I left the last post giving the impression the perfect swordsman more resembles a robotic Terminator; devoid of compassion and only intent on destruction. In Kata this concept works because it requires me to adopt a specific mindset: that of trying not to make any unforced mistakes, allowing any suki (openings - apart from those I choose, as ‘baits’, that is) or allowing my attention to drift off (like how bad his keikogi stinks). But it's time to move on: develop an idea I’ve been toying with by, counter-intuitively, physically removing the killer from in front of me.
One of the beautiful aspects of practicing Seitei Iaido is all the sets/forms are performed alone. OK, we might be taking up space in a Dojo with a multitude of others but each of us are essentially alone with imaginary opponents. It’s one of the challenges in performing solo kata: that of constructing our convincing kassou teki (invisible opponents). Not only do we have to turn and look to where the opponents are but we also have to imagine what they are doing, how far away they are, in which direction they are travelling, how fast they are doing it and what their sword is trying to do to us, etc. It’s actually quite hard to construct for normal people as, generally speaking, we tend not to see people who don’t exist. People who do claim to see imaginary bodies end up being prescribed drugs for their condition. But it’s a very, very useful talent to acquire in the Dojo. It’s a bigger talent if you are able to convince a high-level grading panel these bodies exist.
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| Nukitsuke - a horizontal cut in Mae |
Having pared the combat back to a single person we have to bit by bit reconstruct the kassou teki. True, each kata has a riai or ‘story’ and thus we already know how many enemies, what they are doing, the order in which they come and so on. We learn this fairly early on in our development. For example, we learn in the very first kata, Mae, our single opponent is sitting right in front of us, makes as if to draw his katana and we beat him to it, slicing horizontally between his temples and following up with an overhead kirioroshi - a powerful killing cut. The kata then progresses though other aspects before the exponent calmly walks backwards, away from the carnage. Even up until 2nd Dan, blindly following this story will work. But for 3rd Dan and above?
What I’m working towards now, for my Sandan (3rd Dan) is not just the fast/slow, hard/soft aspects of Mae (I’m keeping to Mae to develop an idea), but what goes on in the gaps. I sort of knew about 'gaps' beforehand but, since last weekend, they’ve become super-important to me. During Saturday’s Jodo class, Sensei Paul Maloney related the story of a virtuoso musician who, when asked how he could play the notes with so much beauty replied “Notes? I don’t really play the notes. I play the gaps between the notes”.
For Martial Arts, the Gaps - the sometimes infinitesimal amounts of time in which nothing appears to be going on - are opportunities for kime (decision making). In the merest fraction of a second one has to ask oneself a series of questions along the lines of: “Does a threat exist?” “What are they doing?” “How and when can I counter?” and so on. At any point the threat can disappear – give up and beg forgiveness (say) at which juncture it becomes senseless to symbolically take their life. Oda Sensei, Australia’s Technical Advisor for Seitei Iaido, has always said kime should be present within such-and-such micropause but I’ve never before fully appreciated how important these micropauses were and what we should be doing within them. I need to work on these, now, and attempt to show not just ‘gaps’ but ‘gaps’ filled with kime.
If I take the Terminator version – the Evil Swordsman – and inject him with kime it doesn’t just open up endless avenues for action it also opens up the possibility of the swordsman sparing the victim. It just remains to find a balance between kime and instinct…..
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