SKH Quest & Hatsumi's Bujinkan

Spooky FBI posted

Yes i can see how it might appear that way since we now have the e mail from George Ohashi. But actually if Mr Hayes has not received any letter from Dr Hatsumi telling him the state of affairs, then it becomes a confusing issue.

Can you imagine hearing on the internet that you had been expelled by Dr Hatsumi and the plaque taken down. And yet still getting certificates from your teacher. Talk about a double message.

Especially when you know who placed those things on the internet in the first place.

Gary Arthur

 

Phil Legare? and wasn't it at the request of Soke????

 

In regards to a lack of a response, Ohashi san wrote you (and you edited out) the following.

Everyone here seems to understand. But you say that you do not and Steve should not.

And of course, the sources that reported back on the taking down of the plaque were people like George Ohashi on his web site. So trying to say Steve should not have trusted them just does not hold water. And you have no proof that this was the first indication that Steve heard that there was problems. It just goes against common sense to think that the first thing that Soke did was take down the plaque without some sort of less public warning.

Remember, I was in Japan the last time Steve was. He was not allowed to ride in the same car as Soke though he tried to get in. It was clear to all of us that things were not good between them. If you had ever been to Japan you would know just how everyone there talks about him. It is no secret that Steve has been angering Soke for years.

Again, everyone here, even Eyebeams, knew that Steve was in the doghouse. Your excuses that Steve should not have known do not seem to be convincing anyone.

 

no, i disagree here.

If certs are being sent out by the Bujinkan admin, then it isn't an internal TSD question. It is a question about the reasoning underlying the decision of the Bujinkan admin to continue to release certificates through a source which has been discredited.

The logic is this;

While SKH may not have been explicitly expelled from the Bujinkan his authority as a verifiable source of Hatsumi's budo has been revoked, if we are to trust the message coming from those close to the source within the Bujinkan.

He is off message. So is is logical to assume that his ideas about budo have deviated from those Hatsumi wishes to be associated with the Bujinkan.

Now, if everyone is taking that as validation that SKH and TSD are now sufficiently removed from Bujinkan doctrine to warrant ostracisation, and members of TSD/BBT are receiving rankings from senior members of TSD in BBT, on what footing does that place certification from the Bujinkan administration?

While, on a personal level, we can all make the noble claims that our individual rank doesn't matter, or define our grade in terms of our personal relationship with the person who issued it, that does not negate the fact that it is certification which provides a measure of integrety.

We have a sticky about this very fact which, as I was reminded, was placed here before spooky and I became mods.

If the argument is to be used that the paper trail surrounding lineage is important, then the paper trail itself must stand up to scrutiny and must be seen to have a measure of consistency.

As we have now established, dual TSD/BBT students, graded by senior members of TSD, are still provided with authentic Bujinkan certificates on the recomendation of the TSD administration.

We have here an incongruity in the logic. This very act of continuing to verify that TSD instructors have the authority to issue BBT rankings raises questions.

If a BBT student who trains dilligently under a credible BBT shidoshi, around whom there is no controversy, hold the same paper trail as a TSD/BBT student who trains dilligently under an instructor surrounded by controversy, how can both pieces of paper be held to be equal?

They both look the same, they both have the same marks of validation, but how can they both be held to indicate the same verifiable transmission of knowledge and lineage?

You can't claim that the paper surrounding lineage is important and dismiss these questions unless you are exercising a degree of doublethink.

 

You assume there is only one Hombu admin. There are several some don't speak or read english and some would not know who Hayes is . They just do there job Soke would not know any of Hayes students names so would not ask he would just write the cert's this to can also be done by the admins as well generally under Godan.
The other thing to take note of is that any student above Godan who is a shidoshi kai member can order cert's themselves without Mr Hayes involvment.

 

i'm not assuming anything.

i am making the simple point that people on this board bang on about how important it is to have authentic paperwork and that this issue of certs being distributed through a source which has been publically highlighted as being non-credible raises questions about authenticity.

The details you post above do little to inspire confidence in the quality control surrounding certs issued from the Hombu, But how the administration wishes to conduct its business is its own affair.

However, these questions need to be aired if we are to accept that the paper trail which follows instructors is to be used in debates surrounding authenticity.

Whether the questions will be adequately answered remains to be seen.

 

I don't see how you arrive at this statement.
Shidoshi X sends a request to the Hombu for 10 shodan and 6 5th kyu ranks in these 16 names and the Hombu admins or Soke write the certs out in the various names that the Shidoshi has requested and they are sent off. There are approx 100000 Bujinkan members who on average all change rank once every few years . Anyone like to do the Math ?

 

coming from an org who openly advertised "certs from Japan" when they were obviously fakes maybe you are not the authority on this.

 

Fire and Steel posted

OK lets do the math.

Lets say an average Bujinkan Student grades 3 times a year and a black belt every couple of years, although I think some get graded must quicker than this. Lets say then that each grade is £10, although the dan grades are much more expensive. So lets say as on average it works out grading at £30 per student a year. Roughly $50.

If there are 100000 students in the Bujinkan thats a yearly sales of three million pounds. Thats not including memberships, DVD sales, books, seminars, training fees and other such things.

So you would have thought that if there was this much money coming into the the hombu, that there would be some kind of professional set up.

And if there is a professional set up in place one would have thought that a message could be passed, whether the workers know Mr Hayes or not, that any material with Mr Hayes name on, or a return address to the Dayton Hombu should not be sent.

Simple really. This is after all Ninjutsu, you know intelligence gathering and that.

Gary Arthur

 

Thank you, Grim.

One cannot have one's cake and eat it, too.

How can Steve purport to be the "Western world's foremost authority" on Hatumi-sensei's art, yet *NOT* understand the unambiguous nature of the removal of his plaque? Next thing we know, Steve will be posting that the reason for the plaque's removal was that Soke wanted to have it bronzed because it was going to be donated to some museum somewhere. LOL!

Either Steve knows what he is doing w.r.t. Soke's budo, which means that he is lying about not understanding the meaning, or Steve is oblivious about Soke's budo, which justifies his not understanding. I vote for the latter.

Ah, the musings of the ignorant. Classic case of holding aspirations based on your own culture and trying to map them onto another.

Your expectations of Japan in general do not mesh with reality. Even publishers (who rely on data) or the largest multi-billion dollar firms, such as Toyota, rely on paper files and manilla folders to keep track of very important stuff. So little is digitized in Japan, it is amazing! Sorry to burst your bubble.

Anyone who knows Soke would laugh at the idea of him having a "professional system" of recording anything.

-ben

 

before my time and not my problem or concern (and to be accurate, i'm a person, not an organisation, i speak for myself, no-one else)

paperwork doesn't bother me and it never has, but it apparently concerns many of the people who post on here (when it suits them).

you can't have it all ways here.

At first i bought the line that the certs were for the students of SKH as they shoudn't be made to suffer for his actions. But the question still remains, who is grading the students? Are they 'on message' ?

If none of this matters, if it is all a red-herring, then cool, i'm happy to accept that paradigm. If the only criteria for authenticity in the Bujinkan is contact with Japan, fine, thats cool.

But if people are going to hold paperwork up as being sufficiently important to warrant a sticky at the top of forum reminding us of this fact, then there must be some clarity regarding the current certs coming out of Japan.

And if there is no difference between a cert issued through a respected source and a cert issued through a disrespected source, then where does that leave the sincere students from both camps?

 

i arrive at that statement by working through the logic surrounding how certs seem to come out of the organisation.

it isn't a question of maths. It is a question of consistency. If SKH's actions were sufficient to warrant a public gesture informing the community that he is no longer transmitting Hatsumi's budo then it is logical that if that fact is important his agents should also be scrutinised before official Bujinkan paperwork is issued through them.

To overlook that important aspect of basic housekeeping raises questions. Of course, no one is under any obligation to answer those questions, but the questions remain regardless.

 

Could it be that Soke, after several years of having so many "demand" something be done about Mr. Hayes, finally grew tired of the pressure from his followers that he did what he did with the placard? Could he have taken it down feeling as if he "had to" to calm the pressure down? Even if he didn't necessarily have a personal problem with one of his first students? Could this be the reason why he is still sending Mr. Hayes the certificates? Almost as if he (Soke) is saying, "I still have you in my heart, (thus the permitted certs) but I need to publicly calm the troops."

Obviously this is mere speculation on my part, but my thoughts nonetheless. If Mr. Hayes' status in the Bujinkan has been revoked, then why is he still allowed to extend/promote rank within the Bujinkan via Bujinkan certs? I'm not insinuating that Mr. Hayes is still in the Bujinkan, but then how is he still allowed to issue rank in it if he has been booted out?

 

Ben Cole posted

You make it sound like Japan is country stuck in the feudal period. Yet even Dr Hatsumi uses digital technology in the production of his DVDs, so i see no problem in him employing someone to set up a data base even though he himself may prefer paper and pen.

Gary Arthur

 

yes but whereas Garth is saying TSD is actually still getting certs, BBD said they were but they were making their own, that makes them 10 times worse than TSD.

 

yeah, but as we don't belong to the Booj anymore that really is a barrel-scrape to avoid the current questions isn't it matey?

and once again, i'm not here representing anyone but myself, so if these issues are still keeping you up at night, your talking to the wrong person.

 

yep, THAT must be it.....


Shall i requote the same section again....

'It's OK even if he still receives certificates from Hombu. They are for
his students who are not responsible for this matter at all.'

 

Without trying to get involved b'cause I like both of you,(throws up in bucket)

Sort of ancient history now some ten years on whereas SKH is current and we don't want this to drift too much and go quietly,,,I'm waiting to see what the newest story is..this is better than Eastenders...

 

Xen does make a good point about the validity of the certificates though.

The students under Dual graded can of course send off for certificates for those Toshindo students who want to grade in Bujinkan and in turn could order certificates for Steve to indicate good standing and being part of the team.

But the removal of the plague can not be viewed as anything but an indicator of bad standing.

But the question for me is that SHOULD those Instructors be obtaining those grades morally when its clear that the relationship is not sound. At some point in the future these graded students might move onto different Instructors maybe even Bujinkan Instructors, would they be valid and accepted.

 

the question for me is that SHOULD so many bujinkan instructors be concerned with what doesn't affect them and internet gossip and bitching instead of getting on with training and betterment.
Who cares???? :woo: :bang: :woo: :bang: :woo: :bang: