ahead of the rest of me. I went down like I’d been sledgehammered. The back of my head smacked against the wooden floor. I laid there a second. I knew nothing was seriously hurt, and that I should be leaping back up quickly so as not to put myself at risk of a follow-up attack. But I wasn’t sure where “up” was. All I could see were starbursts.
“Sumimasen,” Yanagi-san said, “Daijobu desu ka?” “My fault. You okay?”
I’m not sure how I expected Mr. Yanagi to react to the accident. Over the years of my training that have followed, however, I have heard that phrase many more times. I have, due to my own clumsiness and ineptitude, had occasion to use it myself. Ask anyone who has practiced with me much at all. And I have come to realize since that afternoon in the dojo, that what Yanagisan said to me is really all one can say in a situation like that. More importantly, in the context of the budo, it is all one should say.
It is quite an awful feeling to hurt someone under almost any circumstances, obviously. This is especially so in the dojo where one’s accidental victim is likely to be a friend or a training partner and one feels towards that person almost as if they were a brother or sister. If it is a senior that you have clobbered, you feel terrible because you’ve repaid the kindness of his instructing you by battering him. If it is a junior, you feel worse: a junior in the dojo is dependent upon you for his progress, not for abuse. The initial response to causing an accident in the dojo—the unconditioned response of the untrained budoka—is to abandon instantly whatever exercise it is, to rush forward, apologizing profusely and checking for damage.
The dojo, however, is not a place for unconditioned responses. The budoka who go there to practice must be willing to give a great deal of their lives over to the crafting and shaping of very highly conditioned responses. They are seeking to respond correctly to every contingency, in a wide variety of situations. Among those contingencies is the possibility of an accident. The budoka must realize there is a chance, a risk involved, every time he trains. When you allow me, for the purposes of our learning, to uncork punches at your face, or to twist your wrists to nearly the point of injury, or strike at you with a weapon, you are accepting the possibility I might miss, go a bit too far. I assume the same; that I may injure you. We have voluntarily accepted what insurance companies call “assumed risk.” Like mountain climbers, big wave surfers, and ski racers, budoka would be idiots if they thought the martial Ways were risk-free. That is simply not the nature of these Ways.
If we have trained properly and we exercise care for our partner, we can (and absolutely must) cut the odds of an accident or injury. But we can never entirely eliminate risk. So when in the dojo an accident does happen, we should not be too surprised. We should not indulge in a lot of pointless blather then. We should admit it if it was our fault, and inquire if the injury is serious enough to warrant attention. If it is serious, we’d better be calling an ambulance or rendering first aid. These require coolness and a presence of mind. There is no time, and no reason to engage in excessive apologizing which, while it might make us feel better, won’t do a lot of good for our injured friend.
This attitude may seem heartless. But remember. Yanagi-san’s first words to me were “my fault.” He accepted the blame for the accident, simply and honestly. Then he asked if I was all right, in a way that was straightforward yet not condescending, respectful of my dignity.
Simply and honestly; straightforward and respectful. This is the best way for the budoka to behave when he has been responsible for an accident in the dojo. He will also find that it is an excellent way of meeting a number of other situations as well.
Kachinuki (Old-Style Tournaments)
Things change. It is a cliché to note this, but as one grows older, the examples of it tend to occur with more and more frequency. I encountered an example of change the other day, while talking with a group of young budoka. One of them asked me when I had begun my practice of the martial arts and Ways. When I told him, he replied, “That’s the year I was born.” So I was feeling like a dinosaur anyway. Then, when I mentioned the once common type of martial arts tournament called kachinuki, all I got in response were blank stares. None of them had heard of kachinuki, none had ever participated in what was once a major social activity in the budo and a fundamental training method. It was as though I was talking to people who had never been sledding on a snowy evening or eaten caramel apples at a fair.
A few decades ago, the idea of shiai, or contests, in karate, judo, and kendo was quite different than it is today. The emphasis then was on an interaction between various dojo. Members got to see and experience the techniques used by others, methods taught in other schools. There was also a great deal of social interaction. Martial arts contests were almost always followed by potluck dinners and informal parties. Many budoka of non-Japanese ancestry got their first taste of sushi, sashimi, and other Japanese food after these shiai back in the sixties, made by the mothers, wives, and girlfriends of contestants. Oh, and one other thing about those shiai that distinguished them from today’s matches: there were, technically speaking, no winners.
It sounds odd, a contest with no winners. But here is the way a kachinuki-type shiai worked. Beginning at the shimoseki (literally, the “lower side”) of the tournament hall (which is called a shiaijo, by the way), the contestants would line up with the lowest ranks beginning at the left, all the way up to the black belts at the joseki (“upper side”). The matches began with the white belt at the farthest left—at the first of the line, in other words—facing the fellow on his right. Let’s call them A and B. Let’s say A won. B would sit back down, and the fellow on his right, C, would be next to face A. That’s right, A; the guy who just fought and is still winded. But he’s lucky; he wins against C too. What happens? C sits down and D jumps up to take on A. Now you’re beginning to get the idea of kachinuki shiai. You stay up and fight as long as you win. Beat five guys in a row and your reward is to face the sixth. No semifinals, no double eliminations; just fight and win or lose and sit down.
At first, kachinuki may seem like a very unfair way to run an athletic contest. After all, it is a given that the guy who’s just won three matches in a row is going to be exhausted. He will be facing opponents who have been sitting and are rested. Ah, but there’s one little detail I haven’t mentioned. Those guys waiting their turn were sitting, waiting their turn in the line to fight. But they were not sitting any way they liked. They were sitting formally, on their knees, legs folded with their heels on their buttocks, in the position of seiza. It is a manner of sitting that, unless you are very accustomed to it, can result in the entire lower half of your body becoming numb in a short time.
No warm-ups, no preparatory “on deck” announcements were part of kachinuki shiai. You knew your turn was coming up when the competitor next to you got up for his match. When your turn came, you had to deal with wobbly, tingling legs. The contestant you would be facing had just fought; he might have been winded, but he would also have had the chance to warm up and loosen his muscles. He would be relaxed and ready to go, and if an approaching opponent wasn’t careful, that opponent was going to be beaten while he was still trying to stretch out his stiffness. Then too, in a large tournament, by the time the matches had worked their way down to the far end of the line, the black belts there may have been sitting virtually motionless for a couple of hours. After that time it was a struggle even to stand up. Many a senior brown belt was able to best his senior in the black belt ranks by taking advantage of his senior’s having been sitting so long he had trouble just getting to his feet, never mind making a good account of himself in competition.
So, do you see why there were no “winners” in kachinuki competition as we usually think of them? Yes, you may have beaten contestant G, but you were only able to do it after he’d fought and beaten contestants C, D, E, and F, for example. This system made categories like winners and losers mostly meaningless. Egos bloated by championships never had a chance
