INTRODUCTION TO AMATAI NO SHUGO-RYU

• Introduction to Amatai No Shugo-ryu
  
  
  
  Amatai no Shugo-ryu (Multitude of Dragons School) is a unique martial art which combines techniques of a number of Budo/martial art forms (amatai no Shugo or a multitude of dragons); yet, a the same time, through the study and application of the principles of Bushido, one forms a strong spiritual sense of love, peace, and harmony. It is art, beautiful and flowing it is Budo, powerful and effective.
  
  Some people may be drawn to Amatai no Shugo-ryu because of one of those two aspects or for one or more of the “dragons”; yet, after a period of serious practice one is likely to discover that all of the elements and all of the “dragons” are interconnected. The spiritual sense is discovered through practice of technique and technique is improved through the development of the spiritual sense.
  
  Amatai no Shugo-ryu is a contemporary Japanese martial art combining:
  
  · Traditional Budo technique
  · Traditional Budo values
  · Traditional Bushido thought with modern applications
  · Traditional Japanese and Asian philosophy and thought with modern applications
  · Traditional Japanese culture
  
  It is a non-competitive art which offers a model for self-defense, conflict management and resolution, as well as for both personal and social responsibility.

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Copyright 2007 by Hayato Tokugawa, Aoi Tokugawa, Sekishinkan Tokugawa Dojo. All rights reserved.

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WHAT IS BUSHIDO: A brief Introduction

現在、武士道に関する本を執筆中です。これはその中からの抜粋ですが、まだ推敲中ですのでその旨、ご了承下さい。

Preface: Because Bushido has tended to become an obscure subject to many modern Japanese people, perhaps being forced aside in favor of "Americanization" or "Globalization", the question has come up here several times "What is Bushido?" We could probably write a great volume here but this is not quite the place and a major work on the topic is in progress. Instead, we offer this very brief introduction in the hopes that it might begin to answer that question and stimulate discussion, thought, and study.

BUSHIDO: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Bushido, meaning “Way of the Warrior” is a code of conduct, a way of thought, as well as a way of life which had existed for centuries and which is part of what makes Japan unique among nations and cultures, and which is part of what makes being Japanese unique as well. It originates from the moral code of the Samurai and stresses such things as loyalty, frugality, mastery of Budo and most importantly, honor. Bushido took “root” or began to develop as early as the 9th Century, although much of the formal literature about Bushido does not begin to appear until the 17th Century. So, one could define Bushido as a unique philosophy or ronri that began to spread through the warrior class In the Muomachi (chusei) Period.

As Nitobe Inazo stated in his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, it is a code of moral principles that Samurai were instructed to and expected to observe. More often than not, Bushido is a code which has been largely unwritten (not written as a unified code until much of it was adopted into the Japanese Feudal Law under the Tokugawa Shogunate) but rather in a number of various writings. Much of Bushido was taught verbally, directly from sensei to pupil, from father (or grandfather) to child. It has always been a living thing: growing and evolving over the centuries and continues to evolve to this very day, although often pushed aside in favor of “Americanization” or Globalization. There is however a strong and every growing feeling among Japanese, old and young alike, that a return to the core principles of Bushido is perhaps needed in order to preserve and protect the unique Japanese culture.

In keeping with the simplicity of Zen, which itself has had a tremendous influence on Japanese culture (and Bushido itself): Bushido is being Japanese. -Tokugawa

字数の関係で日本文と英文は対応していません。

世の中がグローバル化するにつれ、日本人は増々アメリカナイズされ、武士道精神は過去の遺物として、脇に押しやられています。 さて、武士道は何かという質問が私のもとに時々寄せられますが、今はその問いに対する入り口程度の回答でご勘弁願います。 武士道は立ち居振る舞いから考え方に至るまで、日本人を日本人たらしめている教えです。 もともとは、侍の守るべき道徳でした。忠誠心、質素倹約、武道修行など侍のための心得です。 9世紀ごろに生まれたこの思想は17世紀に入るまでは正式な書物としては世にでていません。 武士道は室町時代に武士階級を通じて世に広まっていった哲学であるといえます。 新渡戸稲造は武士道の副題に「日本の心」とつけています。 それは武士の守るべき道徳律です。 その教えが統一されたのは、家康の時代、封建法の中に組み入れられるようになってからです。 武士道の教えは口伝えで先生から生徒へ、親から子へと伝わりました。 その教えは、人から人に伝わり、育まれ、進化し、現代まで伝わっている生きた教えです。 日本人はアメリカナイズされつつあるとはいえ、今の日本には武士道精神が必要であると強く感じている人たちがいます。日本を見失わないためにも、それが必要です。 禅の思想(侘び、寂び)は日本文化に多大な影響を与え、私たちの中に深く浸透しています。 武士道も同じです。
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Copyright 2007 by Hayato Tokugawa, Aoi Tokugawa, Sekishinkan Tokugawa Dojo

MUSASHI AND SELF- DISCIPLINE

MUSASHI AND SELF- DISCIPLINE

類い稀な体力、精神力、知性の持ち主、二刀流の達人、独力で剣の極意を得た剣豪、といえば、「バガボンド」の主人公宮本武蔵ですね。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　これだけ有名な剣豪ですが、さて、幼少の頃の武蔵はどうだったかということになると、なかなか資料が見つかりません。ただ、現存する資料や武蔵関連の書物から子供時代の武蔵を推測すると、武蔵は幼少の頃より自己鍛錬に励み、強い意志を持った青年だったようです。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　武蔵には師匠と呼べる人はいません。仮に、武蔵がどこかの道場の門下生だったとしましょう。武蔵は13歳にして、すでに木刀の達人であり、当時、巷で強いと評判の剣豪達に戦いを挑んでいました。そんなすごい生徒なら、道場が黙っているわけはありません。道場の評判を高める為にも、○○道場門下生として武蔵の名を世間に公表したであろう事は十分に考えられすがそのような記述はみたことがありません。また、武蔵の剣豪としての意識は子供の頃に形成され、剣の修行のため、幼い頃から独力で鍛錬に励みました。
さて、武蔵のおこなった修行を現代に当てはめて考えてみましょう。武蔵の修行ががどれほどのものであったか、想像してみてください。

金メダル目指してトレーニングしているオリンピック選手と比較してみるのが良いかと思います。コーチの指導を全く受けずに、技術的な面も精神的な面も助言を与える人が全くいない状態で金メダルを目指さなければならないとしたら、どうでしょう。

武蔵は独力で金メダルを獲得しました。

武蔵の修行の中から、何か私たちの日々の生活に取り入れられるものが、きっとあるはずです。


MUSASHI AND SELF- DISCIPLINE

One can assume that tremendous mental, physical, intellectual, and spiritual self-discipline are the reasons that Musashi Miyamoto was able to achieve his great success and reputation as Japan’s finest swordsman while still a relatively young man. Despite the fact that records of Musashi’s youth are both scarce and confused, as one learns more about him, it becomes apparent that he was indeed strong-willed and extraordinarily self-disciplined from an early age.

In Go Rin Sho, Musashi wrote that he himself had no teacher but rather that he was self-taught. This would seem to be true if for no other reason than any one of the formalized schools of Budo, which kept careful, strict records could have claimed him as a student and would have done so. By the age of thirteen, he was exceedingly adept at least with a wooden staff, to the extent that he had no hesitation in challenging a veteran samurai who had killed many men in one-on-one fighting.

This alone is enough to make Musashi distinctive in the chronicles of the samurai and indeed rare in any context. It supports Musashi’s claim that his own ambition formed very early on and compelled him to a level of self-discipline that seems rather extraordinary for a boy on his own.

In a modern application, perhaps the best way to point up the degree of self-discipline required in Budo would be to compare it with what men and women training for the Olympics would have to go through without the benefit of coaches, or sponsors. There is, however, nothing really new with regard the role of discipline in developing skills of any kind. Musashi’s deeds make it clear that in order to achieve that kind of success one must exercise comparable self-discipline, which can, be applied to any of life’s undertakings.

copyright 2007 by Hayato Tokugawa and Sekishinkan Tokugawa Dojo

壬生義士伝 MIBU GISHI DEN (An In-depth Film Review)

壬生義士伝 Mibu Gishi Den

(English Title: When The Last Sword is Drawn)

Winner “Best Film” Japanese Academy Awards

Winner “Best Actor” Japanese Academy Awards

Winner “Best Supporting Actor” Japanese Academy Awards

Director:
Yojiro Takita

Writers:
Jiro Asada (story) Takehiro Nakajima

Release Date:
18 January 2003 (Japan)

Late one Tokyo night in the winter of 1899, as Dr Ono Chiaki (Takehiro Murata) and his wife are packing to move their small medical clinic to Manchuria, they are visited by an elderly man with an ill grandson. Amidst the chaos of packing crates and boxes, the man, Saito Hajime (Koich Sato), spots an old photograph of a samurai, Yoshimura Kanichiro (Kiichi Nakai), whom he recognizes from some thirty years earlier. The photo triggers in both Ono and Saito a series of complex memories of Yoshimura as the incarnation of the samurai's heroic code at a time when such a code was fast becoming an irrelevant detail of history.

Along with Yamada Yoji’s superior The Twilight Samurai (2002) and Edward Zwick's entertaining The Last Samurai (2003), Takita Yojiro’s “When the Last Sword is Drawn” or “Mibu Gishi Den”, set in the same period, forms part of a growing body of revisionist literary and cinematic works that re-examine samurai values in their death throes - in much the same way that revisionist westerns like Sam Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' (1969) and Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven' (1992) reexamined the rapidly vanishing ideology of the cowboy. In Takita's film, Yoshimura is depicted at the outset as a deeply unconventional samurai - clownish, obsessed with money, unconcerned with saving face, and always valuing wife and children over clan, life over death. The more traditional Saito's first recollections of Yoshimura are as "the man I hated most", "an awful country samurai bragging about home and family" - and his first impulse upon meeting him was to kill him on the spot. "What kind of samurai is that?" becomes a recurring question.

The younger Ono, on the other hand, who as a boy lived in the same provincial town as Yoshimura, remembers him more sympathetically as "strong and gentle", a wise teacher and a skilled swordsman who deserted the local clan and sought work in Kyoto for the Shinshengumi (a special police force of the late Tokugawa Period) to prevent his family from starving to death. As Saito and Ono begin to share drinks and memories privately with the audience, their view of the man in the photo starts to shift subtly, and the narrative that they weave together transforms a mercenary buffoon, and the shabbily pointless end that he meets, into a heroic example of samurai virtues whose crowning glory is an act of extraordinary self-sacrifice.

The cinematography is excellent and while the editing has a few “bumps” the story moves well and draws the viewer in. The dialog and acting is straightforward with no “tricks” in the characters or plot, thus making it a thoroughly enjoyable movie. There are, within the film, scenes of great violence and brutality (one of the reasons we watch Samurai films ne) but there are also scenes of great dedication, love and compassion, as well as futility, which will bring tears to the eyes of even the most jaded viewer.

Commentary:

NAKAI KIICHI (Yoshimura)
“The Shinsengumi provides a historical background. As I understand it, love toward friends and family is the main theme of the film. In this modern society, when you say, “stick to our conscience”; I wonder what is meant by “conscience” and wonder if people actually do have a conscience. I realized that in this society, how other people perceive you is more important. It seems really important how you see yourself within this society, but actually, how you want to live should be more important than what others think of you.

“You must have your own philosophy on life. In my role as Yoshimura…he sticks to his own way. This might be for his family because he loves his family and wants to protect them. It is not because he should protect them but because he wants to.
I hope through this film, people could see the importance of having their own principles. For the young generation and for my own generation, it is necessary to find and stick to our own philosophy for the future of Japanese society.

SATO KOICHI (SAITO HAJIME)

“I understand the samurai spirit to be like the soul of young boys who have difficulty accepting societal rules. The film describes the conflict which Yoshimura has to face between his samurai spirit and his responsibilities towards his family…this is the matter of conflict which Yoshimura has to face. First he tries to refuse accepting the societal rules but gradually compromises to survive as a real man.”

TAKITA YOJIRO (DIRECTOR)

Question: What was the “trigger “ for making the film?

“I was asked by the producers…I was reading the novel for awhile when it was serialized in a magazine. Then I read the whole story again before making the film. It was amazing. I t made me cry…thinking that I had become hold…but I doubt if there is anyone who would not cry. I am sure everyone would.

Question: What is the most important part of the film?

“That’s it. I believe this film is not only about the Shinsengumi. Even in today’s society, men like Yoshimura absolutely exist. This film is refreshing because it makes us aware that men like Yoshimura exist and are needed in our society.

“It is difficult to explain conscience but I was really attracted to his spirit…if you read the novel you would realize what I realized. I realized I could ask myself “could I live according to my own conscience?”

“I am glad I knew about this novel. It gave me a good chance to think about my job and my role as a film director.

ASADA JIRO (AUTHOR)

“People have pride. Because of this pride the samurai tried to hide what they really felt. This, I think, made them heroes…but Yoshimura was different. He was honest. If he didn’t have money he would say so. He made money by killing people to support his family. He didn’t care about his pride or social status.

“I tried to imagine what he was like and I created his character in my head. I created the “ideal” man. In real life, it might be impossible to find such a man as a husband and as a father. When I think of him it tells me how I should live, as a man, as a husband, and as a father even though I created him myself.

“I wanted to write a story about the least heroic Shinsengumi. For me the worst and the least heroic samurai is the coolest one.

“What are our real responsibilities or duties as a human being? That is what I wanted to convey to readers. In this modern society, although people may already know what they really should do, most are unable to do it because there are so many temptations. At Any time and in any kind of society, what is important for us is the same. I wanted to describe people who do the right thing.

“Another important thing in the story is the love for his [Yoshimura] for his home province. It is one of the main themes of the story. I feel that in the whole world it is only the Japanese people who do not appreciate tat we are Japanese. We have become half-American. In the story, I describe Yoshimura’s love for the province of Morioka. However, what I aimed for is to remind readers of their hometown…or even, in a broader sense, of Japan.”

(c) 2007 Hayato Tokugawa

Vovinam-Viet Vo Dao

Vietnamese Martial Arts

Vietnamese martial arts have historically been influenced by necessity: the necessity to defend the country from numerous foreign occupations, including occupations by China, France, Japan, and the United States. The most influential country in the development of martial arts in Viet Nam has been China and its “thousand-year” occupation. Through decade after decade, civil strife, changes in dynasties, foreign conquests, the rise and fall of warlords, and guerilla tactics, the Vietnamese masters of martial arts used whatever they learned from their neighbors to evolve a unique form of martial arts.Because of the wide variety of influences, it is difficult to point to one definable point in time where Vietnamese martial arts “came to life” but certainly the country itself officially existed as far back as 200 BC and settlements in the country can be traced back at least to 2876 BC.

Despite a tempestuous relationship with China, the Vietnamese adopted many things from Chinese culture and philosophy, including Chinese arts (brush painting for example) and swordsmanship. We know, for example, that in the period of 906 – 1009 AD, the kings Ngo Quyen and Dinh Bo Linh were remarkable military strategists as well as martial artists. We also know that in the period of 1010-1527 AD martial arts techniques reached a very high level of sophistication, particularly under the increased influence of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism: thus adding a rich philosophical base, and that there existed a martial arts school in the Capital, Thang Long (Hanoi) as far back as the Ly Dynasty (1010-1225) in the 11th century and during the Tran Dynasty (1225-1400). It was at that time that people, in discussions and instruction of martial arts started to use “Vo Thuat” (art of hand-to-hand combat) or “Viět Võ Đao” (martial way of the Viets).

The period of the early 16th through the early 19th centuries was a period marred by division and factionization of the country, conflicts as well as rebellions between the people and many of the various warlords. It was during the Tay Son Rebellion of 1771 through 1788, that quite a few martial arts forms rose to prominence in Viet Nam and Bin Dinh Province, which was the base of operations for the rebels, became a martial arts center with many formal schools involving various forms of Viět Võ Đao.

From the 19th century through 1945 was a hard time for Vietnamese martial arts owing to the growing “popularity” and use of modern weaponry as well as a French colonial ban on martial arts in the country. Fortunately a cadre of people retained a strong interest in martial arts and students continued to learn and practice in secret despite the French. In 1938 Nguyen Loc introduced a new “school “Vo Thuat” which he taught (with an eye on building a national identity and independence from France) and inadvertently beginning a renaissance of Vietnamese martial arts, under the name Vovinam or Martial Arts (Võ) of Viet Nam. In 1960 the leadership of this ryu or school was passed to Master Le Sang from Master Loc.

Currently, there are Viêt Võ Đao schools springing up worldwide featuring a wide variety of disciplines and variations such as Thanh Long, Han Bai, Tran Minh Long, Vivinam, Kim E, Nam Huynh Dao and Vo Binh Din and a wide variety of theories including:

Predominance of Close Combat Techniques (Di Doan Thang Trung)
Flexibility Against Force (Di Nhuoc Thang Cuong)
Taking By Surprise (Ky Tap Chen Phap) (similar to Ninja studies)
The Secrets of Illusion (ao Anh Bi Phap)
Methods of Sidestepping Movements Without Resistance (Phan Gut Phap) (not unlike Aikido or Aikijutsu)
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(c) 2007 by Hayato Tokugawa

Philosophy of Sekishinkan Tokugawa Dojo and Takayama Budokai

Sekishin is the ancient Chinese word that means "simple spirit /sincere attitude " or "heart's-blood /sincerity ".

Sekishin is the direct opposite of "cowardice".
First, Japanese martial arts most detests cowardice.
Secondarily, Japanese martial arts has a belief in winning without a fight, that is, for one to win without a fight is best test of one to courage and skill); therefore, we should not be a coward nor should we practice Budo in order to win in competitions (to use Budo as a vehicle for attaining admiration or fame). All Budo is the way of character formation and character building. Budo should be practiced for the sake of Budo.

赤心とは　「嘘、偽りのない心」「真心、誠意」を表す中国の古い言葉である。
赤心とは「卑怯・姑息」の対極に位置する言葉である。
本来、日本武道は卑怯を最も嫌う。日本武道は「往なす」ことを第一義とする。
我々は卑怯であってはならない。
我々は「勝つ手段」として武道を学ぶべきではない。
武道とは人間形成の道である。
武道修練の目的は武の道(人の道）の探求におくべきである。

Please feel free to contact us at www.takayamabudokai.com or admin@takayamabudokayi.com.

(c) 2007 by Takayama Budokai, Sekishinkan Tokugawa Dojo, Aoi Tokugawa