 Meik Skoss concludes his talk with Sawada Hanae who has been training for nearly 70 years. She holds the hanshi certification from the All-Japan Naginata Federation, and teaches both atarashii naginata and Tendo-ryu in Tokyo. Meik Skoss has been a student of Sawada Sensei in Tendo-ryu since 1976. This interview was conducted on December 9, 1996 at the Shinjuku Naginata dojo.
Meik Skoss: So, for example, you shouldn't train only with someone who is your best training partner? You should train with someone with whom you don't match well.?
Sawada Sensei: You must not do the same thing all the time. If you have one thousand people, you have one thousand different partners. All have different spirits. You will learn a great deal by being able to train in the same way with all one thousand people. That's the kind of thing we are doing in the martial arts. If you can only do it with one person, then you cannot truly do it. It is the same in kendo, Judo, and the other arts as well. In martial arts, one practices winning and losing. You practice again and again, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. This is how you become trained. You are not doing it for others. This is how training happens.
Even the worst people have something that they are good at. Even the tiniest child wants to do his or her best. So you must be able to train even with this tiny child or with this unskilled person. "I won't train with those people because they are no good." This is absolutely not the right attitude.
You must avoid having a hard heart and thinking that you alone are skilled. If you possess a heart that is hard like this, you are in trouble. You will make no progress. You must always have a free spirit. Everyone is different.
If you can't do the Kata with anyone and everyone, then you're not really doing the form. If you practice earnestly, eventually you'll come to understand whether you are more or less skilled then your opponent. If you always try to be the strong one, if you're a braggart, then you will not improve. Kokoro, or spirit, is difficult to understand, not simple at all. Even with Zen, there are some people who understand right away and some that never comprehend it. The same holds true with naginata. Some people grasp it right away. Others never make it that far because they aren't really practicing. If you don't practice, you can't make it that far. Just because you are able to talk about it means only that you can put it into words, it does not mean that you have actually trained.
If people don't take corrections and then try to integrate them into their training, then they have no meaning. Just because they try it a few times doesn't mean they can do it. So, as you see, training is not a simple thing. You never reach a state where everything is right. You do something a couple of times, and you may even feel good about it. But unless you have practiced something a thousand times, you cannot really say that you've done it. If you can't do it the same way a thousand times, then you aren't really able to do it.
For example, Niwata Sensei, the iaido teacher, took the hachidan exam for years without passing. Then, one day he went in and passed the exam. Once he passed, he couldn't believe what a simple thing it was that he hadn't understood. He understood because he had finally reached the state of mind necessary to see. You train in order to attain this state of mind. And this can't be taught.
My younger brother's wife is doing calligraphy. She recently told me it was getting difficult and she was considering quitting. I told her, "You are planning to quit at the most important part of your training. How long has it taken you to reach this stage?" "It has taken a long time." "Why would you quit now? Now, when you are at the point where you are finally able to learn the more important parts of your art?" If she quits, all her training to this point, between ten and twenty years, would go to waste.
MS: Would you please say a little more about the idea of training with a "pure spirit" and how one ought to practice?
SS: When you're doing your art, you have to make your spirit pure. You must not be concerned about whether people are watching or not, whether your junior is paying attention, whether you are teaching correctly. All of that is unimportant.
Martial arts are not for merely showing off the forms. One is supposed to do them from the heart. But if I speak of this heart, this spirit of the martial arts, it's difficult to understand what I'm talking about. People who don't train, can't understand.
If there are desires, it's no good. It takes years to get rid of desire. People have desires in their heart. If I do this, will I look good? Will it go well, if I do this? They think about lots of things. The more you think, the more you end up running around in circles. In order to reach this desire-free state, you have to have attained a certain state of mind. Without reaching the state of a pure spirit, you cannot progress in martial arts. You cannot show that you have reached this state unless you truly have. People training are all making the same movements. But it shows when someone has a pure spirit. We can see it. We notice this achievement and think to ourselves, "He has finally become serious, he has finally attained the necessary state of mind." People might come up and tell us how much they have learned, how well they have performed. But when we look at them, we know. We think to ourselves, they just haven't got it yet, have they? You can only see this when you have become capable of looking from above, from this state of mind, as I explained earlier with the example of the cup. You can't see it from below.
SS: This is a bit of an odd question, but what is your objective in training? After all, there is no one above you. The same was true for your teachers, Mitamura Sensei and Nishigaki Sensei.
MS: My objective is to train with young people while maintaining the proper spirit. That is why, when I practice with others in Tendo-ryu, I tell them to cut straight and true, and I will do the same. I can't tell them what to do unless I am doing it first. I also have to do it with a pure and proper spirit. When you practice with somebody else, you must do so with the proper spirit. Then you can raise yourself to a higher level. It's not something to be done only for appearances, so that you look good, or so that you don't get hit by the other person. You have to train over and again. It's like I was telling you earlier: we are looking from above, so we can see what you are thinking about quite easily. We know the shape of the cup. If it is a big cup, we know that. If it is small, we know that, too. We are looking from above, thus we see it all. To attain this state of mind takes a very long time.
I was talking earlier about my teacher, Chiba Sensei. He wrote the most beautiful calligraphy. I would never tell him this directly, though. I once said to his wife, "Chiba Sensei's writing is so beautiful, when I look at it gives me a feeling I can't explain. There are some places where the characters are delicate and thin and other places where they are very strong. But, over all, there is an incredibly beautiful balance. The paper he chose is just right. There's something in it which goes straight to my heart. It stills my soul. It makes me feel quite calm, that the world is beautiful. When I look at such things I wonder at their beauty and wish that I, too, could achieve that kind of spirit." His wife, who has since passed away, commented, "Hanae-san, I didn't know you thought about such things." I replied, "When I look at something like Chiba Sensei's calligraphy, I can't even explain how beautiful I feel inside. It can only be described as beautiful."
Dolls are the same. All dolls are different. A beautiful doll is one that emanates the spirit of the person who created it. A doll artist does not think to himself, "Now, I'll make a beautiful doll." Rather, he makes it with a pure, beautiful spirit. The outcome is thus this beautiful doll. Without this pure spirit, it isn't possible. If he worries about whether or not the doll will sell, or whether it will be appreciated, the doll will not be beautiful. Nothing created with these kinds of questions in mind can be beautiful. That is the difficult part of spirit: it is a thing you can't show others.
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