LITMIR.BIZ

       Stephen and Rumiko Hayes travel the world as seminar presenters, sharing To-Shin Do secrets.

      It is also true that the methods used by aggressors to dominate others change and mutate over time and social conditions as well. Therefore, a truly useful self-protection training method will have to grow and evolve in order to keep up with the development of new forms of aggression, domination, and assault. It is my strong belief that a martial art that does not address directly the specifics of the aggressor’s approach cannot be thought of as an effective method for producing real-world results. This is admittedly my strong belief. Obviously there are others who disagree with my premise, though their arguments often sound more like defensive-rationalization instead of reason.

      Here’s a comparison to help understand. Think of contrasting the study of self-protection martial arts with going to law school. Would you really want to study with a classical teacher if real-world practical results were your goal? If you wanted to be the best possible attorney, how would you feel about enrolling under a teacher who boasted, “I am proud to say that I teach the exact same law that my teacher’s teacher taught back in 1943… but you can kind of wiggle around in it and up-date it on your own if that’s what you want.”

      In the dojo in Japan in the 1970s, there was heavy emphasis on what 16th Century aggressors would throw at a defender. These attacks were based on the ways people moved, the way they dressed, and the environmental conditions of those days. Every technique ended with the aggressor on the ground maimed to the point of total immobilization, and more often than not, dead or dying. It goes without saying that there were no legal systems to protect or prosecute in those days.

      In the dojo in Japan in the 1970s, the classics were taught and practiced, just as they had been for generations of Japanese history. This was the ninja martial art, in all of its oddities. Many of the techniques were performed in strange ways designed to keep the aggressor from seeing the face of the defender. There were methods for escaping burning buildings with tatami rice mat floors and cedar plank ceilings, mainstays of Japanese architecture of the time. Many of the techniques involved unusual hidden weapons that would be impractical or illegal today. And if you do happen to be a counter-intelligence agent, modern technology far outshines the capabilities of crude 500-year-old iron, bamboo, and twine implements. We never covered anything like defending against boxer jabs, grappler submissions, kick boxer round kicks, and small group verbal-hassle surprise muggings. Those were not things that were threats in the Japan of the 1500s.

      My teacher told me in 1982, when he was living in my house in Ohio on a trip from Japan, that he did not believe many people could fully grasp the ninja way of thinking and seeing. I disagreed with him strongly at the time. I even argued with him about it—politely, of course. Throughout the 1980s I tried to teach the ninjutsu I had learned in Japan in the 1970s. But by the early 1990s, I understood what he was trying to tell me. When I started my school in 1996, I set ninjutsu off to the side and offered a modern adaptation that was much more appropriate for the times.