This small essay, written for the website discussion group BudoSeek has kind of gone viral. It is frequently used in various internet discussions to counter claims that lineage doesn’t matter, and it’s acceptable if a teacher is a fraud or liar as long as he or she is charismatic, graceful or a good fighter.

Log on any Internet martial arts site, and sooner or later – no, constantly – there will be a debate about the legitimacy of one school or another. Nowhere is this more common than in koryu (Japanese martial traditions). These debates usually revolve around whether historical documents are needed to substantiate claims of antiquity and authenticity – particularly concerning systems that are little known, presumed lost, or never heard of before. Essentially, the same rationalizations arise in each and every such discussion.

I don’t care about all this historical legitimacy crap – I just care if it works on the street, on the battlefield, etc.

It’s hard to validate the ‘street cred’ of an archaic martial tradition, particularly using weapons are used in neither 21st century street fights nor battlefields. Even if your prospective teacher did cut the arms off a renegade skate-boarder with his naginata, what does that prove about the validity of the art?

A number of years ago, a Japanese instructor of a grappling/kempo ‘battlefield’ art made an unwise comment in a martial arts magazine. He said something to the effect of, “All American martial arts are weak, because they do not have the power which is created in practicing a true battlefield art, training in blows to defeat an armored enemy.” A rather well-known group of American-eclectic karateka from Newark, paid him a visit. They honestly wanted to feel what it would be like to be beat up by an armored fighting specialist – and they were also quite willing to experience what it would be like to shut his mouth for him as well. The Japanese ‘master’ rather ignominiously backed down from the opportunity – claiming to be either misquoted or mistranslated.

Seems like I’m on the side of those who scorn the ‘paper trail’ here. Not really. I simply have scorn for what are called in Japanese ‘frogs in a well.’

A frog in a well looks up at the sky and says, “I know the entire universe. It’s a little puddle of water, surrounded by slimy stones, with a blue disc in the middle.”

But just as one would expect a man who claims to be almighty to respond in proper fashion to a bunch of tough guys from Newark who simply request that he prove his words, I definitely am in favor of expecting someone who makes claims of a lineage to back up these claims. Why? It’s simple – if I am interested in studying an authentic method of pre-modern combatives, the best hope I have of learning something valid is if there is a record – ideally both an authenticated lineage on paper, and a person-to-person connection from one teacher to another, passed down through the generations. Since no one is really testing these methods today, the best hope we have of learning something real is if there is an unbroken chain of transmission back to the period when it was used.

When questioning the lineage of any ryu, I consider the following answers (evasions, really) to be proof that a person is lying.

How dare you ask me that! You are questioning my honor .

. That’s a secret of the school that I can reveal to no one .

. This school was an ‘otome ryu’ – a secret school of a Japanese feudal domain . (The truth, however, was that otome-ryu were not secret – they were specifically designated by the feudal domain as official. There would be, in fact, more paper concerning an otome-ryu than on a run-of-the-mill school).

It is true that some martial traditions, transmitted within a single family, do not have much documentation. They do, however, have an oral history and legacy of teacher-to-student transmission within the family in place of a paper trail. However, when you have a school with no documentation, no notation in authoritative texts such as the Bugei Ryu-ha Dai Jiten, and no plausible oral history, you are probably dealing with a fraud.

Furthermore, if you see a school that claims to be a Japanese koryu that trains with a hodgepodge of weaponry from many nations, or that specializes in techniques that do not suit the culture, clothing and armor of the period of their putative birth, are also suspect. To be fair, martial traditions change over time, and a teacher may have added or altered techniques – but such anomalies should always raise questions that one should expect an instructor to be willing to answer.

Most koryu teach ways of killing or maiming an enemy. It’s obscene to muck about practicing killing without taking it seriously. I expect the same level of honesty from a teacher as I would from someone who wants to marry my daughter. In the latter case, even if a young man claimed to come from a good family, have a good job, and he promised to treat my daughter with love and respect, I would not be willing to take his word. I would want to meet his family, have some evidence of his work and see how he really treats my girl. If I were not able to receive some of that information, I would expect a clear answer why – without defensive belligerence. In short, if I want a chance to study something “real” in the area of Japanese martial traditions, the teacher should have either valid historical documentation and records, or a clear explanation why he doesn’t.

These guys are paper tigers – what would they do in the Octagon?

I believe this question is not totally out of line – although I think even an untrained 70-year-old grandmother with a katana would make Anderson Silva or Daniel Cormier nervous in the ring. First of all, the claim that koryu never had free-style practice is not true. There are many records of jujutsu schools practicing randori in-house or between rival schools. Kano Jigoro did not create competitive grappling in Japan. Rather, he formalized rules so that various schools could compete in relatively safety. Initially, it must have been quite exciting to view a match between Takenouchi-ryu, Yoshin-ryu, and Kiraku-ryu – all those different approaches on one mat! After a point, however, judo and its rules ‘took over’ as a kind of homogenized system. This same thing has happened in the so-called No Holds Barred world. A decade ago, the excitement was seeing somebody from Brazilian Jujutsu fight a sambo player or a kick boxer: now, as Frank Shamrock said, “There are no secrets.” Everybody trains pretty much the same way.

In the early decades of the 20th century, a Japanese martial artist’s name-card might read, X-ryu menkyo kaiden (certificate of mastery), Kodokan judo 4th dan. The Kodokan rank was, in a sense, certification that he’d been tested in free-style competition, and was not merely a master of kata practiced in the safe confines of his own dojo. It is probable that the reason we see so few such jujutsu masters today is the 2nd World War – the pre-war jujutsu schools were already relatively small, and many of their top people were killed in the war or abandoned practice upon their return. This, plus the ever-increasing trend towards sportive budo, led to judo achieving almost complete primacy over the traditional ryu. Most of those who remained, or who succeeded in subsequent generations became kata masters, and never practiced in any ‘live’ freestyle competition.

The majority of weapons arts, at least from the 1700’s, also trained freestyle as well as kata – either in controlled fashion with wooden weapons, free-style in many ryu with shinai (bamboo practice swords) and body armor, or through taryu shiai (fights between men of various schools – anything from official matches before feudal officials, vendettas, dojo breaking, to street fights). In fact, many martial traditions that either assert (or we assume) never had competitive practice once did so quite openly. In fact, in the Edo period, the word koryu, which now means ‘old martial traditions’ meant to most martial practitioners, ‘old-fashioned martial traditions’ and was used to distinguish those schools that trained in free-style competition and those that did not.

It’s a fair assumption that the vast majority of koryu practitioners today are not nearly of the level of many of those from generations past – because they do not train with the intensity that only comes when you really are preparing for the possibility of being challenged. A defeat could mean a loss of livelihood, or at minimum, shame (something that was not only personal, but reflected on the entire ryu of which you were a member).

Certainly, some modern koryu practitioners are amazingly skilled – and some of them, by the way, have honed their abilities only through kata training. It is also true that many trainees – and many ryu in their entirety – are mere shadows of those of generations past. But even if this is true, if a martial tradition has maintained an authentic compendium of kata and technique, one has a living tradition that can be revivified by one’s own intensity and will.

On the other hand, made-up ‘archaic’ schools (‘neo-koryu’), whether created by people honest enough to say so, or those who hide behind a fake history, are little more than the Japanese or pseudo-Japanese equivalent of Society for Creative Anachronism. (And far less fun to hang out with too. A lot of the SCA guys at least know how to party – but their made-up-Japanese counterparts tend to be stiff, pompous rabbits, who hide behind rigid, pseudo-ritualistic etiquette. Funny, most of the koryu teachers I’ve known would be formal when it was necessary, but were great to spend time with in relaxed circumstances).

Some practitioners of modern martial arts and martial sports – (by the way, don’t exclude me! – I have as much time in various modern systems as I do in koryu) – may still find the obsession with history to be overdone. Really? If I falsely claim Rickson Gracie as my grappling teacher, or Chai Sirsute as my muay thai instructor, someone, maybe the master himself, is going to want to pay me a visit. Why? Because when such men teach, they give the knowledge they bled for, and they will not appreciate a fraud scamming their glory. Even if I made the false claim and you paid me a visit, rolled with me, and found me to be really quite good, wouldn’t you wonder why I’d be so insecure as to lie and use someone else’s name for backup? Why not stand on my own merits? In other words, a liar with a good arm lock and a powerful low kick is still a sleazebag.

Over the years, I’ve had lots of teachers. Some of them weren’t exactly people you’d bring home to mom: some were outlaws, some were wildmen. But all of them, upright citizen or outlaw, were stand-up men and women, and all of them could be trusted. I knew who they were, and from whom and where they came. All martial arts revolve around questions of life-and-death, and this includes a life-worth-living, and a death-worth-dying-for. Liars don’t figure into that equation for me – except as people to avoid.

A ‘combat-tested’ knifer who claims he served in ‘Nam with the Navy Seals but was really a stateside cook; a guy who asserts he learned silat from a tribe in the wilds of Sumatra when he never left Vermont; a ‘street fighter who had three schoolyard scuffles in junior high; or a guy who claims his ryu is sworn to secrecy because a Chinese Taoist taught the Japanese master and made him swear not to write it down are all the same – pathetic, morally weak, lying poseurs.

And it doesn’t matter if they can kick your ass because it’s not about the paper. It’s about being a man or woman of integrity. It’s about being a person of one’s word. Without that, a teacher has nothing – absolutely nothing – that can’t be acquired elsewhere and far better.

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