Views On the Importance of Experience
    Boy, Iai do L has been busy this past week or so!  It seems , more posts have crossed here about what students use in swordsmanship and what they have gotten out of it or imagine to, than all the posts in the last year!  All this talk about what sort of sword people use has really brought folks out of the woodwork.  Lurkers I've never heard of are chiming in.  As I read some of the entries, I am struck by how much lack of thought has gone into most of these.  But that is ok, we all write and argue based on our level of experience.
    I would like to pursue some of these thoughts and take them a little further.  Anyone who has used a bokuto knows you can hurt yourself with one.  If you train with otheres doing kumitachi or any of the offense/defense moves, fingers can get broken, a person can get cut if struck on the forehead, etc.  So the guys who only use bokuto can say how dangerous it is and how their awareness is increased. 
    Then along come the guys who use unsharpened mogito and they look down their nose at the bokken crowd.  "How can they possibly know what they are talking about?  They only use wooden play swords!"  Next you have the semi-sharp Iai-to users who have cut their web or stuck themselves in the hand or forearm enough to get cut and bleed.  Isn't this the group that starts trying to throw apples or potatoes in the air and Nukitsuke them?  You can find out how easy it is to split a saya and cut your hand.  In our dojo we have a maxim, it's an ancient one I made up, "draw first, then cut."  Seems to work for me once I started doing it.  But I digress...
    Next you have the guys that have cutting swords either for the "right" feel or for cutting.  They have a way different level of understanding 'cause all of a sudden, you really can get injured if you foul up.  Not only that, but you can hurt someone else.  The students who do kumitachi suddenly may realize just how soft that throat is when your kissaki is pointing at one, or your partner has his sword at yours.  A whole different level of playing field enters your conciousness.  No way can the boken welding student, nor the iai folks have any idea about this other than intellectually.  Theory is fine and people want to argue about it all day long, but it is basically just piping sunshine.  If you don't know, you don't KNOW.  
    So I want to bring the playing field up a little, at least in our minds.  Since that is where this will more than likely take place.  In the imagination.  I know a guy who runs a morgue.  They get homeless and unclaimed bodies in that are to be cremated.  He has offered, and you may say to yourself, "Is Bob really going here?!"  Yes I am.  If you so much as "think" about where this is going, your reality has changed.  But he has offered to let me cut some cadavers.  Hang 'em up on a meat hook and go at it.  Kinda makes me sick, but what if?  Is this stuff supposed to work or not?  Are all these armchair warriors talking about Samurai this and Samurai that willing to KNOW in their heart what it means?  Or are they content to argue about something they are totally clueless about.  Can a person really do sword work on a dead body?  They gonna dispose of it anyway.  So what the hell?  Where's the harm?  Human dignity, maybe?  What was that to the "ancient Samurai"?  They supposadly would kill on the orders of their Lord with no emotion.  And blah blah blah. 
    So as we all sit here in our basic safety yakking endlessly about this, none of us has a remote inkling of what it is like.  Yet so many take positions on it.  Maybe it's time to train and shut up.  Cause then, where do you go to learn after cutting dead bodies?  Live ones!  If you chased an unarmed person around whacking on them, that's one way to know what a sword will REALLY do.  But here again, your respect for the weapon is heightened beyond all who read any of the sword forums.  But if you for sure want to understand swords, and understand them in your hearts and souls, you would have to sword fight with a guy who also has one.  Then and only then can any of us realize what this means.  Then we would totally understand and "get" it.  For myself, I'm not willing.  Just the thought process to get me here though, has changed my view on this endeavour.  Suddenly, I became much more serious.  More serious than the members of the dojo in Japan where I train.  To many of them, swordsmanship is another form of entertainment, like golf. 
    Anyway, I don't know how many out there have truly used a sword, but I have heard that a sword teacher in the DC area has killed with one.  And more than once.  In the end, he is the only one who can speak with authority on this.  You know, we make an analogy in our dojo of people who only use Iai-to.  It is in effect, using an unloaded gun.  You can practice all the jumping around and wild cutting procedures with way cool names all you want.  But if you don't actually cut, you are basically taking that unloaded gun and pretending to shoot your targets like say, under your arms, behind you, across your shoulders, behind your knees, in back of your head, etc.  Click click, as you pull the trigger, and nothing happens.  But if you loaded that gun, you would never do those things.  Why?  Cause they wouldn't work.  Personally I will stick to my level of play acting twice a week, and not dream of telling anything to anybody who has more experience than me.
Bob Elder
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