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Episode 4 - Dojo - The Road Begins with a Dance “So this is the Dojo” A unique atmosphere enveloped me for the first time. I looked around the dojo with various feelings of deep emotion. In front was a Shinto altar. The floor and walls were wooden, just like a dojo I had seen in period dramas. The place seemed to be dominated by a tense and solemn atmosphere. And there were young men dressed in white uniforms, training earnestly with sweat running on their faces. I was caught my eyes by the scene of their training. No, it was not only my eyes that were caught away. “I want to join here! I have to!” My heart was also completely taken by the sight of them. When I returned home, I talked to my parents with the same enthusiasm I had felt at the dojo. Persuasion would be a better word to describe the situation. Fortunately, my enthusiasm was recognized, and I was allowed to attend the Sunday morning class though the class I had observed was the one at weekday evening. "I can practice in that dojo...!” Just thinking about it made my heartbeat faster and faster. On the coming Sunday, I would finally enter the path of martial arts! ---. The long-awaited Sunday finally came. With a little bit of tension in my heart, I entered the dojo in high spirits. Then, I found that the scenery was different from before. There was no doubt about the location and date, but to my surprise, there was not a single other participant! Later I found the reason for this: the Sunday morning class was not fixed in terms of participants, and sometimes there was only one participant. Now, I looked around the dojo again. No matter how many times I look around, I still saw "one student" and "one teacher." In other words, it was one-on-one practice from the very first time. However, surprisingly, I was neither anxious nor nervous, and I was full of enthusiasm to learn martial arts, wearing a brand-new uniform and a pure white belt. My eyes, full of enthusiasm, stared intently at the teacher alone. He was small in stature and somewhat elderly, but clearly a martial artist in his own right. He was dressed in an old "jujutsu" uniform, which gave the impression that he was an old warrior who was prepared to fight for his life. His atmosphere was distinctly different from that of modern judoka. The teacher explained the rules of the dojo and soon he said, "Follow my movements.” He then began to perform a few movements of the Yang-style Tai Chi Chuan, starting with the Commencing Form. I did not know what to expect from the sudden start of the practice, but I tried my best to imitate. My hands were flying in the air as I tried to imitate, and my feet were stepping on the floorboards here and there . I had always thought that martial arts were all about learning "poke" and "kick" at the first, so I was truly surprised to see that the movements began as if they were dancing. It turned out, however, that a boy who loved wonder by nature was intensely fascinated by this “differentness” and literally fell in love with it at once. ---. On the first day, after teaching only a few movements, the teacher left the dojo, saying, "Now you will have to practice by yourself." Left behind, I continued to "dance" alone in the empty dojo, not understanding what was going on. I had not even heard of the term "mokunenshiyo" (*1) yet, but repeating the movements in the quiet, empty dojo, with only the teacher's movements in mind helped me concentrate, and my whole body was sweating despite my slow and steady movements. This was how I started to learn but I had no doubt in my mind. I would go to the class every week to learn a few movements, and after that, I just went on my own and immersed myself in the world of Tai Chi Chuan, dancing silently. It is hard to believe now that they had such a method of teaching and practicing Tai Chi Chuan, but at that time there was no way to obtain any concrete information about Tai Chi Chuan in Japan. There was no Internet, of course. Not even technical books were available. A young boy who had just begun to learn could not possibly know what was right. I simply accepted the unknown as the unknown. That was the whole way of learning at that time. ---. Each week, the teacher would work with me on a few movements just three times, and the rest of the time I was left to study on my own. The teacher would leave the place, so even if I couldn't remember a movement or didn't understand it, I had nobody to support me. After spending many days in this practice, my brain was equipped with a video replay function. That is, when I closed my eyes after watching my teacher's movements, I could see them vividly replayed on the screen in my brain. I had no idea at the time that this function would come in handy several years later, when I had only a limited amount of time to receive instruction from a Chinese master (see Shanghai Episode 11). ---. It was half a year after I started learning. I was mindlessly imitating the movements, but gradually a certain spark began to smolder. It was a question about the movements. When I practiced, I would inevitably have questions about the movements, such as, “What is this movement for?” Even if I wanted to ask the teacher about it, he would, as usual, immediately withdraw when he showed me the movement. Sometimes an old student would come to practice, but he would practice quietly by himself and was unapproachable, so I spent my time repeating the movements quietly. “I want to do something about this question that keeps springing up...” The spark held by a young practitioner gradually grew stronger... One Sunday, I finally had the opportunity to put that question to the test. |