Harsh Training: The Early Example of the Masters

[MindBlade]

I have been doing some research on the early training of the current Kancho's. Much of what I have read about the early training of Hatsumi Sensei, Tanemura Sensei and Manaka Sensei is startlingly different than the training that I witness when visiting several dojo in my area.

For example, from what Hatsumi has written, training with Takamatsu Sensei was rough, rigorous, painful, and even scary at times. Tanemura Sensei's writing about his early days of training speaks of the same kind of harsh and exacting experience. Also, Shihan Doron Navon has written about training in the early days of the Bujinkan (when all the current Kancho's were still with Hatsumi Sensei). Shihan Navon describes Bujinkan training during these early days as rough and serious. There are many other accounts of this type, not to mention the vicious conditioning regime evidenced in many pictures from these days. Well, things seem to have changed. At my last dojo, the training was extremely low speed, low pain, low force, low pressure and low detail. It felt so watered down.

It appears that, in their own early training, the Master's built a base of rough, rigorous, hard core and detailed training. At some point, while being carefully guided through this “fire” there seems to have be a burst of intuitive fluidity and creativity. After this, the Masters SEEM to find little need for the earlier harshness in the training regimen.

What I am wondering about is this. Isn't this first phase of going through the "fire" essential if one really wants to aim at developing the amazing skills of the Masters? I don't believe that one can somehow skip over this phase of training and go directly to the limitless creativity that we witness from the Masters.

So, should a very serious kyu level student seek out some semblance of the harsh and exacting training that the Masters endured in their early days? I have a teacher who is providing me with this now privately, but I wonder, is this generally available?

Taharka Mena