Yamabushii
Green Belt
Hi All,
A bit of background to set some context from my position first. I haven't posted here in a very long time. I used to post on martial arts forums quite often when I first began my training in Ninpo in 2012. At that time, as a complete novice to the art (not in martial arts as a whole), I thought I had all the answers and everyone else sharing their opposing opinions online about Ninpo were wrong. A few years later my teacher left the Genbukan and I with him. It was at that point that I truly began to realize how much fluff and nonsense is in the world of traditional Ninpo within the big three Takamatsuden orgs today (though admittedly I have no experience with the Jinenkan). Don't get me wrong - there are tons of incredibly effective techniques. I love the art, but, respectfully, I don't think Soke Hatsumi or Tanemura are running their organizations in a manner that is relevant to today's world. Living in Japan I wonder if they are sort of stuck in their own bubble.
Living in the U.S., many of us are fortunate enough to be a part of a mixing bowl of martial arts. We have almost every single major to minor martial arts style in every major metropolitan area of the U.S. This opens the doors to quite a bit of additional knowledge for us to take advantage of compared to people in some other countries. In our current organization, for the physical techniques we focus heavily on Jujutsu. We're in the process of becoming certified to teach a few additional modern systems as well, but when it comes specifically to the shinobi techniques, I've found myself teaching it less and less. Now, we just had our annual shinobi seminar which is around 30 hours of training in a single weekend, both indoors and outdoors, but most of the "ninjutsu" we teach is primarily strategy, philosophy, history, and sometimes spirituality if someone specifically asks about it. Of course there are more "shinobi-centric" weapons techniques, and a bit of taijutsu, but again most of the physical techniques are really just some forms of jujutsu.
With that said, my opinion is that we live in a time of relative peace, compared to feudal Japan at least. In most countries today, you can walk around safely to and from your home to the grocery store and back. In some areas you may get jumped, but at least you're probably not worrying about an entire clan on horseback sacking your apartment the moment you leave. Shinobi no mono/Samurai essentially trained 24/7 and lived for a single purpose. That type of training was incredibly different. It required a level of mastery obtained through countless hours of shedding actual blood, sweat, and tears on a daily basis for many years. Our lives aren't that way, unless you're in military special forces. We pay $XXX to train, often times under a legal agreement, and do it either as a hobby, for fitness, for clout, or, sometimes, some of us are truly passionate. Most of us also have our "main" lives which is supporting our families and working, most of the times having nothing to do with our training. However, many practitioners are posting videos doing funky hand signs, wearing black shinobi shozoku in broad day light, and/or sitting on broken tree trunks doing awful ukemi, meanwhile hash tagging everything and end up getting laughed at online.
Regardless, I find that Ninpo is still incredibly useful today as long as you're teaching it from a realistic perspective. I advertise my school as a Japanese Jujutsu school even though we cover a lot of Ninpo, but I don't segregate the two when I teach them, often times not even mentioning it. The problem I have with some of the traditional X-kans is the manner in which they teach. They discourage tournaments/competitions, so few people actually spar. My students are constantly sparring and doing randori drills. I encourage them to go out and learn other things as well. It's a very Jeet Kune Do approach (take what's useful and discard what isn't). We train with compliant uke to let people get techniques down then switch to randori or sparring so they learn how to do them without compliant uke as well. Our students will throw a boxing jab and cross instead of a traditional tsuki (lunging in straight hand punch and waiting for eternity), and the uke's attacks are always some form of a realistic attack. This prepares my students for knowing how to actually put someone in a position to go for an omote gyaku or waki gatame or goja dori or oni kudaki or seoi nage or kubi nage or ganseki nage, etc. I find all of these are severely lacking in your average X-kan school and I have rarely seen that kind of training being pushed from top-down leadership as well.
So my questions for anyone willing to answer:
1) Do you find the traditional teachings of Ninjutsu are still applicable and effective in today's world?
1a) If so, do you have successful real-world experience in applying your techniques in self-defense or in the defense of someone else?
2) Do you think Ninjutsu needs a massive modernization in its methods of teachings in the big 3 X-kans?
Disclaimer: No disrespect to anyone in the Buj/Gen/Jin orgs since I know some folks in the orgs that thankfully don't fit the description above. They are, however, the minority exception.
A bit of background to set some context from my position first. I haven't posted here in a very long time. I used to post on martial arts forums quite often when I first began my training in Ninpo in 2012. At that time, as a complete novice to the art (not in martial arts as a whole), I thought I had all the answers and everyone else sharing their opposing opinions online about Ninpo were wrong. A few years later my teacher left the Genbukan and I with him. It was at that point that I truly began to realize how much fluff and nonsense is in the world of traditional Ninpo within the big three Takamatsuden orgs today (though admittedly I have no experience with the Jinenkan). Don't get me wrong - there are tons of incredibly effective techniques. I love the art, but, respectfully, I don't think Soke Hatsumi or Tanemura are running their organizations in a manner that is relevant to today's world. Living in Japan I wonder if they are sort of stuck in their own bubble.
Living in the U.S., many of us are fortunate enough to be a part of a mixing bowl of martial arts. We have almost every single major to minor martial arts style in every major metropolitan area of the U.S. This opens the doors to quite a bit of additional knowledge for us to take advantage of compared to people in some other countries. In our current organization, for the physical techniques we focus heavily on Jujutsu. We're in the process of becoming certified to teach a few additional modern systems as well, but when it comes specifically to the shinobi techniques, I've found myself teaching it less and less. Now, we just had our annual shinobi seminar which is around 30 hours of training in a single weekend, both indoors and outdoors, but most of the "ninjutsu" we teach is primarily strategy, philosophy, history, and sometimes spirituality if someone specifically asks about it. Of course there are more "shinobi-centric" weapons techniques, and a bit of taijutsu, but again most of the physical techniques are really just some forms of jujutsu.
With that said, my opinion is that we live in a time of relative peace, compared to feudal Japan at least. In most countries today, you can walk around safely to and from your home to the grocery store and back. In some areas you may get jumped, but at least you're probably not worrying about an entire clan on horseback sacking your apartment the moment you leave. Shinobi no mono/Samurai essentially trained 24/7 and lived for a single purpose. That type of training was incredibly different. It required a level of mastery obtained through countless hours of shedding actual blood, sweat, and tears on a daily basis for many years. Our lives aren't that way, unless you're in military special forces. We pay $XXX to train, often times under a legal agreement, and do it either as a hobby, for fitness, for clout, or, sometimes, some of us are truly passionate. Most of us also have our "main" lives which is supporting our families and working, most of the times having nothing to do with our training. However, many practitioners are posting videos doing funky hand signs, wearing black shinobi shozoku in broad day light, and/or sitting on broken tree trunks doing awful ukemi, meanwhile hash tagging everything and end up getting laughed at online.
Regardless, I find that Ninpo is still incredibly useful today as long as you're teaching it from a realistic perspective. I advertise my school as a Japanese Jujutsu school even though we cover a lot of Ninpo, but I don't segregate the two when I teach them, often times not even mentioning it. The problem I have with some of the traditional X-kans is the manner in which they teach. They discourage tournaments/competitions, so few people actually spar. My students are constantly sparring and doing randori drills. I encourage them to go out and learn other things as well. It's a very Jeet Kune Do approach (take what's useful and discard what isn't). We train with compliant uke to let people get techniques down then switch to randori or sparring so they learn how to do them without compliant uke as well. Our students will throw a boxing jab and cross instead of a traditional tsuki (lunging in straight hand punch and waiting for eternity), and the uke's attacks are always some form of a realistic attack. This prepares my students for knowing how to actually put someone in a position to go for an omote gyaku or waki gatame or goja dori or oni kudaki or seoi nage or kubi nage or ganseki nage, etc. I find all of these are severely lacking in your average X-kan school and I have rarely seen that kind of training being pushed from top-down leadership as well.
So my questions for anyone willing to answer:
1) Do you find the traditional teachings of Ninjutsu are still applicable and effective in today's world?
1a) If so, do you have successful real-world experience in applying your techniques in self-defense or in the defense of someone else?
2) Do you think Ninjutsu needs a massive modernization in its methods of teachings in the big 3 X-kans?
Disclaimer: No disrespect to anyone in the Buj/Gen/Jin orgs since I know some folks in the orgs that thankfully don't fit the description above. They are, however, the minority exception.