Samurai Life

After reading this post, you can accuse me of just wanting to play with a sword for an hour or so if you want. That's OK. I'm not going to protest too loudly if you do. That part of this post was a lot of fun. :)

For me, a big part of the reason I travel is integral to my interest in history. I use the fact that I'm going to a new place to try to unravel and understand a little more about wherever it is in the world I happen to be heading. Sometimes, I have specific events in mind that I want to explore and learn about. Other times, I'm just locking on to the first thought that pops in to my head.

I have to admit that I knew relatively little about the history of Japan before I hopped on a United flight headed out of Dulles airport in mid-May of this year. In fact, I think I can still admit that I know relatively little about the history of that country even after spending a week and a half there. As such I didn't have any quests to get deep inside any specific part of Japanese history. But there's one idea I latched onto pretty early in my planning process and that was that I had to get myself smarter on the history of the samurai, the warriors that were the mainstay of any battle fought by the Japanese either among themselves or against foreign invaders for a few hundred years.

What I didn't know earlier this year was that the samurai trace their origins back to the late 8th and early 9th century when the emperor of Japan was engaged in a campaign to conquer the Emishi peoples in northern Honshu, which is the main island of Japan today. Rather than raising a national army to march against the Emishi, the emperor called upon the clans loyal to him to send their family members and subjects to fight on behalf of the nation. In return for their service, the emperor granted the title of shogun to the heads of the clans, and the samurai that led the fighting achieved an elevated social status, becoming the military elite that assisted in keeping peace, defending the empire, waging war and assisting with governance. As the power of the emperor declined, the power of the shoguns and their samurai increased to the point where these groups ruled Japan for centuries.

Samurai armor on the first floor of the Samurai Museum.

The fact that the samurai were the social elites who assisted with the administrative aspect of ruling the country is not, of course, what appealed to me. I mean why would it? It's the swords, the armor, the moves, the secret weapons, the overall mystique of these warriors with an honor code so strict that violating that code might cause them to commit hara-kiri, or ritual suicide. What about everything these men did all those years ago was not the stuff of legends?

If there's a spot in Tokyo to get a little smarter on the history of the samurai, I thought it might be at the Samurai Museum in the Shinjuku neighborhood of the city. We hit this place up on our last full day in country when we were staying nowhere near Shinjuku rather than visiting when we were staying about two blocks away earlier in the week. Chalk that up to an agenda that was just too darned full on this trip. It happens sometimes. But hey, we made it there.

If you visit, be prepared for a packed experience. The place is pretty small (what about Japan isn't pretty small?) and is accessible on a guided tour basis only. The experience starts on the first floor which is pretty much just one room with a series of suits of armor lined up next to each other. You can get a sense of the construction of a samurai's battle garb, usually iron or chain mail over cotton or silk, and what seem to be more-elaborate-than-really-necessary helmets made of metal with more often than not some ridiculous, oversized sculptures resting on top.

The helmets were apparently multi-purpose items. Sure their primary mission was to keep the samurai from taking a killer blow to the head and allow the warriors to fight on through combat. But they also represented the samurai's family (family crests were often the motif on top of the helms) and served as a marker so the samurai's superiors would recognize him when he brought the heads of his enemies for credit of a battle well fought. Not kidding on the heads thing, by the way; not so high on the honor thing right now. 

And I know what you are thinking. Didn't the size of those things on top of the helmets inhibit performance in battle? Well, no. While they may look solid, most were made from wood (the decorations not the helmets) and weren't really designed to survive first contact or handicap the wearer in any way. The stuff we learn...

Close-up look at a dragon decoration on one of the helmets in the Samurai Museum's collection.

Move to the second floor of the Samurai Museum and you'll find the good stuff: the weapons. That's right, defense is all well and good but we'd rather hit than be hit, right? You can find plenty of things that do other people harm on floor two, starting with swords and lances and ending up with guns. Yep, at the very end of the samurai's reign, they were packing pistols and shooting people.

The pistols and spears and bows with arrows and stirrups are all really cool (you can even hold a stirrup and a helmet) but if there's an instantly recognizable emblem of the samurai, it's the curved swords, or katana, that they carried everywhere and used in battle. There's something about sword fighting that is incredibly romantic, even though getting run through with a steel blade is in reality anything but romantic. It's the swords that make the samurai. You can claim to be one with a sword and nothing else; you can't really do it with just the armor and no sword.

Ever wanted to feel like you are an actual samurai? Make it to the end of the museum and you can. They have wearable costumes and fake swords which you can use to take some pictures and convince folks that you are a genuine 21st century samurai. You can also check out a live demonstration of some the Museum's staff showing off their samurai and ninja moves. Ultimately these parts of the Museum meant far less to me than the actual exhibits themselves. No surprise there.

Samurai demonstration on the second floor of the Samurai Museum.

One of the most informative parts of the museum for me is a mural depicting the Battle of Sekigahara in the year 1600. The Battle pitted two sides against one another: an Eastern Army under the command of the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu fighting a Western Army loyal to the leadership of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and later his son Toyotomi Hideyori. The battle involved almost 200,000 combatants on both sides of the battlefield who were led and directed by the samurai. It's complete carnage in parts, especially on the west (or loser) side of the canvas. There are even circles of samurai committing hara-kiri, as if we needed some evidence that really happened.

The battle is so significant to the history of Japan because it re-unified the country and brought peace to an island that had seen almost ceaseless conflict between small family-based clans for the previous seven or eight centuries. Ironically, the battle where the samurai played the greatest role in their history effectively ended the samurai as a social class. Without unending war, the samurai were doomed to decline.

As a general overview of the history of the samurai, I think the Samurai Museum provided some good background. It's in many ways limited by its size and its collections. The demonstrations and dress up portions of the museum, while fun for some I'm sure, didn't add much to our understanding of samurai life. We would need to go elsewhere to learn more about the samurai.

Of course like all good museums, the way out takes you past the gift store. If you are interested in a cool souvenir of Japan, you can stop there and pick up a replica sword pretty reasonably priced between 7,000 and 20,000 Yen or about $60 to $200. I realize any price in the thousands sounds expensive but a Yen is worth less than a penny or essentially worthless. I'm assuming the swords you can buy in the store are blunt, although we honestly didn't check. How you get one of these things back to the United States is something I haven't researched. If you decide you want one, might want to consider that in advance. 

NOT at the Samurai Museum.

If you are not satisfied with the quality of the swords at the Samurai Museum (i.e. you want one that will actually cut something for some reason), there are certainly places in Tokyo where you can get a more expensive and I assume way way sharper one. To just get a look at some of these (and lots of other samurai paraphernalia) we stopped by Japan Sword, which is located within walking distance of the un-missable red and white Tokyo Tower.

The folks at this store are pretty serious about their weaponry and armor and it shows in both the no photography policy and the price tags affixed to what is on display for sale. Want a top of the line, most expensive sword in the store? That will set you back a cool 10 million Yen. Now I know I just pointed out that a Yen is worth less than a penny but 10 million of them is worth about $92,000 as of the date of this post. Yep, there's really no need to worry about a single Yen but put that many of them together and you are plunking down some serious cash for a curved blade. I'm not sure if these things are antiques or modern reproductions (Lonely Planet says they have both) but I know either way it's way too rich for my blood. And that's notwithstanding I can think of no good use for a sword in my current daily life.

Granted there are cheaper things for sale at Japan Sword, including some more reasonably priced swords (again, no real use for a sword...) for thousands rather than tens of thousands of dollars. The cheapest items we could find in the store were some metal decorations that go under the wrapping on the hilt of the swords and are essentially invisible when installed. They come in all sorts of designs symbolic to the sword owner. We could have picked up a pair (remember it's not just one, but two) for about 140,000 Yen. Which is about $1,300. We passed on everything at this place. We didn't even bother asking how much a suit of armor cost. I mean...why?

Weapons and armor display at the Musashi Ninja Clan dojo.

Checking out the Samurai Museum and ogling swords I shouldn't really be starting to think about buying (I mean, again, what would I do with it...) is all well and good, but what I really wanted to do was satisfy my yearning to learn a little bit more about these warriors. And I was determined to do that by getting a chance to find out how to wield a sword for myself. Where there's a will, there's a way. Let's get samurai-ing!!!

A little internet searching turned up a lot of results here. Turns out there are many folks just like me who want to do the same thing I wanted to do. Either that or there are a lot of really pretty empty learn-how-to-use-a-katana lessons scattered around Tokyo. The range of choices is almost staggering. Some offer demonstrations then lessons; others offer just lessons. Some use wooden swords; others let you hack tatami mats to bits with a real sharpened sword. Most let you change into traditional costumes; others have you go through the whole experience in your gym clothes. Or you could do the whole thing in full battle armor. There are short lessons and long lessons; pretty affordable and really outrageously expensive lessons; and group classes or private tutorials. Oh the choices.

As tempting and potentially stress relieving as chopping up mats with a really sharp piece of steel might have been, we opted to go a little bit more on the sedate, disciplined side. We found a not cheap but not outrageously priced 90 minute private session centered around the modern martial art of kendo. We'd get to hold an actual sword but just not for the drills we'd be engaged in; for the doing part of the session, we'd be using a wooden replica, which sounded just fine to us and appealed a little more to the usefulness side of this whole exercise. We signed up.

We ended up at the Musashi Ninja Clan dojo in the basement of an office building in Tokyo's Ginza district, right across the street from the same Tokyo Tower that is within walking distance of Japan Sword. Yep, you read that right, we intentionally took ourselves to a space with a pretty good collection of weapons in the basement of an office building. Sounds kind of sketchy, right? What followed was one of our signature experiences of Japan.

Striking the killing blow in an epic sword battle. OK, it's a wooden sword and I'm moving really slowly.

I'm not going to lie to you, the first 15 minutes or so were kind of uncomfortable. Our teacher and master opened our lesson with a series of prayers and invocations (to the gods I guess) in what was an altogether too dimly lit studio space with some sort of makeshift weapons-adorned altar at the front of the room. And all the chanting and praying or whatever he was saying was all in Japanese so we couldn't understand anything at all. 

The chanting and yelling wasn't the uncomfortable part by the way; I had to sit cross-legged throughout all of that and I am no longer built to sit cross-legged any more. Those years are way behind me. Let's be done with that. Lights up. Let's get to some sword fighting!!!!

We didn't learn everything we needed to know in our hour or more lesson about sword fighting, but we learned enough about some basic moves and were able to understand a little more about Japan and its history by doing so.  We started by getting dressed. And I mean that quite literally. We got dressed; we did not dress ourselves. 

For our lesson, we wore the traditional gi, which I guess looks like some sort of elaborate non-absorbent bathrobe but is really nothing similar at all. I don't know why I really expected this garment to loosen throughout the lesson (the only defense here is that bathrobes seem to loosen about five minutes after I put them on) but they didn't. Not a bit. It was amazing how comfortable and securely fitting these robes were. And the belt work was honestly a work of art. I have no idea how the woman who put this on me did it but without any buckles or ties she got that sash perfectly tight but with the smallest opening necessary to secure the scabbard of my wooden katana. Here we go.

Lesson one was drawing the sword. This makes sense. This is also surprisingly difficult. When fully outfitted as a (pretend) samurai, I'm wearing my gi with my kantana on my left side with the blade in what I would refer to as an upside-down position, that is with the curved portion of the scabbard upwards. Drawing the sword is not a matter of simply pulling the blade out and getting ready to chop something; it's too long to do that unless you happen to have really long arms. The act of removing your sword ready for combat involves pulling the scabbard forward and then simultaneously removing the weapon while sliding the scabbard back into its original position. A quick flick of the wrist and you are at the ready with your right hand holding your sword pointing at your enemy.

Being a samurai is not just about swordplay. You need to know how to use throwing stars too.

Lesson two is putting the sword away. Yes, once we had our katanas out and ready for action, the first thing we had to do was put them away. After all, you can't very well just walk around with a drawn sword, can you? The process of re-sheathing the sword involved pretty much the reverse of the drawing motion but with a twist (literally a twist of the scabbard) and a little more care. Remember you are now bringing an extremely sharp piece of metal towards your body; you don't want to miss. After twisting and pulling the scabbard forward, you'll find the top (non-sharp) edge of the weapon with your left hand and guide the blade back towards the opening of the scabbard and re-sheath, all the while moving the scabbard backwards into its original position.

Repeat all that a few times and we were ready to learn how to wield a sword, samurai-style. Over the next 30 minutes or so we went through a series of exercises covering what I am sure are the most basic attack and defense positions using the katana: attacking the head and leg and defending those same attacks. We were taught proper posture while doing this that showed us two things. First, our movements could be streamlined to maximize effectiveness with minimum effort; by adjusting my body based on the instructions from our instructor, my movements felt much smoother and more powerful. The key there is using your whole body while fighting, not just your wrists. Secondly, I have muscles that I don't use effectively at all because some of those poses stretched me in a way that I don't usually experience.
 

We went through almost the entire lesson with a wooden sword before breaking out the big guns: a real katana made of metal and then some ninja throwing stars. No, we didn't use the real sword and as tempting as it was to see just how sharp this thing was, I refrained. But yes, we used the throwing stars. If I were asked to make a list of things I never thought I'd do in life, I am sure I would write down throwing some ninja stars at a wooden plank if I could even conceive of that being on any sort of radar for me. We spent way more time using how to employ correct swordsmanship but I have to say throwing sharpened pieces of metal at a piece of wood was really pretty darned satisfying. The stars worked way better than the pointed metal rods that looked like pencils sharpened on both ends.

Tell me I don't look like a badass here. It's not true; but it LOOKS true.

Before our lesson began, we watched a demonstration by our instructor in a variety of samurai moves or techniques. It went by really pretty fast and my overall impression (go ahead and laugh) was that I wasn't that impressed. After learning exactly two attacking moves and two defensive moves in an hour or so (notwithstanding the whole throwing stars thing) I am now officially impressed. There's no way I can contemplate how long it would take me to learn how to do what we were shown in that five minute or so show. I couldn't even sit comfortably cross-legged for five minutes.
 

I am also extremely confident that I am in no way prepared to fight anyone with a sword anytime soon. Not that I will ever have to. And that's not a reflection on the quality of our instruction in any way. This stuff just takes time. If I was already skeptical of Mr. Miyagi's wax on/wax off, sand the floor and paint the fence instruction of Daniel LaRusso, I am even more so now that I've spent an hour and a half learning just about nothing about fighting. I don't buy the post-fence painting onslaught from Mr. Miyagi that was blocked by Daniel-san perfectly every time. I know, I know, Daniel already had some karate lessons at the Y back in Jersey and he did wax, sand and paint for a day each. I'm still not buying it.
 

Sometimes these crazy notions of things to do on vacation flop for me. Our samurai quest wasn't one of those flops. Learning the basics of just pulling a sword out of a scabbard and understanding a bit more about the place in history occupied by those men who used these things in battle over eight or nine centuries or so was worth it. The instruction in how to use the sword to attack and defend (and of course the throwing stars!!!!) was just gravy. I mentioned earlier in this post that there are a great range of choices on the internet for samurai lessons. I'd pick the Musashi Clan Dojo any day of the week.
 

One more thing before I end my writing about Japan for this year.
 

While walking around Tokyo and Kyoto in our week and a half in country, we noticed most people walking on the left side of the sidewalks and escalators that we used to get around, which was curious because it's the exact opposite of what we do at home. We couldn't imagine why that was the case. The best we could come up with is they drive on the opposite side of the street in Japan. Turns out there's a reason and it's all because of the samurai.
 

While swinging our sword-shaped pieces of wood at each other in the basement of an office building, we wore our scabbards on the left side of our bodies, as did everyone back in the day, even if they were naturally left-handed. Now imagine a society where people walk around with swords attached to their left hips routinely day after day and where hitting a stranger's sheathed sword might cause a deadly conflict. Want to avoid getting into a fight by accidentally bumping swords on the street? Walk on the left. Mystery solved! I'm telling you, the things that we learn on vacation.

The side of Japan Sword. Bring lots of money if you intend to take anything home.