JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi (12 page)

I gave a questioning look to Mustafa as he opened the doors for us and he raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Celine came walking out of the front door and gave everyone a hug. An older gentleman in a very good suit walked out to join us and I shook his hand.

“
Mr. Demiroglu?” I asked.

“
Of course,” he said.

Celine spun on her heel and made introductions. Mrs. Demiroglu joined us as we went inside and introductions were repeated. I looked around and the only word that came to mind was opulent. The house had marble columns, plaster facades, gold leaf with embellishments, 12 foot ceilings, two staircases of marble… one to go up, and one to come down? And it was huge. This was clearly a very wealthy man.

We went into a room at the end of the hall and a maid brought tea and fruit drinks. It looked like we were in a sitting room or maybe a library; there were books on one entire wall, but the room was very light and airy, not overstuffed and dark.

On a large table to the rear Celine had all her trekking gear laid out and wanted me to look it over for her. It looked fine and I told her as much.

“
But where is your sister?”

“
Oh,” she pretended to pout a little, “She likes to make a grand entrance. She will come down soon.”

Her father stood looking us over and seemed to decide that we were not going to steal the books so long as his daughter was present and excused himself.

“
Papa is very busy,” she said.

We all settled around the long low table waiting for Esra and had tea.

“
My father is happy that three martial artists and their teacher are escorting his daughters,” Celine began. “He has not been very happy when we have gone off on holiday by ourselves. Of course, now he says he has to worry about our escorts – you seem too young and handsome for him – but I told him that I trained with you for a year and you have always been gentlemen.”

There were some surreptitious glances passed between several of those present, glances I chose to ignore, and she continued. “He wants to show you that he is wealthy and powerful and then he thinks you will be certain to do the thing right.” She frowned. “Do the right thing.”

“
Behave ourselves.”

I glared at Chris. He looked steadily at me and I understood how he was feeling, but we were guests.

“
Please tell your father we will take good care of you and we will always be very respectful of both him and his daughters.”

She seemed relieved. “Thank you, Sensei.”

“
Although I really haven’t got a clue what I could do unless someone walks up and grabs my wrist.”

She laughed and bumped my knee which caused me to spill a small spot of tea. She jumped up and made a show of getting a napkin. Suddenly there was a maid with a cloth to dab the tea away. I wondered where the camera or microphones were hidden. I had known that we were under surveillance; strange men in a wealthy Turk’s house with his daughter? I was sure that all meetings between his daughters and suitors happened here.

“
Sensei, what would you do? I mean if someone wanted to grab one of the girls… um, I mean, ladies. Women! Darn, I …”

“
Christian that is the biggest problem in aikido. How do we defend someone else? I believe that an experienced aikidoka could probably defend himself against most untrained fighters. But O’Sensei specifically said that we are to ‘protect and defend all living things.’ Those are his words. What are you supposed to do, stick your arm out and say “Grab my wrist?”

They all shook their heads. I knew I was now lecturing not only for them, but for an unseen audience. I believe that Curtis had probably made that leap as well because he hitched forward and said, “Sensei, what is the most effective way to engage someone who might be attacking someone else. We’ve never trained for that.”

“
No. That’s not true. Sensei taught classes for a whole month on engaging an attacker who was going after a third person.” Chris turned to me and asked, “Was that last winter?”

I turned to Curtis. “I think you were out in Houston doing something on a space shuttle.”

“
It was a control issue for the command module…”

“
Great. Still, good question. The answer is hanging in the corner of the Dojo; in each corner as a matter of fact.”

Christian said, “The punching bags, that’s how you engage someone who is hurting somebody. Punch them in the head.”

“
We don’t have punching bags in our dojos here in Turkey. I’ve never seen a punching bag in any aikido dojo except yours.” Celine raised her eyebrows and looked at me.

“
I have spoken with many senseis who believe that practicing
yokomen-uchi
or
tsuki
is the same as training to strike. All I can say is that they are idiots. The only way to train at striking is to hit something heavy as hard as you can, over and over. Pretend striking just doesn’t get it done. It’s a joke. Ask anyone who has ever broken or sprained a wrist by hitting a bag or board wrong. It is something that absolutely must be trained if it is going to be used to save a life.” I grimaced, but then continued.

“
Okay, here is a lesson I was taught by one of my old senseis. He told me that he and his wife, who is a sixth dan, were leaving the dojo one night and found three street punks sitting on their car. His wife is a very feisty woman and told the punks to get off, and one of them said something and the next thing that happened was the guy punched Sensei’s wife in the head.”

“
Wow!”

“
Yeah, well, the next thing that happened after that was Sensei coming over the trunk of that car and punching the guy that had hit his wife. I mean a good old-fashioned hay-maker, that’s what he did. It only took a fraction of a second for the two aikido masters to find their centers and present arms and when they did the punks took off running.”

“
What specifically, was the lesson, Sensei? If you don’t mind explaining...”

Well, Celine, there were several things I picked up from that story. The first is that a 6
^th
dan can get cold-cocked by a punk. You know, all that posturing by so many shihans is just that, posturing. Outside of the safe and controlled environment of a dojo, they aren’t Rambo, you know. They don’t get into street fights. And face it, most of us are either on one side of sixty or damn close to the other. Even F.B.I. agents have to retire at 57.”

“
Really? I didn’t know that.” Chris looked surprised.

“
Yeah, and not just them, DEA, Secret Service, all the federal agents have to retire by 57. Think the Fed knows something most people don’t? Timing, coordination, physical conditioning, eyesight, balance, all these things start to deteriorate with age. I don’t care how many willing ukes jump over your hand and then stare up at you with abject wonder from the mat, you’re still doing it in a dojo and with students who are trained by you to do just one thing perfectly...”

“
Make you look good,” they all chorused. Then they laughed. So did I. It is what I tell every young student when I call them for demonstration for the first time. Their job is to make me look good. It always makes them laugh and relax and then they are no longer afraid of me.

“
The second lesson I got from that story is that an 8
^th
dan grand master reverted to a haymaker when he saw someone clobber his wife. Do I need to explain the significance of that?

“
Look, before the war
O’Sensei
taught masters of other, deadly martial arts. Aikido was a way to defend while mitigating the killing power of the techniques these other masters knew. Then the war came, and the dojo was closed. In order for the Ueshiba family to re-open the family business they had to convince the Allies that it was merely for self defense. They made it much softer and such gentler.
Doshu
(heir to the family business) told me once that
O’Sensei
was shocked at how many people wanted to train at something like that, but you can’t knock success.
O’Sensei
grew old, the business took off like a rocket and now
Hombu
won’t even allow you to throw a punch in the dojo anymore, or so I’ve heard; at least not in
atemi
waza
, defense.

“
So the result is that there are a million aikido people out there that believe they are training in a martial art and cannot save someone who is being abducted or attacked or molested. That is clearly not what
O’Sensei
wanted. So I took a cue from my old sensei and put up heavy bags and make you guys hit them 100,000 times before I will test you for your first black belt. What’s the result? Any one of my students can knock an attacker off their feet with a single punch, if need be.”

“
Do you think the story was true?” Christian asked.

“
That’s an odd question,” I said.

“
Why? I mean there are a lot of stories that get told in martial art dojos that get all embellished with the telling. You know, like that crazy guy who told you his sensei had taught him 41 ways to strike a man and kill him dead. You remember him?”

“
Yea,” I laughed. “I said, wow, your sensei killed 41 men? Then he said, no, of course not. Then I asked how in hell he knew that those blows would kill a man.”

“
I remember that,” said Chris. “He left. He never came back.”

Christian said, “He’s probably an assassin for the C.I.A. and doesn’t use a gun.” After everyone stopped laughing he asked again. “Still, Sensei, I mean, stories get told.”

“
Okay, I don’t know that it is a true story, although later his wife told me the exact same story. But what difference does it make? Teaching is hard. Teaching aikido is very difficult because you have to figure out a way to keeps someone interested in something for about 15 years, which is how long it takes to master it if you work hard. You have to keep them interested. I mean, come on, we only have a handful of techniques. We demonstrate them each a hundred different ways and even then it takes a remarkable teacher to keep people interested for 15 years. Each of us has his way. Some guys are stern and unapproachable, so they remain distant and mysterious. Some keep coming up with more and more variations. I tell sea stories. I tell stories about everything under the sun and you all know that eventually I will bring it back home and make a point and then you will understand something profound. It is the way I teach aikido.

“
I use allegorical tales to transmit unknowable mysteries. My lesson is in there and sometimes buried so deep that I get phone calls in the middle of the night from students I haven’t seen in ten years who have just figured out what I was talking about and have called to thank me.

“
Telling stories is how I keep you guys interested and coming back. Sailing masters taught the ways of the sea and seamanship to countless generations with this type of story. Zen masters use this device all the time. They might be a lot shorter than my stories, but a koan is a koan.”

“
Do you think it works?” asked Christian.

I looked around the room. “What do you think? But wait, we’re digressing. There was still one more lesson I learned from my sensei’s story. It is that
ukemi
is far more complex than we are led to believe.
Ukemi
is a mystery and a way of life. When we begin aikido we are told to practice
ukemi
and then taken in a corner and someone shows us how to roll back and forth and then over our heads. We learn that
ukemi
is rolling. A very short time later we are actually practicing and then we find out that the guy who attacks is called the
uke
. Then one day, if you are lucky, you see someone like Hiroshi Ikeda take
ukemi
for someone like Saotome.

“
God, he was so fast and athletic! He would twist out of things others would take break falls from. He would go to his knees and never lose his center and continue attacking Saotome until he was finally released. Watching Ikeda Sensei taught me that
ukemi
is far more than rolling or attacking. After many years, if you stay with it you finally learn that
ukemi
is all about the connection, the bonding of life force that unites the
uke
to everything and everyone around him. Some call it
Zanshin
, but I prefer not to use Japanese terms. It’s too easy to fake true understanding by using a term very few people understand.