An Uchideshi Experience: Chapter Fourteen
Instructors, Brothers, and Blackbelts
My brother was in trouble, and needed some help.
Rod was five years older than I was and had been living in Las Vegas for the past four years. He moved there with a girlfriend, but after some difficulty holding down a job, and a hard breakup he didn’t see coming, Rod slipped into a depression. No one in the family knew what to do.
While living in Alaska, I volunteered to go to Las Vegas and check out the situation. I was prepared to move him if necessary. Where I didn’t know, but anywhere else had to be better than where he was at. I flew down and we spent some time together. I met his friends, and came away with the impression that things were on the upswing. But after moving to Monterey, I was informed that his situation had gotten worse.
Sensei and I had a tight relationship, and this was of great concern to me, so I kept him abreast of all the events as they occurred. Finally, I asked him for a favor. Could Rod come to Monterey and also become an uchideshi? If so, everything would work out in my mind. How could you not turn your life around in a dojo full of positive people, with required training to keep you in check? Beats Prozac in my opinion.
And, I owed him. He was popular guy in high school, I really admired him growing up, and he graciously suffered me bothering him and his friends. He babysat my little high school parties I threw at the house, and looking close to identical, gave me his ID for my sixteenth birthday.
Sensei agreed to give Rod a chance, and I relayed that message to my brother. It took a month or two for Rod to tie up loose ends and finally leave Las Vegas, but he did it, arriving at the dojo on a Sunday in April.
Carolynn and I were hanging out in the loft when we heard a knock at the front door. Peering through the loft window out front, I spied my brother standing on the sidewalk. He didn’t look healthy. At all. As Sensei later told him, “Rod, when I saw you for the first time, I saw death.”
But this was a new beginning, and after we embraced, I introduced him to Carolynn, unloaded his stuff, and got him settled in. Carolynn and I thought it would be a good idea if we showed him some techniques, you know, gave him an idea of what Seibukan Jujutsu was like. We thought kihon waza, the basic techniques of the Shodan level, would be the most logical place to start.
Carolynn and I dressed out, bowed to each other, and went through all 19 techniques at a moderate pace, while Rod watched from a chair. We bowed again after finishing, looked over at him, and saw what I can only describe as a scared individual. I think he was expecting a punching and kicking demonstration, and consequently, didn’t understand the grabs, pins, rolls and throws he was seeing. No matter, he’d understand soon enough. The next day, he was in regular classes, thrown into the mix, doing his best.
He hadn’t exercised in years. He hadn’t stretched for an even longer period of time. He was stiff and a little uncoordinated at first, but his body gradually awoke and remembered what it was like to be athletic. Rod was a seasoned basketball player and even competed at the Junior National level in volleyball, but that was years ago, back in high school.
Sensei met Rod briefly the next day before having to leave town. He may have been going to Japan, I’m not sure, but since he’d be gone for a number of weeks, instruction was turned over to several members of the staff.
Some of the more astute and sensitive staff members recognized the need for flexibility and patience when dealing with Rod because of his conditioning. If his punches and kicks lacked finesse, or his rolls were angular and rocky, they cut him some slack, since he was doing well by just keeping up in this accelerated learning program. They knew things would smooth out over time, most likely a short time because of the rapid progress uchideshi training had provided students in the past.
There was one exception to the roster of staff members, an instructor who didn’t cut him any slack at all. He’d be teaching class, leading the warm-up and rolling exercises, then after spotting Rod doing something “incorrectly,” the Instructor would single him out.
There’s no doubt that individualized attention is great, but not when you stop the class to explain for all ears what this person is doing wrong, then add the additional pressure of performance anxiety on a beginning student, who’s now forced to correct his mistake in front of everybody. Poor Rod was just trying to get through the class, and doing pretty well, all things considered. Living in the dojo, I’d seen a lot of beginners come and go, and seen much greater errors receive far less attention in my time. Consequently, I couldn’t believe he was isolating him like this.
Singling him out once or twice would have been helping him. Doing it every single class is humiliation under the thin guise of technical clarification. Clearly this was more for the benefit of the Instructor’s ego, since he now had an excuse to exhibit for the class his vast wealth of knowledge.
If he had done this to me, it would have been OK. I can take it, but seeing it done to somebody else, especially my brother, was almost unbearable. I boiled. The Instructor had done a lot of egotistical things in the past, but I bit my tongue and rode them out. This, on the other hand, really tested me. I thought I was going to explode in every class he taught, but somehow managed to keep it under wraps.
His past behaviors should have clued me in to his teaching style.
During the warm-ups of a Saturday morning class he was leading, while most people are still in the process of waking up, the Instructor decided our rolls weren’t quiet enough. Therefore, to really show us how tough his martial standards were, he took the class outside and had us do our entire ukemi sequence on the wooden deck.
Forward rolls, backward rolls, forward into backward rolls, forward sutemi (slapping with your hand at the bottom of a roll to absorb shock and shave speed), and backward sutemi were all dutifully executed. Luckily, the Instructor had enough sense to not have us do jumping rolls on the deck. It would have been certain death, especially since there were beginners in the class.
Aside from the bumps and bruises obviously incurred from this “exercise,” more than one student bled from deck splinters (one of the blackbelts got a large one in his ankle, which was brutal), and everybody’s white gi was soiled with black residue lifted from the wood. One student had just bought a new gi, and wore it for the first time that morning. Poor timing, brother. Poor timing.
Coming back inside the dojo, the Instructor continued to teach class. Having moved this black residue from the deck to our gis, we then transferred it from our uniforms to the main white mat. Class ran overtime by twenty or thirty minutes since we were scrubbing the mat on our hands and knees, trying to get it reasonably clean, as the Instructor supervised our efforts. Soon after, the Instructor took off, leaving behind the entire mess of buckets, mops, and towels.
And rightfully so. After all, that’s the kind of training we were paying good money for: to pick up after other people’s messes and tend to the wounds of their victims. To top it off, the Instructor bragged about the whole thing. Unbelievable.
Another incident involved a pretty girl who came to the dojo to observe a class. Shortly after she sat down, he set the class up with a technique from the kihon waza, and bowed off the mat to talk with her. Ten minutes went by, we were still doing the same damn technique, and the Instructor was long gone, captivated by his own conversation with this girl. After doing mae zemi dori thirty or forty times, students were conferring on changing techniques and whether or not the Instructor was ever coming back to us.
But he did. Twitterpated by the female presence, he clapped his hands and halted our progress in completing the basic 19 techniques. Usually we go all the way through, but there had been a sudden change of plans. Sending us back to the side, he left no doubt that it was now showtime. He demonstrated a few flashy techniques, which we worked on for a while, then in the last 10 minutes of class, he unveiled the showstopper.
He sat the class down and launched into a lecture on how ancient Ninjas would dress as beggars and “accidentally” bump into samurai. Crunching vital areas while falling on their targets, the assassins would inflict lethal wounds before stumbling away, leading onlookers to believe the samurai had just taken a tumble and died. Then, ending the suspense, he demonstrated the technique a couple of times before ending class.
Truly one of the worst things I’d ever sat through. Aside from the fact that this was a jujutsu class and he was disseminating ninjitsu propaganda, all students had to bear witness to his attempt at impressing this girl. Painfully egoic, obvious, awkward, and sad.
Carolynn and I talked to her after class, and she ended up joining the dojo. Of course, the Instructor was all over her after that, conning her into private lessons, and hounding her with puppy dog devotion. She wasn’t interested.
I was not alone in my observations or frustrations with the Instructor. Class after class, students would commiserate: “You know, after last time [the Instructor] taught, I didn’t think things could get worse. I was wrong.” One visiting uchideshi was subjected to such demeaning condescension during a one-on-one session that he finally thought to himself,
“That’s it. I’m going to have to break this guy’s arm. That’s the only way he’s going to respect me.”
He could have, too. That uchideshi had more belts, mat time, and fighting experience than the Instructor could ever imagine. Seems to be true whom God looks out for…
You might be wondering why Sensei was willing to put up with all this. First of all, from a physical standpoint, the Instructor was good. I have to say, he put his time in on the mat and was a very solid practitioner. Second, it was his dream to be a martial arts instructor, and Sensei was working with him on achieving that goal. Third, most of his ego trips were pulled while Sensei was out of town, so the only way Sensei would have known what was going on was feedback from students. But believe me, he got it.
I was getting ready for my Shodan test at the time Rod came into the dojo. There was a lot of pressure in this, much of it self-induced. First of all, I wanted to do a fantastic job, something I would be proud of, something indicative of the years I had spent in martial arts and my dedication as an uchideshi. Next, being the first long-term resident uchideshi of the system and Sensei’s pet project, I felt an outside expectation from those training at the dojo that this demonstration would be a very pure representation of what Seibukan Jujutsu was. I felt the onus was on me to fully exemplify what this art was capable of at the Shodan level.
Before any demonstration of a rank is performed, a pretest must be given by Sensei, a staff member, or senior yudansha (person with black belt rank). The pretest is really the test, allowing the student and teacher to fully pore over the requirements, without worrying about time restrictions, in a fairly relaxed atmosphere. The demonstration, what most people think of as the test, is really a public celebration of your skills as a martial artist. It is more rigidly structured, formalized, and intense from an emotional and physical perspective, because of the nerve-racking nature of public performance.
The pretest for my Shodan exam was a little unusual. Instead of just picking a night and spending a few hours going straight through the requirements, Sensei broke the pretest up into small sections over three intermittent nights, using whoever happened to be loitering after class as ukes. It was very informal, I passed everything, and the stage seemed set for a fun demonstration.
Later, Sensei informed me that there was some drama going on behind the scenes that I hadn’t been aware of. Apparently, the Instructor had a real problem with not being invited to the pretest. Never mind the fact that there was no official pretest done at a specified time, or that no one else had actually received a formal invitation. As he told Sensei in private meetings, he felt that he had given me more than anyone else, and basically, it was a slap in the face to not be invited.
In a way, I could understand his position, because he had helped me out by training with me when I first arrived at the dojo. But a lot of people trained with me, offered instruction, and helped me out, so what was with the possessiveness? I think it was his ego acting out again.
I could be wrong, but my impression was that in his mind, since he had helped me early on, that I was somehow “his,” somehow obligated to become the Instructor’s protégé, because of that early shot of instruction. But I wasn’t his, I was Sensei’s. I was his compatriot, not his student. I mean, I did come to Monterey to study under Sensei Toribio, and was living, eating, sleeping, and training in his dojo. I think that says something about where my loyalties were and should have been.
Of course the Instructor had a role in training me, but there were other staff members and training partners who had given me just as much, if not more, technical instruction. Sensei told him to talk to me about how he felt after my demonstration, not wanting to compound my stress level with yet another variable.
There’s another thing about going for the level of Shodan. Once you hit your Ikkyu, the rank immediately before, it’s customary to give something up, preferably something dear, as a sacrifice, a sign of renouncement. Some people give up drinking, smoking, caffeine, coffee, or another vice of their choice. I chose to give up my hair to fully realize the kind of asceticism I desired in this uchideshi experience.
Besides, I had wanted to do it for the last couple of years, but never found a good opportunity to do so. Working for the government, winter in Alaska, trying to get a girlfriend, all of these were handy excuses for not shaving it off. But now, living in a dojo, doing it as a symbol of devotion toward my goal, the timing was perfect. I had Sensei shave it with some clippers at his house. Later that night, I took off the final layer with a razor.
You might think, as I did, that having no hair would be a low-maintenance affair. You would be wrong, as I was. I went through a lot of razors and a lot of shaving cream trying to stay bald. Not having hot water at the dojo made things a little more difficult, but I managed to shave my scalp every other day. As a matter of fact, on the day of my Shodan test, during my lunch break, I was in the middle of maintaining my new style when something unexpected occurred.
I heard someone open the front door of the dojo, and some undistinguished, yet vaguely familiar voices drifted back into the bathroom. I decided to check it out.
Try to imagine it: I’m walking across the mat, barechested, one half of my head cleanly shaven while the other was covered in cream. Looking out on the visitors who had just walked in, I see my brother standing there with my Mom and Dad, flown in from Alaska.
This new image of mine didn’t match their last recollection. Mildly shocked, they hugged me. They had to. It’s a parent’s job to be mildly shocked and love you anyway.
A few weeks earlier, Rod had seen another member of the dojo do his Nidan demonstration, and my brother couldn’t believe how many friends and family members came out of the woodwork to support the student. He realized that demonstrations for dan rankings were really a big deal, and promptly got in touch with our parents to see if they could make it down. Obviously, they did, but to tell you the truth, I had mixed feelings about seeing them. Sure, I loved my parents, and realized this was a rare opportunity to share a very meaningful aspect of my life with them, but having them there stressed me out, and I was already stressed enough. They’re parents, that’s what they do: they stress you out. That’s part of their job, too.
Just lying in bed and visualizing different aspects of the demonstration got the butterflies going and my nervous system antsy. It was nothing more than a mental construct, but I knew that if I was getting this worked up just thinking about the demo, I was going to be in quite a state before the event. Nidan was going to be another year of hard work away; it was imperative that I do well, for my own sake. I wanted to step up to the plate when all eyes were on me and expectations were high. I knew if I could suck it up despite all the distractions and stresses in this microcosmic demonstration, I’d be able to use this time as a touchstone for coming through moments of crisis for the rest of my life. This was going to be my personal rite of passage, and I wanted to be at my best.
I did the regular routine for a demonstration: buying flowers for the shomen, doing a thorough misogi (cleansing) of the dojo, then scrubbing and bleaching the mat. I participated in all the regular classes that Thursday, then, during the black belt class, my initiation into the Seibukan dan rankings began.
A formal Seibukan Jujutsu demonstration is one of the most powerful vehicles of self-expression I have ever seen, in or out of the realm of martial arts. It recreates all the pressure and anxiety of competition, without an external rivalry. You’re facing yourself, and by putting yourself in the limelight, you’re choosing to test and discover who you really are under duress. Those that are on the mat participating in the test, under Sensei’s direction, will push you to your limits, but only in the spirit of support.
The first few demonstrations I witnessed blew me away in their emotional intensity. I’ve always been a sucker for man at his best, and these demonstrations have often spurred individuals to break previously impenetrable barriers, and in a sense, forced people to extend beyond themselves, adding a new dimension to their identity.
Each demonstration begins the same. Sensei claps his hands twice, signaling that it’s time to stop milling around and for students to take their respective positions according to rank, in a formal line at the edge of the mat. Sensei assumes his place at the head of the line, slightly offset, and barks, “Mokuso!” instantly quieting murmurs as students seated in seiza (kneeling position) engage in a silent meditation. After a minute or so, Sensei claps his hands, walks to the middle of the mat directly in line with the shomen, kneels, and leads us in bowing twice, clapping twice in unison, then bowing again. Sensei then turns to us and bows as we bow toward him, walks over to the side of the mat, and requests the assistance of the yudansha.
One by one, in quick succession, the yudansha stand and join Sensei at the side of the mat, leaving the testee alone. The demonstrator then knee-walks to the center of the mat, bows toward the shomen, turns, bows toward Sensei, turns, and bows to the yudansha on the mat. With a strong “Onegaishimasu (lit. please be kind to me),” the yudansha give their final blessing before the individual begins to demonstrate the physical requirements of that level.
The initiation has begun. At this point, the student is asked to start with ukemi, to illustrate his protective skills as a martial artist. Forward rolls, backward rolls, forward into backward rolls, sutemi, ushiro sutemi, extended rolls (jumping over three people), and ending with highfalls from a variety of techniques Sensei chooses to toss you with. The first highfall is usually from an explosive kotegaeshi off a straight punch, then a nihonage shoulder throw from a side strike, followed by the ancient Daito-Ryu technique of yama-arashi (mountain storm), made famous by Shiro Saigo while defending the honor of the Kodokan. Sensei may end it there or toss you again, but I’ve never seen him throw anybody more than four times for a demonstration. He may not even use any of the techniques I just mentioned, and do something totally unexpected. He’s like that. He reserves the right to surprise you.
After ukemi, the student and Sensei kneel, bow together, then kata is demonstrated. The kihon waza of the system, or 19 basic techniques, is the kata of the Shodan level. While I was performing the techniques, only one thought went through my mind, “God, he’s going hard.” The attacks were in such rapid succession, one quickly supplanted by another, that my mind shut off and my body automatically responded on its own. There was no time to ask what came next or to analyze the last technique. There was only that moment to respond with the appropriate answer to his attack, a physical payoff for the hours of kata practice on the mat.
Tai sabaki is the next activity. Sensei will call up a yudansha he feels will serve as an appropriate uke, and commands him to attack. The attacks come in a pattern, so the student should be prepared with an appropriate response. All too often, in the heat of the moment, memory fails and improvisation comes into play during sticky situations, which is fine. As long as he demonstrates the ability to end his techniques in a principle within the parameters of his level, and the opening movement off the line is appropriate to the attack, the student passes this section of the demonstration.
Reversals, knife, gun, and jo defenses, a 12-bokken suburi, 40-movement jo kata, katana waza (sword hilt defenses) and katana goshin jitsu (sword takeaways), all of these areas must be executed effectively under the duress of the demonstration. Like all weapons in the Shodan level, a set of basic attacks and defenses is learned, but during the demo, you don’t know how you’re going to be attacked. Plus, they use show blades, which nudges the experience closer to an actual assault. The knife is real, but not very sharp, except near the tip. The katana is really an iaito, with an aluminum blade instead of steel. Again, it’s not sharp along the edge (you can cut vegetables with them, but you’d really have to hack at an arm), but the tip is something to be wary of, since people have bled in demonstrations from both weapons.
Sensei is usually the one attacking with the sword, and when he gets that thing in his hand, watch out. Never trust Sensei with a weapon, never turn your back, and always be on guard, since the energy he projects at this time is dark and serious. He wants you to realize that this is not a game, and feel the pressure of facing a person with malevolent intentions. Fortunately for us, his control is excellent, and he is able to push the student into matching his intensity. I’ve held my breath more than once while he attacked other students, and thought for sure one guy was going to lose his eye during his Shodan demo with a sharp thrust from a pair of garden shears. Somehow though, under Sensei’s direction, it remains safe.
The final taijitsu hurdle, henka, awaits the student after the aforementioned sections have been completed. Two yudansha are called up, one strikes, the other one grabs, and they attack the demonstrator, who’s usually winded by now. After the student successfully defends himself he drops to his knees, two new attackers are chosen, and the demonstrator must execute techniques from that position, known as hantachi (half-standing) waza. After that’s done, a chair is brought out onto the mat, two new attackers step up to the plate, and the student defends himself while seated. Finally, only one section remains to be completed to end a Shodan demonstration: the secret weapon.
The secret weapon can be anything: a chain, hammer, butcher knife, whatever. Sensei is particularly fond of gardening implements, and has used a variety of them in the past. The rationale behind this section of the test is to instill in the student a lesson that no matter how well you may have prepared, you’ll still have to deal with the unexpected. It’s a carryover from his Ranger training, where the ability to improvise can mean the difference between life and death, for you and for others.
There was so much stress, expectation, drama, and exertion during my demonstration that it became a kind of transpersonal experience. Because I was on the spot, with only enough time to react to the attacks that were coming in, the “I” part of my psyche got lost for a while since I didn’t have time for self-analysis, critique or congratulations. A shodan demonstration is continuous crisis management: a flurry of activity you cope with to the best of your ability. At the same time, if the observers know who you are, and are familiar with the art, they can see the clear connections between your personality characteristics and how they manifest as physical techniques. It’s all there, if you know what to look for, and it’s fascinating how this kind of activity can put you in a space where you’re not “thinking,” which allows the real “you” to emerge.
I laid it all out on the line that night, and was satisfied with the effort. After I bowed out to the shomen, I kneeled before the line of yudansha and waited for each of them to say a few words and offer some feedback, as is customary. At the end of the line was my brother, the new uchideshi, kneeling in his yellow belt. Mudansha (non-black-belt ranks) do not usually speak at the demonstrations, but because this was a special case, Sensei allowed it. Rod bowed to me and tried to say something, but was overcome with emotion. Instead, he simply bowed again, which really said it all. Everyone responded to that. It was a heavy experience, but a pretty good night.
A couple of days after my demonstration, I had a breakfast meeting with the Instructor, at a restaurant close to the dojo, in response to his invitation. We engaged in a little chitchat before he stated his position: He thought I was a good martial artist, and wanted to apologize for whatever he had done wrong. I accepted his apology but told him that there was nothing to apologize for. He went on to say that he must have done something wrong, even though he didn’t know what it was, for me to not have invited him to my pre-test. I told him, quite frankly, that the thought of inviting him never came across my mind, just as I didn’t invite anyone else. He contested this, counting out the number of days I was able to tell him that something was going to go on, and so forth.
No real progress was being made here, so after a while, I told him that one of the reasons we hadn’t been getting along was the way he had treated my brother: repeatedly singling him out in class and demeaning him. The instructor contested this as well, stating that he was really only looking out for Rod’s interests as an uchideshi, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, I put it to him another way, although I really tried to phrase it as gently as I could. I told him that it could be construed that he was teaching classes out of ego, instead of the interests of the students, and he might want to take a look at that.
Although his expression didn’t outwardly change, I could see a steel wall drop internally, blocking out anything further I might say. Breakfast was essentially over at that point, so we paid the bill. Before we went our separate ways, he offered me a ride to the dojo. I thanked him but told him I’d walk. It was only three blocks away.
Although the story of the Instructor ends there, Rod’s saga went on. He continued to train after I left the dojo, and one year after he arrived in Monterey from Las Vegas, he tested for his Shodan. Mom and Dad flew down from Alaska, and there was a big turnout that night to support him. It was a good test, and I was strangely unemotional through the whole thing. Maybe it’s because, as an uchideshi, you’re so overprepared for these things that I didn’t fear for him. Later on it hit me, realizing what an accomplishment it was to have come from a place in his life like he did, and achieve a goal that was neither easy nor certain. He even outdid me, living in the dojo 16 months.
Even though he’s not as addicted or obsessive as I am when it comes to martial arts, the year he spent as an uchideshi has given him a strong base of martial skills that will serve him for the rest of his life. But that’s not the real gift Sensei gave him by offering the opportunity to come and live in Monterey. The real gift granted was that now my brother and I can communicate in a different way, in another language, a language based on energy, motion, position, and timing. We have another common interest to increase our interactions, and another forum in which we can formulate goals and celebrate accomplishments.
Maybe this is what it’s all about. Maybe martial arts are really about bringing people together, instead of learning how to fight. Maybe. I’m not sure if the aim of martial arts should be forming friends and linking families instead of learning techniques, but I can’t deny it’s a worthy goal. It brought my family together, if only for a while, and that’s a technique I have yet to learn.