by Diane Skoss
For many
women, self-defense is at least one reason for taking up a martial art, and so
most, at least in my experience, choose an unarmed art such as aikido, karate,
or judo (I’m confining myself to Japanese arts because that is where my
experience lies; I’ll leave it to exponents of the arts of other countries to
see if any of these observations hold true for them). Weapons arts that include
kata practiced in pairs such as kendo, naginata, or jodo are not usually seen as
vehicles for learning self-defense — after all, what good is knowing how to
defend yourself with a seven-foot-long naginata if you are unlikely to be
carrying it with you all the time?
Good
teachers in any of the modern unarmed Japanese martial ways know better than to
promise female students instant, fool-proof defense techniques; I used to
explain that the real value of aikido was less in teaching skills that enable
you to fight back than in inculcating a posture and way of moving that
discourages attack, since studies have shown that victims are often carefully
selected for their apparent vulnerability. Technical proficiency, on the other
hand, takes years and a serious commitment to training to develop.
You’d
imagine then that a fourth dan with over ten years in aikido and a year or so of
judo, would feel reasonably secure in her skills. Well, I sure didn’t! Faced
with the realization that the longer I trained the greater my responsibility to
share some of what I had learned with other women, I had to ruthlessly assess my
own abilities. What I discovered was doubt; not the little niggling variety, but
the sort so large as to be almost certainty — if push came to shove, I simply
did not know what I would do or how I would fare (despite my experiences in
actual match training). How, I wondered, had I failed in my training?
Five years
later, and after seven years in weapons arts (jukendo, tankendo, jojutsu, and
naginatajutsu), I think I’ve found an answer, at least for myself. It was not
I who had failed in my training, but my training that had failed me. For a
number of reasons, unarmed training hasn’t been nearly as useful as weapons
training in teaching me the skills I’d need to actually defend myself. Today,
I am utterly confident that if I were attacked I could and would act, with a
reasonable measure of success, to defend myself. 1
So why did
weapons arts work so much better for me? Well, one thing that I learned in my
aikido training was that despite the claims of the instructors (“See, the weak
can overcome the strong”), when training with men of a similar or higher
level, power does count. A lot. Of course, our ultimate goal is to “release”
general physical power and to rely instead on the relaxed, precise application
of the right amount of force from the right direction in the right place at the
right time. The trick is to learn how. Women often find this initially easier to
achieve than men, since our self-images are less likely to be bound up with our
actual physical strength, but even though we are doing it “right” we often
find that we still can’t truly succeed in applying unarmed techniques on
larger, equally skilled men.
This
discrepancy in power, especially when we know we are doing it “better” than
the guys, can be extremely frustrating. All we learn is that when push comes to
shove, you’ve got to be very, very good indeed to overcome a stronger
opponent. This doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in one’s self-defense
skills.
The
constant struggle against power and frustration can also sidetrack one from the
study of the subtle details that are the real key to useful defense skills, and
we get wrapped up in the notion of “making” techniques work. Looking back on
my years in aikido, I find that what I learned were some magnificent and often
beautiful patterns of movement that I could easily apply to someone less skilled
or smaller than myself. But I lacked a thoroughly internalized vocabulary of
principles that could be instantly shuffled and recast to respond to any
situation and any opponent. I believe this is one of the most significant
advantages to be gained from training in weapons arts.
So how
does this work? First of all, any weapon is a great equalizer, a “force
multiplier.” All of a sudden, differences in reach, weight, and height,
don’t matter as much, given the constant of the weapon. Women with weapons can
easily be as strong as men. It doesn’t take much muscle power to make a lethal
strike with a jo; it does take an understanding of what I call “patterns of
principle.”
Although
these principles of relaxation, observation, distancing, initiative, line and
trajectory, timing, balance, targeting, and volition were talked about to
varying degrees in the aikido dojo I have trained in, what we actually practiced
most of the time were patterns of movement. I have found patterns of principle
much easier to actually see, feel, and analyze in weapons training. The clarity
of the trajectory of a rapidly moving weapon seems especially suited to
demonstrate principle.
For
example, when facing an opponent who is wielding a jo, it is easy to see who
controls the centerline. The location of the leading end of my opponent’s jo
in relation to my body is clear; if it is even a fraction of a centimeter off, I
may well be able to slip past the weapon and drive my own attack home. This is,
of course, also entirely true when facing an unarmed opponent, but accurate
perception of that line, which is far less obvious, requires a significant
amount of training experience.
Distancing
and timing, or maai, is also easier to see and internalize when working
with weapons, especially those of sword length and longer. One is physically
farther from the opponent at the critical combative engagement distance, which
is a clearly defined, visible, and relatively consistent relationship between
the ends of the opposed weapons. In unarmed arts maai is defined by the relative
reach (and speed) of the opponent and varies dramatically from encounter to
encounter; it can take years to learn to assess in the very short amount of time
it takes to close the distance. While there are still variations in reach based
on individual body size and proportions when using weapons, they are generally
offset by the constant of the length of the weapon itself and the fact that it
simply takes more time to cover the greater distance.
Learning
to make accurate judgments can then be refined by working with weapons in
various combinations, sometimes with radically different inherent maai, such as
when using a kusarigama against a naginata, or a tanken against a juken. Once
your understanding of the relationship between a specific weapon and maai
becomes intuitive, it is not particularly difficult to adapt to unfamiliar
situations. In my experience, however, the constant variation of distance in
unarmed arts makes it much more difficult to achieve a “feel” for maai. It
can also result in inappropriate standardization “for teaching purposes”
that often leads to a rigid belief that “this technique can only be done this
one correct way” — a position entirely antithetical to learning principles
and how to apply them.
Observation
skills are also more quickly and keenly sharpened in weapons training, in my
experience. There’s nothing like the prospect of a sword connecting with your
forehead or a nine-foot-long spear punching you in the ribs to encourage you to
pay close attention to every nuance of an opponent’s moves. The danger of
striking and injuring bystanders (or being hit while waiting for one’s turn to
train) also increases when using weapons. Sensible practitioners quickly develop
three-hundred-sixty-degree antennae. Although awareness is an essential part of
all the unarmed training I’ve ever seen, the consequences of failure have
always struck me as being more much dramatic in weapons arts.
I’m not
foolhardy enough to argue that ALL useful self-defense principles are more
easily learned in weapons training — obviously, off-balancing (kuzushi)
is studied in much greater depth in judo or aikido. Nor do I advocate relying
only on weapons training — we all need to know how to fight on the ground and
should have at least rudimentary grappling skills. What I do propose is that a
few years of good weapons training before taking up an unarmed art might well
shorten the time it takes for women (or men, for that matter) to reach a level
where they can confidently rely on their skills for self-defense.
1
Since I first wrote this article, I’ve actually had a chance to verify one
important aspect of this. At the 1997 Meiji Shrine Demonstration in November, I
demonstrated Toda-ha Buko-ryu naginatajutsu. On the first technique, my foot
slipped on the grass and I sat down. My only thought was, “Gotta get out of
here quick, ’cause this is a bad place to be.” I scrambled up and out from
under the descending cut and countered with a cut of my own. While the situation
was not one of life or death, my reaction did demonstrate an ability to act
appropriately and without delay, both important elements of dealing with a real
attack.
This
article first appeared in Bugeisha
#4, Winter 1997. Copyright 1997 by Diane Skoss. All rights reserved. Used here
by permission of the author and Koryu.com.