TFL martial artists

Dude,

I'll be blunt. People with real lives do not have time to stand outside a dojo for a year. In some old (by definition) kobudo styles, the student was awarded kaiden in well under a year, in some cases. No, total "mastery" had not been obtained, but the student knew all the movements, and could practice them to complete mastery while he went about his life.

What is traditional is this: being willing to kill or die for a cause. This attitude has been around for thousands of years, and (looking around at TFL and my friends in general) I don't see it dying anytime soon. In any generation, there are those who say, and those who do. Let us not confuse some romantic ideal with real life, in the past or present.

I humbly suggest you check out www.e-budo.com, where the spirit you speak of is alive and well.

Peace.
 
Nitobe wrote about the code of bushido AFTER the Meiji Restoration. His formal education was as a historian specializing in WESTERN history. He was not trained to read classical Japanese kanji. Before Nitobe you can read Japanese literature and documents...according to present day scholars the word bushido is used maybe a dozen times in centuries. Nitobe made it up. The year in the rain thing is way cool but as Spectre relates-impractical...and always has been. In the surviving ryu-ha, a formal introduction to the instructor by a repected acquaintance and a personal interview are the prerequisites for at least probationary training in the ryu. And, in the non family ryu-ha, this has been the standard for at least three hundred years. Of course, in the family ryu-ha, you could stand outside the dojo until you died of old age...if you weren't a relative, you weren't going to be admitted.
 
Loyalty in "Bushido"

Ghillieman:

Something you have to understand here. During medieval times in Japan, your "Bushido" notion of loyalty and devotion were the ideal, not the practice.

Bushido was about as widely practiced as chivalry (of the Arthurian knights of the table kind) was in medieval Europe, which is to say very little.

Loyalty was about as important as anywhere else. Meaning, it was touted and celebrated as paramount, but little given or expected in reality.

Afterall, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (that ruled until the Meiji Restoration) himself feigned submission to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (himself a pretender) until the death of the latter, afterwhich he rose in opposition to the Toyotomi cause, vanquished his foes and made himself the ruler of the Bakufu (tent or military government).

You see, Ghillieman, Bushido (like the Knights of the Round Table) was a myth, a poetry and an ideal. So, nothing really was ever "lost" in practice. Loyalty of the Bushido quality has been around everywhere (even in the materialistic United States) from honorable men, who, I agree, are scarce in number.

It does not require one to stand outside a Japanese martial art Dojo for a year or to recite mumbo jumbo Bushido myth for one to possess honor and loyalty. Those things come from our everyday interactions and actions with less-than mythic, ordinary individuals, not what we say we believe in with our tongues.

Skorzeny
 
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