Kaso Teki getting in the way

"We talk about kaso teki a lot because talking about our imaginary enemy doesn’t sound as cool." 

Peter Boylan, 2015

Before reading this I would like to direct your attention to two other websites that mention this subject:

• http://budobum.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-problem-of-kasso-teki.html
  
• https://www.yaegaki-kai.be/see-and-cut-an-invisible-opponent/ 

These wonderful articles are published by Peter Boylan and Yuki Kanto/Michael Simonini (the latter being a translation from the book "Shinsa-In-No-Me" and is an article written by Ueno Satanori Sensei, Hanshi 8th Dan Iaido). I think it is important that they are read first as I want to build on them slightly...

Last week at the end of a Zoom Iaido class I was talking with our budo friends about the necessity of thinking about kaso teki in both a grading and in general training. It took me a few minutes to dredge up all the memories that I had about people talking and teaching things referring to kaso teki. They were very few and far between to be honest. Well, it gets talked about frequently but rarely to any degree of detail or depth.

In fact even doing a trawl of the internet only came up with the above two articles, almost all other links were just one-line definitions of it. The ZNKR Referees Manual also contains this clause:

I could find nothing the in the range of other budo books that I own; nothing by Donn Draeger, Dianne Skoss, Nicklaus Suino, Karl Friday etc.

 Let's have a look at the detailed definition:

仮想 - Kasou Imagination, supposition, virtual, potential (enemy)

敵 - Teki Opponent, rival, adversary

So the question being discussed after the Iaido class was, how much attention and focus do we need to give to kaso teki? All of the people in this discussion were planning to take a range of examinations in the near future from 4th dan to 6th dan.

My response at the time was quite garbled but I will try here to express my opinion on this based purely on my own experience with training in Iaido.

Firstly, I believe that in my experience we pay a bit too much attention to the more "ethereal" aspects of budo in comparison with the physical and technical. I'm not suggesting that these aspects are not important, they surely are, but I think they get too much airtime. These aspects include Zanshin, Kigurai, Metsuke, Kaso Teki. The reason why I think they get more attention than they deserve is very simple - they are not difficult to do if you pay them just a small amount of attention. To be flippant about this I am pretty sure that I could train anyone, during a one-day training session, to represent convincingly all of these aspects. The first thing to note about them is that one can do them sincerely or one can fake them and I challenge anyone to be able to even identify the difference...

• Zanshin - "Do the final part of the kata much slower like you're moving through mud except for any bits where you need to make the sword move quickly like in chiburi and noto."
• Kigurai - "Keep your back and neck straight so that you look like a peacock and try to look down your nose. Closing your eyes slightly also helps."
• Metsuke - "Look in the direction that I tell you and after cutting the final enemy then look down slightly."
• Kaso Teki - "Make the cuts in the right direction and position."

In fact the last one, Kaso Teki, is perhaps the only one that requires some coordination and skill with the sword. 

Now, what really is the difference between faking these aspects and doing them sincerely? Can you really look into another person's mind and see if they have true belief and sincerity about these aspects? Well, maybe a bit, but not reliably and how would you know?

My humble opinion is that these are products of dedicated physical, but mindful, training. Patching them on like some go-faster stripes on the side of a car doesn't necessarily improve the quality of the Iaido. Let's take Zanshin as an example. As I previously said, you could "fake" Zanshin by doing the end of the kata considerably slower (although how that would work with Okuden I'm not sure). But of course what you should be demonstrating is a degree of care and attention to your surroundings at the theoretical end of a kata. But again I ask, how would you tell the difference between faking it and a sincere expression? I think a good answer might be, train yourself to a degree where you might actually survive to the end of a theoretical fight, then put this into action in a kata and then you might, kind of, sort of,well, umm...feel Zanshin.

I'm laboring this point because I have heard in the past, more than a few people saying

"I must have done the kata well because I can visualize all the dead enemies around me."

...can you see the pointlessness of that statement? What if my response was 

"Oh that's weird, because I see three people all standing smugly over your eviscerated corpse."

It doesn't really lead anywhere does it? We are having an unfalsifiable argument.

So, getting back to the Kaso Teki discussion. I now stand on the shoulders of the previous two articles and the one excerpt and state my opinion as:

An acceptable level of performance in showing Kaso Teki is doing the technical aspects of the form with the correct geometry and appropriate tempo along with looking in the right direction so that the technical form would be effective and represent what the exponent would almost certainly be doing in that combative situation dictated by the logic and situation of the kata.

I sincerely think that anything beyond this, any inner visualization of the enemy in order to intensify the feeling of the form is entirely personal to the exponent. If this goes to an excessive degree though then it is likely that the exponent will enter a zone of self-delusion concerning the effectiveness of their performance. As Kusama Sensei has said at a number of European seminars (where I had to stifle my embarrassment while translating) 

"If you do form repetition without attention to technical detail then this is just masturbation." 

So from my opinion in bold above, if one removes reference to technical correctness, timing and metsuke (which are considered as separate necessities) ...there isn't much left really is there? It's almost like "Kaso Teki" becomes a justification and metric for doing the form correctly. 

When it comes down to it, isn't it just a useful tool for establishing if you're doing the form correctly? To borrow an understanding from Peter Boylan's post, isn't it just a temporary alternative to not having a real partner there against whom to establish if you're being accurate with your attacks?

Sure, you can visualize even a moving opponent in order to understand the timing and speed that you need in order to win a particular moment (the two kirioroshi in Morotezuki come to mind here; many people believe the opponents are static; Ishido Sensei has in the past demonstrated that they are not and what you really have to do in order to win each encounter). 

Where I think the monsters live though is:

• Justifying to yourself that your technique must be superior because your Kaso Teki reacted appropriately to your attack (e.g. they died - dramatically).
• Pretending that you can see someone else's Kaso Teki based on something other than the physical performance (i.e. technical correctness, accuracy, metsuke and appropriate use of speed, power and timing) of their form.
  

During this rather long lockdown period, it has been something of a blessing for me as the restriction that Zoom sessions have on being able to coach effectively has meant that I have been doing far more training myself than I usually would. During some really nice sessions with the Loki-Ryu (!) crowd on Sunday mornings, I have been able to completely focus on my own training. For ZNKR training I have been mostly doing them slowly and methodically, analysing how techniques respond to small changes in effort and timing. On a few occasions I have taken my foot off the brake and allowed myself to try to do the form as if it were a real fight. Even at these times, I don't find dedicating lots of brain power into literally visualizing a person there does anything to improve the performance. For all the mental processes going on in ones brain, all the little plates that need to be kept spinning, there are far more useful and effective ones to dedicate resources to than trying to paint a picture of a ninja/ronin/samyoooorai in my head. Even sensing how ones centre of mass is moving and changing while stepping is far more rewarding and improving than doing this kind of deep visualization of an enemy. I can see if my cuts are straight and I can develop good cutting technology without having to think about an organic target.

I am passionate about this because I think that Iaido, being a generally solo training art, already has a susceptibility to lead to self-delusion and...well...a kind of "legal in public" masturbation. Too much theatre (which I have always been pretty talented at) is not a good thing for long term and consistent development of one's Iaido. At some point you have to be honest and ask yourself if your technique is as good as you imagine it is.

 

 

Hatsunuki: Ryuto, Yokogumo and Iwanami

Well I'm covering a couple of sessions now and still keeping on a koryu theme. I am finding lots of things interesting to work on the more time I spend delving into the various koryu kata but I have been keeping myself busy with Shoden and Chuden recently.

I focused on Ryuto recently, trying to do it by a factor of 10 against other forms as I realise it really is a form that requires some kata mileage in order to be good at it. Like most other forms it's performance is related to leg power as the entire speed is dependant on getting up quickly. The bits I am trying to focus on in particular are:

• Ensuring that the draw is done with a relaxed attitude so that the sword glides out smoothly instead of it being snatched. Snatching the sword tends to cause the action to stop at it's conclusion which then halts the form. By drawing smoothly the draw leads nicely into the block without pause.
• Getting the weight accurately balanced on the knees at the end of the draw so that the left foot can quickly be brought into position and action.
• Trying not to spend too much time posing once the stand has taken place and the blocking sword brought out of the way. At the same time I don't want this to be a rushed moment.
• Ensuring the body is turned to face the opponent before stepping in to cut.
• Being careful not to reach for the sword as the cut takes place but to rather let the left hand catch the sword at the end of the moment.

I have tried to emulate Ishido Sensei's timing of "tatum-tum" but it is very difficult. It might be better for me to do the form less sharply and more gracefully given my size but I still want to be able to do it quickly. I think I have written this all before in a previous post.

I want to jump forwards to Iwanami now. I train in guilt that I always tend to skip this kata a little bit, not doing it more than once or twice compared to the grating I have been giving the other Chuden katas. I'm not sure why I had this reluctance but it's probably to do with the difficulty I have in controlling my weight distribution and being able to slide back cleanly and rapidly. Still, I decided last week to give this one a bit more attention and set to work on it. The first thing I was steered to do (in fact this bit of advice came a long way back) was to try to get the body moving back without the whole body coming up first. After that it is a case of nice timing as there is a propensity to do this form quickly but without much in the way of meaning. It's difficult to write about the mental block I have around doing the sweeping cut but it's probably hesitance about doing something quite strenuous like this cut while both feet spend a bit of time off the floor. Perhaps I don't understand that bit properly...

Jumping back now to Yokogumo. I like this kata and I think it probably has a longer history than Shohatto and would thus be a primal seed of all the seated kata. Chuden, being shorter in distance and timing than Shoden, tends to move quite quickly and I have been aware that Yokogumo may well lend itself to speed training in iaido. To this end, and on the basis that generally my iaido is a bit sluggish due to my size, I have decided to make this form "one of my own". By this I mean, I am putting a little bit of me into the version of this that I want to do. In my opinion (only), the rapidity of the form is created thus:

• The sword is drawn approximately half way out before the hips rise (although they are tensed while the sword is moving to lend themselves to a quick movement forwards).
• The last half of the draw and the nukitsuke is performed at the same time as the hips rising and moving forwards into quite a quick draw.
• At the end of nukitsuke, the feeling in the feet and lower body is to be pushing the body forwards into the kirioroshi. This doesn't have anything more than a very subtle effect on the posture, most of the contrast is felt internally.
• The furikaburi footwork is similar to Seitei mae and should be done simultaneously with the sword-work of furikaburi and the following kirioroshi. It should really be done quickly.

These last two points are the ones I was working on last night in particular. The diagram below sort of shows what I mean in terms of the tension and position after nukitsuke:

In Shohatto, even if nukitsuke is created with a forward feeling of the body into the draw, the final position should be quite well centred and upright. The rear foot is gently pushing back, the knee is gently balanced into the floor and the front foot is gently pushing forwards.

In contrast to this, I feel, the feeling in the body is slightly more forwards. This is more so in the lower body where the rear foot is quite strongly pushing back, the body weight positioned so that the rear knee inclines some force down and back and the front foot being pushed strongly forwards.

At this point in Yokogumo, to create a fast furikaburi-kirioshi action, the tension is released in the lower limbs and hips and the body quickly moves forwards and under the sword as it is raised and quickly brought down. I spend quite a few goes just practicing this intermediate sequence and it can become very fast after a while.

I think this is something I am going to go onto practice a bit more in the next few weeks as it has the propensity to become either something quite nice or at least be good for my development of lower body strength.

Digging up files

I was so taken aback by the number of people that were interested in my blog that I thought I would share some files I used to help me with my 5th dan training.

I had written a Seishinkan Dojo Members Pack article on progressive training after witnessing the fairly slow lack of progress from one of our members who was trying very hard to pass their grades and I tried to study and understand what was happening. I did some research on learning patterns and wrote the chapter linked below:

http://www.4shared.com/file/220418246/55f878fd/Chapter_9_Progressive_Training.html

I can't remember if we ever got this into the members pack but it now forms part of the BKA Level 2 Coaching Course.

I have to be honest now about my geekiness and admit that quite a lot of the above chapter was to justify me using mathematical analysis (in it's simplest form) to judge my own progress in preparing for 5th dan. As the article indicates I watched my previous weeks embu on video on Wednesday nights after training and tried to score my performance to see what elements were progressing, which were getting worse and which needed attention. I have attached this on the link below, if you can be bothered to have a look don't expect anything revelationary...

http://www.4shared.com/file/220421340/87f182a5/Iaido_progress_log.html

In fact I only managed to log three lots of embu before I got bored of scoring it so pedantically. However I think practicing to evaluate to such fine detail gave me a bit of a skill in doing it much more generally and pinpointing things about my performance that I should work on. I do however still think that the spreadsheet is a good way of of improving performance if one is either short of feedback opportunities or doesn't have much time to prepare for their grading. It's great for prioritising your training focus and ensuring that you don't end up doing a fantastic Mae followed by a pathetic Ukenagashi.



Anyway, the weekend is nearly here and I hope to be going training to Hilary's tomorrow and get a bit of time just working on my own stuff. I must also remember to look into booking a squash court out for myself somewhere locally to do some solo practice. Everyone else seems to do this except me...

I should also just add that very few of the photos I am posting on this blog are recent, they are mainly just to break up the text a bit.

Iaido 6th Dan Training Session 1

I should add here the purpose of this blog. At the moment it is to be something of a training diary for my 6th dan Iaido grading which I am due to take in the UK in summer 2011. It's still a year and a half away but I really want to make sure that my "transition" to 6th dan has a meaning and a tangible change (hopefully for the better).

My own rules for this blog are:

1. To be honest; to avoid arrogant stances as well as insincere humility.
2. To not write disrectful things about other people...unless they really deserve it and I would say it to their face.
3. For it to be readable for any geeks who happen to come across this blog.

Anyway down to business...

I set in my own mind to actively start my 6th dan iaido training last night at our regular Wednesday practice. Now the weather is a little bit better I am trying to strengthen up my arms as well as improve my fitness by going out in the garden and doing 75 cuts left and right with a suburito. I think up to now my home training has focussed on embedding the Jodo koryu curriculum in my mind but I think I now have to pay more that the slightly casual level of attention to Iaido.

Thinking back to my 5th dan Iaido grading preparation I had the luxury of being able to be left alone and asking Tony Brocklebank, one of the dojo seniors, to video my embu nearly on a weekly basis for me to take home and study in huge amounts of detail even to the extent of plotting my perceived progress in the various elements of the kata on a spreadsheet. I don't think I will have as much free time to do that now so I must ensure that every moment of training time is used properly.

My first question to my sensei, Chris Mansfield, last night was to ask what was the first kata he recommended for my first koryu form. As I expected he said for me to do Shohatto, the best and most appropriate kata for a Shinden iaidoka doing an Iaido embu.



I worked on trying to improve my stability during this session. Sensei talked to me for quite a while about the difference between 6th dan and 5th dan and I remember the thing he emphasised most was having a clear understanding and contrast of the "when" factor i.e. timing of the kata. He made me do some cutting exercises to work out how making conscious decision on cutting didn't always work and in fact having a "feeling" of preparation would lead into a well timed cut.

We also looked at my performance of Yukizure. Again he noted that my preparation was late and that the whole kata could be sharpened up by quietly preparing earlier and then making the entire first cut happen in one cohesive, well-timed movement. I then had to focus on metsuke for the second cut as well as sharpening and shortening this movement. Having just practiced this outside I feel at the moment that I should avoid the "inashi" action and focus on two distinct cuts instead but linking them with good awareness and metsuke.

So anyway, that's probably enough for this first posting although I would like to write down here my current choice candidates for my three koryu:

1. Shohatto - a must have for the first kata
   
2. Ukigumo - a nice long flowing kata with opportunities for rhythmic changes
   
3. Yukizure - a nice flash sharp kata showing a slight penetration into oku
   
4. Towaki/Tozume - as Yukizure
   
5. Ukenagashi (seme version) - I feel I can do this particular version quite well
6. Oroshi - again a nice flowing kata with a potential for really hamming it up!
7. Toraissoku - this would be to challenge me to do this kata as well as Harry Jones or my sensei can do it

In terms of those seiteigata that I need to work on:

1. Ushiro - to sort out my ochiburi
2. Ukenagashi - just coz. I need to work on keeping the thing sharp but removing busy'ness
3. Tsukaate - gotta get my hikinuki working better.
4. Kesagiri - because it's just difficult
5. Soetezuki - have to work on making this a kodansha level kata regarding timing of the thrust.
6. Sogiri - it's likely to be a shiteiwaza

More later...