“More Softly Please”

Walter: As I mentioned in my first posting, I’ve been practicing Iaido for a short while as a way to become more directly immersed in the Japanese culture.  Iaido is an ancient traditional art form originally used to defend against surprise enemy attacks in fifteenth and sixteenth century Japan.  Iaido, “the way of the sword,” embodies methods of quickly drawing, cutting and returning a long, curved sword to the scabbard.  I also decided to practice this art as a means of stress relief and to improve my mental focus.  Since your opponent is imaginary, you don’t actually spar or interact directly with other practitioners, but you spend a lot of time refining the kata (form).  Because of this focus on kata, you might say it has more in common with tea ceremony (Chado) than with say, Karate or Kendo.

Before WWII you had martial arts in Japan like Jujitsu, Iaijitsu, etc. Shortly after the end of WWII, these were seen by the occupying forces as fighting methods with military application so they required that Japan basically stop practicing these techniques.  However, the Japanese came back and made a case that these were culturally important art forms with very limited military value (can you imagine a bunch of guys with swords and sticks facing a modern army?) and so changed the suffix to –do, meaning “way” or “path.”   Now you have Judo, Iaido, etc.

I started practicing in Cambridge with a wooden “sword” (bokken) under the guidance of an excellent sensei at Boston Iaido.   The dojo in Tokyo is located in Shibuya and is lead by one of the most highly respected teachers in all of Japan and hence the world, Esaka-sensei (he is immediately to my left in the photos).  This guy is well into his eighties and sharp as a whip.  I saw him do a demonstration for a group of French tourists that included some rare forms involving structured sparing and he was amazing.  Upon arriving for my first practice in Tokyo, they informed me that I would be using a sword (Iaito or Katana) from the start.  After borrowing a katana for a while, my own arrived (see photo).

Most of my instruction came from the dojo treasurer, Nashima-sensei (immediately to my right in the photos).  He is one of the most senior sempai (senior students) at the Esaka-dojo.  He instructed me mostly in Japanese which, as you can imagine, was a slow process.  But one of the phrases I heard most often in English was “more softly please.”  I had a tendency to grip the katana tightly and power down into the cuts with all my strength.  The proper form is to grip the katana more loosely with some fingers and use the right hand only to guide the alignment of the sword while the left hand provides moderate power (I’m leaving out many details).  In short:  less effort, more skill.  “More softly please.”  This is really a lesson that can be applied to life in general.  We tend to exert extraordinary effort to deal with problems or day-to-day tasks, only to waste a tremendous amount of energy on things that actually don’t matter or to get poor results when less effort would have been more effective.  Isn’t it better to back up and evaluate a situation and decide what is the most skillful path before proceeding?  The most skillful action might be to do nothing at all. 

At work, I sometimes find myself pounding my keyboard at as I type on my computer or gritting my teeth when I’m in a politically charged meeting.  At one such meeting, I felt myself spending a lot of energy getting ready to resist some guy’s political agenda and feeling terribly annoyed by it all.  I just stopped myself, decided that it wasn’t going to be threatening to me, my career or my agenda and then I could calmly listen to what the dipsh*&t, um, colleague, had to say. I just accepted that this guy had a point of view (no matter how much it was politically motivated) and could relax and decide what to do next.  There are probably better examples, but you can use your imagination. “More softly please.” 

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author.