Meigen – words of wisdom

 The following are words spoken by Nagato Sensei.

 

 

There are many good 15^th dan shihan. The idea of menkyo kaiden is to transmit the teachings through training and developing a community feeling among everyone.

 

When menkyo was given to Soke by Takamatsu, he was told that he had past on everything he had and that as Hatsumi was the only one with him, he had to give it all to him. It has been 50 years since Soke met Takamatsu. The concept of menkyo kaiden is one not of teaching but of transmitting the feeling of budo.

 

Do not become a collector of techniques from the densho!

 

You must be able to do Koshi nage correctly.

 

It’s important to train slowly and correctly.

 

The form must be correctly performed before real training can begin.

 

Budo is about weapons.

 

Move in a way that is unseen or understandable by the opponent.

 

The young generation must train hard for the future.

 

You have to hit and be hit.

Shinogi kezuru

Shinogi – a particular section of the blade of a katana.

Kezuru – to slide,shave,slip past, press past, against.

This concept was used by Nagato in a class to train in creating a deflection of the opponents attack by using the correct distance and angle of your body / limbs.

 Training nowadays is difficult to grasp. To understand the waza, the finer points, and the transition between the levels of the denshos’, you have to be instructed by a good teacher.

 We have to trust the training we receive and try and get better at what we are taught, to the best of our ability.

 Listen the best you can, train the best you can, and just feel for the training at this present moment.

 Thinking about waza, finer points, ways to do techniques and philosophy is fine, but we must understand that budo is not an academic subject. To collect tit bits from teachers about “how to do things” is great, but only if you study them through physical practise.

 The physical training is the most important. We should not forget that it is important to develop strongly both our body and spirit through training.

  “The power I use is not physical power. Soke would get angry. The power is mind power.”

        The Kukishin ryu densho was lost. Toda taught Takamatsu the Kukishin and Takamatsu wrote down the waza as he remembered. The densho was then handed to Soke. The kanji in the densho can be read in many ways. They are not important. The learning was from teacher to pupil directly through the training. The feeling and waza was then naturally absorbed by hard training. The body would then understand and thus the kata and ryuha is brought to life. Just collecting the waza and not training means nothing.

 When Nagato Sensei first met Soke it was at his clinic. Nagato said Soke approached him and said.

“Would you die if I said DIE!” Nagato said he didn’t reply. Soke returned to his clinic.