The weapons are a catalogue of the martial arts in medieval Japan.
600 years later, the same weapons are still used in Japan, but no longer in battle.
The way of the warrior has become, for many people, the way of the sportsman.
The ancient techniques have been developed to fit into the modern world.
Also in the Kofuku-ji temple, there is a group of rare wooden statues about four inches high, of warriors in fighting postures.
Some unarmed, some with weapons. They were also carved about 600 years ago.
They show, in their variety of gesture, that the same basic movements have been used in fighting throughout the centuries.
There's a continuity between the warriors of that time and the sportsmen of today. Only the purpose has changed.
All the ancient Japanese traditions suffered a traumatic shock when the emperor of Japan surrendered in 1945.
The American administration of Japan considered that the martial arts encouraged militaristic behavior and stopped the practice of them.
Instead, the Japanese were encouraged to take up American sports and the American way of life.
They accepted many aspects of it eagerly, and it caused a revolution in their mental attitudes.
Many of them were no longer content to accept that the main purposes of practicing the martial art were philosophical and religious.
And as a result, many of the old forms have been turned into sport.
Aikido is a sport that arose from this process. Once it was a true martial art called Aikijujutsu.
Then between the 1920s and the 1940s, it was changed into Aikido, and it became a way of life.
After 1949, it divided into two main schools. One continued to follow tradition, the other transferred it into a sporting system with fighting contests.
This is called Tomiki Sport Aikido after the master who developed it.
An Aikido contest is fought between a man holding a rubber dagger and his unarmed opponent.
The contest is won by scoring points awarded for a successful stab with a dagger or a successful counter to it.
Before 1945, there are only a handful of Westerners practicing fighting arts.
Though the Chinese and other fighting systems are practiced throughout the world, they are still minority sports outside their own countries.
The Japanese arts are the ones that are internationally popular.
There are shops in Tokyo where it's as normal for the customers to be Western as Japanese.
The customers are often men whose lives have been fundamentally changed by their training in fighting arts and the philosophy that is taught with them.
Jim Elkin was such a man. He was known throughout Britain as a master of Aikido and vice chairman of the martial arts commission.
This film is based on his ideas and experience.
Unfortunately, he is a silent witness since he had not recorded his contribution before he died in January 1982.
The shop that he visited is well known to British martial artists, many of them by their equipment here.
This international aspect of the fighting arts is one of the most important side effects of its worldwide growth.
In this process, prejudices are shed and lives are enriched. This is exactly what happened to Jim Elkin.
He was a member of the British security services for many years and much of his life is still secret.
He also knew ancient Japanese martial techniques and especially the use of the joe or staff.
Aikijujutsu is the martial ancestor of the gentler Aikido.
First I attack the armor here and attack a vital point to paralyze the arm.
Now I attack the next vulnerable part which is the wrist and I break it.
And you, because of the thing, will open the fingers and lose the knife.
Then I take the arm up so and jerk violently which dislocates the shoulder.
To finish off...
He demonstrated these techniques to Japanese students of Aikido who don't usually study the older systems.
Within Japan even Jujitsu, the martial ancestor of Judo, is rarely studied.
I end an attack here, control the wrist and break it, bring the hand up too, keeping this pressure on here and take away the throat.
Here, stretch across, collapse the knee.
At the relief of Singapore, Jim Elkin was a young rating in the British Navy.
He saw the condition of prisoners in the Japanese prison camps which left him with strong anti-Japanese feelings.
However, in the 1970s he met Master Kuguri and they became close friends.
This friendship changed Jim's mind about things Japanese.
He became a Buddhist and head of the international section of the Tomiki Aikido Federation.
Kuguri is a master of Aikido.
He enjoys demonstrating brutally the effectiveness of Aikido against karate techniques.
Thread Daochan straight out of the
Master Kaguri enjoyed sharing all aspects of Japanese life with Jim Elkin, including
the ritual of the bath with a traditional meal to follow.
This food is a mixture of nourishment and display, so that a raw and still moving lobster
is a great delicacy.
The look is even more important than the taste.
The arrangement of a formal room for entertaining includes strategy for self-defense.
A samurai host could never be certain that he could trust his guest.
The host now sits where, in more dangerous days, the guest used to sit.
It was an act of folly to sit with your back to the paper screen doorway.
The screens that surrounded the host concealed his bodyguard, who could burst in to defend
their master.
Though in ordinary life the Japanese no longer take such precautions, there are still some
who think it necessary.
I found several differences between the western martial arts and the Japanese or the eastern
martial arts.
One thing is that in the west there is boxing and wrestling.
There is the weaving and ducking and the jumping.
In Japan, all of the martial arts like judo, kendo, karate, and Aikido, the movement is
that the head never moves.
And the steps are like this.
In the western martial arts there is jumping.
I wonder why there is a difference between the two.
This is because the Japanese were basically the agricultural nations.
In agriculture, when you have these things to put the soil down, we move in this case
one, two, never walk like this.
In all the martial arts movements, as well as the kabuki, is this type of movement.
And against in hunting, we must run.
And we must run.
This kind of wrestling and boxing, jumping.
In Japan, never jumping, the head never moves.
I think there is a basic motif of the martial arts in two different ways.
Master Koguri has achieved such command of the Tomiki style of Aikido that he is able
to demonstrate the effectiveness of the art at great speed.
He uses techniques taught only to advanced students, applying painful locks, chokes,
and pressure to the nerves.
In fighting, the time when I attack you is when you are breathing.
And when you are breathing, I hit you.
But in Japanese, between the Japanese fighting, I can easily get the breathing times.
But the foreigners find always breathing out is more.
So it is very difficult to find his breathing in.
And I wonder why.
Then somebody told me this is because of the language.
Like English accent is always pushing out.
I said, fine, okay, yes, let's go, no.
Japanese is breathing in.
And always think about the enemies.
Suddenly, if somebody attacked from here, I have to stand up.
And I have to stand and to fight.
And therefore, I can't sit like this.
I must always move.
And if I sit down like this and stamp and with the knees.
And always right knees up because my sword is here.
And therefore, the posture is as a regiment and these type of things are very much important
in Japanese in all evening ordinary life.
Aikido is very popular amongst Japanese university students.
It's practiced enthusiastically and thoroughly by large numbers of them.
This is a typical class from Waseda University.
Go, rock, sit, hut, kyo, jo, et, a, se, o, rock, sit, hut, kyu, ju.
When the students' bodies are supple and warm, they move on to practicing the basic movements
of Aikido.
The idea of moving calmly and rotating the arms in circles to defend oneself originated
in China.
There also, the fighters had a profound understanding of the joints, muscles, and vital points of
the body and developed ways of throwing or paralyzing an attacker.
For centuries in Japan too, these principles of soft or internal martial arts have been
used in combat training.
In modern Aikido, the dangerous techniques have been eliminated, but the mental approach
remains the same.
One of Jim Elkins' friends in Japan was Master Oba, a master of Aikido and also a master
of Judo and many weapons systems.
He is over 70, but he still teaches actively in several universities.
In his long life, he has been awarded a total of 38 dans, the highest number ever earned
by a Japanese individual.
His life has been devoted to the fighting arts, especially as a teacher of university
students.
He thinks that sport is an essential part of training.
When a samurai does martial arts, he is very much affected by the spirit of the past.
He went to the battlefield and fought for his life.
If he wants to be affected by the spirit of the past, he has to do it in the field of sports.
In the modern era, when the battlefield was changed, the spirit was affected by the field
of sports.
Aikido was not changed instantly from a martial art to a sport.
In between is the classical Aikido, still practiced and still important.
When a fighting art is developed for sporting purposes, there are gains, but also certain
qualities are lost.
The older system's prepared exercises take the time to be more complex and elegant.
The very complicated holds work like chess moves.
Each grip is a counter to the last.
They are practiced so that one person performs the winning moves.
Two masters fighting together would use these techniques until one of them achieved a move
that the other couldn't counter.
Like many Japanese systems, Aikido, even practiced as a sport, aims to cultivate the mind and
spirit as well as the body.
By repeating the moves in a classical manner, the girls can concentrate on perfecting their
actions.
The effectiveness of these throws and locks is secondary to the aim of performing them
perfectly.
All Aikido is based on the same principles, but the sporting style is simpler.
It's more direct and faster in action.
Master Oba has lived through these developments.
He knew the masters who initiated them and the long arguments that divided the world
of Aikido.
There are now two main schools.
One the school of Master Ueshiba has rejected the sporting way.
The other follows the teachings of Master Tomiki who led the movement for change.
Master Tomiki started the Aikido competition.
He used to make a lot of Aikido communication and
then suggested youtube.
After few years and an hour, Master Leshi fixed the internet using the internet.
curriculum sacrificed and taught the young for
the sake of checks.
I will also teach the techniques of Tomizu Aikido to people who are not strong enough.
I will also teach the techniques of Uesawa and Tomizu Aikido to people who are not strong enough.
The sophisticated knowledge of the ways in which the joints of the arms and legs won't bend lies at the heart of Aikido.
Practicing the fighting techniques also instills calmness and relaxation.
You can't be thrown repeatedly like this unless your mind and body are in a passive state.
All these qualities make Aikido ideal for use in schools and universities.
And it's from these places that Tomizu Aikido has drawn its basic support.
In free-form sparring, students can use any techniques they like to defeat each other.
A rubber knife stops the risk of injury but gives the sparring a more lifelike quality.
The night man is always the attacker, the unarmed man the defender.
This was the martial art of the samurai women.
It is called naganata after the name of the weapon that they used.
It's similar to the western halberd.
The blade is made from the same steel as the Japanese sword blade.
It is a powerful weapon when handled skillfully, almost as effective as a sword with a longer reach.
As always in the martial arts, they practice with wooden weapons.
This was not a sport for the samurai women.
It was their defense when their homes were attacked.
They had the reputation for being ferocious fighters and for dying as bravely as their men.
To use the naganata properly, it must be twisted through a half circle
so that the shaft is used almost as much as the bladed end.
A series of slashes build up into a potent attack,
blows shiring down in an arc from above or siding upwards from below.
Sawada sensei shows her mastery of the weapon by the way she wields it
and the ease and precision with which she stops and changes direction.
Before 1945, naganata was the usual physical training for girls at school in Japan.
After the war, naganata almost disappeared as a result of the American prohibitions.
Sawada sensei with her colleague Yoshida sensei were two of those who led the revival.
When the practice of martial arts was permitted again,
all the remaining naganata schools combined to develop a modern form.
Traditional naganata was the art of cutting.
New naganata is the art of striking.
Sawada sensei teaches the classical style in the mornings,
but in the afternoon the class turns to the modern combat sport.
Sport naganata schools are the most popular women's martial training in Japan today.
Besides learning basic techniques, the women test each other's skills in contests.
To reduce the chances of injury, the training weapons have been modified.
They have a light split bamboo blade on the end of the shaft.
Armor covers the main target areas, which are the head, neck, shoulders, forearms, trunk and shins.
The contestants must shout out the name of their target just as they launch an attack,
and the judges then decide whether the blow strikes home accurately or not.
The evolution of the Japanese martial arts has not been a simple process
because they are so deeply involved with the nation's religion and culture.
The martial arts became a way of meditation, a part of Zen Buddhism,
and sometimes not even a way of self-defense.
These ritualistic strokes with swords could be used for fighting,
but that is not the purpose of the practice.
These men are concentrating on reaching perfection in their actions.
In Zen, the perfect performance of the ritual is to achieve a state of Zen.
This perfection can be expressed in many ways, by calligraphy or the tea ceremony or in the martial arts.
For many Japanese, this is enough. They are content to perfect their art.
However, development was possible.
Out of the trance of Zen sword practice came the violent sport of kendo.
But it is not just a sport in the Western sense.
Within it, there is also philosophy and a way of life.
It's because of this complexity that kendo attracts many Westerners to study it.
Some give up their settled lives and travel to Japan to practice.
This is what Les Denniston did three years ago.
He left Glasgow and came to Kyoto and supports himself by teaching English.
Les performs his solitary exercises on the roof of his flat,
completing a thousand sword strokes each day before going on to the dojo to practice.
Before starting kendo, I would have described myself aggressive, very aggressive.
But you lose your aggression or you learn to control it.
I started originally because I was very fat.
After I lost weight, I became interested in the spirit, the mind of kendo.
But it can really change you. It becomes your life.
Kendo is not a sport. A sport you play for enjoyment or for entertainment.
Kendo, Japanese call it Kokoro no Shugyo, spiritual training.
And I became really interested in that aspect of kendo.
Les was lucky. He was accepted into a small dojo with several kendo masters.
One evening a week is devoted to the practice of ritual sword strokes.
In Japan, the tenders of kendo are called kata.
In Japan, the tenders are called kata.
In Japan, the tendency of the teacher is not to teach you by a spoken word.
He will keep striking you in one place where your weakness lies.
He will keep striking you.
So eventually you learn the painful way, the hard way to stop that weakness.
In kendo, my weakness is my wrist kote.
So the kendo teacher just continually hits you, strikes you.
And eventually you learn. You learn, okay, it's really painful.
Many foreigners come and they want to do something, some modern discipline.
And the first time they're hurt or the first time they experience any pain, they stop.
They won't continue.
And in Japan the important thing is to continue.
No matter how bad you are or how bad you feel you are, you continue.
If the teacher sees this spirit determination, then you can really...
He'll meet you halfway and you must come the other half.
And you can really advance.
But westerners tend to be egotistical.
In kendo, if you get hurt, it's not so much your body that gets hurt, it's your ego.
Ego gets hurt so the people stop.
They feel they've been defeated.
If you want to overcome others, you must first overcome yourself, your own weaknesses.
The rules of kendo dictate that an attack may only be started with the right foot forward.
And attacks must be aimed at areas which are covered in armor.
The head, shoulders, chest or upper forearm.
None of which would have been a target in real fighting.
People, beginners especially, follow their instincts and raise their hands to protect their head, which leaves the body open.
Or they'll make their instinct defeat them.
You have to overcome your instincts and stand there strongly.
But kendo and zen basically have the same purpose, to destroy the ego.
The atmosphere in a kendo dojo has a powerful sense of controlled violence.
The shouts are full of intensity.
The fighting is fast and ruthless.
The contestants are tuned to a high pitch.
Their minds reach a special intensity, both calm and yet racing, alert to every tiny movement of their opponent.
The Japanese call it Ichigo Ichie, which means every time is the last time.
This is a real fight, the last time.
And you're serious, and you're direct, you're not casual in any way.
Your attitude must not be casual.
No matter even if you've beaten the guy, you must still be alert and aware.
And have respect for your opponent.
It's like a spring, just waiting to go to see the opportunity of moving.
If your opponent shows a weakness, take it quickly and seriously.
No smiling, no laughing, it's not a laughing matter.
Les Denniston and Blake Jemelkin both had their philosophy of life changed by their contact with the Japanese.
They are not alone.
Theirs is the common experience of serious students who are taught by masters of ability and integrity.
At the heart of the old martial arts and the new sporting system is an ideal of self-control and a distaste for violence.
Aggression is based on fear, basically frightened inside.
And after a few years of training, quite hard, you lose it.
I'm training every day in fighting.
I don't need it anywhere else.
I don't want to fight anyone, only in the dojo.
That's all.
But before, I was a nasty piece of work.
What an interesting series. We hope you've enjoyed the way of the warrior tonight.
And don't forget to be with us again at 7.30 next Monday night when we learn of the Chinese art of Tai Chi.
But now stay with us for sneak preview.
And then at 8.30 the start of a new Italian series, Longing to Fly.