Ninjutsu E-Book

Simon Yeo

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Ninjutsu: The Secret Art of the Ninja covers all aspects of this remarkable martial art, including the hidden details within the Ninjutsu forms. It reveals the secrets of how to develop power through body movement, how to effectively remove an opponent's balance, and how to unify the mind, the body and technique. The author's objective is to improve both the reader's mental and physical skills and to promote harmony between mind and body. A wide-ranging introduction covers the history of Ninjutsu and mental and physical attitude. The following chapters cover principles, fitness and stretching, postures, break falls, Sanshin No Kata, the Kihon Happo, basic and additional techniques, Sixteen Secret Fists, training pointers and advice, and pressure points.

Leseprobe

Ninjutsu

The Secret Art of the Ninja

SIMON YEO

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2007 by The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book edition first published in 2011

© Simon Yeo 2007

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978 1 84797 370 2

Disclaimer

Please note that the author and the publisher of this book are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any damage or injury of any kind that may result from practising, or applying, the principles, ideas, techniques and/or following the instructions/information described in this publication. Since the physical activities described in this book may be too strenuous in nature for some readers to engage in safely, it is essential that a doctor be consulted before undertaking training.

Acknowledgements

Everything is owed to Hatsumi Soke who sowed the seeds of thought in the first instance. I would like to thank Ali for her love and support in my thirst for martial knowledge, and for putting up with my weeks away pursuing this quest; also for her help with the photos. Also my agents Jen and Jane, for their help and encouragement. I would also like to thank my brotherin- arms, Jon Farriss, for all his encouragement, interest, and his mutually expanding conversations that I value so much. I would also like to give a big thank you to Paul Richardson for all his technical information and help. Also Peter King for his friendship, for having the patience to teach me in the first place, and for being a great travel companion. Lastly I would like to thank Kid, my sister, for her support and help with the photos.

Contents

Introduction

1 Principles

2 Fitness and Stretching

3 Kamae (Postures)

4 Ukemi (Break Falls)

5 San Shin No Kata (The Three Heart Form)

6 Kihon Happo: Eight Basic Techniques

7 Additional Techniques

8 Hoken Juroppo (Sixteen Secret Fists)

9 Training Pointers

Glossary

Useful Websites

Index

Introduction

About the Book

In writing this book on Ninjutsu my aim is to help improve the reader’s mental and physical skills and reduce weakness in both these areas. This will bring a balance to them, thus addressing the equilibrium of mind, body and spirit. Issues of harmony of the mind and body will be covered, and how one can unbalance the other. Also this book will give solutions to martial artists and to the public in general; and will explain how Ninjutsu enables you to defeat someone much bigger and stronger than yourself. As well as showing you how to perform each technique, how it works – the principles behind it – will be revealed, so that you can see for yourself how and why it is effective. How to use effective distancing to counter speed and power will be covered; how, with good timing, you can make techniques feel effortless; and how you can take a person’s balance so that the outcome of a fight is no longer determined by who is stronger or faster. Principles not previously mentioned in any other martial arts books will be disclosed.

Takamatsu Sensei, the previous Ninjutsu Grand Master, said that the techniques included in this book make up the backbone of the fighting arts. If these moves are mastered and the small details understood, the reader would really be at a very high skill level.

The previous Soke, or Grand Master, has also said that, to experience ultimate happiness, you must let go of all worries and regrets, and realize that being happy is the most satisfying of life’s feelings. He says you should reflect on all progress you have had in your life, and allow the positive, creative and joyous thoughts to outshine and eclipse any sorrow or grief that may be hiding in the recesses of your mind. He goes on to say that the key to overcoming adversity with a calm and happy spirit is being aware that disease and disaster occur as natural parts of life, and accepting this. Happiness is waiting there, before you, but only you can decide whether or not you choose to experience it.

I am also conscious that once concepts and principles are written down they become fixed. However, this is not the nature of Ninjutsu. The reader should use this book as a reference book on the way to perform the techniques in a basic way, but by no means the only way.

About Ninjutsu

The Western world has an incorrect image of the Ninja as assassins, dressed in black wearing a hood that only reveals their eyes, and running around with a sword on their back. This is largely due to all the different films and media of the 1980s that portray the Ninja in this light, and bears no relation to reality. This can also be said about the fighting styles exhibited in these aforementioned films, which are nothing more than karate mixed with acrobatics.

A Ninja is a person who has cultivated the spirit of Ninniku: that is, a compassionate heart, one who does not harbour grudges and who always seeks peace and harmony. In a famous historical Ninjutsu document called The Bansenshukai it is written that an essential trait for the Ninja is to have a pure and honest heart. It goes on to say that if a Ninja pursues a life involving lying, cheating and plotting their heart cannot be pure, and therefore their judgement will always be incorrect and their nature will never allow them to make the correct decision. A person who uses Ninjutsu for dishonest reasons or for their own personal gain may have some limited, immediate success, but will eventually be exposed for what they are. Integrity is the key point here.

It is this spiritual aspect that makes Ninjutsu so intriguing and mysterious – yet it is this very aspect that is often omitted by some instructors and many other martial arts. In my opinion without this content, the practitioner is missing out on 50 per cent of the possible cultivation. If you do not consider this part of Ninjutsu, or of humanity for that matter, it will be very easy to become just a collector of techniques, with little depth of understanding and this attitude is little better than being a hoarder of things, which can include money.

The next trait is unending perserverance. The practitioner should have an extremely high level of endurance, and it is this aspect that will help the trainee succeed when normal people would not consider the task ahead possible. There is not a prerequisite for talent, as there is no correlation between talent and effort. Effort alone can defeat the most gifted master. A lack of talent should not cause you to despair, but should provoke a commitment to work with even more effort.

The last trait is to have a curious mind. This will engender good general knowledge, common sense and a critical judgement, which in turn will give the practitioner a cultural knowledge and the ability to traverse through the hierarchy of society, as well as through different cultures without exposing themselves or offending anyone. It is not enough to be intellectual, but this intellect needs to be used, along with cultural knowledge, in practical ways. If you develop intellect with a pure intent, ultimately this will lead to spiritual refinement – which brings us back to the first trait.

I will discuss these traits in detail later on in this book.

About the Author

I have been studying martial arts since 1974, and these include Judo, Kyokushin Karate, Tai Chi and Pak Mei kung fu, Tae Kwon Do, traditional Jiu-Jitsu and currently Bujinkan Ninjutsu and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. At the time of writing I hold a 10th-degree black belt in Bujinkan Ninjutsu. I began training in Ninjutsu in 1987 after a long background in most other martial arts, and immediately felt Ninjutsu to be the art I had been looking for all along. It filled in all the gaps. I found it to be very efficient, and much more reliant on technique than on strength and power. Ninjutsu incorporates weapons, pressure points, punching, kicking, locking and throwing, which encompassed a lot of what I had learnt already, but in a more formalized form and without a lot of superfluous movement. It taught me how to use good distancing, to first take a person’s balance, and then apply technique with good timing, rather than just struggle with my opponent and overpower them with strength.

In 1990 I started travelling round the world to train with Ninjutsu Grand Master Hatsumi Masaaki. Each year I would make four journeys, either to a long weekend of training at events called ‘Tai Kai’, staged around the world, or to Japan, to train with the living source of Ninjutsu. Most martial arts do not have the good fortune of having a living Grand Master, and as a consequence the art of Bujinkan Ninjutsu is still evolving, and alive, where most other arts are repetitions of historic moves, and the techniques are inappropriate in today’s environment.

I was awarded my teaching licence by Hatsumi Sensei in 1994, and currently teach twice a week in London.

I would like to say at this point that I am only a conduit to the Grand Master, and my role is to prepare any student to a position where he is able to begin to comprehend what Hatsumi Soke and his Shihan are teaching. I would like to stress that the points I make in this book are my observations at my current level of understanding – but as we are all continually learning, these views may change or certainly evolve as time goes by.

To train with Hatsumi Soke is an amazing experience. The classes are conducted in a very light-hearted, open fashion and are not at all austere, as you would think. When you watch Soke move, it is as if he is walking round his opponents, and they are falling over. Often you are convinced that a wrist lock is doing the technique, but in reality it is a leg control, or vice versa. The opponent is always controlled on many levels physically and mentally, as well as on different vertical planes, and Soke will create a space between him and the aggressor, for that person to fall down, by discretely stealing their balance.

When Soke talks it will often be in a multi-levelled fashion, much like a parable. I remember him saying something once and thinking I understood the gist of it, but when I reflected on his words some five or so years later I realized he meant something much deeper as well. So whatever level you are on, his words will have some meaning, but the more you ponder them, and as you evolve as a human being as well as a martial artist, the deeper you will realize is their meaning.

The author with Hatsumi Sensei at the Hombu Dojo, Japan.

History

I don’t want to spend too much time on the history of Ninjutsu, as it is well documented in other books. However, I will outline a brief history so as to give the reader a basic insight into the evolution of Ninjutsu.

Ninjutsu was born out of a necessity to survive, and was developed by the rural people living in the mountains of Japan, who had a different belief system to the ruling Samurai class. Like many minorities throughout history, these people were persecuted by the ruling classes. It is not fair to say that all Ninjas were assassins and spies; however, some certainly were. By incorporating fighting techniques from exiled Chinese priests and warriors hiding in the mountains, and by adapting Samurai ju-jutsu and the people’s affinity with nature, a very effective method of survival evolved; this included very efficient methods of armed and unarmed combat.

Because of the poor natural prevailing conditions, and also as a result of the widespread persecution, these people would travel all over Japan in search of work. For a few, these travelling workers were a convenient network of observers or, some might say, spies.

The Togakure Ryu school of Ninjutsu can be traced back over nine hundred years from Grand Master or Soke to Grand Master to the current Soke and my teacher, Hatsumi Masaaki. It is traditional for the Soke to pass his scrolls, or densho, to the next Soke along with the oral instructions, and there is an unbroken lineage stretching back thirty-four generations, as detailed here:

1. Togakure Daisuke (aka Nishina)

2. Shima Kosanta Minamoto No Kanesada

3. Togakure Goro

4. Togakure Kosanta

5. Koga Kisanta

6. Kaneko Tomoharu

7. Togakure Ryuho

8. Togakure Gakuun

9. Kido Koseki

10. Iga Tenryu

11. Ueno Rihei

12. Ueno Senri

13. Ueno Manjiro

14. Iizuka Saburo

15. Sawada Goro

16. Ozaru Ippei

17. Kimata Hachiro

18. Kataoka Heizaemon

19. Mori Ugenta

20. Toda Gogei

21. Kobe Seiun

22. Momochi Kobei

23. Tobari Tenzen

24. Toda Seiryu Nobutsuna

25. Toda Fudo Nobuchika

26. Toda Kangoro Nobuyasu

27. Toda Eisaburo Nobumasa

28. Toda Shinbei Masachika

29. Toda Shingoro Masayoshi

30. Toda Daigoro Chikashige

31. Toda Daisaburo Chikashige

32. Toda Shinryuken Masamitsu

33. Takamatsu Toshitsugu

34. Hatsumi Masaaki

The theory on the founding of the Togakure Ryu is as follows: Togakure Daisuke created the Togakure Ryu by combining his Shugendo training with the Ninja skills he learnt from Kagakure Doshi aka Kain Doshi. In the beginning there was Daisuke, Shima Kosanta Minamoto No Kanesada, a samurai who worked with Daisuke in the employment of a Shogun called Kiso Yoshinaka, and his son Rokosuke.

It is accepted that the 3rd Soke, Togakure Goro, was the person who formed the Togakure Ryu into the Ninjutsu system that is still taught today. It has been suggested that the Togakure Ryu was involved in the defence of Iga in 1581. In the 1600s the Ryu was then taught at the Hatori Ryu to the warriors of the Kishu fief. It was at this time that the Toda family, who were also Sokes of the Kumogakure Ryu, took over the Sokeship of the Togakure Ryu as well.

The 11th, 12th and 13th Sokes changed their name to that of a large town in the Iga province, Ueno. It was quite normal at this time to change your name, or be named after the town or village you came from. The Iga province is the famous province associated with the Ninja.

The 22nd Soke, Momochi Kobei, was related to Momochi Sandayu, who was the Soke of the Momochi Ryu, Gyokko Ryu and Koto Ryu (the last two ryu are also part of the Bujinkan). He was also a very important person within the Iga Ryu.

The 33rd Soke, Takamatsu Toshitsugu, belonged to the Toda family, as his grandfather was the 32nd Soke, Toda Shinryuken Masamitsu.

Hatsumi Soke is currently the Grand Master of nine different schools, or ryu. These schools make up the Bujinkan system and are listed below.

1. Togakure Ryu Ninjutsu

2. Gyokko Ryu Koshijutsu

3. Kukishinden Ryu Happo Hikenjutsu

4. Shinden Fudo Ryu Dakentaijutsu

5. Gyokushin Ryu Ninjutsu

6. Gikan Ryu Koppo Taijutsu

7. Koto Ryu Koppojutsu

8. Takagi Yoshin Ryu Jutaijutsu

9. Kumogakure Ryu Ninjutsu

As you can see, there are six schools of Ju Jutsu and three schools of Ninjutsu. I am going to show you elements of the Bujinkan system, which is made from an amalgamation of all the schools, but a few in particular.

Attitude

Mental Attitude

Takamatsu Soke wrote that the essence of all martial arts and military strategies is to protect oneself, and the art of Ninjutsu fully epitomizes this concept of self-protection since it deals with the protection of the physical body as well as the mind and spirit. He also said that the way of the Ninja is the way of enduring, surviving and prevailing over all that would destroy a person; and that Ninjutsu is more than merely delivering strikes and slashes, and much deeper in significance than the simple outwitting of an opponent: it is a way of attaining what you need while making the world a better place.

When I talk about techniques and tactics, please don’t just think about it from the aspect of fighting, but try to work out how the lesson applies to your work, your life and your relationships. And when I talk about ‘taking balance’ you should also consider how you can take your opponent’s balance on a mental level. This art is so much bigger than just fighting.

Controlling the Emotions

Hatsumi Sensei has often said that ‘… the difference between animals and humans is that humans are able to control their instincts or emotions. If a person is unable to do this, they are no more than a wild animal.’ If you are unable to control your emotions you will easily relinquish control of your feelings to someone else, giving them control of you. This is unwise in any area of life, let alone in a violent confrontation. Say, for example, that you succumb to a fit of road rage: the scenario is a person who is clearly behaving in an idiotic manner, and behaving aggressively towards you: if you choose to get angry you are allowing that person to make you feel a certain way, and you hand over the control of your feelings to someone you have previously established as being a fool. So you will have to question who is the greater fool.

Other emotions or feelings that are easily manipulated are greed and ego. It is amazing what people will engage in if they are offered easy money or are flattered sexually, in a way that shows poor judgement and is quite out of character. Again, if you can’t control yourself, you won’t be able to see the situation in its entirety (the bigger picture) or, again, will be easily manipulated. Neither of these is an ideal situation, whether in work, life or fighting.

Ultimately, I think the human being must learn to identify the form or structure of a situation, which is the emotionless, logical reaction to it. Before they can be creative, which relies on their instincts, they need to re-educate their instinct. It is very much like learning a new sport or art where you have to learn the basic moves or techniques before you ‘free form’, when you perform as an expert. Some people have naturally good instincts, but most people’s instincts can be improved upon. Once you have control of your emotions you will be able to see events for what they are, without any preconceived views or wrongly anticipated outcomes, and will stop fulfilling roles that are based on illogical desires. By balancing your emotions with logic you can form a balanced view of situations and events. By remaining calm you will also be able to make the most of all the techniques and knowledge you have, which are easily blocked by emotional tension. Both these qualities are invaluable in life, and particularly in times of conflict. This has been described as ‘quietening the conscious mind’, or Mu Shin, to allow the all-knowing subconscious mind to bleed through.

The conscious mind has a tendency to ‘chatter’ like a monkey and obscure the subconscious mind, which recollects everything you have ever seen, heard or learnt. How many times have you got flustered and not been able to find the correct words? As always, the balance is between two extremes – in this case the emotions or instinct, as opposed to logic. If you can unbalance your opposition, your battle is already won; and if you can prevent your opposition unbalancing your mind, at least your battle is half won.

Dealing with Stress

Let us also talk about stress, and the mechanism for dealing with it. Generally there are two types of problem that cause stress: those you can influence, and those you can’t. It is really important to forget the problems that you have no influence over: by definition you can’t influence their outcome, so to worry about them serves no purpose. The second type of problem is the one you can influence, and it is really important to decide on your line of action as fast as possible based on the information available. And if further information becomes available, then it is quite all right to adapt your original decision. As Theodore Roosevelt commented: ‘In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.’

Hand in hand with forgetting the problems you can’t influence is the issue of living in the present. Too many people worry about ‘in the future this could happen, or not happen’ – and again, this is a waste of energy. Clearly there needs to be some allowance for the future, but all too quickly time can pass you by. You need to enjoy the present because it is lost forever, and the future may never come. The future is a fantasy, the past is a memory, the ‘now’ is a gift: that is why it is called the present.

Banishing Insecurity

Lastly let us consider the human condition of relying on a person or people to make them feel a certain way. The onus on how you feel is your own responsibility. In particular this observation relates to partners and how they interact together. For example; both partners treat each other with respect and courtesy, but one partner proclaims that the other ‘doesn’t love them enough’, and thinks that if their partner did XYZ or behaved in a certain manner, this would prove that they did. This feeling is not based on anything to do with reality, it is based purely on how they feel and perceive their relationship. But insecurity is a feeling you choose to feel, and unless your partner has given you a quantifiable reason to feel insecure, you should have the ability to dispel it.

The other example comprises of people who cannot spend time on their own, or who always need to be around other people to make them feel a certain way. This is a feeling of being incomplete without a partner. A relationship cannot work properly unless two people come together as complete people, without the baggage of this inadequacy and the need for a partner to fulfil their emotional inadequacies. These people also need to rid themselves of this insecurity and become comfortable with themselves, and make themselves more balanced individuals.

Taking Control of Yourself

For sure, to address any of these issues will take work and time, but unless you can rid yourself of such feelings or needs, you cannot view circumstances from a natural balanced position. The first step in taking control of yourself is to realize that these things are happening to you, and then try to address your weaknesses. You have to decide to stop reacting in a Pavlovian fashion to the whims of your mind. When you start trying you may not at first succeed, so initially you should try with situations that are not too stressful. Look at it in the same way as you might when competing in a sport: you don’t want your first competition to be the Olympics – it is best that you start with some easier competitions first, and build up to more difficult ones after a little practice.

I found a simple way of starting to make adjustments to my emotions and to my feelings was to work on my mood. When you wake up in the morning, as long as you do not suffer from a clinical illness, you can decide to feel happy or miserable. This means that, as long as you consider this to be a logical decision, when you feel depressed, either you can choose to indulge the mood and have a really bad day, or you can take three deep breaths and decide to change your mood and have a fantastic day. After all, why would anyone choose to have a bad day? As Lance Armstrong, the seven-times winner of the Tour de France said after he survived cancer, ‘Now I only have good days and great days!’ I really do think that with practice you can decide how you wish to feel.

As you can see, in both Ninjutsu and in life, it is vital that you are in control of your feelings and desires, rather than your feelings and desires being in control of you. Your attitude can be your greatest weapon in life or in combat, or it can be your worst enemy. It is your choice as to which.

Physical Attitude

Controlling the Distance

The most important physical strategy is to control the distance. If you can maintain a distance beyond your opponent’s punching and kicking range he will always have to make a step before being able to hit you with either his feet or his hands, and this takes away some of the reliance on superfast reactions. If you let someone get within this striking range you have to rely totally on speed and reactions to defend yourself – which is fine if you are gifted and young, but these attributes are likely to disappear with age. I think it makes good sense to train in something you can get better at with age, rather than training for years in something where you won’t, and then you start being whipped by the new young beginners.

Whoever makes the first attack naturally puts themselves in a position of vulnerability, so from a martial arts perspective, it is wise to take advantage of this and control the distance to draw your opponent to make the first attack, unless you can be sure of a preemptive strike. The former method will also keep you, in the main, on the right side of the law. However, from a sports perspective this is not ideal, as you are scored on aggression and you also have limited time. This is the beginning of the divergence between a martial art as opposed to a combat sport. As already mentioned, speed and power disappear as you get older, so in a martial art as opposed to a sport fighting art, you have a chance of getting better as you get older because you don’t have to rely so heavily on speed and power.

The other important difference between a martial art and a sport is, of course, that the sportsman wonders how to win, while the martial artist is thinking of how to survive. The consequences are also different, in that for a sports martial artist, if they lose they consider training harder in order to win the next time; but if a martial artist loses, the potential consequence is death.

The Importance of Timing

The next important skill is timing, and choosing the correct time to do your technique, be it a block or an attack. If you get your timing wrong, you will have to work that much harder to compensate. This can mean that after a few exchanges you will either be physically tired, or you will be hopelessly out of position from over-compensating; either way you are playing into the hands of your opponent. Undoubtedly you have experienced that technique, be it a throw or strike, where you have used no effort, but your opponent has flown through the air. This is the feeling you should strive for every time in your training. There is a tendency to start with bad timing, and then to compensate with strength and power. However, if you find yourself getting tired during technique training this is a sure sign that something is wrong, and you should look carefully at your timing. The ethos of training hard and sweating a lot can be good, but it can also be misdirected, and may even be ingraining poor timing and technique. It is important therefore to analyse how you are training, and whether it is efficient or not. Also always seek the advice of a qualified instructor.

Linked with this is using your whole body to do a technique, by which I mean putting your body behind each technique. It is a common habit to rely on the smaller muscle groups such as your biceps and triceps to perform a move. If you can use your whole body to block, strike and throw you will find your power to be devastating, and also effortless. If your body is stationary and you punch with just your arms, you can develop some power. If you now do the same punch but at the same moment of impact you are moving your body in the same direction as the punch, for example by stepping, the force of the punch will be more than doubled.

We have looked at distancing and timing; let us now consider how we could use the principles in everyday life. This is very much like Sun Tzu’s advice of crossing the river at the narrowest point, meaning that there are certain moments when it is easier to get things done than it is at other times. When things are difficult or awkward, use your knowledge of distancing and timing to choose the easiest moment to achieve what you want, or to present yourself, or to make a suggestion to someone, if you like. If you do this at the wrong time you can make all the effort, but be unsuccessful. A crude example of this is if you want to make a business appointment it would be unwise to call the client last thing on Friday, as they may well be preoccupied with going home for the weekend.

In Japanese martial arts, the unification of mind, body and technique is referred to as ‘Shin Gi Tai’. If our minds are distracted by some of the issues mentioned earlier in this book, you can never have this unified state of being. Singing is an example, because if you don’t put spirit into the performance, the song will be lifeless even though technically it was performed perfectly. Hatsumi Sensei suggests that rather than seeking this unification of mind, body and technique on a daily basis, you should try and attain it when you are attempting to do something specific that requires it. This is the value of Mu Shin or ‘no mind’, trying to empty your mind of any self-constraining thoughts or emotions.

The Complete Human Being

With regard to these physical and mental attitudes, one might say that you can master a thousand opponents, but first you must master yourself. It has also been said that the human being should forge themselves like a sword, with continuous tempering, sharpening and polishing. I believe this refers to the mind, body and spirit, and one or two aspects of the three are often omitted. People are happy to focus on one or two of these and omit working on the remainder – and some don’t work on any of them at all. For some reason people often attend to these issues when they have lost someone close to them or have suffered an illness or injury. But it should not take such dramatic circumstances to provoke introspection; and also by its nature, another aspect has been removed or damaged, so that aspect is now difficult to work on. This circumstance again leaves the person incomplete, although now in a different way. I think it is very important to work continuously on all three aspects, so you can evolve as a complete human being.

Ninjutsu: a Comparison

The fact that I have studied a number of different arts, as mentioned above (including Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, traditional Jiu-Jitsu and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu), gives me the opportunity to be objective about tai jutsu or the unarmed fighing techniques of Ninjutsu. Bujinkan Ninjutsu is a comprehensive art in that it teaches the elements of punching and kicking, and locking and throwing, as well as various weapons. As the Grand Master is still alive, the art is still evolving, and at higher levels, defence against current weapons is taught. The footwork taught in Ninjutsu is second to none, and is often a rather random affair in other arts. Once you have studied Ninjutsu to black belt you can begin to see how other martial arts’ techniques can be applied in a Ninjutsu style. Ninjutsu is also a martial art, as opposed to a sport, and more will be written about this later on.

There are specific weapons used in Ninjutsu, and what is remarkable is how, once you have an understanding of the unarmed fighting, using these weapons becomes a natural extension of your body and all you have previously learnt. Like physics there are certain rules and principles and, as long as you apply these, you can use them in variations, or henka, of a specific technique. As mentioned earlier, the art of taking your opponent’s balance prior to applying technique is another cornerstone of this art, and combining this with using your whole body to apply techniques makes Ninjutsu a devastating but, equally, a logical and scientific art.

Once you have been training in this art for some years and have learnt the correct and logical ways of doing things, there will come a time when you will need to pass the fifth Dan and the teaching licence test, which will rely totally on your esoteric skills. The test requires you to kneel on the ground in front of the Grand Master with your back to him; he is holding a shinai or bamboo sword in a raised position. At an unspecified time the Grand Master will try and hit you on the top of your head. It is up to you to feel his intention and roll out of the way without being hit, thus passing the test. If you roll prematurely or get hit you fail. The only advice I can give a prospective candidate is to go mentally to zero, and to clear their mind of extraneous thoughts. If you think of passing or failing you will surely fail. This is Mu Shin. When I did my test I used exactly this technique and rolled out of the way on the first attempt – although at that precise moment it felt as if time stood still and I was pushed out of the way. At no point do I remember consciously deciding to roll out of the way. The following two weeks left me very confused as to what had occurred. After a period of reflection I began to realize that I had to forget my scientific education and accept that this was something that I could not explain scientifically. Please don’t think that there is anything too remarkable with this test. I believe everyone can do this, it is just that most of us have forgotten how to react to this kind of stimulus.

In short, I have found the Bujinkan system very efficient at cultivating physical and esoteric attributes, and Hatsumi Sensei’s teachings have helped me very much, personally, both in my life and in business, as well as being a totally fascinating art.

I hope that once you understand the principles and rules I am going to divulge, it will start you on your way to being a great martial artist. The word ‘artist’ implies that you create something unique, and don’t just regurgitate old historic techniques: please remember this as you progress.

Training with Hatsumi Sensei

There are quite a few things that have stayed in my mind after training with the Grand Master; one of them is the encouragement to keep going. To persevere sounds like a very basic instruction, but it is one where most people fall by the wayside, and so fail to fulfil their dreams and desires. If you want to be good at anything, whether it is martial arts, a job or life, you have to persevere and keep pushing forwards. Sometimes you will feel as if you are standing still or treading water, but if you don’t try to move forwards, you will go backwards. And as far as training is concerned, it is vital that you keep turning up to class, even when you are injured or tired: it will give you a chance to rest the injured area and train the other areas, which in normal situations may not be so strong. ‘Persevering heart’ is also one of the meanings of the Japanese word nin that is part of the word ‘Ninjutsu’ .I am sure that ever since Hatsumi Sensei started teaching, people have asked him about the so-called secrets of Ninjutsu, and he has always replied gambatte, or to ‘keep going’, and the more I train the more I realize how true this is. It is so important to persevere and to keep training, even when you least feel like it.

On this subject Hatsumi Sensei has written that you should forget your sadness, anger, grudges and hatred: they should be allowed to pass like smoke caught in a breeze. Also that you should not deviate from the path of righteousness, and should lead a life worthy of a man, and not be possessed by greed, luxury or your ego. He goes on to say that you should accept sorrows, sadness and hatred as they are, and should consider them as a trial, given to you by the powers, a blessing from nature. You should have your mind and your time fully engaged in budo, and your mind deeply set on bujutsu.