When I was a beginner student, I read everything I could get my hands on regarding Japanese swordsmanship - from various iterations of "The Book of Five Rings" to Nitobe's "Bushido" to books written by Western practitioners. In the way typical of me, I was trying to find out the context of my practice. In the dojo, we worked on techniques, but the sempai never really discussed anything else. (When my teacher was able to come to class, he frequently brought up philosophical elements, but let's just say not everyone was interested in listening.) So I started with some technique books and some philosophical stuff, then history, geography, and, eventually, traditional aesthetics, in an effort to situate what I was learning in some context that made sense to me. Just loving this stuff was not enough; I had to get some sense of why it was important to me and what it meant beyond me.
One of the things that struck me, and that I still occasionally think about, was the non-Japanese writers who wrote that iai was a "defensive" form of budo. What they meant was that in the kata we were practicing, the practitioner drew her sword in order to fend off an attack, whether by preemptively cutting or defending and counterattacking after someone else had initiated an encounter. Peaceful, meditative, non-violent. Sounds good, right? Like taiji. Except that after five years of training, and a little digging, I found out that those cool short form taiji moves were meant to variously rake flesh and otherwise mess up your opponent's anatomy. Oh.
So it was with Japanese swordsmanship. In the style I studied (and still study), the first six or so kata in the shoden set are all about defense. Of the 12 forms in the first set, nearly all of them are defensive, in that the action of the kata is in response to a hostile act on the part of our unseen "opponent." Given that, it was easy to consider iaido as a defensive form. But I was wrong. The hint came in the second half of the beginner set. In the kata Koranto, the iaidoka chases down an opponent and cuts him down. However, when I was learning this kata, my sempai downplayed its aggressive nature, and, since, like every beginner, I was concentrating on understanding the technique, I was able to overlook what now seems obvious: the opponent is retreating, perhaps he even has his back to you, but (as some of my Japanese teachers used to euphemistically say) you have "orders," and the orders say that this opponent, no matter how helpless, cannot be allowed to get away.
As I progressed through the kata, through the chuden (middle) set, to the okuden (upper) set, I began to realize that the writers who had referred to iai as "defensive" had probably not studied for very long when they wrote that. Iai kata introduce a whole variety of situations, and in some of them, defense is the last thing to be considered.
Take the okuden kata Itomagoi. Kata with this name exist in a number of styles I have come in contact with, and the scenario is essentially the same. The iaidoka has "orders" to kill the opponent. The word "itomagoi" means "farewell" (I remember one of my Japanese sempai grimly remarking that the kata name actually meant "farewell forever"). The scenario for all of these similarly named, but slightly different kata was that the iaidoka had orders to kill the opponent no matter what. The encounter is a farewell bow, done at the door of a home, as the iaidoka is saying goodbye (which is why he has his sword, while the host is unarmed). While the host is still bowing, the iaidoka quickly draws his sword and kills the host with one cut.
So much for defense.
But, being me, of course, I had to ask, what does this mean for iai as a meditative, peaceful form of budo? I think everyone has to draw her own conclusions, but for me, killing someone because of orders sets up a series of ideas that need deep thought. As we wend our way through the violent images of American culture (world culture even, in this age of interconnectedness), performing a violent kata in order to ponder the nature of violence is worthy meditation indeed. Meditation is directed thinking, not just sighing and letting go of what might be bothering you. Sometimes meditation is for solving problems, including moral dilemmas. Iaido may feel peaceful at times, but morally certain, it's not.
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