Category: art

Aikido – literally harmonic spirit path – is a modern Japanese budo or martial art. It was developed by Morihei Ueshiba – now reverently called Osensei – in the early 20th century, starting from the time when he was around 20 years old all through his life until his death in 1969 with 85 years.

Osensei, born in 1883 was a sickly, weak child, and to strengthen his physique, he was sent to take martial arts lessons. Although his father wanted him to eventually take over the family business, Ueshiba – by then a strong young man – took a number of similarly minded people to Hokkaido, where he established a farming enterprise – today we would probably call it a commune – with mixed success. Around this time, he met two people who proved essential for his future path: He met Takeda Sokaku, a master swordsman and martial artist, and he studied what was then called aiki-jujutsu under Takeda for more than 10 years. After that, he joined the Omoto-kyo sect under its spiritual leader Onisaburo Deguchi and opened his first own dojo in Ayabe. Following his spiritual enlightenment as he called it, he went to Tokyo to open a dojo and there, he fused Deguchi’s spiritual ideas and Takeda’s martial arts into the round and soft movements today known as Aikido.

Aikido is generally considered an inner martial art, that is, the focus does not lie on increasing physical strength but on developing inner energy called ki. Nevertheless, Aikido is highly effective if done correctly. Aikido is strictly defensive and uses no weapons. The basic idea is to take an attacker’s force and turn it – using round movements – against him; hence, the force is never blocked but always redirected. The techniques fall into a type of pin, rendering the attacker unable to move, and into a type of throw, where the attacker is moved further. The total number of kata techniques is quite limited (for example, there are only six types of pins), but together with a number of different types of attacks and the distinction of receiving an attack standing or sitting, those basics already take a long time to learn: Depending on the dojo, you can expect to train between three and six years for your shodan, the first grade black belt.

From there, everything else takes a lifetime. Clearly it makes a difference whether your attacker is a 150 kg, 2 m muscular superman who comes at you with all he’s got, or a 60 kg, scrawny nerd… The techniques remain the same, but beyond your shodan you will be expected to use less and less force and to make ever smaller movements. Really good shihan – senior teachers – hardly move at all when they smash you into the ground.

A typical Aikido lesson starts with everybody sitting in rows opposite the kamiza, the head of the dojo that usually contains a scroll or a picture of Osensei. The sensei – teacher – enters and seats himself in front of the kamiza; everybody bows first to the kamiza, and then, with a hearty onegaishimas – please – to the sensei. A technique is demonstrated, usually with one of the senior students and then the participants form pairs and try to execute the technique themselves. Usually, there is no restriction with whom you can train, beginners train with black belts, men with women… Everybody trains to their own abilities, and for the next technique, you’ll find another partner.

One of the partners is the uke – attacker – and the other is the nage – defender – who is executing the technique. As uke loses by default, there should be no competition as to who is stronger (although I know this is not always the case) and when after four attacks the roles are reversed, both partners benefit in the same way. At the end of the class, everybody bows again to sensei, then to the kamiza, and finally to the other students. Then, the black belts fold their hakama, and the dojo is swept for the next training.

Although Aikido incorporates many moves from sword fighting, the focus lies on empty-handed techniques, but that depends both on the style that is taught and on the particular dojo. There are a number of different styles or schools of Aikido. For example, Yoshinkan Aikido goes back to Gozo Shioda sensei, one of Osensei’s early students. It is a relatively hard style of Aikido and is taught to the Japanese police. Ki-Aikido, a further development by Koichi Tohei, is the softest style on the other end of the spectrum, focusing on Ki – a concept of energy and inner strength that is difficult to explain, even for Japanese. Iwama style Aikido is the one that emphasises weapons training the most, as it was taught to Morihiro Saito in the dojo in Iwama, where Osensei spent his later years. Shodokan or Tomiki Aikido was founded by Kenji Tomiki, another one of Osensei’s earliest students. Shodokan is the only one where regular competitions are held, and as such it is probably the most distant from Ueshiba’s principle.

The largest school of Aikido, considered the main line, at the moment headed by Osensei’s grandson Moriteru Ueshiba, is called the Aikikai, and their headquarter is still in the dojo in Tokyo that was founded by Osensei. Especially inside the Aikikai, there are many different styles, which go back to Osensei’s students of different eras. As I mentioned above, Osensei kept refining his Aikido over more than 50 years, and his techniques changed from the hard style of the young man in his prime (many students of this era went to the US to teach) over the more round style of middle age (often found in Europe) to the irresistably soft style of his old age (mainly found in Japan).

Aikido dojos of all styles can be found all over the world. If you are curious, just stop by for a trial lesson, most dojos will allow that. Finally, there are also many books about Aikido out there, from biographies of Osensei and some of his better known students down to how-to’s. My favourite book that does not talk about techniques at all, but about the greater picture behind Aikido and its place in the world is called “It’s a lot like dancing” by Terry Dobson, one of the last students of Osensei. Accompanied by stunning photographs, he shares little stories and insights he gathered from his own training over the years. Think about this one:

To have a war, the enemy must be kept alive.

One of the most beautiful Japanese handicrafts – in my opinion at least – is lacquerware, also called shikki or urushi. Like maný things Japanese, lacquerware originally came from China, but once again, the Japanese have refined the techniques and raised them to new heights.

Lacquer is the filtered sap of the urushi tree, and as the midsummer sap is of the best quality, the tree is usually tapped between June and October, in a similar way as rubber or maple syrup is gathered: by making cuts into the tree’s bark at different places. A sign of quality is the amount of urushic acid in the sap (80 – 85 % is optimal), and the sap from different trees should be kept apart. Interestingly, liquid lacquer is very toxic and needs to be handled with care and safety clothing, but once hardened it is practically insoluble, and drinking from a lacquered cup for example is harmless.

Producing a lacquered object is relatively easy: A thick layer of lacquer is applied, left to dry – lacquer dries best in a somewhat damp environment between 20 and 26 degrees – and then polished. This process is repeated numerous times until the desired thickness of the lacquer has been reached; different types of lacquer require different periods of drying (from two days to one month), and different means of polishing (from simple whetstones to deerhorn powder). The complicated parts are the preparation of the object to be lacquered – the core – and the final ornamentations that may be applied at the end.

In principle, any material can be lacquered – metal, porcelain, ivory, etc., I once even saw a lacquered leaf – but the core of most lacquer work is wood. Clearly, the size of the object determines the type of wood that lies underneath, but for small, everyday things like bowls or boxes, a core made of cypress wood is most commonly used. When the core has been made, a single layer of lacquer is applied. After drying, channels and joints of the core are carefully covered with a mixture of lacquer, hemp, and rice starch, and then the piece is dried again. This layer is rubbed down to give a smooth surface, then another one of sabi, a mixture of lacquer and burnt clay, is applied. When this is dry, the piece is covered with cloth (hemp or linen) to prevent the wood from cracking. Again, several layers of sabi are applied on top of the cloth, dried and polished each time. Only after this procedure is finished, the “true” lacquering as described above will start.

Natural lacquer is transparent, but often coloured pigments are added, for example India ink or – traditionally – iron filings boiled with vinegar give black, silicate powder gives white, vermillion red, metallic powders give gold, silver, or copper tones. Coloured lacquer is used in lacquer carvings, for example. Numerous layers of – sometimes differently coloured – lacquer are applied to the core, and then an image is carved into the lacquer, showing the different colours.

Metal powder is also used in Maki-e, a kind of painting lacquer ornamentations, that has been developed in the Nara period (645 – 794). Essentially, a design is painted with lacquer onto the piece. The wet lacquer is then dusted or rubbed with coloured powder, and so, layer by layer, the final image is created. When the design is complete, a final layer of clear lacquer is applied to even out the surface, which is then polished.
Lacquerware remains an expensive artwork that takes a long time to create. Even if some steps can be automated with the help of machines (making the wooden core for example), the final decorations lie still in the hands of an artist.

I guess that the top three things associated with Japan are sushi, samurai, and geisha. While sushi is easily available all over the world these days, and samurai are readily identified as men with swords and that extra bit of honour, the world of the geisha is even nowadays a carefully guarded one where not everybody is allowed to enter, lest take part. This, as well as the fact that the hanamachi (geisha districts, literally “flower town”) are operating with ancient rules and traditions, the meaning of which has long been lost to the outside observer, has given rise to a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings even among Japanese.

It starts with the name: geisha means literally “art person”, she is a woman trained in a number of traditional Japanese arts and plays the part of hostess at parties generally visited by men. She is there to entertain the guests with singing, dancing, witty conversation, general attentiveness, and just the right amount of flirtation; in short, she is there to embody that image of the perfect woman every man fantasizes about – the perfect unattainable woman, because she will always go home alone.Like in many traditional Japanese arts, the first geisha were men, as women were not allowed to go to parties and mingle with men. In the 18th century however, women began to appear as geisha (how this came to pass is unclear), and they quickly became very popular of course. Geisha were independent and worked for themselves, and the brothels or oiran felt threatened by what they saw as competition. So, the government set up rules what geisha were allowed to wear, and how, where, and when they could entertain. Instead of curbing the business, however, this only fanned the flames, and geisha became hugely popular – in the 1920s, there were about 70.000 geisha all over Japan.

In these old days, girls as young as five or six started working and training at an okiya (geisha house). Not few of them were sold by their poor parents to the okiya and had to work there until they could repay the costs for their training. Nowadays becoming a geisha is a normal, albeit somewhat rare career choice for a girl. They usually enter an okiya at 18 (in Kyoto at 16) and start the demanding training of five years until they – at least the most determined ones of them – give their debut as geisha.

A typical training begins with the application of the girl to the okasan (mother) of an okiya. If she is accepted, the okasan will pay for her training and also act as her manager, and the girl will move into the okiya as a shikomi, essentially a maid helping around the house. She will now try to find a mentor among the geisha in the okiya, and once she has been accepted by her onesan (older sister), the so called misedashi ceremony will turn her into a maiko, an apprentice geisha. This is the time when she adopts a stage name that will be hers throughout her career, and often the geisha in an okiya share the first syllable of their stage names. Part of a maiko’s training will be conducted at a kaburenjo, a training school for geisha, where different types of art are taught: ikebana (flower arranging), shodoh (calligraphy), sadoh (tea  ceremony), and traditional Japanese dance and music (shamisen, koto, fue, etc.). Another part of the training is learning to speak the dialect of the local hanamachi, and how to entertain all types of men and what to do at parties in general. For that, the maiko will accompany her onesan, but does this only to observe – and to be introduced and to make connections for her future career. Finally, there are intricacies of polite Japanese behaviour to learn: whom to greet first for example, or how deep to bow. This happens mainly by interacting with the other people in the hanamachi, by visiting other okiya or teahouses, for example. Once the training of a maiko is completed, she will make her debut as a geisha after a ceremony called eriage, which literally means “turning the collar” of her underkimono from a red to a white one. This is only one way of distinguishing maiko and geisha. The appearance of a maiko is usually that of a young girl, with very colourful kimono and bright obi. A maiko’s kimono has long sleeves that almost reach to the floor; most often they wear their obi in a long dangling style to show off the pattern. To avoid trailing the expensive kimono on the floor, they must wear 10 cm high wooden okobo, and a part of their earliest training consists of learning how to walk in them. Maiko also have an elaborate hairstyle that includes many colourful hair ornaments and is difficult to maintain.

One of the things many maiko choose to do once they turn into a geisha is to cut off their hair and wear wigs instead. This saves them hours at the hairdresser’s each week, and now they can use real pillows instead of the tiny ones that allow no movement that could destroy the hairdo in the night. In general, a geisha’s appearance is more subdued than that of a maiko, as a geisha represents a mature woman. A geisha’s kimono is less ornate and colourful, the sleeves are much shorter, and the obi is worn in a more compact way. Another boon of being a geisha is that the more simple kimono now allows them to wear normal zori sandals, instead of the okobo. These are the most obvious changes from maiko to geisha, but there are many little details only the truly initiated can spot. Maiko’s hairstyles and collar patterns change from year to year; the more mature a maiko or geisha, the less flaunting her kimono becomes as she is now able to rely on her skills rather than to impress with her dress; and there are people who can tell, just by looking at the kimono and hair ornaments of a maiko which month of the year it is.

Nowadays, geisha are not only accomplished entertainers, but also smart businesswomen. In fact, the hanamachi are entirely run by women – from the maiko, their big sisters and mothers, to the owners of the teahouses that employ them. All geisha are unmarried but I guess boyfriends are allowed these days. A geisha getting married marks the time of her retirement, which is celebrated by the final ceremony of hiki iwai. She may now stop taking classes and can move out of her okiya. Often, however, retired geisha open their own teahouse or okiya and stay in the hanamachi in this capacity. A private evening with a geisha is almost prohibitively expensive, which may be one reason why the number of geisha is dwindling – there are less than 1000 in Japan these days, mostly in Kyoto and Tokyo. There are some public performances throughout the year though, and occasions where you can see maiko and geisha walking the streets on the way to their work, especially in Kyoto’s Gion district. The photos here were taken at a public ceremony last month, by the way.