Each week sports reporter ROBERT CARRY tries out martial arts from around the world. This week it’s Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu
Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, or ‘House of the Divine Warrior’, is unlike any other martial art I’ve come across, in that it is only taught by a single organisation based near Tokyo in the martial arts Mecca of Japan. The group is headed by a guy called Soke Masaaki Hatsumi, whose instructors teach out of an international network of Bujinkan dojos – or ‘Warrior Spirit’ training halls – dotted around the world.
Taijutsu (for short) is actually quite closely related to that bizarre form I had the good fortune to try out a couple of weeks ago called ninjitsu. However, I felt sure there would be a difference between the two, in that while the ninjitsu class involved running around the shrubbery which grows on the side of Bray Head in Co Wicklow, Dubliner Jackie Mooney’s Bujinkan dojo nestles in the distinctly foliage-free setting of the St Andrew’s Resource Centre on Dublin’s Pearse Street.
Being a single organisation means that Masaaki Hatsumi gets to decide who is given the chance to study the martial art, and he’s drawn up a list of the criteria that would-be bujin-kaneros (probably not the correct term) must satisfy before setting foot in a dojo. Many who train in the hundreds of Bujinkan dojos around the world make annual pilgrimages to Japan to learn from those most fluent in the form.
Interestingly, rule number four in the list seems to allude to what can happen when you extend an open invitation to anyone who might like to come and stay with you. It reads: “Until now, the Bujinkan was open to large numbers of people who came to Japan. Among them, unfortunately, were those committing violent drunken acts, the mentally ill, and troublemakers who thought only of themselves and failed to see how their actions might adversely affect others.” As much fun as this motley crew of violent drunken, mentally ill trouble-makers might have been for the first five minutes they spent in Japan, the Bujinkan Dojo had to take steps to get rid of them, and the rules now state that “from this day forward, all such people shall be expelled.”
I’ve probably been tagged with most of the aforementioned slurs at some stage down the years, so I was somewhat worried I might be chased across the car park when I presented myself for training at the Pearse Street dojo. Happily, Jackie couldn’t have been more friendly and I was soon changed and on the mats of the clean, spacious hall with the other eight or so practitioners.
Jackie handed over to one of the senior lads, who took us through what was easily the most thorough stretching routine I’ve come across. Much of it involved holding certain stress positions which meant it also acted as a warm-up. Oddly, it was somewhat akin to the routine taught by former Irish national boxing coach Nicolas Cruz. I’m often the only newbie in the class, but I was relieved to notice that another guy was also just starting out on the day I turned up. It meant that rather than being chucked in at the deep end with the bulk of the class, Jackie took myself and my fellow johnny-come-lately aside for some basic drills.
We started off with some basic evasion techniques and top of the list was, your favourite and mine, the forward roll. However, I barely had time to dismissively cast my eyes skyward before we were straight onto another technique – the backward roll. Now, I’m not quite sure if I could do this when I was a kid but I’d definitely forgotten by last Wednesday. That said, Jackie is as patient an instructor you’re likely to come across so it wasn’t long before I’d got it.
After running through maybe 15 techniques, Jackie, who has been to Japan to train a number of times, apologetically called the class to a close by getting the group to kneel in a line. The Japanese love to insert odd rituals into their martial arts classes, and Taijutsu proved no different – everyone shouted something in Japanese, bowed to the ground, clapped their hands and then bowed again. It was weird and I’m not entirely convinced of its value, but it only lasted a few seconds so I can get over it.
Taijutsu also involves the use of a huge variety of traditional Japanese weapons, and Jackie informed me that although practitioners don’t take part in competitions, pad-work and some more fitness-orientated drills do come into play for those who are at a higher level.
When I was reading up about it, taijutsu would not have seemed like the type of martial art I would normally be drawn to, but Jackie’s class was thoroughly enjoyable. One thing I particularly liked about how the class was structured was that if you got a bit of a mental block about a certain technique (which tends to happen to beginners) you didn’t have to spend two hours fruitlessly banging your head against a brick wall, because in five or ten minutes the class would have moved on to something new.
Rather than counting down the minutes until I could leave, I was actually convinced that the guy had called the class to an end early, until a glance at my watch revealed that I had been there for a full two hours.
While some of the more old-fashioned aspects of the form might not be entirely practical – unsurprising really, given that they were originally moulded for use on a feudal-era Japanese battlefield – Jackie deliberately teaches moves in a way that makes them more applicable in a modern self-defence context.
The traditional ceremonial aspects of these types of Eastern martial arts can be a turn off for many, but they’re not over-stressed in taijutsu, and the pleasant, friendly atmosphere Jackie has created in his mixed sex, mixed nationality class means it’s devoid of any of the associated stuffiness. All in all, it’s well worth a try.
For more information visit hickeydojo.com/jackie.htm
