The sword of purification

The Swordof Purification

杖の立ち方 Standing with the Jo

杖も構えない、そのまま 杖の延長線上を相手の目線へ合わせる

The staff also takes no stance. Hold the jo so that a line extending from the end of it would intersect your opponent’s eyes.

The sword of aikido is not for cutting. You can always cut. But to cut is to commit a sin. The sword of aikido is not used for such wrongdoing, but for helping one another to remove the impurities that are within us. It is enough if we can avoid using our swords for confl ict and instead come to realize the absurdity of fi ghting.

The sword of aikido makes no sound.

If your sword makes a sound, it means that you have received your opponent’s attack. In aikido we aim to control the opponent from the instant before his attack, always a step ahead of him, so that in fact there is never any attack to receive, and therefore no sound. With the ken and jo alike, not taking a stance makes you faster than if you did take a stance. Without a stance, in the time it takes your opponent to raise his sword and bring it down again, simply by raising your own sword you can easily reach him in half the time. As your opponent cuts downward on one line, you can take another line and enter to his side. While you can cut your opponent into two if you wish, you control him by stepping forward without touching his sword with yours. You can control your opponent at will. Such sword and staff techniques are very characteristic of aikido. In aikido you bring the situation to this state, time and time again, fi nally leaving behind confl ict and clashing as you seek a unifi ed direction.

The photos show the basic ways to stand when holding the sword and staff.

Just as empty-handed aikido uses no stances, we don’t adopt a stance when using the ken and jo either. However, while you may not take a stance, you do still need to create a “set-up” (tsukuri) that will elicit your opponent’s action. In some cases, for example, you might open the line of your sword with a small, quick, dropping motion to create an opening and a give yourself a slight “build-up,” then wait for your opponent’s responding attack and enter when it comes. How you work with such set-ups will vary from moment to moment depending on how you intend to meet and draw your opponent in. Throughout history, the most famous exponents of arts such as karate and judo have typically employed set-ups well matched to their own bodies, taking advantage of their particular physical characteristics. Anyone who does budo, aikidoka included, needs to think about how to work with such set-ups.

There are certain differences in the ways the ken and jo are used. The sword is primarily for cutting, and so relies heavily on centripetal force. To cut, you draw your extended sword inward toward your own front. Generally your targets include softer areas of the body, such as the neck and sides. The jo, on the other hand, is primarily for striking and thrusting, and thus relies more on centrifugal force. Typically, you are pushing the

striking or thrusting part of the jo away from you, usually targeting the harder areas of the body such as the head, shins, and wrists. The “striking” you do with a jo is controlling with the end of the jo. The “cutting” you do with a ken is equivalent to a fi st.

In aikido we often talk about “uchi,” meaning “strike,” for example shomen-“uchi” or yokomen- “uchi.” But given the realities of the sword, we must ignore these misnomers and know that such attacks really refer to cuts, not strikes, because the sword is a cutting weapon, not a striking weapon.

If you don’t keep this sort of thing in mind when training with the ken and jo, you may end up misunderstanding the techniques you are practicing. In budo, you will not always face the same opponent. In order to be able to handle anyone, you need to practice both the ken and jo, and one of the wonderful things about aikido is that you practice a number of martial arts.

In the way you open your body too, the distancing changes depending on whether you’re using a ken or a jo, because the distance you use to strike and the distance you use to cut are different. This is something that it is possible to absorb from the unique movements of aikido. Ikkyo, nikyo, and in fact, all aikido techniques can be expressed via the sword and staff. This is something that is not possible in other budo.