But what if he doesn’t?
I knew only too well that a desperate opponent will do the unexpected. The white scars I have on my hands are a fading reminder of a skilled lunatic who almost took my life. The fear and pain of that battle sometimes returns unbidden late at night and I am haunted by the memory of rain and death on a wooded mountain.
I was trying to impress upon the trainees the importance of real focus and a more elusive quality called
zanshin
. It means “remaining mind,” and different teachers use the phrase in different ways. For Yamashita,
zanshin
is the quality that preserves you from losing sight of the unpredictability of life— and of your opponent. We train long and hard to focus on an attack or a technique—to give it everything we’ve got. But the effect of
zanshin
is the development of an awareness that is both inside and outside the moment. Commitment with flexibility. Balance while flustered. Creativity in chaos.
When my students started to flow into their
ikkyo
routine, I continually encouraged them to stay grounded in the technique, but not to lose themselves in it. It sounded contradictory even to me. The point I was trying to drive home was that they shouldn’t be so confident in what they did. They needed to stay alive to the possibility that the opponent would not respond as they had come to expect, that the opponent wouldn’t lose focus or balance, or flinch from the distracting
atemi
blow that was intended to set up the technique. It was hard to get through to them. They were more confident in themselves than they were in my ability to show them something new.
Yamashita finally called the group to order, seeing that alone I couldn’t get the point across.
He regarded the class. They sat quietly; a few mopped sweat off their brows with the heavy sleeves of their
keikogi
. Many of them had just gotten the dark blue practice tops Yamashita has us wear. They are dyed a deep indigo and when new, the coloring comes off on the skin. I watched the students and smiled inwardly as they created faint blue smudges on their faces. It was a rite of passage we all experienced during our first months here.
Outside, a gust of wind pushed against the building—you could feel the subtle change in air pressure. Winter was upon us. Yamashita’s head swiveled to take in the sitting row of novices. His thick hands lay in his lap, palms up and fingers curled slightly, dangerous looking even in rest. He spoke quietly and you had to strain to hear him over the sound of the rain on the roof.
“When we train,” he said, “we must strive to go . . . beyond ourselves. To see more than what lies on the surface. So.” He gestured with one hand and rose to his feet. He stood in the
hanmi
ready posture familiar to these
aikidoka
. “Familiar technique is a good friend,
neh
?” He flowed in a swift pantomime of the actions in the
ikkyo
technique. Immobilization of the attack with the left hand—a hip twist to off-balance the attacker—the distracting blow—then the finish, as smooth and certain as the downward flow of a current. He finished and looked at us. “But if you lose yourself in the technique, you . . . ” he brightened as he came up with the finishing phrase, “ . . . lose yourself. Do you understand?” Some heads nodded hesitantly. Others frowned to show him that they were thinking.
Yamashita looked about and sighed. “Sometimes what appears to be our friend can be our enemy. To be so certain that a technique will succeed is to court disaster.” He looked eagerly about at the class. They had all been training for years in various
dojo
. Maybe that was the problem. Some schools were tougher than others, but they were all schools. People tended to cooperate with one another. It cuts down on injury and made sure that everyone could make practice again next week. But it wasn’t real fighting. The whole point in real fighting is to make sure that the other guy doesn’t make practice next week, or maybe ever again. And that’s a hard lesson to teach someone.
“So,” he concluded and gestured to me. I stood up with an inward sigh. Serving as my teacher’s demonstration partner is a regular part of what I do, but it does induce high degrees of wear and tear and I’m not getting any younger. But today I got a reprieve. Yamashita gestured again to another student, a
godan
—fifth degree black belt—in aikido who had some of the most fluid moves we had seen that day.
“
Ikkyo
,” he ordered. He didn’t bother to identify who was attacker and who was defender. We were all experienced enough to know that the junior member always defends. Which meant that I would attack. We set ourselves and I looked for a brief moment at Yamashita, trying to figure out what exactly he wanted out of me for this demonstration.
He looked right back at me and his glance was the same cold, severe look he gave everyone on the
dojo
floor. “Take the middle way, Burke,” he told me.
My teacher is not someone who believes in making things easy.
The whole thing works like this: The attacker reaches out with his right hand and grabs the collar of the defender. So I did, and the
godan
flowed right into the routine. He grabbed my wrist with his left hand while swiveling his hips so as to pull me forward and off balance. Then his right hand came around to smack me in the head and distract me, which should have set me up for the technique.
It’s based on a simple premise: it’s difficult to stay balanced and centered when threats are coming from either side of you simultaneously. The conventional wisdom is that you either opt to stay upright or block the strike, but you don’t do both. At least most people don’t.
But Yamashita has trained me to different expectations. I had learned by personal experience that there are people who can defend against things simultaneously. So you’d better learn to deal with it. Which was the whole point I was supposed to drive home to the
godan
.
He grabbed me and did the hip shift. I just extended my right arm through him, following his movement. His
atemi
shot out quick and crisp, a blur on the periphery of my left side. It was a good serious blow and I would have seen stars if it had connected. I liked that about the guy—he was doing this as hard as he could and had enough respect to know that I was capable of dealing with it. It was a shame what I had to do next.
The whole point of the demonstration was to reveal how inadequate his technique was. It’s a hard thing to do to someone who’s probably got over a decade invested in the move and the system that spawned it. But Yamashita is not in the illusion business. He believes in the underlying unity of everything that’s effective and exhorts us to meld functionality with esthetics. Sometimes the result is as graceful as the swoop of a bird. Sometimes you are as subtle as a train wreck, but always your opponent should be the one left in the rubble.
The
godan
was used to dominating people through superior grace and technique. He wasn’t used to someone like me. He shifted to draw me off-balance and I drove in to join him. The hand he tried to immobilize loosened its hold on his collar and sought his neck instead. His diversionary strike was hard and fast, but I slammed it away with my left forearm, and I saw the quick wince of pain tighten the skin around his eyes.
That flash was all I needed. I struck him a few times—a chop to the neck, a wicked elbow jab to the solar plexus. It happened too fast for me to bother to register. Then I was behind him, and I strung him out and dumped him hard on the floor. In the real world, you give the shoulders a little English as they go down—it makes the head bounce when it hits. But he was new to Yamashita’s school and I tempered my throw with a touch of mercy.
He could fall pretty well, but the thud still echoed in the room. Outside in the murk, thunder rolled in mocking imitation. I came around to the
godan
’s side and looked in his eyes to make sure he was okay. They focused on me all right, and the look on his face was not pretty. I gave a mental shrug and helped him up. To survive in this
dojo
, you must learn to let go of some pride—no hard feelings, just hard training.
Yamashita glided up to us. “So. To assume a technique will work is to provide your enemy with a weapon to use against you. I have made Burke do this thing,” my teacher turned to look at the class, making sure that the point he wanted to make was heard. Many of them were eyeing me warily. “In time, you will come to know him. His technique is . . . ” he waved a hand as if to show what had just taken place, “as you see. But he sometimes holds back and does not push hard enough.”
His students
, I thought,
or himself
?
“Burke is a humane man,” Yamashita continued. “It is a great gift. But each of us needs to balance mercy with . . . efficiency. The proportions are mixed differently in each of us. And we struggle for balance. Listen to him. Train well. Ultimately, you will find him a good teacher.” Then he looked at me, his eyes dark and glittery in the lights, like the flash of stormy weather that was held at bay by the
dojo
walls.
“You must push them, Burke,” he told me.
“Yes,
Sensei
,” I bowed.
By the time class had ended, night had arrived. The rain came in waves, the distant drumming echoed in the murky night. Yamashita and I went up to the loft portion of the
dojo
where he had his living quarters. The training floor below was dark, and the soft lights from upstairs gave you a sense of warmth and comfort.
My
sensei
left me in the sitting area. I heard water running as he filled a pot. “I will make something hot to drink,” he called to me from the kitchen. “I have a new blend you will like.” I smiled to myself. Coffee was one of Yamashita’s obsessions. He was like a mad alchemist and fussed over the process of brewing with all the attention and precision he brought to life in general.
“Where’s it from this time?” I called. Last Christmas, I signed him up for monthly deliveries of something they called “new kaffe.” So far, we’d sampled the produce of Jamaica, Madagascar, and a variety of other places that Yamashita delighted in pinpointing with the aid of a huge hardbound
National Geographic
atlas. He sits with the atlas splayed across his lap, stubby fingers tracing the contours of the countries in question. At those times, he looks like a happy child.
“Peru,” he answered when he finally came in. He set a square wooden tray down and poured me a cup. It was an act of courtesy and hospitality on his part. I had come to look forward to the ritual. My teacher would invite me up. We would drink coffee, letting the smell and the steam wash against our faces. And I would see another side to this complex man.
I looked at his cup. There was a tea bag in it. “You’re not joining me,
Sensei
?” It was unusual.
He smiled tightly. “This evening, Burke, I have a desire for something soothing.” He picked up a spoon and fished the bag out. I could smell the mint.
“Is something wrong,
Sensei
?” I remembered the transient glimpse of trouble I had seen earlier in his usually stoic face.
Yamashita sipped at his cup, his eyes almost closed. He set the cup down and sat back, hands on his stomach. Then he looked at me. “I wonder, Professor,” he replied, pointedly ignoring my question, “how the
godan
felt about the lesson you gave him?”
I shrugged. “He probably wasn’t too happy. But you were right. It needed to be done.”
“So,” he said and sipped at his tea again. “As a teacher, it is difficult to know when a student is ready to hear something,
neh
?” I nodded in agreement. “This is perhaps one of the hardest things to gauge.” He held up a thick hand and balled it into a fist. “When to give,” he opened the fingers of his hand toward me, “and when to withhold,” the fist formed again.
“How do you know when the time is right?” I asked my teacher.
He smiled. “Sometimes, you sense it. Or see it in a student’s movements.” He looked at me for affirmation. I nodded. We had both experienced this with trainees. Then Yamashita smiled. “Other times, you guess.”
“Do you think he was ready for that lesson?”
“Time will answer that question,” he said. Then he grew solemn. “Time . . . ” he said, and appeared ready to go on, but the phone interrupted him. I got up and went to answer it.
“Hello?”
“You makee lice?” a screechy voice demanded.
“What!” I said, momentarily flustered. Yamashita looked up inquiringly at the tone of my voice.
“Yeah,” the voice continued, “I’m interested in kung-fu lessons.” Then the evil cackling started.
“You idiot,” I told my brother Micky.
The voice on the phone became normal, more recognizable. “Yeah, well, I tried your apartment and got no answer. I figured you’d be there.”
“What’s up?”
“You comin’ tomorrow?” Micky asked. It was his wife Deirdre’s birthday and the entire family would descend on his house like a cloud of Mayo locust.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I told him. “Why?”
“No reason,” he told me pleasantly. Which was a lie. Micky was a cop and when he asked questions, it was for a reason. His conversation had all the subtlety of a chain saw. I promised I’d be there and we hung up.
“Your brother the detective?” Yamashita said. His eyes glittered in the lamplight. I nodded. “He wishes to see you,” he stated in reply. It was not a question. He sat there quietly, watching me.
I lingered over the last of the coffee, but Yamashita never picked up the thread of the conversation that had been interrupted by Micky’s call. I knew my teacher well enough to know that it wasn’t that he had forgotten, rather that he did not wish to pursue it right now. My
sensei
doles out knowledge on a timetable known only to himself. I had learned to accept it. I finished my drink and then I said goodnight. None the wiser about what was disturbing him, I returned home tired, but uneasy. Off in the distance, muted thunder rolled across the heavens and the air pulsed with an energy that, although unseen, made the skin along my shoulders and neck tingle in trepidation.