Over the past week, I have had the opportunity to view videos and "secret footage" from some of the koryu and their lead proponents. The experience has provided me with much food for thought.
The traditional kata demonstrated in most of the videos (which were produced by the highest-level representatives of the respective ryu)were ritualized. Their demonstrators were devoid of passion or purpose -- as though they had forgotten the reason why their art was developed to begin with. Yet, each kata began and ended with elaborate rei that seemed to have more meaning to the demonstrators than the kata themselves.
My belief is that modern ways and peacetime societies have given rise to hobbiests who do not represent martial personalities. They prefer to avoid the intensity and life-or-death method of the ancient groups that practiced these arts of necessity. Even the koryu (or, perhaps, especially the koryu) are not safe from stagnation and drift away from the source and original intent. Based on what I have seen, the koryu themselves are becoming like inbred, pedigreed dogs that have had the fire and spark drained out of them, to be replaced by receding jawlines and hip displacia.
There was only one video -- one ryuha -- which showed a clear connection to its martial purpose and heritage. Subjectively speaking (after being jaded for decades), to me the practitioners depicted were the closest and truest inheritors and disseminators of the art as it was intended. Their kata were as intense as life-or-death combat, while adhering to the principles that the kata were designed to teach. It was the perfect balance of teaching/learning tool and the opportunity to train and practice for crucial neuromuscular spontaneity and mental focus.
I owe the quality of practice to the senior practitioner and teacher, who has retained the vision of bujutsu as tool meant to be kept honed and ready for use -- not left on a shelf gathering dust. It would be just as easy for his particular ryu to get lost in ritualization as were the others whose demonstrations I viewed.
It almost seems to me as though the sole function of many (if not most) ryuha today are to serve as repositories for ancient principles, but not necessarily as producers of able practitioners. The arts lie sleeping, their principles groggily handed down generation to generation, until it is received by one person, an innovator, who is awake and has his eyes open. He sees the principles and their cogency, is grateful for their having been preserved, albeit not utilized, and promptly procedes to reinvent and restore their original purpose.
If for no other reason than that, we owe a debt of gratitude even to the sleepers and their stagnant kata. As long as they do not lose their understanding of the principles (making the kata into meaningless dances), then the koryu will remain alive as the keepers of the principles until a martially-minded innovator -- such as Otake of the TSKSR -- comes along to reclaim them and put them to use.
Just some thoughts. Gotta go watch those tapes again a few dozen more times. Meik Skoss admonished readers not to use videos to learn an art, and I agree with him. Videos are best used to provide comparisons and contrasts to knowledge you already have, for overviews of systems and their methodologies, and to get a sense of individual practitioners and leaders of established systems.
Cady
[Edited by Cady Goldfield on 12-18-2000 at 11:43 AM]