Swords

"Why are there Swords in your Waiting Room?"

As I work from a home office my waiting room is also my living room. It's a comfortable, handicapped-accessible space fitted out with climate control and a flat-screen television that displays a relaxing screen saver while it plays digital music. The room is so comfortable I often get clients who come early just so they can sit, listen to the music and perhaps hold a cat.

Recently a "kake" or horizontal rack holding samurai swords appeared in a nitch in the living room. The long sword is called a "katana," the shorter sword is a "shoto" or "companion sword," while the third is a "tando" or dagger. A few clients have asked about them. Here is what they look like:

Actually, they are not real swords. The rack holds a "bokken daisho" or set of three solid hardwood training swords. Bokken are carefully made of beautiful woods by skilled craftspeople. They have exactly the same weight, feel and balance of a real sword. My particular set are "hand cut" from choice American Hickory in the traditional manner. This means they were carved by hand using small sharp tools. No power tools, sandpaper or grinding was used to shape them.

I'm a martial artist. I hold multiple black belts and I've been an instructor in the traditional weapons of Ancient Japan and Korea. At the age of fifty-two I honorably retired from teaching and pursue my art privately in a dojo I have built in my home. I occasionally study with various guest Masters and I've had some fine ones. These days I focus on the classical sword which I like very much and which keeps me fit.

I do have an actual "live" sword that has a real blade that is really sharp. I have trained with it for more than 20 years and keep it in a rack in my bedroom, safe from prying eyes and curious fingers. A recent redecoration of my home dojo to free up floor space meant that the rack of bokken had to be somewhere else. My wife and I decided they look beautiful in the living room, and there is no reason not to keep them in the nitch there where they can be admired.

If you think about it you will quickly understand that swordsmen and swordswomen do not train daily with their live blades. About 80% of the time we train with wooden bokken as it is much safer.

As my black belt certificate is displayed on a wall in my office, it's no secret to clients that their chaplain-hypnotist is an experienced martial artist. Most find it an amusing and interesting facet of my personality, and I've always enjoyed helping people understand that the martial arts are a sophisticated and spiritual activity. Too many people think of them only as the campy fighting style seen in movies. The martial arts are more than that, although one has to hunt to find a traditional dojo in our over-commercialized time.

These days most training centers really teach a "martial sport" not a "martial art." They emphasize techniques that score points in a tournament or look good on video, but are impractical elsewhere. They also feature weapons techniques that are showy and fast, but would get one killed in short order if one tried to use those moves in actual combat.

After viewing one recent "champion sword form" I commented that it seemed to owe its primary inspiration to the "Ancient Art of Cheerleader Baton Twirling." The idiot doing the technique actually threw his sword up in the air and caught it under his leg. This is the exact same move I used to watch the cute Drum Majorette do with her flaming baton at college pep rallies. It is a worthless move from any fighting perspective, and if you did it with a real sword you could easily castrate yourself.

But he didn't have to worry about that. As he threw the sword into the air you could see the light aluminum blade wiggle and flex with the motion. An actual steel blade is heavy and rigid. This wasn't a martial art demonstration. It was a twirling routine done with a toy sword. I laughed so hard I worried that I might rupture something.

No...it's good that I've retired from martial arts instruction and can spend the rest of my life quietly pursuing my art in the privacy of my home dojo. I would offend people if I were as outspoken at tournaments as I would probably want to be these days.

Maybe I should start calling myself a "martial curmudgeon" given how I feel about the fake techniques I see passed off as combat these days.