So a good friend and fellow budoka came to NYC for a weekend of training. I have not seen him for nearly two years, though we have communicated during that whole time. We had a GREAT weekend of practice, visiting and recreation.
The sponsor of my Thursday night space decided at some point a few weeks earlier that he wanted to have a "Samurai Night" enbu for the Saturday my colleague was in town. This idea came out of practically nowhere, and the time for planning was very tight. But what the heck. We decided to go for it, and invited some budo teachers to demonstrate at a nouveau coffee house not far from our practice space. Due to the modern miracle of social media, we ended up with about 40 people in the audience(!), along with the members of the various groups taking part.
A word about enbu - in Japan, enbu are prestigious. Usually, a teacher and his very top students are the ones who take part, though there are exceptions. I know one prominent teacher who, if he is doing an enbu in the context of a gasshuku (training seminar), will drag out virtually everyone to show what they know, no matter how well they might know it! The audience, however, is generally of the friends-and-family sort, making the stakes relatively low. However, for high-level, invitation-only enbu the idea is to put only one's best students out there for public viewing. There are excellent reasons for this, of course, besides just skill level. Enbu performers must be flexible, especially if they are walking into a space for the first time. Perhaps some of the techniques they planned for aren't feasible; in which case the students have to be capable of adjusting or changing what they are doing. Students also have to be calm and collected and sure of their technique so as not to be rattled by the stress of performing for an audience. For really haute enbu, the audience may include special guests and dignitaries, so being cool in front of such an audience is essential.
Most importantly, performing in an enbu as a senior student marks one as a bearer of the teacher's faith -the student gets the honor of representing the dojo and his teacher, and the teacher's reputation rests on how well the student performs. Personally, I would find this supremely stressful. Happily, for all the years I have put in to budo, I am not really at a level comparable to my sempai in Japan, so performing in a high-level enbu can comfortably remain an aspiration, maybe forever (but that's ok).
In the US, however, demos can be all over the map. Who performs and what they do can say a lot about the practices at various dojo. Without getting too specific, I would like to analyze some of the performers from last week and try to draw some correlations between what they showed us and what it said about their practices.
Here, in part 1, I can start with my own choices. This is how I handled this particular event.
Of course, I want my most senior students to be present. My group has been very small, but I did have two people who qualified, turned out and I thought did quite well. Both of them, though they have been with me for at least two years but not more than five (which makes them still *very beginners* in the koryu budo world). However, they both have experience in other styles and were therefore aware of what was expected.
Like a lot of US dojo, I have only a couple of senior students and many more beginners. Since we had so little time to prepare, the beginners did not take part, since none of the current crop have been around long enough to perform even simple techniques effectively. I have seen students fumble through demos where they are not confident. I don't know what is going through instructors' heads that they think this is a good idea. I have never seen anyone get hurt, happily, but I doubt the fumblers were enjoying themselves. As an audience member, I can say that watching someone fumble to sheathe a sword is a very unnerving sight.
What I never want, though, is for people who studied for a few years and then drifted away to drift back when they hear there is a demo. So I made it clear that the demo performers had to have been in attendance regularly for the preceding three months. In fact, I find it incredible that there are students who will reappear for a turn in the spotlight, but it does happen. I have had people show up in the weeks before a demo whom I have not seen for some time. Maybe they don't find it obvious that they have shown up because they are stage-struck hams, but I actually do notice. I do. I have let them perform on occasion, but not this time.
Former students showing up to show off does not just happen here in the US. Many years ago I happened to be practicing at a dojo in Tokyo for six months, which was to be featured on a local TV show. People I had never met, even though I had come to every practice for months, showed up for the taping. The teacher took everything in stride, I think mostly because we were just background. It was really the teacher and daisempai who got all the screen time (and who had prepared for months in advance).
At one point, when I was at the old place, the sempai (my teacher was on a leave of absence) would perform demos that included things we no longer practiced regularly (like kendo, and not very well). At the same time, some of the things we were actually practicing were not represented at all. I felt this was misleading the audience, since anyone who felt tempted to actually show up for training would find out that we didn't actually teach some of the techniques they had seen. When I got to the point of seniority where I could have some influence, I asked that we please only show the techniques we were actually doing. It worked, but the penalty was that I got to be organizer of demos from then on. But that was ok. I set about having beginners do beginner techniques, which they could do well. The sempai had more latitude in what they wanted to prepare (in fact, this was how I learned the okuden forms - I volunteered to perform them, and then spent months preparing three or four at a time. Over several years, I got through the whole set, though I wish I was better at them). Generally speaking, though some of the kata and kihon were obscure, at least everything had the potential to be seen in a random okeiko. And since we did more than just solo sword kata, we still had a lot of variety to offer an audience.
Last week, since we had our guest instructor with us, we were able to put together enough material to make a good, competent demo within the time limit (and it's much better to run a little under the time allotment than over it). Once the audience was assembled, the space turned out to be smaller than we thought (never a good thing), but since the performers were more senior people, everyone was able to adapt without too much trouble.
My teacher had this habit of looking at us as though he could see right into us. This was disconcerting, especially to beginners (some of whom could not take that kind of scrutiny, and quit). To him, it was the essence of what our practice was about. Anyone can learn to wield a sword and hurt someone. There are, in fact, modern sword styles that emphasize exactly that. But that was not my teacher's way. To him, the practice should reflect what is in the heart. I want our demos reflect not only what we do physically, but to show (to the extent possible) that inner sense of what we do. It's certainly not for everyone, and it can't be accomplished by only showing up for a few weeks around Sakura Matsuri time. Not everyone in the audience gets it, either. But among those who do, the reaction is usually something like: "That was beautiful."
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