially award rank in).
With that state of affairs (the Bujinkan not existing as an entity, the schools not being anything that has realistically existed for a while now, and all of it only surviving in name only), there isn't anyone to answer to... it's completely up to anyone to do what they want with the material, which has always been what Hatsumi has done and allowed... so that's what I'm doing. I'm attempting to bring the schools back to what they should be, as that's how I continue to teach them with integrity. I should say, of course, that I still use the Bujinkan material in the form of the Tenchijin as the foundation and grading requirements for my kyu grade students... but also that I don't consider it a "martial art", more a study in body control and concepts. Don't get me wrong, I think it's one of the best teaching packages around, but it's not a martial art. That study happens when you get to the ryu-ha. And no-one in the Bujinkan is doing them, no matter how much they think they are.
We haven't met. I haven't seen you teach, nor have I met any of your students... however... what I do know is that teaching, in and of itself, is a skill. Any and all guidance provided, whether based in the most pristine of pure tradition, or something that is simply right as you understand it at the time, is not pseudo anything. So I urge you not to sell yourself short, mate. You've helped people? Awesome! Isn't that a big part of why we teach? Then, it's just a matter of teaching something you can feel good about... which I've done by applying the above. I'm not saying you would need to do the same, but if you have received value from the teachings you've received, teach what you got from them... and forget the rest! Best thing about being independent is that we're not beholden to any company line or defending anyone else.
