I am a hired hand. I teach in two places - one, a community college, as part of its ever-dwindling (due to constant budge cuts) fitness program; and one, an art gallery/cultural center. I have a schedule. I have one hour at the community college, which I regularly extend to at least 90 minutes, and my other two classes are exactly 75 minutes long. No more, no less, or else, as the guy who runs the center puts it, we have to change the price he charges for classes.
And ya know what? I don't even know how much he charges. I have no idea, because it keeps changing. I really should go to the website some time and look it up. The community college class is free for students, and there is a really nominally small fee for non-students (no wonder they have budget problems, but I appreciate the idea that they feel a communuty college should have some sense of "community").
I no longer get paid for the community college class. It became free after a round of budget cuts almost two years ago. I am a volunteer. Even when I got paid, it was seriously the equivalent of carfare. The gallery pays me a little as a contractor so I can theoretically deduct some expenses. Again, it is basically carfare as well.
But pay is not the issue. The issue, for me, is: is this a dojo? The thought came up again this morning, when a dance teacher and I were talking about our relationship to our students. She noted that it was a conundrum - to have some kind of relationship without getting so close that things students do or say start to affect you in some way (any way - good or bad). And she said, "Well, you guys go out drinking, so you could be said to have some kind of relationship rather than just in the class itself." I had to respond that even when I was at my old place, we did not go out like we had when I first started. Somewhere along the line work obligations or family obligations or financial obligations had taken over. Now, as a hired hand, I can truthfully say that opportunities like that are practically non-existent. I spend more time socializing on my brief training visits to Japan than I do with my own students here.
When I first started on my own, I tried to replicate my earlier model, which had worked successfully (and still does, actually, over there, where I started it), but it did not work a second time; whether because the times are different (space is more expensive, people are busier, etc.) or because I am different, or whether it is the catfish pond thing. I could not charge enough to meet expenses and still make it affordable for the people I did have, and the market seemed to be saturated enough that there was no good way to stand out.
All the same, I have begun to think about it again, maybe someplace closer to home. I have refined my curriculum so it doesn't duplicate everyone else's. And it would be really nice to be able to stay an extra ten minutes without someone calling "time."
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
Solstice party
There are many things I like about the 2nd half of the year. Fall is my favorite season. I enjoy the cooloff after a hot humid NYC summer. The colors are frequently beautiful (even if it takes until November until we actually see them). People even seem a little nicer (which is saying something), because everyone is finished enduring the weather and can actually enjoy it for a change.
But I don't like the creeping darkness. I usually notice it around the end of October. It's dimmer in the morning when I get up, and the sun sets rapidly. I enjoy "garden inspection" in the late spring/summer, but by the time December comes around, I am getting up in the dark and going to work at more or less first light, and returning in complete darkness. If (as I truly deserve) I sleep in on a weekend morning, I feel bad that I have missed a precious few hours of daylight in the process. For years I did not do any close work in the late fall through early spring because the insides of my various apartments were so dark; eventually I wised up and got a swing arm lamp with two types of bulbs to fight off the darkness, and it helps, but it's not enough.
I get used to it, eventually, but I still don't like it, even as I enjoy other things about the end of the year. And I know I am not alone. I think the reason why Christmas lights are popular is that it's a primordial reaction by humans to rage against the dark. After all, people have always lit fires at night to keep preditors at bay, and I also think to comfort themselves - a little substitute light until daylight returns. People often refer to deities as being a source of light. More than one religion incorporates halos into their artwork to differentiate divine figures. Even if there was no religion, however, we would still be pursuing light.
So here we are at the Solstice day, and the hysteria (who knew?) about the end of the Mayan calendar has had a nice side benefit - we are today supremely aware of it being the shortest day of the year. There was a party at Stonehenge, like there is every year, only this time it was bigger, including people in reindeer antlers and Santa hats, and not just "druids," all to celebrate the return of the light. I saw that video this morning on the news, along with the sarcastic commentary ("We're still here, guys"), but I also saw something else. That no matter what anyone's professed religion, we all want the light to come back. All of us - even plants and animals. Every now and then, something transcends all of our differences. Today is one of those days.
But I don't like the creeping darkness. I usually notice it around the end of October. It's dimmer in the morning when I get up, and the sun sets rapidly. I enjoy "garden inspection" in the late spring/summer, but by the time December comes around, I am getting up in the dark and going to work at more or less first light, and returning in complete darkness. If (as I truly deserve) I sleep in on a weekend morning, I feel bad that I have missed a precious few hours of daylight in the process. For years I did not do any close work in the late fall through early spring because the insides of my various apartments were so dark; eventually I wised up and got a swing arm lamp with two types of bulbs to fight off the darkness, and it helps, but it's not enough.
I get used to it, eventually, but I still don't like it, even as I enjoy other things about the end of the year. And I know I am not alone. I think the reason why Christmas lights are popular is that it's a primordial reaction by humans to rage against the dark. After all, people have always lit fires at night to keep preditors at bay, and I also think to comfort themselves - a little substitute light until daylight returns. People often refer to deities as being a source of light. More than one religion incorporates halos into their artwork to differentiate divine figures. Even if there was no religion, however, we would still be pursuing light.
So here we are at the Solstice day, and the hysteria (who knew?) about the end of the Mayan calendar has had a nice side benefit - we are today supremely aware of it being the shortest day of the year. There was a party at Stonehenge, like there is every year, only this time it was bigger, including people in reindeer antlers and Santa hats, and not just "druids," all to celebrate the return of the light. I saw that video this morning on the news, along with the sarcastic commentary ("We're still here, guys"), but I also saw something else. That no matter what anyone's professed religion, we all want the light to come back. All of us - even plants and animals. Every now and then, something transcends all of our differences. Today is one of those days.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Too many budo catfish
I recently spent a day training with a jodo group in Washington DC with two of my students. Even though we were invited to train for the whole day from whenever we were able to show up (the host teacher arranged for extra afternoon training), I busted my butt (and commanded the busting of my two students' butts) to get there in time for their regular group okeiko, which started at 11:00am. I did it because I wanted my two guys to have an opportunity to see that there is in fact an audience for this practice (the host teacher has about 20 students). And I also felt that it would be nice for them to be able to feel part of that larger whole - a bonding opportunity, if you will.
And it worked out great. We had a good (and exhausting!) day's practice, I got to see a few people I have not seen in awhile, the guys got to meet some fellow enthusiasts, and we all got our butts kicked. Even my ancient car cooperated. It was a pretty good weekend.
However, it did get me thinking about my relative dearth of students. I have about 7-8, spread between two places, and at this time of year, between college terms ending and holidays looming, I am lucky to get 1-2 people at a practice. Sometimes there is no one, and while I love the opportunity to practice by myself, it makes my sponsor unhappy because he does not make any money when that happens. By contrast, about 1/2 of the host teacher's students showed up in DC - about 10 people - with the teacher and the three of us it made for a relative "cast of thousands" as one Facebook commenter put it when he saw the photo.
And, for the record, it is not just me. The sponsor of my Thursday space says all of the classes are suffering from lack of attendance at the moment, so perhaps it's just the time of year, but I think there is another side to the problem.
Here's the story. My great aunt had a small farm in Pennsylvania. There was a white, clapboard house, a barn, and a catfish pond. There were blueberry bushes (beloved by the local Pocono mountains bears), and a spring house. It was beautiful and cool in the summertime, and I used to enjoy visiting when I was going back and forth to NYC in the early years. At one point, my aunt asked my father to look into a problem with the catfish pond. Even though she had many catfish, they never got to be more than about 8 inches long. What, she wondered, could be done to make them grow bigger. My dad, the biologist, responded - fewer catfish. She didn't quite understand. What if she fed them special food? Same result, said my dad. You need fewer fish in the pond. Right now, the fish were the optimal size for the space available in the pond for everyone to have enough food, water and oxygen. Get rid of some of them, and the remaining fish will be larger, because they will take advantage of the relatively increased resources.
Heaven forbid! My aunt could not bear the idea of getting rid of the catfish, so, in spite of special food, they never did get any larger than 8 inches, if that.
My aunt eventually died after a long life and the farm was sold, as I recall, to a couple who kept horses and were delighted with the place (I don't know if they kept the pond or not). End of story.
I thought of this when I was talking to the host teacher this weekend about class size. I could always do more to publicize my classes, of course, but NYC is a lot like a catfish pond. There are so many dojo, and so many teachers (and senior students who sometimes strike off on their own), and so many fitness crazes that come and go, including cardio kickboxing and hell knows what else, that every place can only attract a handful of students, except for special events. I should qualify this by saying that there are a few larger dojo out there for things that are less traditional. Traditional dojo, in my experience, tend to be small anyway, but as people have found out about koryu budo, more dojo have come into existence, and fewer people per dojo are the result. People can pick and choose the location, style and time of classes, so everyone picks what they want.
As part of my evidence, several old students of my teacher, Mr. Otani, have said that originally, when he first started teaching iai, his classes were packed with students, many of whom were teachers of other genres of martial arts. Otani Sensei was the *only* catfish in the pond at the time. But as time went on, people peeled away, whether to incorporate their new techniques into their curriculum, or to do other things, I do not know. But we can do the math easily - if 20 people are interested in swordsmanship, and there is only one dojo, then that one dojo will have 20 students. One senior student goes out on his own, and takes 1/4 of the students, then you have one place with 15 students, and another with 5, and so on. Since traditional budo involves little, if any, competition opportunities and may or may not function as a rank-granting organization, and (importantly) is not really meant for small children, the number of new recruits in a given year is understandably small. As groups form and multiply, the available pool of students becomes ever smaller relative to the number of opportunities to train. Really simple math.
If we step back and look at NYC's cultural scene, you can take classes of every conceivable description in any cultural practice to be found almost anywhere in the world right here, if you look hard enough for it. And the teachers are the best to be found anywhere as well, by and large. It's a wonderful thing, but it also makes sustaining a group a lot like trying to grow big catfish in a very small, overpopulated pond.
And it worked out great. We had a good (and exhausting!) day's practice, I got to see a few people I have not seen in awhile, the guys got to meet some fellow enthusiasts, and we all got our butts kicked. Even my ancient car cooperated. It was a pretty good weekend.
However, it did get me thinking about my relative dearth of students. I have about 7-8, spread between two places, and at this time of year, between college terms ending and holidays looming, I am lucky to get 1-2 people at a practice. Sometimes there is no one, and while I love the opportunity to practice by myself, it makes my sponsor unhappy because he does not make any money when that happens. By contrast, about 1/2 of the host teacher's students showed up in DC - about 10 people - with the teacher and the three of us it made for a relative "cast of thousands" as one Facebook commenter put it when he saw the photo.
And, for the record, it is not just me. The sponsor of my Thursday space says all of the classes are suffering from lack of attendance at the moment, so perhaps it's just the time of year, but I think there is another side to the problem.
Here's the story. My great aunt had a small farm in Pennsylvania. There was a white, clapboard house, a barn, and a catfish pond. There were blueberry bushes (beloved by the local Pocono mountains bears), and a spring house. It was beautiful and cool in the summertime, and I used to enjoy visiting when I was going back and forth to NYC in the early years. At one point, my aunt asked my father to look into a problem with the catfish pond. Even though she had many catfish, they never got to be more than about 8 inches long. What, she wondered, could be done to make them grow bigger. My dad, the biologist, responded - fewer catfish. She didn't quite understand. What if she fed them special food? Same result, said my dad. You need fewer fish in the pond. Right now, the fish were the optimal size for the space available in the pond for everyone to have enough food, water and oxygen. Get rid of some of them, and the remaining fish will be larger, because they will take advantage of the relatively increased resources.
Heaven forbid! My aunt could not bear the idea of getting rid of the catfish, so, in spite of special food, they never did get any larger than 8 inches, if that.
My aunt eventually died after a long life and the farm was sold, as I recall, to a couple who kept horses and were delighted with the place (I don't know if they kept the pond or not). End of story.
I thought of this when I was talking to the host teacher this weekend about class size. I could always do more to publicize my classes, of course, but NYC is a lot like a catfish pond. There are so many dojo, and so many teachers (and senior students who sometimes strike off on their own), and so many fitness crazes that come and go, including cardio kickboxing and hell knows what else, that every place can only attract a handful of students, except for special events. I should qualify this by saying that there are a few larger dojo out there for things that are less traditional. Traditional dojo, in my experience, tend to be small anyway, but as people have found out about koryu budo, more dojo have come into existence, and fewer people per dojo are the result. People can pick and choose the location, style and time of classes, so everyone picks what they want.
As part of my evidence, several old students of my teacher, Mr. Otani, have said that originally, when he first started teaching iai, his classes were packed with students, many of whom were teachers of other genres of martial arts. Otani Sensei was the *only* catfish in the pond at the time. But as time went on, people peeled away, whether to incorporate their new techniques into their curriculum, or to do other things, I do not know. But we can do the math easily - if 20 people are interested in swordsmanship, and there is only one dojo, then that one dojo will have 20 students. One senior student goes out on his own, and takes 1/4 of the students, then you have one place with 15 students, and another with 5, and so on. Since traditional budo involves little, if any, competition opportunities and may or may not function as a rank-granting organization, and (importantly) is not really meant for small children, the number of new recruits in a given year is understandably small. As groups form and multiply, the available pool of students becomes ever smaller relative to the number of opportunities to train. Really simple math.
If we step back and look at NYC's cultural scene, you can take classes of every conceivable description in any cultural practice to be found almost anywhere in the world right here, if you look hard enough for it. And the teachers are the best to be found anywhere as well, by and large. It's a wonderful thing, but it also makes sustaining a group a lot like trying to grow big catfish in a very small, overpopulated pond.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Chivalry and Bushido
If you look up "bushido" on the web, you will encounter many things, and one of them will be that bushido was a code of conduct for members of the samurai class "analogous to the code of chivalry." Really? Let's take a look at that idea.
I have been enjoying Maurice Keen's Chivalry (1984) lately. In fact, just for fun, I started it during my latest trip to Japan. Keen scoured through original documents, including popular literature of the time, as well as visual sources dating from approximately 1000CE until approximately 1600CE, in order to produce an overall idea of what chivalry was, and more importantly, what it was not. In addition to quoting from some splendid original sources, he debunks certain "truths," including that chivalry was a concept of Christian knighthood (no) or that it really masked a corrupt warrior society (also no). Chivalry was actually a living, secular ethical system that was consciously promulgated by a Europe-wide warrior class. The book is a well-written, fun read, and is considered a classic of medieval history scholarship still used in classrooms. I have been a medieval European history buff almost since the time I first learned to read, but this book came along well after I left school. Thanks to the NYT publishing Keen's obit some months ago, I am happy to be able to enjoy what is generally considered as much of a last word on this topic as we currently have.
So, there I was in the Old Country, reading about chivalry while naturally thinking about bushido, and while practicing some koryu with some samurai class descendants. And you know what? There's no analogy to be made at all between the two, except to say that both chivalry and bushido were warrior codes of a sort. That's it.
Let's look at some tenets:
Bushido:
1. Gi - rectitude (a sense of justice)
2. Yuki - bravery
3. Jin - compassion
4. Rei - respect, politeness
5. Makoto - truthfulness, honesty
6. Meijo - Honor
7. Chugi - Loyalty, devotion
(Nitobe and other sources)
Chivalry:
1. Prouesse - skill at arms
2. Loyaute' - loyalty
3. Largesse - generosity
4. Courtoisie - politeness, also generally interpreted as protection of the weak (i.e. women and children)
5. Franchise - generally interpreted as a "free and frank" deportment that suggests good manners and virtue
(Keen, 1984, 2)
We should keep in mind that with the exception of Nitobe, a Japanese scholar who wrote Bushido in English to begin with in 1895, our ideas of bushido will be coming through a highly interpretive, Western lens. Nevertheless, a look at both lists brings up significant differences, as well as some implied similarities. Prouesse for example implies bravery in the field (one can't be skilled in battle if one is known to run from a fight). Bushido's jin suggests defending the weak, while not explicitly stating it.
However, there seems to be no parallel, nor even an implied one, to franchise - a sense of self that reveals a virtuous nature to observers. Here we see a reference to a sense of individuality that is lacking in the tenets of bushido. This sense of individuality, manifested in franchise, carries through other tenets. For example, prouesse referred to individual skill at arms, and one of the early goals of chivalry was to engage in individual contests for personal glory, an idea that never comes up in bushido (the idea that heroes would ride out during a siege, state their name, lineage and title in order to do battle with some worthy opponent that we hear in the various monogatari are literary devices - there is virtually no evidence to suggest that such individual challenges were ever issued or taken up by others). In fact, loyalty (chugi) seems to be chief among the tenets of bushido, at least that was the thought in the early 20th century. A quick look at medieval European history shows loyalty to be somewhat further down the list of virtues at least in actual practice.
Another tenet of chivalry that has no parallel whatsoever in bushido is the idea of largesse. Largesse is not generosity of spirit; it literally meant spending money on others, and the literature is full of stories of poor knights who eventually lost their status by overspending.
In fact, prouesse, largesse and franchise together were responsible for a unique aspect of European chivalry that had no parallel elsewhere - the tournament. Keen notes that tournaments, rather than the overdressed panoplies most people think of (and which really were more for show by later in the period), began as literal training for war, and they could be brutal. Many, many men died in early tournaments, most especially in the melees - when groups of combatants would fight each other to some definite conclusion. At the very least, a knight who had a grudge against another could easily pull together some allies for a melee and kill his rival without even needing to proclaim it an "accident." Ideally, though, the goal of a melee was to take fellow knights prisoner - victors were entitled to all of a prisoner's equipment and horses, and moreover a victor could hold a vanquished colleague for ruinous ransom. A poor knight with enough means (begged, borrowed, etc.) to pay a tournament fee could potentially improve his fortune through prouesse (or lose his status altogether if he lost). Ransoms eventually became so outrageous that less than super-wealthy knights of necessity formed associations in part to bail each other out in case of capture.
Sound like bushido? Not really. Moreover, while some knights were in fact of noble birth, not nearly all of them were. Nobles actually did rule Europe, and kept knights in their employ. Bushi (later samurai) became a ruling class unto themselves in spite of the nobility, and while some occupied lesser positions than others, everyone knew what constituted the ruling class.
I could go on, but I think this very condensed look can easily show that someone who simply claims an analogy between bushido and chivalry may not be that well-versed in either.
Cool book: Chivalry, by Maurice Keen (1984) New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr.
I have been enjoying Maurice Keen's Chivalry (1984) lately. In fact, just for fun, I started it during my latest trip to Japan. Keen scoured through original documents, including popular literature of the time, as well as visual sources dating from approximately 1000CE until approximately 1600CE, in order to produce an overall idea of what chivalry was, and more importantly, what it was not. In addition to quoting from some splendid original sources, he debunks certain "truths," including that chivalry was a concept of Christian knighthood (no) or that it really masked a corrupt warrior society (also no). Chivalry was actually a living, secular ethical system that was consciously promulgated by a Europe-wide warrior class. The book is a well-written, fun read, and is considered a classic of medieval history scholarship still used in classrooms. I have been a medieval European history buff almost since the time I first learned to read, but this book came along well after I left school. Thanks to the NYT publishing Keen's obit some months ago, I am happy to be able to enjoy what is generally considered as much of a last word on this topic as we currently have.
So, there I was in the Old Country, reading about chivalry while naturally thinking about bushido, and while practicing some koryu with some samurai class descendants. And you know what? There's no analogy to be made at all between the two, except to say that both chivalry and bushido were warrior codes of a sort. That's it.
Let's look at some tenets:
Bushido:
1. Gi - rectitude (a sense of justice)
2. Yuki - bravery
3. Jin - compassion
4. Rei - respect, politeness
5. Makoto - truthfulness, honesty
6. Meijo - Honor
7. Chugi - Loyalty, devotion
(Nitobe and other sources)
Chivalry:
1. Prouesse - skill at arms
2. Loyaute' - loyalty
3. Largesse - generosity
4. Courtoisie - politeness, also generally interpreted as protection of the weak (i.e. women and children)
5. Franchise - generally interpreted as a "free and frank" deportment that suggests good manners and virtue
(Keen, 1984, 2)
We should keep in mind that with the exception of Nitobe, a Japanese scholar who wrote Bushido in English to begin with in 1895, our ideas of bushido will be coming through a highly interpretive, Western lens. Nevertheless, a look at both lists brings up significant differences, as well as some implied similarities. Prouesse for example implies bravery in the field (one can't be skilled in battle if one is known to run from a fight). Bushido's jin suggests defending the weak, while not explicitly stating it.
However, there seems to be no parallel, nor even an implied one, to franchise - a sense of self that reveals a virtuous nature to observers. Here we see a reference to a sense of individuality that is lacking in the tenets of bushido. This sense of individuality, manifested in franchise, carries through other tenets. For example, prouesse referred to individual skill at arms, and one of the early goals of chivalry was to engage in individual contests for personal glory, an idea that never comes up in bushido (the idea that heroes would ride out during a siege, state their name, lineage and title in order to do battle with some worthy opponent that we hear in the various monogatari are literary devices - there is virtually no evidence to suggest that such individual challenges were ever issued or taken up by others). In fact, loyalty (chugi) seems to be chief among the tenets of bushido, at least that was the thought in the early 20th century. A quick look at medieval European history shows loyalty to be somewhat further down the list of virtues at least in actual practice.
Another tenet of chivalry that has no parallel whatsoever in bushido is the idea of largesse. Largesse is not generosity of spirit; it literally meant spending money on others, and the literature is full of stories of poor knights who eventually lost their status by overspending.
In fact, prouesse, largesse and franchise together were responsible for a unique aspect of European chivalry that had no parallel elsewhere - the tournament. Keen notes that tournaments, rather than the overdressed panoplies most people think of (and which really were more for show by later in the period), began as literal training for war, and they could be brutal. Many, many men died in early tournaments, most especially in the melees - when groups of combatants would fight each other to some definite conclusion. At the very least, a knight who had a grudge against another could easily pull together some allies for a melee and kill his rival without even needing to proclaim it an "accident." Ideally, though, the goal of a melee was to take fellow knights prisoner - victors were entitled to all of a prisoner's equipment and horses, and moreover a victor could hold a vanquished colleague for ruinous ransom. A poor knight with enough means (begged, borrowed, etc.) to pay a tournament fee could potentially improve his fortune through prouesse (or lose his status altogether if he lost). Ransoms eventually became so outrageous that less than super-wealthy knights of necessity formed associations in part to bail each other out in case of capture.
Sound like bushido? Not really. Moreover, while some knights were in fact of noble birth, not nearly all of them were. Nobles actually did rule Europe, and kept knights in their employ. Bushi (later samurai) became a ruling class unto themselves in spite of the nobility, and while some occupied lesser positions than others, everyone knew what constituted the ruling class.
I could go on, but I think this very condensed look can easily show that someone who simply claims an analogy between bushido and chivalry may not be that well-versed in either.
Cool book: Chivalry, by Maurice Keen (1984) New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Another twist on the tradition thing
While I was visiting the Old Country last month, I had a nice visit with an old friend. This person went to Japan in the late 1970's to study budo, among other things, and then stayed, eventually becoming a Buddhist monk. Since he's my sempai, I find it interesting always when we meet to bring up whatever budo-related topic is on my mind. I always find his insights worthwhile.
We were chatting generally about relationships between Japanese traditional ryuha and non-Japanese dojo. He remarked that, in his mind, the best way to handle that sort of relationship is in a relatively distanced fashion - go to Japan and train, invite the teacher to come to your home country to train, even take your students to Japan to train from time to time, BUT - but - draw the line there.
He was not basing this assessment on budo alone, but from his observations of other types of Japanese cultural institutions that started branches overseas (generally at the behest of non-Japanese people interested in whatever the practice was). Specifically, he has seen some non-Japanese Buddhist temples that decided to break away from the Japanese honbu. While he did not get very specific, the impression I got was that the non-Japanese affiliates did not like to be micromanaged by the honbu, and eventually became unhappy enough to separate. In his opinion, this breaking away was more like "setting up your own religion," in the sense that a group that breaks away from the founding Buddhist sect is, in effect, unmoored. Where will the breakaway group get its spiritual guidance? From whomever is leading the group at the time of the breakup? Is that person in any way qualified to be a priest, or is he/she making it up as s/he goes along? A group that separates itself from the honbu could therefore be said to be effectively no longer practicing that type of Buddhism, and perhaps may not be practicing anything in particular at all.
Cultural differences seem to be at the heart of these sorts of breakups. The honbu cannot understand why the non-Japanese affiliate can't be more like their Japanese counterparts, and the non-Japanese affiliate cannot understand why the honbu's attitude cannot be more flexible. There is simply no middle ground where this situation exists. I can (and perhaps other readers can) think of a number of examples - not just budo examples either - that are similar. The relationship that springs to mind for me is Japanese classical dance, where the rules of the honbu are expected to be enforced even outside Japan, while no provision is made for the very weird things that can happen when "the boss" is half a world away.
Many people I know who study budo would love to be under the umbrella of a real Japanese honbu. I do know of several situations where this has happened. In at least one of these, the US shibu is very much under monetary obligation to the honbu, even to the point where the dojo is not able to maintain enough for operations without the instructor putting in some cash from time to time. As I understand it, part of the justification for this arrangement is that the honbu thinks of the practice as a form of property, and if you want access to this property, you must pay for it. You should, in fact, be happy to pay for it. There are other stories also, about money-making tactics, but I think you get the drift. Needless to say, there are times when quality is sacrificed in order to increase the number of students being promoted, but I think I have covered that elsewhere.
To be fair, there are some Japanese koryu teachers who think the practice is more important than control. They have a fairly hands-off policy, and don't seem interested in funding a retirement plan with the proceeds of foreign students. Any instructor fortunate enough to find such a group can embrace this relationship, while keeping a wary eye out: ryuha are human institutions, and a change in leadership (which is inevitable, given that humans grow old and eventually leave the scene) can change.
The micromanaging arrangement for koryu can hamstring not only instructors but also students. Very often there is no course of appeal for an unhappy student. The teacher controls access to the honbu, and the unhappy student, rather than being able to make an appeal or even a graceful exit is simply forced to withdraw. And in the hierarchical arrangement of official honbu-shibu setup in the US, there is nowhere else to go for a student who would like to pursue the style with a different teacher. The hierarchical nature, as well as the dearth of people generally involved in this type of arrangement here for instance means that a student who has an issue with the shibu cannot simply pursue the art elsewhere; he or she must leave entirely, or else suck it up in order to keep training. At least in Japan, in all likelihood, one could simply go to another shibu for training. Not here. Needless to say, an instructor who runs afoul of the honbu in the US will not be officially allowed to continue, in effect being put in a position of teaching "his own thing" or nothing at all, sort of like the renegade priest mentioned above.
The styles that are more diffuse, therefore, like MJER and MSR, may have an advantage. Since there is no soke for MSR (and I understand, multiple ones for different branches of MJER), the structure is more flexible, and opportunities at least slightly more numerous in an art form that is still relatively unknown outside Japan (and not all that well-known inside it). I sometimes wonder if Hakudo, for example, did not name a successor because he welcomed this diffusion? I have no idea, but that is what seems to have happened.
I therefore think my sempai's thoughts are worth considering: train yourself, train your students, have the teacher come as a special guest from time to time. Even take your students on a special visit to Japan! But mind your dojo yourself.
We were chatting generally about relationships between Japanese traditional ryuha and non-Japanese dojo. He remarked that, in his mind, the best way to handle that sort of relationship is in a relatively distanced fashion - go to Japan and train, invite the teacher to come to your home country to train, even take your students to Japan to train from time to time, BUT - but - draw the line there.
He was not basing this assessment on budo alone, but from his observations of other types of Japanese cultural institutions that started branches overseas (generally at the behest of non-Japanese people interested in whatever the practice was). Specifically, he has seen some non-Japanese Buddhist temples that decided to break away from the Japanese honbu. While he did not get very specific, the impression I got was that the non-Japanese affiliates did not like to be micromanaged by the honbu, and eventually became unhappy enough to separate. In his opinion, this breaking away was more like "setting up your own religion," in the sense that a group that breaks away from the founding Buddhist sect is, in effect, unmoored. Where will the breakaway group get its spiritual guidance? From whomever is leading the group at the time of the breakup? Is that person in any way qualified to be a priest, or is he/she making it up as s/he goes along? A group that separates itself from the honbu could therefore be said to be effectively no longer practicing that type of Buddhism, and perhaps may not be practicing anything in particular at all.
Cultural differences seem to be at the heart of these sorts of breakups. The honbu cannot understand why the non-Japanese affiliate can't be more like their Japanese counterparts, and the non-Japanese affiliate cannot understand why the honbu's attitude cannot be more flexible. There is simply no middle ground where this situation exists. I can (and perhaps other readers can) think of a number of examples - not just budo examples either - that are similar. The relationship that springs to mind for me is Japanese classical dance, where the rules of the honbu are expected to be enforced even outside Japan, while no provision is made for the very weird things that can happen when "the boss" is half a world away.
Many people I know who study budo would love to be under the umbrella of a real Japanese honbu. I do know of several situations where this has happened. In at least one of these, the US shibu is very much under monetary obligation to the honbu, even to the point where the dojo is not able to maintain enough for operations without the instructor putting in some cash from time to time. As I understand it, part of the justification for this arrangement is that the honbu thinks of the practice as a form of property, and if you want access to this property, you must pay for it. You should, in fact, be happy to pay for it. There are other stories also, about money-making tactics, but I think you get the drift. Needless to say, there are times when quality is sacrificed in order to increase the number of students being promoted, but I think I have covered that elsewhere.
To be fair, there are some Japanese koryu teachers who think the practice is more important than control. They have a fairly hands-off policy, and don't seem interested in funding a retirement plan with the proceeds of foreign students. Any instructor fortunate enough to find such a group can embrace this relationship, while keeping a wary eye out: ryuha are human institutions, and a change in leadership (which is inevitable, given that humans grow old and eventually leave the scene) can change.
The micromanaging arrangement for koryu can hamstring not only instructors but also students. Very often there is no course of appeal for an unhappy student. The teacher controls access to the honbu, and the unhappy student, rather than being able to make an appeal or even a graceful exit is simply forced to withdraw. And in the hierarchical arrangement of official honbu-shibu setup in the US, there is nowhere else to go for a student who would like to pursue the style with a different teacher. The hierarchical nature, as well as the dearth of people generally involved in this type of arrangement here for instance means that a student who has an issue with the shibu cannot simply pursue the art elsewhere; he or she must leave entirely, or else suck it up in order to keep training. At least in Japan, in all likelihood, one could simply go to another shibu for training. Not here. Needless to say, an instructor who runs afoul of the honbu in the US will not be officially allowed to continue, in effect being put in a position of teaching "his own thing" or nothing at all, sort of like the renegade priest mentioned above.
The styles that are more diffuse, therefore, like MJER and MSR, may have an advantage. Since there is no soke for MSR (and I understand, multiple ones for different branches of MJER), the structure is more flexible, and opportunities at least slightly more numerous in an art form that is still relatively unknown outside Japan (and not all that well-known inside it). I sometimes wonder if Hakudo, for example, did not name a successor because he welcomed this diffusion? I have no idea, but that is what seems to have happened.
I therefore think my sempai's thoughts are worth considering: train yourself, train your students, have the teacher come as a special guest from time to time. Even take your students on a special visit to Japan! But mind your dojo yourself.
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