Traditions. Dave Lowry

      In a corner of my home sits a baby’s high chair that was already an antique when the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. (Yes, it is an odd way to begin writing about the Japanese martial arts and Ways. We will get to that presently; trust me.) When our child was a toddler he sat in the chair a few times, for special occasions. But this piece of furniture is a treasured possession for reasons far beyond its utility. It was made in New England, in the middle years of the 17th century. It is a singularly good example of the kind of simple, strong furniture the Puritans built during their first decades in this country, and though the chair is almost three centuries old, it is still sturdy and, to my way of thinking, quite beautiful.

      I was fortunate to grow up in a home furnished and decorated with many reminders of early America like that baby chair. So in retrospect, it is natural, I suppose, I’d have an affinity to antiques. But more important than liking or enjoying them, my parents imbued me with a respect for old things. I learned to appreciate fine craftsmanship and quality of design because I was surrounded by it. I was taught that even though antiques were a functional part of our house-hold, that I had a responsibility to take special care of them, to school myself in their attributes, and to be as certain as possible that they would be correctly preserved for future generations.

      While I was still young, I was equally fortunate to become exposed to the budo, the martial arts and Ways of Japan. These arts set the guideposts for a path that I have been following for over one quarter of a century now, a path that continues to be rewarding and profound to me. I cannot claim that the various sensei and seniors under whom I learned were the most skilled exponents in the budo. Nor even especially well-known. But they were outstanding teachers and mentors and I am still learning from some of them. The training and teaching they offered were as enjoyable as anything I have ever done. It continues to be so today. It was also strict at times, and tedious, and for the most part, it was conducted along lines that were traditional and not much affected by current trends and ideas. I learned the lessons of the budo the same way my teachers had learned them; the same way their teachers learned before them.

      Just as are most people drawn to these arts, particularly young people, my original intentions were to learn the budo in the hope of becoming adept at protecting myself from the dangers, real and imagined (and a teenage boy had at that time just as he does now, a quantity of both), that life holds. Over time, I began to discover that “self-defense” is almost an incidental by-product of these arts. It was impressed upon me that their ultimate goals were to be found instead, in different realms, in arenas that were by no means obvious at first glance, or even observable at all from the perspective of the outsider. I discovered, in short, what all serious practitioners find eventually, that the goals of the budo lie in the refinement of the body and the spirit.

      Yet, possibly because of my childhood among antiques, and probably because of the encouragement of my sensei, I came to see something else in my budo training. The martial arts and Ways of Japan, I have come to think, are an intimate and powerful connection with the past. Within their techniques and methods and rituals are the essence of the well-lived life as their practitioners of old saw it, and as such they can be considered artifacts every bit as valuable as the antiques in any museum. In his etiquette, his traditions, and philosophies, we can know what was important to the martial artist of the feudal era. Combining the lessons of the physical training in the budo he has left us, along with a perspective on his intellectual and spiritual outlook then, affords today’s exponent a link with another age that is significant, remarkably so.

      Sixteen years ago, when I was preparing for a trip to Japan to further my study of the budo and of Japanese culture, I got a call from the editor of Black Belt Magazine. Would I be interested in writing a monthly column on the traditional aspects of karate and the budo in general? I was surprised at the offer. At that time, the “martial arts” in the United States were dominated by violent films and by gaudy public exhibitions and contests. A number of innovators were creating new forms of self-defense and personal combat that had been freed from the “classical mess” of the past. The martial disciplines were becoming “Westernized,” which was allegedly an improvement for them and which was going to make them more meaningful or at least more palatable to the non-Japanese enthusiast. Concepts like budo philosophy or traditional training methods were either being ignored or dismissed as archaic or categorized as that most egregious of failings in this end of the present century: