Yamabiko

I've just noticed that this blog has been running for several weeks, but I haven't explained the slightly hippy-ish title.

"Echos from a distant mountain" is a rough translation of a Japanese phrase, yamabiko, used by poets and philosophers in the past, and by Masaaki Hatsumi, the patriarch of a some very old Japanese samurai traditions, today. It's an artistic expression, referring to the idea that you can shout unknowable questions at the distant mountains of the kanto plain and then listen carefully to the reply echo back to you.

However, to modern Japanese people, the term yamabiko is more likely to be recognised as the name of an express train from Ueno to Morioka on the original Tohoku mainline. In this sense, it has a double meaning, both of seeking for answers to life's great unknowable questions and also of being on a journey, possibly doing both things at the same time. Neat, huh?

Hatsumi Sensei is a true renaissance man and his writings and paintings are as sought after as his skills as a teacher of koryu bugei. However, amongst his uniquely impressive skills is the ability to use one word to encompass many different conflicting but related ideas. This allows him to create what are know as kuden, or oral transmissions in budo - short maxims which tend to be extremely deep in resonance and which can encourage people to think creatively and come to new understandings.. I first came across the term yamabiko in the publication of the Bujinkan Dojo, Sanmyaku, in which Hatsumi Sensei invited senior practitioners of his art to write articles before titling his responses with the headline yamabiko.

This phrase is also part of an old tradition of four syllable maxims that would be painted on kakejiku hanging scrolls and then placed in a special alcove in Japanese tea houses used for the meditative practice of Sado, or tea ceremony. Japanese is a syllabilic language, and words are pronounced in syllabels, each of which usually takes one borrowed chinese character to write. Yamabiko is one of those phrases, along with countless more. As a budoka (literally martial way person) more obviously martial phrases associated with our traditions include Banpen Fugyo (ten thousand changes, no surprises) and finally, a complex idea known as Seijin Yojyo. I received a present from Hatsumi Soke of a six foot shodo painting of the calligraphy for this expression earlier this year.

As I understand it, seijin, the first two characters, literally mean saint or holy, and then virtue or human character point. The second two are very complicated but sort of mean the essential points of life experience.

In Japan, the coming of age day that happens in January is called Seijin day, and it’s celebrated by anyone who has their 20th birthday in the previous year. Girls dress up in fabulous kimono and boys wear formal suits for the day. Then they get drunk!

Anyway, that’s the conventional meaning of the expression that most Japanese people would recognise from the sound of the words. However Hatsumi Sensei has used different kanji to write the same words, and the kanji he has chosen to write it with actually form part of a kuji incantation used by yamabushi (google it if you don’t know what this means) as a spell to help give them courage before a battle.

A third interpretation of these kanji implies a meaning of old age, of the life lessons learned by an old person looking back on their coming of age day and everything they thought they knew as a 20 year old, from the perspective of an old person.

He has also added two characters, so the one to the left actually says Seijin Yojo Shinden. Shinden sort of means divinely transmitted. So you can see, sometimes a lot of meaning can be squashed into a very few words.

So there you go, now you know. Yamabiko is sort of like throwing ideas into the void, which is basically what writing here feels like.