Kage (6 page)

drag yourself forward and can’t move fast enough or far enough

to be effective. In years past, when Yamashita demonstrated the

technique, it looked as if he was being jerked across the floor by

an invisible wire: a feral gnome bent on your destruction. His

posture was impeccable, and his hips drove him forward while

his legs worked smoothly together to close the gap between

him and his opponent, his eyes intent and his sword boring in

for the kill.

The visual memory of that attack burns in my brain like

the afterimage of a lighting flash. I work every day to replicate

it. That day, I had demonstrated the basic idea and a less ter-

rifying version of the move itself to the men and women at the

seminar. They watched me coldly, nodding as I shot across the

floor. I could see the thought flash across their eyes:
if
he can do

it, I can
. Then I began what for those people was probably one

of the most unpleasant hours of their lives. Because the only

way to begin to learn something like this is through repetition.

22

Kage

I had them lurch back and forth across the
dojo
floor. The

line of trainees completed the awkward trip. “Good,” I com-

mented flatly. “Again.” They churned across the floor once

more. When they got back, more than a few began to stand to

take some of the strain off their legs. I shook my head but didn’t

say a word, just swept my arm back in the direction that they

had come. Off they went.

After thirty minutes or so, their faces were flushed with

effort, their palms sweaty on the handle of their wooden train-

ing swords. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sarah blow a

strand of her fine brown hair away from her eyes, draw a focus-

ing breath, and stoically continue. She needed no prodding.

Breath control was second nature to most of these people,

but even so I heard some gasps. I knew that their leg muscles

felt as if they were on fire. But I kept them at it. It wasn’t just

that as long as they did this exercise I didn’t have to worry

about what else they might try to pull on me. It was because

my teacher and his teachers before him and now, I suppose,

even I, believed that the best learning takes place at the white

hot juncture where the body and mind are thoroughly fatigued.

And as I looked at the trainees, I sensed that some of them were

starting to make the move their own.

That’s
what training in the martial arts is about.

After a few more tortuous minutes, I called a break. I

wanted to burn these people, not break them. They stood up

gladly and walked around the room, blotting their foreheads

with their sleeves, waiting for the muscle cramps to ebb a bit. I

edged over to Sarah.

“How’s it going?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know what you had planned for later tonight, Burke,

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John Donohue

but dancing is definitely out of the question.” She smiled.

“The Irish don’t dance,” I informed her.

“Come on,” she protested, “I’ve seen those girls in those

fancy little dresses jumping around. What’s it called?” I had

recently taken Sarah to a
feis,
a festival that featured Irish step

dancing, bagpipes, and other forms of Celtic torture.

“Step dancing,” I told her. She nodded silently at my

answer, as if her point were made. “But did you ever notice,” I

continued, “that when they dance, they keep their arms pinned

to their sides?”

“So?”

“That’s because in the old days, when the English lords

would make the peasants dance, the Irish knew that they had

to do it, but they decided that they would refuse to enjoy it.”

Sarah looked me up and down, quietly pensive. “It explains

so much about you, Burke,” she concluded. Then I saw the

laughter in her eye and knew I was being teased.

The seminar wound its way through the morning. We

worked hard with
bokken
, the oak swords that are the basic

training weapon here. We also did some empty-hand tech-

niques, stressing joint locks and pressure point techniques that

made the nerves jangle. It wasn’t totally new stuff to most people

in the room—trainees in arts like
iaido
or
aikido
or
kendo
can see some faint hint of their styles in what Yamashita does. But

there’s a difference: a harder edge, a more concise motion—it’s

difficult to explain in words. To see it revealed clearly, you have

to experience it. Which can be a problem. In the
Yamashita-ha

Itto Ryu,
my master’s system, a full-bore demonstration usually

leaves someone moaning on the ground.

The demo had to come eventually, of course. It was what

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Kage

they were all really here for. They’d heard about Yamashita; they

wanted to see the real deal. But so far, all they got was me. I

could tell it was bugging them. Yamashita Sensei was there,

of course. He drifted along the edges of the room, silent and

contained, but you could feel him and sense his energy. Martial

artists at a certain level of training can pick up the psycho-

kinetic energy called
ki
. We all emit
ki
, but it viscerally pulses

off someone like my teacher. You can suppress it somewhat or,

if you’re really good (and Yamashita is) you can ramp up the

energy projection until even the dimmest pupil can feel it.

He was doing it on purpose.

As the men and women here today trained, they felt the

pulse of Yamashita’s
ki,
his energy, washing over them. Yet he

stayed in the background, content to let me run the class. And

what did they sense from me? I’m not sure. Most of them were

probably too caught up in trying to master what I was showing

them, in trying to look good in front of Yamashita. That kind

of thing tends to dim peripheral awareness. In any event, they

were glancing occasionally between the two of us as if com-

paring. Average looking white guy versus Asian master whose

energy field was pinging off them like sonar. Who would you

watch?

Eventually, Yamashita looked at me and nodded. It used to

be that he gave me a great deal of verbal direction. He said he

was compensating for the damage done to me by all that study-

ing for my Ph.D. in Asian History. He didn’t need to say much

to me anymore.

I called the class to order. They sunk attentively to the left

knee, which permits everyone to see the instructor and hear

his words. “OK,” I said. “You’re looking good.” Many of them

looked like they had been soaked with a garden hose, but they

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John Donohue

were all hanging in there. I liked that. “Relax for a minute.”

They settled in a rough circle around me and sat with crossed

legs on the hard floor.

“We’ve been working this morning on various things—

movement, sword work, some nerve points. In lots of ways,

it’s a sampling of a continuum of aspects in the system we train

in here.” I winced inwardly at the word
continuum.
Over the

years, I’ve tried to lose some of my pointy-headedness, but I

guess Yamashita is right—I
have
been damaged. I saw one guy

smirk slightly at my choice of words. I didn’t respond to it, but

an idea was forming in the back of my mind.

“Most modern martial arts forms tend to focus their train-

ing on a limited range of techniques,” I told them. It was noth-

ing new to them. I could see that in their eyes. “At the higher

level—where many of you are—you’ve got to expand your prac-

tice to include the integration of other techniques, other per-

spectives.” I held up my hands, fingers splayed, and then joined

my hands together. “Meld them.” I began to walk around the

circle a bit, making some eye contact with individuals.

“The exercise we practiced this morning that was based on

mae,”
I continued, “is a case in point. Depending on how you

play it, it’s got elements of sword-drawing and weapons use, of

aikido-
like entering techniques, and then the potential for an

almost limitless series of applications using strikes or locks or

throws.” I watched them carefully as I spoke. There’s a well-

honored dictum in the martial arts world that people who

talk about technique can rarely
do
technique. First, I had used

an egghead word like continuum. Now I was going on and

on, making some points that had to be patently obvious to

people with their experience. So I watched their eyes. Some

26

Kage

were expressionless, but I saw one guy—the same person who

had smirked—looking at me with just the type of aggressive

skepticism that I needed.

“Now let’s take a look at the application, OK?” I saw a few

satisfied nods around the circle and got the message—
it’s about

time.
When I gestured to my smirking friend, he rose eagerly to

his feet in a smooth, powerful motion. His look told me that he

had been waiting for something like this all day.

I made the rest of them back up and widen the circle. There

was no telling how this would go. My opponent and I sat about

one and a half meters apart from each other, just out of attack

distance. As we settled down into the formal sitting position

known as
seiza,
I held up my hand. “You want to wear
kote?
”

I asked my opponent. They’re the padded mitts that protect

the hands and wrist in arts like
kendo
. They come in handy

sometimes.

He looked at me pointedly. “I don’t see you wearing any.”

I nodded.

He smiled tightly. “I’m fine, then.” He was probably in his

late twenties. His hair was cut short and you could see power-

ful cords of muscle anchoring his head to his neck. This guy

was built. He was also taller than I was—not a surprise, since

most men are. He thought that when I offered the
kote
that

I was asking him a question. Maybe he thought I was being

overly conscientious. Or perhaps I was trying to needle him.

There was probably some aspect of all these things at work.

Mostly, however, I was just playing for time, getting a good

look at him, registering the length of his arms and legs, and

figuring out my options. It wasn’t a particularly fair tactic. It’s

what Yamashita calls
heiho—
strategy.

We took our places and prepared. Usually, the senior person

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John Donohue

serves as attacker, but since I was demonstrating the full appli-

cation of the technique, my partner would start. We sat for a

moment, breathing quietly, wooden swords at our left sides.

The man sitting across from me on the floor seemed calm.

Confident. Contained.

His sword began to move. I had been watching him and the

others all morning. They were all pretty good. So I knew that if

I lost the initiative here, his sword would have swept across me.

At his first twitch, I had already begun to move.

My
bokken
swept in an arc across his face, forcing him to

pull back. I scrambled forward in the crouch we had practiced

and he shot up and backwards to avoid the pressure I was

bringing to bear. This much was standard, almost scripted, and

everyone in that room expected it. But now the interesting stuff

was going to happen.

Because once my opponent stood up and got slightly out of

range of my sword tip, he had a variety of options. His attack

could come in many forms. The trick in doing something like

this wasn’t just in mastering the awkward series of scrambling

motions we had practiced, it was in being able to cope with

what would happen once your moves brought you into the

radius of your opponent’s weapon. Like now.

I tried not to give him the option to think too much by

continuing to jerk myself forward in that low crouch, my sword

seeking a target. He parried and backpedaled, and I could see

the awareness in his eyes, his realization that whatever he was

going to do would have to be lightning quick, because I was

moving in, and if he didn’t do something I was going to churn

right through him.

He moved slightly to his right as I came forward and he

snapped his sword down at my left shoulder in a quick, hard

28

Kage

motion. I whirled in toward his blade, simultaneously mov-

ing my left shoulder out of range and bringing my own sword

around to beat down his weapon. The wood shafts barked on

contact. But he was pretty good: he held on and kept trying.

His impulse was to get the sword’s blade back up for another

try at me. He went with the force of my parry, sweeping his

bokken
down and then up in a counterclockwise sweep that

was designed to bring his weapon into the high position, ready