(12-19-05) In Ms. Wilson's recent posting to e-budo she completely missed what is at issue here. It is not Ellis’ opinion of the technical teachings of Kaze Arashi Ryu that matters so much; it is the alleged dishonesty at the core of Kaze Arashi Ryu. Ellis’ post was necessary because he previously vouched for me and KAR in one of these very discussions. Having changed his opinion about KAR, he is free to state that publicly. Ellis' opinions, as much as I respect them, are actually tangential to the real issue. The real problem is that several of the highest-ranking members of KAR have recently decided to quit that organization after many years of hard study, and prolonged interaction with Henri. Some of whom don't know Ellis and probably don't really care much about what he has to say. They quit not because of Ellis or anyone else external to the “ryu” but because of their experiences internal to it. Probably experiences she would not be privy to, given its hierarchical structure.
I myself quit KAR before getting any negative feedback about its arts from Ellis or anyone else. I quit because I felt something was fundamentally wrong with things I had been told and behaviors I witnessed. I waited a long time, and gave a great deal of “benefit of the doubt” as a result of my conviction in the physical techniques. But as I was not getting, and realized I was never going to get, a straight answer or resolution to the problems I saw at the core of the organization, I left.
Having left, what is my opinion of the arts themselves?
I feel that KAR teaches quite good aiki-styled jujutsu possibly drawn from an admixture of kenpo, aikido, and/or Daito-ryu of some kind. It contains a good amount of kenpo-styled atemi which is very well integrated with its jujutsu. If it does come from an art called Yama Arashi-ryu, I have seen no historical proof of that. I have seen no proof that anyone knew Kaze Arashi Ryu before Henri began teaching it in Queens around 1980. Whatever its origins, Henri Vilaire is probably not even the most skilled exponent or teacher of that art today. It is my opinion that his student Abel Castanos moves much better than him, and has for some time. In that way, Henri was successful as a teacher.
As for its weapons, KAR teaches what I feel to be very good use of the tanto. It also has what I still find to be interesting use of the bo (called daijo in KAR), which parallels its atemi in many ways. At this time I think a lot of the sword work does not work as well as KAR members think it may. Out of the entire curriculum of kenjutsu, I can think of both basic (fundamental) and advanced (esoteric) aspects that do not work well once you think outside the box of the form they are taught in, and even less well with shinken than with bokken. Some of it remains quite good in my opinion, but of those portions, I have no idea where they come from -- if they were mis-appropriated or not. People like Ellis, who have seen a number of different koryu in detail, would be more qualified to make statements about provenance than me.
After I left, I took Ellis’ feedback at face value, and decided to experimentally validate the teachings as best as I could. I had done those movements for over sixteen years on faith, within the context of KAR practice. With that experience, I tested them with someone who was training in KAR even longer than I had been. We came to negative conclusions about the kenjutsu in the process of wanting to hold onto it, even after deciding to leave. It was not an easy realization to come to. It went against the grain of my thinking, as I had sparred well against other people in the past – even one person who did koryu - but shinai are not shinken, and moving forward, I am only interested in practicing things which I know work.
I can understand Ms. Wilson's loyalty, even though I feel it to be misguided. But being forced to examine the field weapons critically, with no guru figure to hold our hands and tell us "it is all fine, you just need to train harder" my friend and I came to some hard negative conclusions. Of the myriad of sword techniques we were taught over the last fifteen years, only a portion of them are worth retaining as useful in an unscripted environment. And if I am not qualified to say this, after Henri awarded me menkyo-kaiden in KAR, and I was generally regarded as one of the people most interested in working on and preserving the weapons teachings he presented us with...
The situation is unfortunately more problematic than dealing with a single ‘disgruntled former student.’ KAR as taught from Vilaire has mixed a great deal of New Age and New Religion dressed up as an older form of Shugendo into its upper level practices. There is nothing wrong with New Religion, or New Age ideas in principle. But, I feel the mystical worldview promulgated by Vilaire created a great deal of loyalty in a number of people, as well as an "us versus them" mentality. This I feel is unfortunate, especially since those teachings all came from a person who is not very educated in Japanese history, language, or culture. Those ideas were often expressed in very Western terms. So, what happened? People who were generally not trained in logic misapplied logic in their thinking. Even people who made efforts to be well-informed put in even greater efforts to rationalize the stories presented to them, to find the grain of commonality or truth to them:
Because Henri is good at jujutsu, many of us thought him to be good at classical weapons, and teaching in a classical style. Because we thought him taught in a classical style, we thought his teachings to be expressive of classical martial arts. It is my opinion that the first inference was incorrect, and the second even more so, being based on a false assumption.
Maybe our jujutsu is good because Henri was actually taught jujutsu by someone. Maybe there are problems with our field weapons practice because he was never taught the classical use of field weapons. He long ago said he was not taught weapons by Samuel, but by Rene Barjaval. He also said his teacher only used bokken, and not shinken. That all being said, I now have some strong suspicions that Rene Barjaval does not exist, and neither does David Lee Samuel, Marie O’Toole, or Akemi Nishiyama.
I think Henri is a very talented modern jujutsu practitioner who over-stepped the bounds of his training in attempting to teach ‘classical’ martial arts. Because he was talented, I think he felt he had license to improvize a great portion of his curriculum. But since he is only human, I feel he made some mistakes along the way. It is not that there are mistakes that is the important issue. There could be old arts with mistakes as well (although I imagine they would probably less fundamental in scope -- witness natural selection). It is that the process behind the creation of, or true nature of, the arts were hidden from even senior practitioners. Disclosure was simply was not part of the program. I am left thinking that a good deal of KAR ‘weapons’ curriculum should be best viewed as a form of aikiken or aikijo; i.e. drills or practices to improve KAR jujutsu.
Why care about provenance or history or how KAR represents itself? Martial artists care about lineage because for some of these arts, we do not use them in combat in the present day (e.g. sword, naginata). Lineage then becomes important, so that we know we have a connection to the past, outside of the realm of dream or fantasy. Without lineage, were we to have fighting ability alone, it would be sufficient to determine the ‘reality’ of our practice. But in arts which are no longer used in their full form, one must be more conservative in one’s thinking.
One can argue that lineage is only important because we do not fight each other any longer, and cannot stand solely on fighting ability. This is true. Pure fighting ability should be enough. But without character, both lineage and ability become irrelevant.
I would have loved proof about what it is I was taught. I would have loved to have been sat down, set straight, and set on my way. But Vilaire was quite willing, in retrospect, to let anyone who questioned him and wanted something more than a story by way of an answer, walk away. To that several of us ultimately said, "keep your sense of identity". We were tired of the stories. They grew thinner and thinner as time wore on.
It is time to move on. I am not interested in hashing out all the gory details of why I quit beyond what I have written above. I am not interested in having a conversation on the subject. If Vilaire wishes to provide the public proof about KAR's origins, then he will do so. I myself was quite willing to let my one line statement earlier in this thread stand. But silence would somehow feel inappropriate, given all that has been said about me during my absence from this discussion.
If Ms. Wilson wants to practice KAR under Henri, no one is going to stop her. If Henri is just concerned with techniques and not history, it is however time for both him and his students to lose the stories – and as they say, shut up and train. But when they do so, they should remember: character and self-discipline and honesty above all other things are the heart of true budo. Without that, we are left only with the darkness of violence.
MVR
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Best Wishes
Mark Raugas
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