The Way of the Warrior by Jotaro

Author:Jotaro [Jotaro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Strategy

25. KETSUBUN—THE MISSING MASS

I think a true master, and one who is not so only in name, should have a good heart. . . . He should have a positive effect on all those with whom he comes into contact.

—Onuma Hideharu

One night while traveling home from the dojo on the train, a student was attacked and beaten quite badly by a gang of local toughs. It was no accident that the last train of the night ran shortly after closing time at the pubs, and especially on the weekends, it was not unusual for a very merry crowd of revelers to pile into the carriages for this last ride home. It was also not unusual for there to be a few rude exchanges between “town and gown,” given that many of the indigenous young men and women were resentful of the ivory-towered immigrants who populated their town’s campus for nine months of the year. But it was unusual, and in fact unprecedented, for violence of this magnitude to occur.

No one was quite sure how it had happened. The assailants were unknown and the victim was not talking. His injuries were mostly superficial—lumps and bumps—but he had withdrawn into his shell after the incident, missing classes at both the college and the dojo for several days. The former went unnoticed by the instructors, but not the latter. When the master asked after the student, his friends murmured something to the effect that he was ill, for fear of upsetting the master on a number of grounds. They maintained this fiction for as long as they could until it became clear to all that the boy would not be returning. It was then that the master made his first house call.

Not the very next day, but the day after that, the injured boy was back on the mat, gingerly making his way through rolls and falls. Over the months that followed, the other students were able to piece together at least some of what had transpired. The boy was small and slight, but very skilled. Perhaps for both reasons, when approached by the group of drunken thugs on the train, he ignored everything the master had taught him, and if he had not exactly started the fight, he certainly did not try to defuse the situation either. The hard lesson he had learned is that all other things being equal, the bigger yang usually wins. But that was not the true revelation.

The master’s unexpected visit to his dorm room and the conversation that ensued behind those closed doors precipitated a period of deep contemplation and reflection by the student on the true nature and purpose of the martial arts. From this meditation, the student emerged with a wisdom beyond his years—a wisdom that is sadly lacking among too many members of the modern martial community.

What the young warrior had realized then was this: With the exception of a very few, specialized professions, unarmed combat is no longer a societal imperative. The

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