My study of the sword

Tsuda Itsuo never taught ken. Of course he did use it for the salute in front of the tokonoma at the beginning of the session, and then when we ran in a circle around him on the tatamis before lining up to watch the demonstration. Otherwise he used it mainly to demonstrate the pushing of the bokken with two partners, as he had seen Ueshiba Morihei O-sensei do.

In fact, I make no distinction between bare-handed aikido or aikido with bokken or jō aikido. The most important thing to me is the fusion with the partner’s breathing. This other person so different and yet so close, and also, at times, so dangerous.

My main roots in weapons come from what I learnt from Tatsuzawa sensei. He is the one who influenced me the most. In the 1970s I started practising Hakkō-ryū Jūjutsu with Master Maroteaux. Then I studied weapons at the Noro Institute where specific courses were held, and during workshops with Tamura sensei and Sugano sensei – this work was part of aikido. What Tatsuzawa sensei showed me was a koryū (ancient school), which is something else. In Paris for his studies, this young Japanese man (we were both in our twenties) turned up unexpectedly one evening in the dojo where I was teaching aikido. So we started an exchange: he practised aikido with me and showed me techniques from his family’s school, which we worked on for a certain number of hours a week, maybe four or five, for about two years.

We practised a lot of Iaijutsu and also Bōjutsu²the bō is a long stick, 180 cm long, wielded with both hands The techniques he showed me impressed me by their extreme precision. He was the young master of his family’s school, Jigo-ryū. At that time, I did not even know the name of the school. Today, he is an important sensei, the 19^th master of Bushūden Kiraku-ryū, a school that is over four centuries old.

There is a reality in weapons that can be lacking in the practice of aikido as it is sometimes taught today and then risks becoming a kind of dance.

With Tatsuzawa sensei, there was a breathing. It was not the same breathing I found with Tsuda sensei, but there was something and I liked what he taught. It was something so fine, so precise, so beautiful that I wanted to share it with my students. And for years, when I gave workshops, I would say: ‘What I’ve just shown is a technique from the School of Tatsuzawa sensei’. Gradually these two skies, the teaching of Tatsuzawa sensei and the work on breathing with Tsuda sensei, led me to give this name to what I was discovering myself, Ame no Ukihashi Ken, the sword that links heaven and earth, the conscious and the unconscious, the voluntary and the involuntary.

Tatsuzawa sensei and I did not see each other for thirty years, and it was during a trip to Japan that we met again! For the last ten years, my students have been studying the art of Bushūden Kiraku-ryū with him and one of his students, Sai sensei. It is a way for us to better understand the origins of the techniques we use, and it is a historical research that allows us to discover the path walked by Ueshiba O-sensei.

A principle of reality

For Tatsuzawa sensei training had to be real; during our training sessions in the seventies, he used an iaitō and he hit like hell! ‘Men, men, kote, tsuki, men, tsuki’. Of course, at some point I got tired and caught the sword in my shoulder – I still remember it. Because it was a metal sword, it went a few centimetres into my shoulder, three, maybe four. It woke me up. I was never asleep on dodges again. Never again. It was a wake-up call, because obviously he was not there to hurt me. His state of mind was to wake me up, to push me in a direction, so that I would not be some kind of clumsy sleeping lump. Well, it served me right. In that sense, the sword can wake you up. A good kick in the ass is sometimes better than a thousand caresses. I am still very grateful to my master for bringing reality into my body.

Today, when aikido seems to have become a pastime for some, I gently but firmly bring them back to reality.

I have too often seen people parodying the drawing of the katana with a bokken where they simply opened their hand to draw the sword (those who practise Iai will understand).

We must not confuse the Noble Art of the Sword with the way we use it in aikido.

I have always advised my daughter, who has practised aikido since she was a child and loves the sword, to go and see a real sword school. As well as aikido, she too has chosen to study Bushūden Kiraku-ryū with Tatsuzawa sensei and Iaijutsu with Matsuura sensei, who teach her what I could never have taught her.

Aikiken is not Kendō

Aikiken is not Kendō or Iaidō. Poetry is not the novel, and vice versa, each art has its specificities, but when we use a bokken we must not forget that it is a katana which also has a tsuba and a scabbard, even if they are invisible. We must use it with the same respect, the same rigour and the same attention.

Every bokken is unique, despite its often rather industrial production. It is up to us to make it a respectable, unique object, through our attention, the way we handle it and the way we move it. For example, when working with a bokken, if we visualise drawing the sword, we must also visualise sheathing it. Little by little, as it is getting charged, you may get the impression that it is getting heavier. Moreover, the students who have the opportunity to touch my bokken, to hold it, or sometimes to work with it, always find it very special, both easier to handle and at the same time more demanding, they say. It is not quite the same, it is not an ordinary bokken. That is why I advise my students to have their own bokken, their own jō. Weapons get charged. If you have a bokken or a jō that you have chosen well, that you have charged with ki, and that you have used for years, it will have a different nature, it will resemble you in some way. You will already be able to know exactly how big it is, the size of the jō, the size of the bokken, to the nearest millimetre. This will prevent accidents.

It will have a different consistency when we act in this way, it will be a reflection of who we are. The circulation of ki changes the bokken and we can begin to understand why the sword was the soul of the samurai.

We remember the legendary swords that reflected the soul of the samurai to such an extent that they could only be touched by their owner. I had the opportunity to discover this at a time when, to continue practising and support myself, I was working in the field of antiques. I specialised in the resale of Japanese swords: katana, wakizashi and tantō. Being around them – for I could never have afforded to buy them – allowed me not only to admire them, but also to discover something inexpressible.

Some of them had such a charge of ki, that was extremely impressive! Just by drawing the blade ten or fifteen centimetres, you could feel if the sword had an aggressive or generous soul, or whether it exuded great nobility, and so on. At first this seemed absurd to me, but the dealers I worked with confirmed the reality of these sensations and later discussions with Tsuda sensei gave them the reality they needed.

A weapon without breath, without fusion, what is it? Nothing, a piece of wood, a piece of metal.

Zhuangzi does speak to us of fusion, of the extension of the being with the tool, the weapon, when he speaks of the butcher:

The fusion with the partner

‘When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and following things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. […] whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.’ ³Zhuangzi, translated Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013, Columbia University Press, pp. 71–72

If there is no fusion with the partner, you cannot work with a weapon, otherwise it is nothing but brutality, fighting. Precisely because we use it by merging our breath with our partner, you can discover what great masters have discovered before us. All their efforts to show us the way, the path to follow, will be lost if we ourselves do not make the effort to work as they suggested. With a weapon in our hands, we can discover our sphere and make it visible. And thanks to that, we can extend our breathing to something greater, which will not be limited to our little personal sphere, but will go further. If we use weapons in this way, I think it makes sense, but if we use them to try to cut off other people’s heads, to hurt them, or to show that you are stronger, we have to look elsewhere, not in our school.

Weapons are extensions of our arms, which are extensions of our centre. There are lines of ki that run from our centre, from the hara. They act through the hands. If we put a weapon at the end, a bokken, a wakizashi, a stick, these lines of ki can converge. They have an extension. It may be easier when you work with your bare hands, but it starts to get more difficult with a weapon. However, it also becomes very interesting: you are no longer limited, you become “unlimited”. That is what is important, it is a logical progression in my teaching. At the beginning you work a little bit small, in a way limited, then you try to extend, to go beyond while starting from your centre. Sometimes there are interruptions, the ki does not go to the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, the fingers. Sometimes the bokken becomes like the stick of a puppet hitting the policeman, and then it makes no sense. That is why I show these lines, which everyone can see. This is something known in acupuncture. You can also see it in shiatsu and in many other arts. And there we go further. If we could materialise them as lines of light, it would be amazing to see. It is what binds us to others. It is what allows us to understand others. These are lines bound to the body, not just the material body, but the body as a whole, both physical and kokoro. It is the subtle, the immaterial that is bound, there is no difference.

Seitai-dō

In our School we practise the art of Seitai-Dō, the way of Seitai. This art, which includes Katsugen undō (Regenerative Movement in Tsuda Itsuo’s terminology), allows us to rediscover an unusual quality of response, both involuntary and intuitive.

It awakens the “animal” instinct in the good sense of the word, rather like when we were children, playful or even sometimes turbulent but without any real aggressivity, taking life as a game with all the seriousness that it implies.

It was thanks to this art that I discovered the breathing intermission, that space of time between inhaling and exhaling, and between exhaling and inhaling. That infinitesimal, almost imperceptible moment during which the body cannot react. It is in one of these moments that the seitai technique is applied. At first it is difficult to feel it, and even more difficult to act exactly in that moment, very precisely. Gradually, however, you get a very clear sense of this space – you get the impression that it is expanding, and in fact you get the impression that time is passing in a different way, as it sometimes does when you fall or during an accident. You may ask what this has to do with the use of weapons in aikido. Well, our research follows precisely this direction, and the following anecdote told by Tsuda sensei reveals us just how much:

Too high a level

Noguchi Haruchika sensei, the creator of Seitai, wanted to practise Kendo when he was young and enrolled in a dojo to learn this art. After the usual preparations, he was confronted by a kendoka. As soon as the other raised his shinai above his head, Noguchi sensei touched his throat, even though he did not know any of the techniques. The teacher sent him a more advanced practitioner, with the same result: he was given a sixth dan: no better. The master asked him if he had ever practised Kendo: ‘Not at all’, he replied, ‘I stab at the breathing intermission, that’s all’. ‘You’ve already reached too high a level, sensei’ he said. So Noguchi sensei could never learn Kendo.⁴[this story seems to be told in Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Chap. XII (end), 2014, Yume Editions (Paris)]

Whether you practise aikido with empty hands, Aikiken, Jō, Bō, Koryū or any other art, like Tsuda Itsuo himself who recited Nō, the essential thing is not in the technique, but in the art itself and its teaching, which must allow the realisation of the individual. Tsuda sensei told us, citing the various arts he had practised:

Master Ueshiba, Master Noguchi and Master Hosada⁵nō theatre: Kanze Kasetsu School dug ‘wells of exceptional depth […]. They have reached the streams of water, the source of life. […] However, these wells are not interconnected, although the water found in them is the same.’ ⁶Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, 2023, Yume Editions, p. 12 (1^st ed. in French: 1973, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 10)

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi published in April 2016 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 12.