A karate group at the boarding school.
In this chapter:
· Sugasawa Sensei’s first visits to Essex. 1986.
· What’s the right way to ask questions?
· The Suzuki Dojo Kun.
· Suzuki Sensei’s other changes.
· Training at the Yawara Centre.
· A hint of things to come.
Too big to handle.
It was inevitable, it had to happen. I had established such a large Dojo within the boarding school that I couldn’t possibly keep ferrying them down to South London for gradings. So, eventually I plucked up the courage to ask Sugasawa Sensei to come to us in Essex.
I say ‘plucked up the courage’ because I had an overwhelming deferential attitude towards the Japanese Sensei that took a lot of getting over; I was forever fearful of ‘getting it wrong’.
It was in the winter of 1986 that Sugasawa Sensei ran his first training and grading at the school. I remember that the boys were in awe of him and the other teachers, particularly the PE staff couldn’t understand the hype. As an activity, it was well outside of their world of rugby, football and hockey.
This gave the Dojo the boost we needed. The boys were climbing the grade ladder and wanted to compete. At the school, the popularity of karate as an activity was eclipsing the traditional sports, which sometimes caused clashes of interest, particularly with school fixtures. I had to initiate a waiting list and vetted membership (which caused some resentment from those who didn’t make the final cut).
Questions.
Over the years I had been secretly storing up a whole catalogue of unanswered questions about technical Wado, and with Sugasawa Sensei landing on our doorstep I saw this as my opportunity.
On the bigger courses there was seldom any opportunity to ask questions. I got the impression that it wasn’t the done thing. In part, I am sure that it is cultural, ‘Don’t talk/ask, just do!’ was the unspoken Japanese attitude, at least prior to 1989.
How not to do it.
Over time, I came to understand that there were two distinct methods of asking questions that were going to get you into trouble:
· The type where it is obvious that you are deliberately slowing down the lesson for your own ends. To explain; I heard a story about a rather well-known Wado karate teacher (who no longer does Wado, but is still around) who would infuriate his club mates by asking questions when the Japanese Sensei was trying to get a good head of steam going, thus slowing the class down because he was getting knackered, he needed a breather. But they became so sick of this practice that they made sure that in the inevitable sparring at the end of the class they gave him a severe beating as punishment. Apparently, he never learned the lesson.
· There is also the type of guy who asks questions he already knows the answer to. Why would anyone do that? He is the type that he wants to appear knowledgeable in front of his peers, or at least more knowledgeable than them. To be fair, these are not going to be questions of a very basic nature, no, that would make him look dumb. This is just intellectual posturing, disguised as being ‘helpful’.
Asking questions; the payback is worth the blowback…usually.
But, there are sometimes questions that, no matter how much you puzzle on them, the answer is eluding you. Perhaps they just need reframing, or a vital piece is missing?
It’s a question of time and place. And, in those days, my time and place with Sugasawa Sensei was not in the Dojo at the boarding school, or on the bigger courses, it was in the staffroom afterwards over tea and cake.
I think I cascaded so many questions on him in those early visits that I felt a need to apologise, but he was very patient and seemed to enjoy the lines of enquiry.
In fact, he told me that on the bigger courses I ought to ask more questions. This really surprised me. I came to realise that with some of the Japanese Sensei, the people asking the questions were not the thorn in their side, it was the ones who WEREN’T asking the questions that disappointed them the most. They weren’t interrogating what they were doing, they were just blindly following instructions like little automatons. Their engagement with what was going on was minimal.
But there is a balance to be struck, one which Sugasawa Sensei has always spoken about. This is the need to chew the gristle over your own question before you think about pushing the problem on to the higher authority. Quite often, working it out for yourself, really cogitating over the matter and approaching it from all angles will give you an answer that will have a greater value to you, just based on the fact that you earned the answer through your personal effort and sweat – you ‘owned’ the problem. This can have much more worth to you than being spoon-fed.
Particularly in the late 80’s and early 90’s I became ‘that guy’ on the courses who asked the questions. It might have irritated some of my fellow students, but these weren’t just casual enquiries over trifles, these were the burning questions. And, to their credit, the Japanese Sensei were very giving and patient in tolerating my interruptions.
A grumpy Sensei.
I only got rebuffed once; this was on a seminar with a visiting Japanese Wado Kai Sensei who clearly found my questions, however politely delivered, impertinent.
In one instance he growled back at me that I was asking him a political question; actually, it wasn’t, it was about a manoeuvre around a particular foot position. I can only think that it somehow crossed a line with some technical issue between the Renmei and the Wado Kai in Japan, but for the life of me I still can’t figure out how, as far as I understand, those two parties never talk to each other, particularly over technical matters. All I can think was he’d twigged that I was not from the Wado Kai tradition (earlier in the session another student from a Renmei affiliated group was chewed off for his kihon gyakuzuki. It wasn’t just a polite reminder, or an explanation of a different way of doing things, no, the Renmei method was just ‘wrong’).
In the same session we were training the kata Seishan. I was working next to an instructor who was senior to me but from the same side of the political fence. We were both puzzling over the last move of the kata, couldn’t work out what was being asked, “maybe we should ask the Sensei?” he said, “Okay, so you’re the senior man, you ask him” I replied, he must have seen what happened with my previous question, “no, no… you ask him”, was his answer (disappointing). So, I did. Again, the Sensei was not happy, more grumbling, it was clear he wasn’t going to answer the question, he eventually turned his back on me and just stomped away.
Fools step in where angels fear to tread.