AIKIDO WEAPONS
Many years ago, I witnessed a dojo opening which ended with the Sensei disarming a senior student who attacked with a live blade. The Sensei intercepted his attacker’s shomen strike, took the blade, and sent his student flying with a spectacular breakfall. The whole audience stood up and cheered. I am sure that part of the demonstrationattracted at least 20 students! There was only one problem: the audience did not realize that the demonstration was fake. Actually there was a deeper problem: the Sensei did not realize the demonstration was fake.
There’s an irony to all this. The Sensei I witnessed teaches in a school famous for its weapons training, but it is a training not grounded in Iaido or any other system of training that uses a steel katana. Having visited the Sensei’s house, I noticed a blade prominently mounted in his living room, a blade which looked as if it had never been touched - in short a ceremonial blade. And a ceremonial understanding of sword work simply doesn’t suffice. You need a deep level of sword practice to understand the meaning of weapons work, an understanding not provided by those poor imitations of a real blade, the shinai and bokken. The demonstration itself reflected this lack of awareness. The attacker’s blade was at most a foot away from the Sensei’s chest and shoulder area at the onset of attack. A distance this close distance calls for a quick ski (forward thrust), an attack almost impossible to counter at short range. Instead, the attacker raised his blade and slid forward,suriashi style (moving forward without changing hanmi), as he executed a standard shomen attack. This allowed the Sensei plenty of time to look up and easily grab the sword handle while the rest of the choreographed dance took place to thunderous applause. No fault attaches to the Sensei. He trained in a school whose practicants, while respectful of Iaido as an art, tend to denigrate its practical relevance to Aikido. I disagree.
My big breakthrough in Aikido came from Iaido. At the time of my breakthrough, I trained at a dojo with a Sensei excellently qualified in both Aikido and Iaido. That said, my training languished. I did not understand the instructor’s style of Aikido. This was unfortunate because I arrived at this dojo determined to become a professional teacher, but the harder I tried to understand my instructor’s “style,” the greater my confusion. This reached an intolerable point. I decided to quit, a momentous decision as I had devoted my entire adult life to Aikido. Practical problems, however, made immediate withdrawal impossible: I held a teaching position and had other additional contractual obligations which involved months of waiting (rent, etc.). Accordingly, I decided to sit back, withdraw from things, and leave my Aikido practice and the city as soon as my obligations ceased. Having finally relaxed and surrendered my most cherished ambition, I found myself looking at martial arts practice anew. One day while watching a class demonstration of irimi nage, I was struck by the parallels between our Sensei’s Iaido and his Aikido. I was more than just “struck.” I experienced an epiphany which further opened up the more I watched. Yes, I may have overdone things a bit, but the force of this revelation led me to abandon my (thankfully) unannounced plans to leave, and I remained at the dojo for another year and a half. Excitement and insight had returned to practice!
The rewards of Iaido training often manifest in subtle ways. A student of mine once asked if she could quit Aikido weapons to train at a good Kendo school which held class at the same time as our weapons training. I encouraged her to do so as Kendo is a great art which teaches many valuable aspects of weapons work not adequately covered in Aikido. She benefited from her training, but when she came back to Aikido, I noticed that she had lost the habit of blocking blows with the fat (jigane and shinogi portions) of her blade. Why? Shinais are perfectly round and don’t admit of such fine distinctions. Any part of a circle is as good as any other. While this is true of a shinai, it is not true of a real sword. Blocking with the wrong portion might cost you your life. This student corrected this habit and later furthered her interest in “real” weapons training by attaining sword certifications while living in Japan.
Aikido body art techniques such as shihonage and irimi nage, are just a few of theAikido body art techniques that closely parallel sword forms. A great deal could be written about these correlations, but I will skip doing so and offer a conclusion. Weapons work should involve more than just the choreographed banging together of wooden objects. There is nothing wrong with boken and jo work (indeed it has great value!), but O’Sensei derived much of Aikido from his sword training (consider our basic striking attacks – shomen, yokomen, and ski) and any form of Aikido training or weapons training grounded in a real understanding of swordsmanship immeasurably benefits the student.