OK. I’ve lost the plot with this blog. Three glasses of port have sorted that out....
Last week was the Australian Kendo Renmei’s 2012 Iaido and Jodo seminar. It included the comps and gradings, with my better half successfully gaining her Iaido Nidan (2nd Dan): literally 5 days before being admitted in hospital for a knee reconstruction/replacement. I’m pleased beyond words for her and I would have given my comp achievement up without hesitation if I thought it might influence the judges. BTW, I’m in a ‘gap period’ where I just wasn’t eligible for any grading. Next up for me will be a stab at Sandan (3rd Dan) in Jodo next January and a doubtful go at Sandan in Iaido in the UK come August-ish 2014. I’m not fussed with the wait.
The champs were quite interesting for a variety of reasons. I’m going to ignore some strange decisions but instead focus on something that rose to the surface of consciousness within me while watching some people - 'perceived ability'.
A month or three after commencing Iaido a few years back, the club I was in had an ex-Australian Defence Force guy who it appeared to me was very, very crisp with his techniques. Against him, the others were just going through the motions. I modelled my techniques on his and moved inexorably towards that style. Years on, he’s since moved out of the area but that feeling of knowing instinctively what you ‘like’ hasn’t left. Some people out there on the Dojo floor just have more than that little bit extra. Sometimes they are that good you can’t even identify what it is they possess that sets their Iaido apart. You just know and attempt to fathom out how to emulate it. And it works even when you see much higher grades perform. It just goes to show; from a position much lower down the “mountain of learning” you can still possess perspective.
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| Kik, me and Igarashi-San (4th Dan and from whom I bought my shinken, 'Taka') |
Now, this perspective concerns me a tad. Doubtless we all own portions of it and have this gut feeling when watching some performance or other. But when we are higher up the Dojo environment food chain the obverse side of the coin means we know we have more impact on the newbies – for good or ill. I became extremely disconcerted in the seminar when my Sensei (I call him mine but I’m sure he’d do a “thrice denial before the cock crowed” if asked) told me, in no uncertain terms, to take my fellow Nidan Jodoka group and teach then his method of Hikiotoshi uchi. Now, no one outside the Jodo sphere will have the faintest idea what this entails. Suffice to say he was asking me to teach a ‘basic’ technique Klara and I (re)learned in his Sendai Dojo while we were there in Japan a few months back, to my fellow Nidan. He was asking me to role-model his technique to my equals. I baulked a little but then tried my best. After the session was over, he came marching back with an interpreter and harangued me right royally. Nagayama Sensei doesn’t need a translator: his English is good, but you know you’re in trouble when he only speaks to you in Japanese. His actual point to me was two-pronged. On one level he wanted me to demonstrate something he’d taken time out of his busy schedule to teach me and Klara privately and was happy we'd mastered. On a completely parallel level he was testing. It’s not the first time he’s had a hidden motive and I’ve been blindsided by something or other he’s asked me to do.
Returning to the impact on the newbies angle. I’m now a firm believer newbies are given a bad press. They are far more observant and discerning than the higher grades give them credit for and it now seems self-evident to me: given only mediocre examples from the higher grades, they can only choose mediocrity to follow. Given some variety of choice they will choose their exemplars (maybe only in the short term, but that’s fine). What this all boils down to is this. The springboard to their development as martial artists ultimately resides within the amount of ‘perceived excellence' within us slightly higher grades [Ignoring, for a moment, we all believe we’re god’s gift to the art once we reach a certain grade....]. Bearing in mind we are talking about the survival of the martial art (since it's invested in people who may become future high grades) the continued interest of my juniors, for me, is seen as a huge responsibility and was never on my radar back on day one. When I adopted that Australian Defence Force guy's technique I had no idea one day others might be doing the same to me.
