What can Bujinkan offer me at my stage of life.

Given the club he's looking at and the gentleman who oversees it I would say that he won't have to worry much about money at a club level.

Whether he wants to sink his cash into regular Japan trips and what not though is a slightly different thing.

 

My apologies madam.

 

bassai posted

I'll also agree with this, We have this gentleman down to our club every couple of months, and if you get him to the pub after training he forgets that you have to pay his expenses.

 

That's very true but his wife waits up for me to remind him!!!! Lol

 

To understand the lack of quality control and the inflatted grades you need to understand the history of the BJK and the japanase way of doing things.

When Ninjutusu first became popular through the efforts of mr Hayes he tried to put himself as the source of ninjutsu training and build an empire. He was only a shodan at the time and in japan that is not a high grade. So when Hatsumi sensei came to the USA for the first time he invited all Hayesses students to come to Japan and graded them quickly so no one could claim superiority over the other. This is the first time that grading was used to make everybody equal. This practice has continued over the years. Hatsumi has said many times, im not teaching, grades are just paper, you have to have the eyes to see who is good and who is not, if you think a shihan is not good put them down.

One thing that is also important to understand is that Hatsumi sensei is rich and was already rich before the BJK. He doesnt need the money from the grades or membership and he lives a very modest and simple life. He gives huge amounts of money to charity and tries to support everybody including his longtime students.

He does care about people turning up in japan and he hopes a few will get what he shows and go through the process he himself went through to forge himself and to become the master he is today. Most people are to happy with their grade and the feeling that theyve grown and it is being recognized. I personally think that he underestimated the impact of his actions and now finds himself in the situation he is in.
Its very unjapanese to change everything around now. Maybe that is a task for the new generation but I think it will be impossible.

Hatsumi sensei made a rule where every teacher got to keep half of the fee that a student paid for the grade. That means now you have in japan shihan that make a lot of money just by grading the people who come to class. Ive been in classes where the shihan graded 20-30 people in one class and this happens more then once per week. They take a months salary in one class grading students on top of the fee for the class itself.
They make a lot of money and the students feel special because the shihan recognized their ability and has promoted them. The classes of the shihan that hand out grades like candy are also the classes where most students go. The japanse shihan who dont grade foreign students and that dont care about grades have very few people in their classes but you will probably learn more there if you stick around and show sincerity in your practice and demeanor.

Traditionally there are 4 reasons for giving grades or menkyo in Koryu:

Number 1 Giri Yurushi,
You give a grade because of duty.
You give the menkyo to somebody because he is your lord, or he has done something for you. In the BJK this can be because you have done something for the organisation or for Hatsumi sensei. For instance organise a Taikai, gave an expensive gift, bring a lot of students etc.

Number 2: Ie Yurushi,
You give a grade or menkyo because of a family relationship.
The son who is not great but becomes a menkyo kaiden because he is the son of the master. This can also be because you like the guy.

Number 3: Kane Yurushi
You sell a menkyo to make money, so you can feed your family.
As Hatsumi doesnt need the money I dont think it his primary motivation but I know there are japanese shihan that make a lot of money this way.

Number 4: Ude Yurushi
You give the menkyo because the one who receives it is very good. He deserves it based on this skill and effort. This last form is very rare and you will need to find someone who received menkyo because of this.

So your experience in the BJK will depend on who you end up with as a teacher.
Therefore I would not recommend anybody going into the BJK without years of experience in other arts so you can at least measure and evaluate who you have in front of you.
The are some incredibly skilled people in the BJK but they make up just a fraction of the total and they are ussually people that have had a large experience to draw from in other arts.

My advice is to experience a lot of different teachers and be really critical in your evaluation of what you are learning. Can your teacher do the technique when you are fully resisting? Can you attack him/her as he is doing the attack when you are allowed to take one step for every step he takes? Who is his teacher and how often has he trained with his teacher? A lot of people claim to be the students of a japanese shihan or Hatsumi sensei but how much time have they really spend together?
If your teacher goes to japan twice a year for two weeks that means 4 week of training. Is that enough to really learn an art so complex as this? Your experience in this art is based on your own ability to be critical of yourself and your teacher. For some this works well for most its an disaster because they want the dream of the godlike assasination ninja warrior and are fooled by their own desires.

I also recommend crosstraining and testing your aquired skills in other arts once you become compentent is what you are doing. But that will take a couple of years.
I have several students who crosstrain (thaiboxing, judo, mma etc) and enjoy it.

 

I think this thread has sort of got derailed from my initial curiosity of what Bujinkan had to offer. Unfortunately it looks I will have to wait before finding out as the time slot I believed I had to go and check the guys in Walsall out hasn't panned out, so unless I get saturday mornings off from my job, its unlikely to happen.

That being said what was initially a innocent comment on quality control from myself turned quickly into napalm on this thread, which wasn't my intention.

Even so I was following another thread on Ninjustu, where I read a link to an english translation of a early Bujinkan manual which has been published on Scribd, and contrary to what I was expecting considering the diatribe on threads, there seems to have been a set curriculum from 1st - 9th kyu. From what I seem to be able to discern is that taihenjutsu (rolling/breakfalling) seems to be and emphasis in early training with Kihon Happo (basic 8? - I gather these are the bread and butter of the system) being introduced gradually as the student progresses.

It looked to be actually quite sensible and well structured. No different to what you would expect in say Judo or Karate, or even in my own sport.

But then I compared its with some other curriculum I found online I found that groups some had additions to it, some had less techniques, and some were all over the shop. I'm guessing here, but has this to do with the yearly themes? In short are the curriculum of groups variable according to when instructors trained and what the emphaisis of the year is, or what their emphasis of training in Japan was?

It would explain the variable curriculum and perhaps the wide differences.

In short the answer to my original question. : "What can Bujinkan offer me" might well be:

"Whats in the basic curriculum + whatever the emphasis of training your instructor was exposed during his formative years"

 

botta: the only way you'll be able to determine if this "art" is for you is to go take a test class. maybe several, or in my case with other arts, a year or two.

there are plenty of great reason to study ninjutsu, or do any physical activity--really.

 

True. But I'm more thinking less of myself now and more of people who might do an internet search on the bujinkan who have done other MA stuff before but who may want a little bit more information. There's pleanty of stuff there on the web already I know, but perhaps its a bit more confusing to sort out what is specific, essential about the system.

For example a JKD concepts guy may want to have exposure to the system to incorporate aspects of it in his own personal journey of JKD. That sort of thing.

Yes it does sound a bit Dojo 'whore', but I'm being sincere here.

Ps - Despite my fencing/boxing background I dont actually do original JKD, though I have had enough people come along fencing who have. Just to make sure there isnt a misuderstanding

 

Some dojos have a curriculum, others don't. It depends on the instructor. For example, my original instructor Dale Seago, didn't have a set curriculum for the dojo. We started every class with rolls, followed by the Sanshin No Kata. Other than that, we would mainly focus on the annual theme or a specific principle Dale wanted to focus on.

I think most people would agree that the "basic curriculum" would include ukemi, Sanshin no Kata, Kihon Happo and the various strikes which are common. On top of that, it's up to the instructor.

I don't have a curriculum, but we regularly do the Sanshin and Kihon Happo in my classes. This is in addition to whatever ever topic I decide to focus on for the class, which will most likely stem from a certain principle within the basics I may decide to/accidentally focus on for the class.

I've trained with other dojos that had set curriculum for each rank. Both have their pros and cons in my opinion.

 

i trained in hapkido, and aikido for years. dabbled in judo, boxing and eskrima and specifically now do bjj. i can honestly say i've learned something from all that training. and even though i've spent relatively little time doing aikido, i feel that training has informed all of my training, including boxing and bjj, since.

maybe the right question is: what are the salient elements of training across systems?

we could probably start with just a couple buckets: offensive and defensive concepts. maybe?

i also doubt that training one, or two times in a system is going to give anyone a real feel for what's going on--especially something as esoteric as ninjutsu.

i don't know. just throwing things out there. i've been training over a decade and i have more questions than answers, lol.

 

You and me both. And probably thousands other...

 

They do grade below 5th dan. I have not only seen this but I have experienced this personally from 2 of them (Mr Noguchi and Mr Nagato), that was as recent as October 2012, perhaps now they dont? but they did then, I no longer train with them as I train at Ishizuka Dojo with the Shihan there, and as such I am out of the loop in regards to them.