At the recent jodo grading one of the judges declared himself pleased because we saw a real difference in level between the grades. This is as it should be, if you didn’t improve there would be little reason to continue grading.
The judging requirements in our organization are more or less like this: For the first three grades (ikkyu to nidan) we look for reasons to pass the challengers. At sandan you should know all the kata of the kendo federation iai, and you should know all the jo waza up to… what is it? Number 8 I believe. The jo gradings are set up to go through the 12 kata in the kendo jo set in order. There is no need to work on the kata above the ones you are testing for, but I can’t think of a sandan in our group that doesn’t know the whole set so let’s say that at sandan you are expected to know the lot.
Sandan then, is a bit of a turning point, where you stop the memorizing and start working on other things.
What other things? Well, technical things for lack of a better way of putting it. Since the judging manual says that up to five dan you “look in the book” for your grading points, I take that to mean that five dan is another of those turning points. At five dan you are at the end of your technical work and now the real work commences.
Six and seven dan are more or less similar and when you get to 8dan the judging instruction simply says they ought to know the riai. Yep, the difference between seven and eight is the knowledge of the riai.
So if you know it all (the technical stuff) at 3dan what’s this technical stuff up to five dan? It’s the stuff you work on all the time at all levels, it’s my all time favourite piece of teaching “stop the sword at chin height” on the first cut of Morotezuki. The difference between three dan and five dan? A third dan stops the sword at chin height, a five dan cuts down to chin height.
A six dan? A six dan wonders what the blazes you’re talking about. “I just cut the face and then held my opponent using seme, there’s no ‘height’ or ‘angle’ in there”.
“No” you say, “you have to stop at chin height, that’s what I was told, if you don’t you will fail”. The six dan replies, “So if I cut the face and I’m off by three millimeters I will fail my seventh dan? Fail me then.”
But we won’t. We’ll fail you for stopping at chin height. The difference isn’t in things you can measure, the difference is in attitude. Attitude toward the kata, toward the art as a whole, and toward the judges. We see different things at different levels. I’m not looking at the same things in a godan that I look for in a sandan. I’ve only got so much attention, and if I’m using it to measure how good your propioreception is (can you close your eyes and touch your nose?) I may not have the spare space to check whether all the challengers are cutting. I’ve seen yondan pass iaido gradings with an incorrect chiburi and noto on a kata. I wasn’t looking for a specific chiburi and noto and apparently neither were the other judges. If the challenger does a good chiburi and noto (although the “wrong one”) and doesn’t collapse in despair (a tiny hesitation will draw the judges eyes just as fast as that sigh and twist of the mouth. Yes we saw it… now, yes we know you know you did it…. now.
I’ve also seen yondan pass who couldn’t cut, but who hit all the checkpoints. There are five or six judges on a panel, if enough of them are looking the other way and enough of the others haven’t switched to the next level of judging filters yet, it can happen. Not very often, so I don’t advise it as a budo career strategy.
I’m not terribly concerned with yondan in the iaido section, there is plenty of rank above that to catch and correct any troubles over the next several years. I am more concerned with the challengers to six dan.These are the folks who will be taking over the instruction very soon. These guys are “important”. In Japan they are nobodies but in Canada they are the few, very few, that will be taking over the heavy lifting in the next decade or two.
In the jodo section that duty falls much lower on the scale since the section is younger and smaller. We rely on sandan to be doing the heavy lifting. This is true for the entire America Zone and it’s not really fair but who said Budo is fair? If you’re the only guy on the block, you’re the guy.
While we try not to grade jodo sandan as if they are rokudan challengers, outside the grading we end up asking them to do the things one would normally ask rokudan (or higher) to do. These folks are organizing seminars, lobbying their kendo federations, setting up jodo sections and generally doing the work that hanshi do in Japan. In the USA and Canada we’ve got some yondan and godan to take some of the pressure off, but it’s still a matter of “first in, most work”.
Is this unfair? Is this a hardship? Do you wish it were otherwise? Don’t. When an art is just starting out, just growing, it’s a wonderful time. Everyone bands together to help one another, everyone, of necessity, thinks of the art first and their own selfish interests second. It’s “us against them” a time of knocking on (kicking at?) the doors of established power structures trying to get in. You learn more about human nature in fifteen minutes than you might in ten years in an established structure.
In short, you’ll miss it when it’s over.
Outside the grading, look at your role, rather than at your rank, to find your way. To return to gradings though, what does a six dan look like?
First, they can hit all the checkpoints. They wouldn’t be a five dan if they couldn’t, so we can leave that behind. They can also show some power, not the power of a nidan, with all the shoulders and straining forearms, but rather, somewhere on the way to the power of an 8dan with it’s softness hiding a nasty surprise. The lead pipe wrapped in velvet. I was once a bouncer in a strip bar where the bartender was a small guy. Since there was only one bouncer he was the backup and he asked the local police if he could have a pipe behind the counter. They replied that if he did such a thing he ought to wrap it up so he didn’t leave a mark. Yes the lead pipe wrapped in velvet is a thing. By the way, this was 40 years ago so relax, I doubt the police would say any such thing any more… and this was also a place where one of the bouncers was knifed in the bathroom for supposedly ratting out his buddies on a drug deal. I didn’t work there long.
Back to 6dans. They can show a relaxed power, still muscular perhaps, but not in the shoulders, its only in a “your hands are too tight” sort of way. The current crop of rokudan, the ones who were teaching at the seminar, all showed that sort of power in their test and they all got the same correction. Lovely and relaxed just a tiny bit too much grip. What does that grip look like? It’s the tiny frown on your face when you are telling your student you want him to stop his sword at chin height. It’s a small reveal, a tell, that the student might misinterpret as anger or disbelief or something else.
Mostly though, what I look for at six dan is “your own iaido”. A self-assurance that borders on arrogance, a pride in your work. If you come asking for the grade you aren’t going to get it. If you demonstrate that you are already there you’ll pass. Once you reach 5dan you are done with changing and fixing and wondering how to move from your hips and “how to” in general. That’s what 5dan is for. From now on you don’t ask, you tell. If a senior corrects a movement it is to get you to a higher level, it’s to provide the chance for you to discover other things. It is not to correct a mistake. You are beyond mistakes.
Let’s face it, by 5dan you’ve been doing this stuff for at least 15 years. Twelve kata for 15 years, do you figure you missed a class somewhere? If someone says “the angle is here” or “you stop here” you just do it, even if it’s not what you think should be done. There are styles even in ZKR iai and jo. By 5dan you ought to be able to recognize what’s “in the book” and what’s “his way of doing it”. If a 5dan gets told to do it at a different angle, specifically told, it’s likely that the instructor is trying to reveal a different body mechanics, not making a correction. Try it, if it works steal it. If you don’t get it, think about it for a while but ultimately, if it’s useless to you, forget it and don’t worry about it. It may pop up again years later.
As a judge on a 6dan panel I’m there to be told what iaido is. Tell me.
Seito Bugei Juku 