Dueling with O-sensei: Grappling with the Myth of the Warrior Sage - Expanded Edition

By Ellis Amdur

If there were an "ordinary martial arts book", this would be its evil twin. Unflinchingly honest, writing from an unique, insider-turned-outsider's perspective, Ellis explores aspects of budō, its philosophies and dilemmas through the lens of aikido, a modern martial art whose founder is discussed in reverential tones and wrapped in quasi-religious mystique. Looking at the idea of budō-as-way-of-life and a path to personal perfection, Ellis confronts the real-world complexities and contradictions behind these simplified stereotypes, revealing insights which hold value for any martial artist or even a non-martial artist with an interest in the darker aspects of human nature.
— Dave Lowry, author of Persimmon Wind

If you are a long-time martial artist, you have likely been either the recipient, the victim – or both – of the "wise old master" phenomenon, whereby budo students reverentially enfold their teachers as martial, moral and mystical juggernauts sans reproach, in which case, this book will make you clench your fists and laugh out loud, often while reading the same sentence.. Iconoclastic, rebellious, yet fiercely holding to some of the most traditional values of Japanese martial culture, Amdur brought something new to martial arts writing - a startling honesty about the flaws, not only within martial arts culture, but also within its practitioners, often using himself as an exemplar of the latter.

Originally published in 2000, and now fully revised, with eight new chapters, new artwork and photography, Dueling with O-sensei, Revised and Expanded Edition will be an invaluable addition to the library of old readers and new alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freelance Academy Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781783019977

Ellis Amdur

Ellis Amdur received his B.A. in psychology from Yale University and his M.A. in psychology from Seattle University. He is both a National Certified Counselor and a State Certified Child Mental Health Specialist. Amdur has trained in various martial arts systems for the past fifty years, spending thirteen of these years studying in Japan. He is a recognized expert in classical and modern Japanese martial traditions and has authored three iconoclastic books on the subject, as well as one instructional DVD. Since his return to the U.S. in 1988, Amdur has worked in the field of crisis intervention as a pioneering instructor for law enforcement. He has written eighteen books on the subjects of crisis intervention, hostage negotiation and the art of psychotherapy, many with subject-matter expert co-writers, as well as several works of fiction. He is a dynamic public speaker and trainer who presents to people working in a variety of professions throughout the United States and internationally. He is noted for his sometimes-outrageous humor as well as his profound breadth of knowledge. His vivid descriptions of aggressive and mentally ill people and his true-to-life role-playing of the behaviors in question give participants an almost first-hand experience of facing the real patients in question. In addition, Amdur has developed a range of consultation services, as well as a unique style of assessment and psychotherapy. Amdur's professional philosophy can best be summed up as: The development of an individual's integrity and dignity is the paramount virtue. This can only occur when people live courageously, regardless of the circumstances, and take responsibility for their roles in making the changes they desire.

Book preview

Freelance Academy Press

Wheaton, IL 60189

Revised, Expanded Edition

©2015 by Ellis Amdur

Printed in the United States of America

Original Edition

Publisher: Edgework Books

20126 Ballinger Way NE, #85

Shoreline, WA 98155-1117

[phone]

[e-mail]

www.edgeworkbooks.com

©2000 by Ellis Amdur

All rights reserved. Published August 2000

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover and interior design and production: Rebecca Smith

Some of these essays were published previously in a slightly different form in Aikidō Journal over a four-year period in the 1990’s. My deepest appreciation to its publisher, Stanley Pranin, and its editors—first, Diane Skoss, and later, David Lynch.

Printed in the United States of America

by Publishers’ Graphics

21 20 19 18 17 16 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-937439-24-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014951623

In memory of Evelyn Amdur: woman of valor. In the last decades of her life, a hospice social worker, she took the last walk alongside those she called heroes all.

And she used to sing me to sleep when I was small.

Contents

Note to the Readers of this Edition

Preface to the Second Edition of Dueling with O-sensei

The Knights of the Mouldy Rope

Ukemi from the Ground Up

My First Days at the Headquarters Dōjō

The Best of Their Time

Forever Young

A Conversation with Daitō-ryū’s Other Child

Atemi: Striking to the Heart of the Matter

Did You Ever Meet O-sensei? O-sensei Who?

Tenchi: Head in the Clouds and Feet in the Muck

Toward Simple Morality

Otoko (Manhood)

Anyone Can Be O-sensei In One’s Own Movie

The Ring is Where You Draw It

So How Tough Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Setsuninto-Katsujinken

Hiding in the Shadows of the Warrior

Aiki: A State of the Union

Aiki is Not Always Pretty

Cutting the Circle

Musubi: Tying Together or Tying in Knots

Bushi no Nasake

Kamae: Taking a Stand

Oniisan (Elder Brother)

Epilogue: Afterword Twice Told

Glossary

About the Author

Photo Credits

Published Works by Ellis Amdur

Books On Martial Arts published by Freelance Academic Press

DUELING WITH O-SENSEI:

Grappling with the Myth of the Warrior-Sage - Revised, Expanded Edition

- Ellis Amdur

OLD SCHOOL:

Essays on Japanese Martial Traditions – Expanded Edition

- Ellis Amdur

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Tracing the Roots of Ueshiba Morihei’s Power - Revised, Expanded Edition

Publishing pending, Winter, 2016 - Ellis Amdur

Fiction (Published by Amazon)

THE GIRL WITH THE FACE OF THE MOON

- Ellis Amdur

CIMARRONIN: The Complete Graphic Novel

- Neal Stephenson, Mark Teppo, Charles Mann & Ellis Amdur

On the De-escalation of Aggression

published by Edgework

www.edgework.info

FROM CHAOS TO COMPLIANCE

Communication, Control, and De-escalation of Mentally Ill, Emotionally Disturbed and Aggressive Offenders; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Parole and Probation Officers

- Ellis Amdur & Alan Pelton

COOLING THE FLAMES:

Communication, Control and De-escalation of Mentally Ill and Aggressive Patients; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Fire-Fighters and Emergency Medical Technicians

- Ellis Amdur & John Murphy

EVERYTHING ON THE LINE

Calming and De-escalation of Aggressive and Mentally Ill Individuals on the Phone; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Emergency Dispatch (9-1-1) Centers

- Ellis Amdur

GUARDING THE GATES

Calming, Control and De-escalation of Mentally Ill, Emotionally Disturbed and Aggressive Individuals; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Security Guards

- Ellis Amdur & William Cooper

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Skills to Calm and De-escalate Aggressive and Mentally Ill Individuals in Outpatient Settings: 2nd Edition; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Health and Social Services Agencies, and Individual Practitioners - Ellis Amdur

IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE

Skills to Calm and De-escalate Aggressive and Mentally Ill Family Members: 2nd Edition - Ellis Amdur

SAFE BEHIND BARS

Communication, Control, and De-escalation of Mentally Ill and Aggressive Inmates; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Correctional Officers in Jail Settings

- Ellis Amdur, Michael Blake & Chris De Villeneuve

SAFE HAVEN

Skills to Calm and De-escalate Aggressive and Mentally Ill Individuals: 2nd Edition; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Personnel Working in Hospital and Residential Settings - Ellis Amdur

SAFETY AT WORK

Skills to Calm and De-escalate Aggressive and Mentally Ill Individuals; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Worksite Safety

- Ellis Amdur & William Cooper

SHAPESHIFTING

Effective Scenario Training for Crisis/Hostage Negotiation Teams

- Ellis Amdur & Ret. Sgt. Lisabeth Eddy

THE THIN BLUE LIFELINE

Verbal De-escalation of Mentally Ill and Emotionally Disturbed People; A Comprehensive Guidebook for Law Enforcement Officers

- Ellis Amdur & John Hutchings

Published by The United States Concealed Carry Association

HOW TO CONTROL CONFLICT & DE-ESCALATE THREATS

A Companion Guide to the DVD: Threat De-escalation - Book & DVD

- Ellis Amdur

Note to the Readers of this Edition

A number of Japanese words are used in this text. Those outside common English usage are italicized, throughout the text. To make the text more readable, proper names of various martial traditions are italicized only in their first instance. I have endeavored to define each word, either in the text or in a footnote. Furthermore, there is a glossary at the back of the book which should define any Japanese language word (or other non-English word or phrase) that the reader will encounter.

All photo credits are at the end of the book.

Preface to the Second Edition of Dueling with O-sensei

I came to aikidō by accident. I’d read about it in advertisements in the back of comic books, and walked into an aikidō dōjō on a whim, while on my way to an entirely different martial arts academy. It absolutely stunned me. It was beautiful, a system of movement unlike anything I’d ever seen. Furthermore, the ritual and formality of the practice embodied a way of living unfamiliar to me, where the smallest nuance of behavior appeared to have meaning.

I subsequently read in several books that, beyond the redirection of an attacker’s force, aikidō offered a method of training whereby one could develop nearly superhuman strength, paradoxically through relaxation. Through this, one could establish peace by completely dominating every aspect of a violent being’s actions. It seemed to be the equivalent of picking up an enraged child and not only keeping him from clawing out the eyes of his playmate, but also instantly soothing him so that he no longer had the desire to do so. Aikidō was described as a martial art more refined than any other, one that created reconciliation between enemies through a disinterested kind of love. This was not the emotion of romance, passion or parental care; rather, it was described as a solicitude for all living beings. What one learned on the mat would somehow transfer outside the dōjō into the real world. All of this was embodied, so the stories went, in the person of the founder of aikidō, Ueshiba Morihei, deceased some years before I came upon the art. Aikidō became my main preoccupation for the next five years. I practiced about six hours a day, either in various dōjōs or alone, training under many of the leading teachers of the mainstream group, the Aikikai, both in America and in Japan.

Given this passion, bordering on obsession, it may perhaps seem a little surprising that I discontinued aikidō in 1978. Love is a strange thing, isn’t it? A seed of dissatisfaction can take root in one’s heart, growing in secret, suppressed, until one day it breaks through, undeniable. You suddenly cast aside your love, denying it ever had any value in the first place, perhaps falling into the arms of someone new.

While in Japan, I enrolled in several other martial traditions, the Araki-ryū and the Toda-ha Bukō-ryū, both of which offered me training more rooted into the older Japanese culture of which I was enamored. My training in these martial traditions, and also such modern martial arts as jūdō and muay thai, offered combative methods that were, as far as I was concerned, more powerful and effective than the techniques taught within the modern aikidō curriculum.

Most frustrating to me, I had not encountered nor even heard of any training methodology to acquire the kind of power that Ueshiba Morihei reportedly possessed. Instead, I was merely told that it would appear if I practiced long enough and hard enough or, in the faction of aikidō headed by Tohei Koichi, that I could achieve such a pinnacle by simply hewing to some simple platitudes about relaxation, keeping ‘one point,’ being sure to ‘keep weight underside,’ and perhaps, most importantly, to ‘extend ki,’ which was described as an intangible force that one expressed like some kind of energic fluid.

To be sure, some of Ueshiba’s successors were consummate athletes, and others were very tough, skilled men, but such could be found in any martial art. No one whom I had seen, however, manifested anything resembling the kind of unique skill that Ueshiba allegedly had, abilities that garnered praise from some of Japan’s most powerful karateka, judōka and practitioners of koryū (old martial traditions).

Furthermore, there seemed to be no relationship that I could see between moral force and aikidō training. Good people who did aikidō seemed to be good people doing aikidō. Flawed people doing aikidō manifested their flaws within their aikidō. Worst of all, bad people doing aikidō found an opportunity to do evil through aikidō.

This was enough for me. I found other things to do, and became a better man through them. However, I could never completely let aikidō go. Like the music one learns at a certain period of one’s life, it kept drawing me back.

The concept that aikidō offered a way beyond the syzygy of violence and victimization stayed with me. I kept revisiting this question, particularly as I became professionally involved in the field of crisis intervention, a particular subset of psychotherapy, where one attempts to assist individuals in resolving dilemmas that drive them towards suicide, psychosis or violence. I eventually wrote about this in the first edition of this book, particularly through a consideration of Ueshiba Morihei as a struggling, albeit extraordinary, human being rather than as a saint.

The book, self-published, sold a mere 2800 copies. Based on references made to it in fields as varied as internet forums to graduate theses in Asian studies, it evidently achieved influence far beyond that small number of sales, apparently being passed around in samizdat fashion. The book offered a frank discussion of morality in a field—martial arts—where it was either considered a given or an irrelevance. And beyond that, it was something new—I made myself less a lens than a burning glass. Rather than merely criticizing others’ violence, I discussed my own.

In recent years, I took a second look at the whole concept of Ueshiba’s power, referred to in various accounts as aiki or kokyuryoku, the result of which became my book, Hidden in Plain Sight.¹

This is an attempt to trace the transmission of unique methods of physical power development from China to Japanese martial traditions, and up through the modern arts of Daitō-ryū and aikidō. Beyond research that established to my satisfaction, at least, that Ueshiba Morihei, among others, truly did have quite astonishing abilities due to a specialized method of training, I began to engage in training of like nature, which has radically transformed the practice of each and every martial art I do. Among other things, this has led me to return to aikidō, developing my own particular application of this type of training within a practice I refer to as taikyoku aikidō.²

And now, fifteen years later, here is my first book again. With an opportunity to republish, I’ve corrected a number of grammatical errors. I’ve changed the order of the chapters. I’ve also rewritten passages where my thinking has developed, although I do not attempt to fully incorporate my parallel interests in internal power training that I describe in Hidden in Plain Sight. Finally, I have added a number of new essays that deserve to be here as well. I have never stopped grappling with the questions I raised so many years ago.

Ellis Amdur, 2015

Seattle

In darkest night, you hear the cry of a voiceless crow and you see the face of your father before you were born.

—teaching of Araki-ryū torite-kogusoku

Chapter 1

The Knights of the Mouldy Rope

New York Days: Diamonds in the Gutter

It was hot, dirty, and gritty; it was summer in New York. I was staying in Greenwich Village with a new woman friend; six foot two, we met eye-to-eye, and life was hot, dirty, and gritty all over. I spent one afternoon playing in the wicked pick-up basketball games on the outdoor court on West Fourth Street, and managed to get through the day without getting stomped either in basketball or in one of the fights that flared almost every game. The next morning, after leafing through the phone book, I decided to walk from the Village to West 36th Street, to visit the Kung-Fu Wu-Su Association.

I had been training in this eclectic system, developed by Alan Lee,³ one of the first Chinese on the East Coast to teach those of other nationalities. Among its styles were tantui (‘springing legs’),⁴ northern Shaolin temple boxing, and a method of fighting from the floor—trapping and kicking a standing opponent.

Tantui

(Springing Legs)

My instructor had been George HX, a captain in the Fruit of Islam, the Nation of Islam’s paramilitary force. A big man, he had an absolutely terrifying reverse spinning axe kick, his heel cutting down like a massive sword. He had broken off from Lee and founded a martial arts school in New Haven. Most of his students were African-American, but only a few were Black Muslim. The school was a place of tension, with George pressuring the non-Muslim blacks to join the local mosque, pressuring all of us to raise money for the school, buy bean pies, and generally toe his one-party line regarding everything from the impending race war (yes) to oral sex (no). Still, it had been a good place for me to learn how to fight, and how to interact with people with backgrounds far different from my own. The school never made much money: the way George treated people having a lot to do with it. He eventually disappeared with the school’s funds, came back to raise more money to allegedly make a new start, then took this money and disappeared again. Most of my fellow students were disgusted; as for the Nation of Islam followers, I think he broke their hearts.

I liked the combative system so much, however, that I decided to go to Alan Lee’s headquarters in New York, intending to commute the seventy miles from New Haven on weekends if they would let me join.

That morning I set out walking. I have no idea why I didn’t just hop on the subway, deciding instead to travel the entire thirty-six blocks on foot. It was 95 degrees—the heat, like a woolen blanket wet with liquid smog, weighed everything down and drove everyone mad. Taxis slammed on brakes to avoid people running across the street, music blared from every window, and the general level of conversation was a scream. Sweat ran down faces in streaks, catching the soot in the air.

But I didn’t give a damn. My girlfriend had accompanied me to the apartment door, and I strode away, lifted by her smile. I had hair in those days, a blond mane over my shoulders and down my back, and I started out walking so quickly that it floated in the air behind me. I was young, in heat, and on my way to learn better ways to kick butt.

New York. Summer. Eighteen blocks later. One hour later. I should have taken the subway. I was soaked. My feet were aching in my Western-heeled Frye boots. I was only halfway there and it was more than enough, but I couldn’t just turn around with my tail between my legs. I hit Eighteenth Street and somehow remembered from my trip through the phone book that there was a school of aikidō on this street. I knew almost nothing at all about this martial art, and up to that moment, had little interest in Japanese combative systems, thinking them stiff and unimaginative compared to the Chinese martial arts with which I had a little familiarity. At any rate, I figured I could drop by the school, satisfy my curiosity, and go to kung fu class by subway the next day.

The school was over an auto repair shop. Up I went, out of the exhaust, up some narrow steps into fumes of sweat and mold, emerging into the full panoply of the New York Aikikai. This was 1973, and the school was a place on fire! On the mat that day were Angel Alvarez, lean and graceful; Harvey Koenigsberg, a broken-nosed ex-boxer and artist, later to be one of my first teachers; Lou Kleinsmith, who also was one of Cheng Man Ching’s⁵ leading students of t’ai chi ch’uan; the verbose and eccentric T.K. Lee; Carl Riley, bald and obsidian, a devout Muslim who started each class praying in the corner, and then blended each technique with a series of multi-level slap-strikes, playing his partner like a conga drum; an icy blond woman who appeared unapproachable, the object of fantasies unvoiced and unexpressed; and a friendly laughing guy with a lisping high voice, who people whispered about as being a militant revolutionary, a member of a small group called RAM (the Revolutionary Action Movement), that was set up by some police agency in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty. A precise, humorless German, Klaus, was also there, that day chasing fifteen-year-old Bruce Bookman with a wooden sword after some insult, Bruce playing Roadrunner to Klaus’s Coyote. All these people and more, swirling, sliding, and throwing with varying degrees of grace, the movements mystifying, yet somehow familiar and altogether entrancing.

I don’t remember who was teaching class that day; I know it wasn’t the dōjō director, Yamada Yoshimitsu, whom I didn’t see until later, but in the middle of the floor was a man who looked like the miscegenation of a Hell’s Angel and a Sufi dancer, laughing, hacking with a smoker’s cough, throwing people who were half his size (even those bigger looked tiny). He took people to the brink of disaster, slamming them down at warp speed, then emptied the juice at the last second, so they landed with the slap of a sodden towel rather than the crack of bone, and then, as they gaped in relief, he’d grab them in a sensitive area, laughing and warning, Don’t ever let your guard down!

Enthralled, I waited until class was over, asked if aikidō was taught in Connecticut, and was told that there was an independent dōjō that would be affiliating with the main organization in less than a month.

Terry in his prime

I never went to kung-fu class that next day. When Yamada sensei arrived a month later at the West Haven Dōjō, I had already started practicing, still wearing my black kung fu ‘pajamas,’ in the dōjō of Bob Barrett, a rough-spoken sweet-hearted postman, who had previously studied with then-Captain Somboon Thongaram, a combat instructor from the Thai army. Yamada was accompanied by Harvey Koenigsberg, the ex-boxer/artist, as well as the massive wild man who had caught my attention when I visited New York. Harvey was a senior student of Yamada, whereas the other man was slightly junior to Yamada in the hierarchy of uchi-deshi, the in-house students of aikidō’s founder, Ueshiba Morihei, one of only two non-Japanese to actually live in Ueshiba Morihei’s dōjō.⁶ These two men began traveling one day a week to Connecticut to teach. Harvey and I hit it off pretty quickly, and for the several years that I lived in New Haven, and later, in New York before I went to Japan, he became a tough, amused big brother.

The other man, Terry Dobson, became many things to me, and in time, I to him.

Terry used to travel up to New Haven in an old pickup truck, accompanied by his senior student, Kini Collins (now a well-known artist in the Baltimore, Maryland area, she will thread her way throughout this book as her life so often twined its way alongside mine). Kini was tough! She had previously trained with Moses Powell, a student in turn of the legendary Florendo Visataceon of Veejutsu,⁷ two of the great martial artists to develop within the crucible of American eclecticism. A little over five feet tall, boyish and feminine at once, with long blond hair and a swagger that she had earned and could defend, Kini became my lifelong friend.

After perhaps a month of classes, Terry came up to me and said, "I like your attitude. I’m going to be using you a lot to demonstrate techniques for the class.⁸ Why don’t you come down to New York sometime? I have a small dōjō on Bond Street. You can stay there while you’re visiting." About two weeks later, I drove to New York City, and found the Bond Street Dōjō, right off the Bowery, an area of industrial lofts (many taken over by ‘urban homesteaders’), down-and-out street people, bars, after-hours clubs, and lost souls. If the New York Aikikai was a circus, the Bond Street Dōjō was a small, insular asteroid whirling in the most eccentric of orbits. The building was owned by an elderly Swedish character actor who played Ming the Merciless in the old Flash Gordon movies. Alcoholics and drug addicts slept in doorways and died on the sidewalk in the winter cold. CBGB/OMFUG, one of the birthplaces of punk, was right across the street, and the NYC Hells Angels a couple blocks away. The dōjō itself was run by Terry and Ken Nisson, one a grizzly bear and the other a high-strung terrier, their relationship one of mutual love, irritation, and envy, as each could do what the other could not.

Warm-up for class often included hanging out in one loft or another with some serious smoking of dope. Unlike dōjōs in Japan where alcohol use and abuse, usually after practice, is not unusual, here marijuana was the fuel of supposed inspiration. Aikidō is always associated for me in the fragrance of burning herb, and after many decades away from the use of marijuana, even the smell of burning autumn leaves can call up a memory of Terry, smoke clinging to his beard, eyes like bloodshot runny eggs, whirling to throw me like the hammer of Thor, me grinning in stoned ecstasy, helplessly hanging on for the ride.

The cast of characters in the dōjō included a yoga instructor who would start each class with a few spoonfuls of pre-digested yeast, which would silently, malevolently emerge in the second hour of practice, tenaciously nestling in the folds of one’s clothes like insidious fuming spiders. There was a famous militant feminist, an associate of the tragic Shulamith Firestone,⁹ who would suddenly decide that one or another of us was ‘too male,’ and in the middle of a technique, would point a finger and say, Stand back, stand back, you’re trespassing in my space, and an anthracite, shaven-headed disciple of guru Sri Chimoy, the most physically rigid man I have ever met. If I remember his story correctly, he was an ex-pimp street criminal who ran across America and back as an offering of devotion to his guru. There was an incredibly abrasive lawyer who held the record for having to pay the largest divorce settlement in the history of New York State. He would have a taxi sit, meter running, for two or more hours outside the dōjō while he went to class, because I don’t like to wait. There was a woman who drew incredibly subtle, wistful cartoons for an otherwise raucous underground newspaper, and Megan, a delicate, yet tough and cynical dancer—bright dandelion and thistle at once. And for too short a time, there was Tommy McCready, a tough New York Irish third dan, who was murdered by a twelve-year-old boy who stabbed him in the stomach with a butcher knife when Tommy caught him hiding in a friend’s truck. Tommy reached in to shake him like a rat, not even imagining what the kid was cradling in his lap; all his beautiful power and arrogant confidence cascading through his fingers as he ran down the street yelling, Oh my God, I’ve been stabbed.

And there were others, perhaps more subdued, like Stuart, a sweet little guy who suddenly died during an epileptic episode that most of us were unaware that he even had; Elizabeth, a slender lovely archaeologist who (later, Terry’s paramour) seemed as out of place in this Bowery neighborhood as a white feather floating above a gutter, somehow never touching down; and there were Paul Kang and Chrissie Jordan, who, years later, would run the dōjō themselves.

And me. I started going to every Friday practice, doing afternoon classes at the New York Aikikai and evenings at Bond Street. Somehow, I also attended college and passed my courses, even though I was three days in New York, and every other night at the West Haven Dōjō.

Bond Street! You entered the storefront doors onto a black painted hardwood floor, a small jumbled office on the right, filled with books, clippings, magazines, and junk picked up off the street; staircase-like wooden bleachers, also painted black; and then an expanse of white mat, bordered on the far end by black felt curtains. There was a suspended rack of weapons in the middle of the curtains, both ordinary bokken (wooden practice swords) and others—a driftwood staff, my twisted tree-limb of black birch, and Terry’s huge suburi-to, a massive eight-sided pillar of oak.

The mat was Terry’s pride and joy, the cover fashioned, I think, by a maker of racing-boat sails. An individual who will remain nameless, now a very prominent teacher of iaidō¹⁰ (sword drawing), slept at the school one night, and Terry told him, You’re welcome here, but don’t do any iaidō... No, no, please, I know you are very good, but I don’t want to take any chances with this mat. The guest, however, thinking no one could possibly know, started practicing alone, and left a slash in the mat several inches long. He left town before dawn. Terry put the word out that, were he ever to see him again, he would gnaw out his liver. (I don’t know if such vows endure after death, but if you’re reading this, my friend, watch out for hungry ghosts).

I lived and practiced in two different worlds. The New York Aikikai, usually just called ‘Eighteenth Street,’ was like jumping into an out-door basketball game—you never knew what you’d run in to, or what people would do or say. The focus was on practice itself, not on any high-flown philosophy. I can’t recall anyone ever expounding on the nature of the universe, aikidō as a vehicle of world peace, or on Ueshiba Morihei as a saint, superman, or sublime martial artist. In fact, the most profound story I ever heard was of one man, a stocky guy who took twelve years to earn his 1st-degree black belt. He worked for a large brewery and while cleaning an empty vat, got a caustic solution splashed into his eyes. Quick as thought, he whirled and dove headfirst into an open vat of beer. Now that is a manifestation of training! As a reward for his quick action, thereby saving them from what could have been a huge lawsuit, the brewery gave him a lifetime supply of beer.

Bond Street, on the other hand, was full of talk of spirit. Terry saw aikidō almost in messianic terms, promising nothing less than the redemption of the world from violence. He spoke of having incurred an enormous debt to Ueshiba Morihei, so that he had to ensure that aikidō entered America not merely as another elegant martial art, but as something capable of transforming all of society. That his mission was currently confined to Bond Street and to a few trips to other dōjōs on the East Coast was merely temporary. Terry believed that through writing, through workshops developed for non-martial artists, and alliances with fellow disciples of Ueshiba, the millennia would come to pass. Terry would, depending on the day he was spinning his plans and fantasies, be the éminence grise, the prime minister supporting the throne, or merely the herald who would usher in the coming era and then fade into the background.

His intention was to assist others, more graceful, more skilled, more charismatic than he, into leadership roles, somehow willfully ignoring that most of these fellow disciples, Japanese one and all, had no interest in such salvationist fantasies. A few of them would pay lip service to this ideology of aikidō as a discipline that could redeem the world from violence, because being a guru is quite a sweet gig—money and women (some at least) tend to adhere to those who stink of holiness. He was at once deferential to his Japanese seniors, and enraged and rebellious that their concerns seemed more mundane: merely the propagation and spreading of a martial art that focused on dealing with aggressors at arms-length range. Thus, he came into conflict with many of his former friends, the men with whom he trained under Ueshiba.

I must admit that I hardly remember Ken Nisson’s classes. I was too focused on what Terry was doing. Ken had a graceful style of aikidō, subtle and skillful, but he made little impression upon me. My memories of Ken are mostly associated with his bickering with Terry, and his wondrous pointillist pastel sunset and sea paintings, with a sign—pyramid or infinity—emerging from the glowing haze of dots at the horizon line.

Terry’s aikidō skills were limited—perhaps a better word is ‘circumscribed.’ He eschewed elaborate techniques, sticking to the basics except when intoxicated on glee and marijuana, he would start improvising an outrageous chaotic mix of aikidō, Hatsumi Masaaki’s pseudo-ninjutsu,¹¹ and Wang Shujin’s¹² xingyi ch’uan and t’ai chi ch’uan.

He usually tried to express the principles of his ‘faith’ in his movements; he was often off the mark, but when he succeeded, it was amazing. This huge dancing grizzly riding on the ‘mojo wire,’ his techniques emerging in splashes of motion and impact. Taking falls for him, at these times, was rapturous.

At other times, it was miserable. His timing would be off, as were his angle and his center of gravity. The worst was when he would wield a staff, which I was then to grab and be led into a throw or lock. He always moved too fast. Reaching for that weapon in his hands—the staff thrashing around dangerously close to all my vital parts, smacking me on the knuckles in pops and cracks, Terry barking, Grab it, damn it, just grab it!—was as unnatural an act as deciding to save bus fare by hitching a ride in the back bin of a garbage truck. I did as I was required, but I would have much preferred feeding the stick to him, end on, and leaving him impaled on a street corner to be pecked to death by crows.

After graduating from college, I moved to New York City and got an apartment a few blocks away from the dōjō, where Kini was then living. For a few months, she and I would meet every morning at six o’clock and work out for an hour or so, filling the dōjō with just the two of us. After she left New York City, I moved in. I’d do solo practice, then read, and then wander over to the lower East Side, past the Hell’s Angel’s headquarters to one of the kosher restaurants or the Binibon café¹³ for a meal.

I best remember waking, the sun coming in through the frosted storefront window, the expanse of white mat at my cheek sweeping up to the black curtains with the weapons hanging at their center, the dōjō silent except for the sounds of New York shaking off the night, distant beyond the walls.

My father had died two years before. An ex-FBI/Special Intelligence Services agent turned lawyer, he was a meticulous man of whom my uncle once said, "He was the first guy I ever met who would wear suspenders and a belt to hold up