Of Gods and Monsters.

If you haven't listened to the Samurai Archives podcast yet, do it!  I have been listening off and on for the past few years about the culture, warfare and literature of historical Japan while driving to and from work. I would like to continue the theme of getting into the mindset of the historical Japanese warrior by exploring one of the podcast episodes that talk about just that.

I wrote about some of the ideas the Japanese person may have had during the Edo period of Japan (the time period from which Shindo Yoshin Ryu was founded). I have spoken about Shinto and the concept of wabi-sabi in earlier posts. What the Samurai Archives podcast leads into is this idea that people from the past were not simply ignorant versions of ourselves but had a completely different reality to our own. Things like ghosts, spirits, magic and gods that are termed superstition today, were part of a person's reality in medieval Japan. Think about that for a moment. For the average medieval Japanese person, magic was real, the kami were real, evil spirits existed.  As the hosts of the podcast put it, the Japanese before the 1800's were living in one of our medieval fantasy novels. 

In Jack's world, Aku is very real.

Now extrapolate out that idea to the Japanese warrior. David A. Hall writes about the influence of Buddhism on combat and warriors of the time. One goddess of the Buddhist pantheon in particular, Marishiten, has been an important figure for groups such as military personnel, police officers, the classical warrior traditions (bingo!) and sumo wrestlers. Apparently, Marishiten's popularity among Japanese warriors was mainly due to the combative powers she could place upon her devotees. Such things as invisibility, clarity of mind, intuition and so on. By the thirteenth century, esoteric practices such as the kuji (hand gestures combined with mantras) had become very popular. Again we must remember the psycological implications of a warrior believing these chants and gestures would actually give him power over his enemies. Looking at this from a modern worldview we may scoff. However, we all know the placebo effect is a real phenomenon so it doesn't take much convincing for me to see how the classical Japanese warrior's belief in such a practice could lead to him performing at an enhanced level, even it it wasn't really based on supernatural entities.  Remember, the people of this time had no access to any other way of thinking. This was their reality.

Returning to David Hall's writings we can look at the power of invisibility. Immediately we can say, wait a moment, they couldn't actually turn invisible! Hall proposes that in the case of the Japanese warrior the power of invisibility granted by Marishiten was not so much physical concealment but more a psychological ability. It could mean anything from hiding one's intentions strategically to the psychological blinding of an opponent during hand-to-hand combat. He uses modern war time examples of where soldiers firing their weapons at charging troops would miss due to the charging men having a psychological advantage. They were for all intents and purposes, 'not there', so couldn't be hit. 

Another wondrous power of Marishiten is intuition, the ability to react accordingly, without thought. You can imagine that after years of training and experience, with thousands of hours dedicated to a chosen field, that the way a warrior thought and reasoned would change. This new way of thinking can call upon experience and/or the appropriate movement rapidly at a moment's notice without effort. Otherwise known as a flash of intuition. So what the classical warrior might attribute to Marishiten's power was simply an accumulation of years of experience in a narrow focus of study. In fact in classical martial traditions the okugi (inner mysteries) may be told to those after they have done their share of training. However, these secrets would not have been useful to the uninitiated anyway,  without years of practice and training to put them into context, they wouldn't make any sense.

The idea that the classical Japanese warrior had a different reality to ours can also be demonstrated with their use of esoteric practices to decide strategy and tactics on a larger scale. Deciding when to fight battles or go to war was often considered by first seeking the advice of a priest or other holy person. This wasn't considered an afterthought either. A warlord could decide the fate of his domain on these practices and he truly believed that there were forces at work that were beyond the mundane. These forces could strongly influence the outcomes of battles. 

So, where does that leave a modern day practitioner of koryu bujutsu? First of all I have no intention of shrugging off my twenty-first century worldview and living in the reality of a medieval Japanese warrior. I could no sooner do that, than a warrior of the past understand what a mobile phone is. What I can do is look at what those practices and beliefs developed in the warrior. Things such as intuition, a mindset that controlled or dominated an opponent, a feeling of invincibility. This is the key to breaking into that mindset and this is why I get annoyed when people say that what I might practice is archaic and pointless. There are lessons to be learned if we trust the process. One thing that hasn't changed for hundreds of years is the mentality of the human mind going to war. There is a certain psychology that will set you up for dealing with combat much better than others. There is a formula that has been put together by many practitioners and passed through many generations waiting to be discovered. Provided we are patient, we can tap into this. 

Train safe.