BICYCLES AND BUDO, A LOOK AT KORYU "SNOBBERY"
By Dave Lowry

My Peugeot ten-speed is, to my way of thinking, if not the classiest mode of transportation in the neighbourhood, certainly a very stylish way for any twelve-year-old to perambulate to the outer reaches of my world. Gears ratcheting into place with an efficient metallic click, hills and straight-aways alike open before me, conquered with near-effortless pedaling. My companions are all still at the helm of those clunky old Schwinns, the ones with tyres the size of Polish sausages. Earthbound knaves, deprived of the nobility of my just incredibly nifty bike. I can but briefly pity them as I flash by, leaving them panting in my dusty wake. My world spins neatly as a derallieur, my sense of self is as sleek and sophisticated as the downward curving bend of my handlebars.

And then comes the new kid.

And he is out on the street-my street-and he is pedaling something the likes of which I have never seen. Nobody in the neighbourhood has ever seen anything like this contraption. It's a bicycle, clearly. Of some sort. But instead of sitting atop it, he's down between the wheels. No handlebars; he steers with a couple of levers on both sides. It is a remarkable sight and becomes no less so after he explains, when the other kids in the neighbourhood ask him about it, it is a recumbent bike.

The recumbent is a whole different approach to bicycle technology. It doesn't appear any faster than my ten-speed. Doesn't seem any easier to pedal. There isn't anything he can do with it that I can't do with my bike. It is just different-looking. And I am massively bugged about it. I was the coolest kid around when my ten-speed was the ne plus ultra of pre-adolescent transportation. Watching him cycle up and down the street on the cursed recumbent, I don't feel so special any more. My bicycle is no more the standard by which cool is measured in my world, at least not in terms of getting around in it. I am no longer unique. The new kid isn't rubbing it in, mind you. He isn't bragging about what a superior bike his is, isn't claiming it can do anything remarkable beyond what mine or any other bicycle can do. It is, he has explained, a different technology for bicycling; that's all. And maybe in some ways that makes it all the worse. If he was blowing about how much better his bicycle was than mine, if he was insisting it was a "real" bicycle and mine was just a toddler's plaything, then there'd be something concrete against for me to rail. Lacking the substance of such frictional resistance, I am bereft any legitimate or logical or meaningful complaints against the new kid. So I have to make some up. I do it by assigning to him motives that are less than salutary and which are, in fact, positively venal. I attack him by suggesting his bike represents a deliberate attempt to "be different," to "show me up." I do it the way children have always responded under such circumstances. I stand on the kerb and watch him ride back and forth, up and down the street and consumed with jealousy and a sense of not measuring up somehow, I mutter with what I hope fervently will be interpreted as a sneer of derision, "He thinks he's so cool!"

Okay, actually I never owned a Peugeot. Even so, I am all too familiar with the general frame of the vituperative "he thinks he's so cool" elicitation. I see it about once a month. I'm exaggerating. Though not by much. With predictable frequency, the sentiment manifests itself in attitudes expressed on Internet sites, in some of the more serious literature devoted to the martial arts, and in correspondence I receive from readers. I encounter the reaction "he thinks he's so cool" so often I have come to associate the word "koryu," in fact, with the "snob" that now seems to follows it as reliably as news of a breakup follows headlines about Jennifer Lopez's matrimonial activities du jour. Detailed Internet conversations are devoted exclusively to "koryu snobbery." Koryu snobs are held in general disdain and serve as straw dogs for bashing or kicking or whatever it is you do to straw dogs. The concept of the koryu snob has become solidified in the imagination of some. So much so that not long ago more than half the body of a review of a book about koryu in English was given over not to the subject of the book or its treatment, but to the personalities and alleged motives of those writers who compiled it. Not koryu or its treatment in the book, but koryu snobbery was the preoccupation of the reviewer. Indeed, it is a mentality and attitude reflected in much of the opinion expressed by a fair percentage of the population of martial artists who concern themselves with such matters.

I am old enough to remember when koryu were first presented to Americans in books and some scattered articles and publications like the late Donn Draeger's Martial Arts International back in the Sixties. It was a time when I probably owned literally everything published in English about the koryu-and it all fit easily on a single shelf. So I am still astonished to see these arts have become widely (if not entirely accurately) known in martial arts circles and even, to some extent, to the general public. Even more so to discover they have come to be associated with some kind of elitism and cliqueishness. Like the new kid in the neighbourhood, pedaling his new-fangled contraption innocently down the street, those who have devoted an enormous percentage of their lives to the koryu have come under rebarbative scrutiny from those loitering kerbside. They have been excoriated by individuals whose motivations appear less genuine as authentic criticism and more as tantrums of jealousy. More to the point, their commentaries, insights, and experience have, when they are offered for consumption in books, articles, or Internet correspondence, been dismissed out of hand. They are, after all, a coterie of snobs. Logrolling one another and congratulating themselves on their special status. And so little or nothing they say can be relevant or objective or worth any more than the contributions of those whose perceptions and exposure to koryu have scarcely more depth than the TV ruminations of Dr. Phil. Am I being unfair? Overly sensitive? Let's see.

Let's define terms. Koryu are literally, "old traditions." Most readers will be aware of at least the structure and general nature of the ryu itself. It is an organised system devoted to some area of learning or art or activity that is transmitted through a direct lineage between generations of teachers and students. The ryu is uniquely Japanese. It is inextricably a product of the feudal age in that country. Western apprenticeship programmes for various trades and arts flourished since before the Renaissance and some of the great "houses" of Italian and Flemish painting designed a learning structure somewhat similar to the ryu. The comparison, however, is not entirely accurate, for many reasons. The ryu stands as a method of transmission as a singular product of the pre-modern Japanese mind and spirit. That stature is not to suggest the ryu is the pre-eminent method of learning or acquiring mastery. It is by no means incidental to point this out. The ryu system has many weaknesses. The ryu, whether it is devoted to martial arts or the tea ceremony or anything else is, in some significant ways, little different from a pyramid scheme. The founders licence their followers who in turn licence their students, so on and so on, and as they do, money continues to flow back up to the top of the pyramid. In flower arranging schools, the ryu system has become something of a minor scandal in Japan, largely for this perception of it as a business more concerned with profit than art. Some ikebana ryu are spectacularly wealthy at their peaks. The same can and is said of tea ceremony ryu. And rather than the ishin-denshin or direct, intimate transmission of deep and profound secrets, the ryu sometimes seem more like tawdry scams of the sort run by real estate marketers or television evangelists. Favouritism, backstabbing, toadying; shenanigans of a sexual, financial, and moral nature; it isn't hard to find any of these in the mechanisms of the ryu, now or in the historical past.

The ryu system is also determinedly hierarchical. That's fine so long as the individuals at the top of the heap are there as much because of their technical mastery as for their inheritance. When the headmaster of a ryu takes over because of sanguinary connexions, however, and lacks other critical qualities such as technical skill or teaching ability, the ryu suffers, sometimes fatally. This is particularly evident in marital ryu. In the best of these cases, the ryu is weakened or subverted, a process nearly always irreversible. More than one classical martial ryu has been rendered nothing more than a collection of dances and epicene "performance" devoid of any fighting spirit or combative reality for this reason alone. Worst-case scenarios have occurred; the ryu has disappeared altogether.

In spite of these sometimes-valid criticisms, however, the ryu as an institution remains a remarkable structure for transmitting complex processes and values. Some martial ryu in particular have an astonishing vitality. Standing in the path of a wooden practise weapon coming in at full speed and power, moving only at the last possible second, absorbing accidental strikes that split lips, contuse, or knock one windless, all the while maintaining composure and the instant ability to strike back; these are exercises ripe with vast mental and spiritual as well as physical rewards. The classical combative arts of pre-modern Japan offer an astonishing range and depth of human interaction. They generate powerful personalities. They have an important influence in creating individuals of unique talent and worth. The koryu, whatever their limitations and potential for mis-use, have value. They are interesting glimpses into the past, an important foundation of Japanese culture, and a means of perfecting the self in many ways.

And the term "snob?" It is, essentially, an ad hominem attack. A criticism made against a person rather than against his ideas or positions. It is invariably an attack made by someone unwilling or unable to assemble factual arguments of relevancy. You lay out a plan for government managed health care. I respond by calling you a Communist. What can you say in return? "Am not!" Ad hominem attacks are poor ones for several reasons, not the least of which is that they never address the original issue. Perhaps you are a Commie. Or not. Either way, I am not replying to your argument by responding with arguments against your position. I'm simply slinging a personal insult. To call someone a snob, whether in relation to his approach to koryu or to anything else is a diversion away from substantive argument. Because I make a living by casting a critical eye on restaurants and food and writing about it, I am accustomed to being called a snob. I have been called worse. "Turkey-necked geek," for instance. I lose comparatively little sleep over the epithet of snob. (I lost more over the turkey-necked geek thing. I prefer to think of my neck as having a patrician arch.) Even so, I note that when the word is used against me, it is very rarely accompanied by any facts to dispute any position I may have taken. If I write as I recently did for example, that a phyllo pastry at a Greek restaurant advertised as "Cretan" was inauthentic in that there was obviously no olive oil or raki liquor in it, I heard from the owner. I was a snob, he said. Was I incorrect? No, he admitted, the phyllo was actually more the Athenian version. But I was snobbish about it, he insisted. "Have you been reading some martial arts sites on the Internet, by any chance?" I wanted to ask him.

Those who use the word "snob" seem to believe that its power alone invoked is sufficient to shut down any opposition or to effectively nullify the points that have been made by the accused. Sometimes they're right. The accused is forced to exert time and energy in defending himself instead of his position or argument. It is wearing and not easy and in some instances, those who would be accused or who have been have simply retired from the field. It isn't hard to understand why. You have spent decades in Japan training in koryu, read Japanese fluently, have access to dozens of koryu authorities there and based upon that experience, you advance a point. My response? You're just a snob. How many idiotic exchanges like that would it take you to call it a day in terms of offering your insights or opinions in a public arena?

I suspect one reason those who use the word snob believe in its power is because to be snobbish, to demonstrate any form of snobbery real or imagined, is to at least peripherally if not directly engage in discrimination. And given the choice between discriminating about anything and oh, say, devouring one's own young for many today would not be a choice at all. Fire up the grill. As I said, I discriminate professionally. Discrimination is my metier. Unfortunately, for varied reasons, an entire generation has been raised to believe that discrimination is not only bad, it is beyond any doubt the meanest behaviour or attitude a human can possibly demonstrate. "Who are you to judge?" is more than a rebuttal. It is a mantra, invoked against even the mildest form of discrimination. And so it is not complicated to see why "koryu snob" comes so quickly to the lips or keyboards of so many today when they are confronted with facts or opinions they do not like or which they find unflattering.

Koryu snobbery, if we are to believe those who frequently employ the term, takes a protean form. It is everywhere for them. Sometimes the most innocent of commentary or articles meant merely to inform are targeted by the anti-koryu snob cadre. In what had to be the most ludicrously unsupportable claim of recent vintage, a "secret" lineage of ninjutsu was revealed, thriving under the direction of a "grandmaster" living in the South Pacific. A Western koryu authority visited the training and asked about the origins of the school. Based on the historically improbable assertions of the grandmaster, the complete lack of documentation in any Japanese source and the fact that the authority recognised the "ninja training" as a poorly executed series of modern karate-do kata, he concluded there was little reason to take the school seriously. He said so, in answer to an inquiry made about it on an Internet forum. One response castigated him for his narrow-mindedness and another-you can't make this stuff up-suggested the authority might harbour some anti-Polynesian racism. Both, predictably, accused him of being a snob.

If those who apply the snob label to koryu practitioners are quick on the draw, their aim is not necessarily pinpoint. More often their swift deployments are difficult to follow to any sort of logical conclusion. Consider: on an Internet website a member writes to detail his experiences with a "koryu teacher" who is conducting an open clinic in the art of unsheathing and immediately using a Japanese sword. The "teacher" disparages the seitei gata, the modern and standardized forms of drawing and cutting with that weapon. Within a few responses comes one I expected: typical koryu snobbishness, the respondent wrote scornfully. Wait a minute. The "koryu teacher" is unnamed. The number of koryu "experts" out there is legion. How do we know this fellow is a legitimate teacher from a legitimate koryu? Given the fact that he was instructing at a seminar open to every interested party who wandered in, a suspicion about his credentials for that reason alone is warranted. Nonetheless, an unnamed teacher representing an unnamed ryu allegedly makes comments that may or may not have been accurately reported by the Internet site member. And the paralogism of this sequence is cited as another example of "koryu snobbishness."

Observing the phenomenon of the koryu snob critics for the past few years results in a fairly consistent pattern of their criticism. Distilled, their complaints fit mostly into the following, which, for whatever it is worth, suggest a response.

"Koryu people are all convinced their ryu is the best. Their self-esteem is linked to practising some ryu they think makes them better than all the others and everyone else." A charge as mystifying as it is irrelevant. The majority of koryu exponents outside Japan practise more than one koryu. So which of their ryu is it they think the "best?" Further, the majority of them are also practitioners of modern budo forms. If their self-image were dependent on affiliation with a koryu or with classical combative ryu in general, why would they devote time and energy to modern aikido, karate-do, judo, etc.? I have never read or heard a koryu exponent claiming the superiority of his or her ryu and the bulwark of this argument would be considerably strengthened if the critics would ever cite a specific instance of this attitude being expressed. Being proud of one's affiliation with a tradition that goes back for centuries is not an automatic condemnation of those so unaffiliated. Taking satisfaction in having succeeded in entering an organisation of the sort that has been notoriously unreceptive even to the average Japanese is not evidence of disdain for those who have not.

"Koryu snobs believe their arts are the 'real thing' and modern budo forms are inferior in technique, spirit, and quality." Again, this common charge doesn't make much sense in light of the fact that, as was just noted, nearly all koryu exponents in the West are also practitioners of modern budo forms as well. Remember the kid on the recumbent bicycle? He was not bragging. He was doing something different and merely explained, when asked, why and how it was different. To note that koryu have lineages that may go back several generations is simple fact. It is not in and of itself a repudiation of modern combative forms that may be less than a century old. Age does not confer worth. It does, though, demonstrate a continuity of transmission in the case of koryu. If you are a member of the Katori Shinto ryu, for example, you are involved in an activity to which many, many other members going back several hundred years have also devoted themselves. Either they have all been deluded as you are now or, or they are practising a different incarnation of the school, or there is something worthwhile in the ryu. That is one putative advantage the koryu adherent has over the practitioner of more modern forms. The koryu have a provenance. Few would suggest though, that such a history alone is proof of merit. "Open Since 1910" was a very minor determinative factor in propelling me through the door of a BBQ joint in Memphis. It figured not at all in keeping me there. In the case of koryu as well as BBQ, it is the meat and sauce that makes one keep coming back. Rather than acknowledging the comparatively light weight afforded historical provenance by koryu practitioners, that evidence is frequently placed under attack by the snob cadre, who see any mention of lineage or history as a sign of fraud or, at best, a misguided preoccupation. This leads to their next charge.

"Koryu snobs are focused inordinately on lineage and a lot of paper instead of on the important stuff." Oh dear. To note that Caravaggio's Madonna del Rosario is from the early 17th century is, to reiterate the point above, a statement of fact. To conclude it is a poor painting or a masterpiece is a matter of aesthetic debate. Great works of art have been created in the past decade. Okay, well, perhaps that is stretching things to some degree. Suffice to say, pretty good works of art have been created that recently. Worthwhile art is not entirely dependent on age. There is something to be said for longevity as a measure of value, though. Titian aside, there aren't a lot of mediocre paintings from the 16th century around today. Those pieces that were the work of dabblers or second-raters ended up on the trash heap or otherwise forgotten long ago. If they have lasted this long and are still cared for and presented in museums, they almost certainly have some value or benefit. It is not irrelevant to make this point. Similarly, it is illogical to conclude, again to reiterate, that longevity alone is a standard of worth. The presence of a lineage is a conclusion a ryu has been around a while. Any other inferences about a lineage are, I suspect, most often in the minds of the critic rather than in the arguments or demonstrated attitudes of koryu practitioners themselves.

Koryu adherents are not generally focused on the documentation of their ryu because those documents are taken as a matter of fact. Sometimes a scroll will surface that sheds new light on the history of a ryu. A document might be discovered that reveals that some ryu's headmaster had influences on his art previously unknown. Aside from infrequent revelations of these sorts, koryu training is not particularly concerned with lineage, with the exception of scholars doing research in the area.

"Koryu lineages are full of holes, cannot be adequately authenticated, and are just a matter of history being written by the 'winners." There is the inclination to file this criticism along with those made by proponents of the notion the Holocaust was the fictional creation of a confederacy stimulated by a desire to get back at the Germans for inventing sauerkraut. Those critical of koryu as a teeming repository of snobbery are intelligent enough to acknowledge this. So instead of denying that lineages exist, they insist such lineages are fabricated or so shot full of gaps and omissions as to be useless as a source of validation.

It is true that gaps exist in many keizu (ancestral lineage charts) or densho (scrolls related to the transmission of a ryu). What is not true is the contention these gaps constitute a serious lacunae in the authenticity of koryu. An acquaintance in Japan is researching the history of the Gan ryu. Not the semi-fictional one of the same name mastered by Sasaki Kojiro, but one created by Matsubayashi Samanosuke in the first half of the 17th century. She was interested in Matsubayashi's son, Chuzaemon, who inherited the ryu. With little effort, she found more than two dozen historical references to Chuzaemon and his practise of Gan ryu that were independent of any documents directly related to the ryu. These included government records from the prefecture where Chuzaemon lived, provincial census records that noted his relation to the ryu, and documents of other ryu that mentioned Chuzaemon. Now, it may be that all these sources were faked or part of a covert effort to prop up the reputation of Chuzaemon. Most of us would conclude, though, that he existed, as did the ryu of which he was head.

In general, the wealth of information that exists about most extant koryu today is so extensive researchers have to weed out superfluous or tautological sources rather than find new ones. Yes, there may be a gap; we may not know, for instance, which grandson of Shoda Kizaemon was the third headmaster of Shoda ryu. But we know, from heaps of reference materials, that Kizaemon existed. And we know that the fifth headmaster of the ryu existed because he is mentioned in the records of Sakakibara Tadatsugu, for whom he worked, in Harima. And so indicting Shoda ryu as a fraud based on the hole in its lineage is more than a bit of a stretch. Similar accusations that this ryu or that was wholly concocted at some late date and decorated with an ersatz past cannot be reconciled with all the independent mentions of these ryu in the documents of other martial ryu or in the records of provincial governments where they were located. Neither do the mythical tales of the origins of many koryu automatically discredit their heritage, another charge leveled against them and their practitioners. I would find it difficult to substantiate the story of the tengu goblin Jigembo who came to the shrine at Itogaki and imparted the secrets of swordsmanship to Setoguchi Bizen-no-kami. I would not find it difficult at all to prove that Setoguchi existed-there is extensive documentation about him in the Shimazu family records-or that he created the seminal Jigen ryu.
What does tend to bring up the subject of documentation in nearly every case where such information is relevant to koryu is a lack of it in those schools claiming an historical connexion. Or, to be more exact, those schools making such claims and then refusing to corroborate them via any kind of documentation. Curiously, the most vociferous of those who disparage lineages are so often devotees of suspiciously generated ryu that have a troubling lack of scholarship about them.

Without presuming to know or assign motivations to them, based on what I read and the correspondence I receive, I think some readers or others interested in this subject have an image of koryu practitioners outside Japan. They picture these exponents as a self-styled elite who gather in cozy cabals, principally to congratulate themselves on how wonderful and unique they are and to make fun of the unwashed masses of modern budoka not so blessed as to be "real" martial artists. If that's really what they think, then the image of such a fraternity says a lot more about the people who believe in it than it does about those who are being imagined. Again, without presumption or pretension, I know a lot of Western koryu exponents. And while there is little reason for you to take my word for it, I can reliably tell you that among the many adjectives that might fairly be used to describe them, "snobbish" would not be among them. I tend to agree with Ortega y Gasset, that "a society without an aristocracy, without an elite minority, is not a society." But these guys ain't it. They are people capable of the most extraordinary discrimination. They can look at a movement, a kata, a manner of holding a weapon and they can tell you definitively and authoritatively that it will or will not work. And they can stand before you and let you take your best shot with it and they can prove it. They are unusual, in the sense they have acquired a knowledge of an arcane subject. (They are unusual, most of them, for various other reasons well beyond the boundaries of this discussion. I could tell you some stories.)

Like the kid with the recumbent bike, the non-Japanese authorities on koryu have something most others don't have. If this alone qualifies them as snobs, then they are no different from other experts in other fields. The woman informed by the ceramics expert on The Antiques Road Show does not respond with the accusation the expert is a snob when he informs that her family heirloom Limoges basin is actually a cheap, mass-produced chamberpot. She respects his informed opinion. She asks him how he's reached this conclusion. She may seek out other authorities to either confirm or confront his opinion and knowledge. This approach is both civil and constructive in advancing her knowledge and understanding. Calling him a name might make her feel better or less disappointed. It accomplishes little else. Those who profess to recognise snobbery among the koryu practitioners outside Japan would do well to follow a similar course when confronted with opinions or facts contrary to their own regarding the classical martial arts of Japan. Rather than falling back on an ad hominem barrage, they might take time to learn why and how those opinions were formed, those facts ascertained. Not only might they be edified, they will, even in the worst case, polish a more rigourous discipline in intellectual discourse.

Finally, one critic averred that many or at least some koryu exponents are perhaps not really snobs at all, but instead are essentially self-loathing. Japanophiles who aped Japanese ways and advocated Japanese methods of doing things in spite of the fact they are Westerners. Turning their backs on their own culture, they are attempting to satisfy inner needs by embracing a foreign one. It is a charge nearly perfect for a critic motivated by resentment or jealousy to make. It relies on innuendo. It is dismissive of facts, weighted instead entirely on an appeal to the emotional. There is no exchange of ideas in an argument of this base nature. No honest confrontation or reasoning that follows from a critical examination of facts. It is, in a sense, the voice of one who, for whatever reason, feels threatened or angry at the presence of something different and who reacts against that, attacking those who have brought what's different by impugning them personally. It is, sadly, the voice of the child standing off to the side of things and sneering, "He thinks he's so cool."