Kiri Otoshi Part 3

When I uploaded this video YouTube told me my last upload was 9 months ago. I was surprised, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. Like many of you, working remotely doubled my workload this year. I can’t really complain, at least I was able to keep working! I don’t think the months leading up to retirement are going to be any less busy. But I am crossing my fingers that whatever work I do after retiring from Public School teaching will be a 40 hour work week at the most.

By definition, Kiri Otoshi is a simple vertical cut. Just like Aiki, it is simple, but not easy. At least it isn’t easy to do it in the manner where if not blocked it delivers a decisive cut, and where if blocked it redirects whatever touches one’s blade and still delivers a decisive cut, all without looking like one did much. I think Kiri Otoshi is like “ichi” in shodo (Japanese Calligraphy.) It is probably the first ken cut one will learn, and the last cut one will truly master.

Like most everything else, Kiri Otoshi can be done with internal power, with Aiki, with both or with neither. (In case readers haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t equate “internal power” with “Aiki.” To my mind they are two separate things that can be powerfully related. One can have “internal power” without being able to Aiki, one can Aiki without “internal power.” One can have neither and one can have both. And one can have varying degrees of both. There is a facet of Kiri Otoshi that I learned called Hitotsu no Tachi, which translates as one (as in counting) no (possessive) sword. I know that the ken that I learned was influenced by Itto Ryu (Itto translates as one sword.) among other kenjutsu Ryu. I don’t know which Itto Ryu though. I don’t even know if the principal of Hitosu no Tachi that I learned is directly related to Itto Ryu or borrowed from another school of Ken. It is my understanding that there are more than one school that transmits the principle of Hitsotsu no Tachi as well as others that use the same jargon but may apply it to a completely different principal. Nevertheless, Kiri Otoshi was the container in which I first learned the principle of Hitotsu no Tachi within Sho Chiku Bai no Kenpo. This isn’t to say that the principle of Hitotsu no Tachi is only expressed in Kiri Otoshi, far from it. Put another way, in the manner I learned, all other cuts can also be considered Kiri Otoshi. In one of my early blogs I made reference to writing shared by a now deceased Head of Itto Ryu, I think he was the head of Ono ha Itto Ryu. In the writing he spoke of Kiri Otoshi. I referred to it because to my mind what he was addressing in direct relationship to Kiri Otoshi definitely also had a direct relationship to how I learned Aiki expressed via sword. Again, to be clear, this isn’t a technique. At my present level of understanding, it could be said to be the “heart” of all techniques. At least the “heart” of all techniques that express Aiki.

When I learned what I learned about Aiki from Shirata sensei it was through the ken. Of course meeting and training with Dan Harden was crucial in helping me connect the dots in relation to Aiki. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to do any weapons related training with Dan Harden (yet.) It’s on my bucket list!

After we went into lock down for Covid, Tom and I switched to training outside with weapons exclusively. We began training in the normal way (kata, kumitachi, etc.), but early on I made up my mind to teach Tom differently. I decided to teach him in a manner almost backwards from how I was taught and trained. He had already learned many of Shirata sensei’s solo ken kata from me and also some paired practice. But I decided to back burner kata and exclusively concentrate on practical ken usage from the very beginning. In other words, there was nothing choreographed other than basically how to cut to various bodily targets. I also decided to work from exercises that assured a feeling of safety so that I might bypass any inherent fear responses. I led him from basic simple blocks (which we don’t often use but will save one’s life while very likely destroying one’s ken.) I progressed from there only after Tom got to the point that blocking my cuts in this manner randomly up to a medium speed and power began to look like it might be becoming boring. At that point I morphed the blocks into to what became parries. Again, I made certain that this progressed at a pace that did not elicit a fear response. At this point I taught Tom a back and forth method of cutting and receiving that I purposefully called “playing catch.” I did this because I wanted to maintain the idea of cooperative practice and avoid the idea of “doing something” to the other. Just like with normal catch, we started slow and friendly until slow became boring and then naturally we began to “throw” faster and harder. Not because we wanted to “do something” to the other, but because it made practice more fun and engaging. Along the way, situations naturally arose in our practice where I could share a variety of “what if” scenarios. I shared various responses that “fit” the situation that arose. These weren’t if this happens, do this, they were “well, you could do stuff like this, this, or that.” I do this on purpose. The idea is to introduce possible choices rather than prescribed responses. Maintaining perspective, at the moment, equipped with a variety of choices promotes cognitive freedom which is especially important at the pace of free weapons engagement. Nevertheless, I took care not to let these “teachable moments” detour us from the emphasis relaxed, fluid, natural engagement practice. Sure, as we played catch, occasionally one of us might drop the ball, or throw wild, resulting in “death” but that just happens in catch sometimes. Finally, I began to introduce how both internal power and Aiki occur in these engagements. This is pretty easy since the ken usage taught never violated the framework for either internal power or Aiki. Usually the response was more of, “Oh yeah, duh!” Not that that understanding made the acquisition of actual reliable performance any easier. Anatomical and neurological development and adaptation takes time. The cool thing for me was, not only did this approach work, but Tom began to REALLY understand what was, and necessarily needed to be worked upon in solo practice both with weapons and without. Furthermore, he began to express (and more importantly demonstrate) how what he was learning via Ken wasn’t “similar” to taijutsu, jo jutsu, yari, naginata, tanto, etc. It IS, WAS, and will always BE the essential aspect of all of those. No matter what one is “doing” one is always working on doing essentially the same thing. We just want to do it better, and better, and better! It has been over a year since we began my experiment and have absolutely no desire whatsoever to stop.

Now, to be clear, I have shared none of that here yet. I’ve shared important things, but not that. Presently, I am convinced that this is the best way to teach and to learn. It purposefully bypasses peoples fear response because, if one doesn’t do that, one can never truly learn something new. When push comes to shove, one will always do what I call “running home to Mama.” They will do whatever their body and mind at its basest level is convinced will assure survival. And for most people, that is whatever they do as a fear response.

I’ve come to believe that only after one’s body/mind, at its basest level, is absolutely convinced that what one has learned and trained is the best assurance of its survival will one access one’s training in a truly dire situation. Most forms of martial arts training is through kata. I think of kata as a repository of knowledge. It acts as a book can act, to preserve and help transmit knowledge. And just like one cannot read a “scuba diving book” and suddenly know scuba diving, much less perform dangerous underwater welding and the like. One cannot expect to learn kata and suddenly be able to manifest the knowledge trying to be conveyed within kata, much less apply that knowledge in a dangerous high stakes situation. This is true even though, the kata and/or book may have been written to directly addres dangerous high stakes situations. Similarly, one cannot practice in an atmosphere that elicits fear responses, and expect to learn new fear responses. One will only strengthen old fear responses. Either one must carefully select individuals with a very high fear response threshold (lower than normal response to stress) or one must gradually and painstakingly “reprogram” normal individuals. This dovetails into why individuals that were expected to perform well in high stress situations became interested in Buddhism (especially esoteric Buddhism) and other forms of promising technology traditions that proved to produce desirable psychological states.

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