Australian Laszlo Abel came to Japan sixteen years ago in search of “noncommercial” martial arts. After trying out “ninjutsu” and finding it unsatisfactory, he turned to Yumio Nawa Sensei’s manrikigusari, or chain art. Unanswered questions about the roots of the art led Abel on a fascinating odyssey of historical research. Here he recalls some of his discoveries and experiences in both the classical martial arts and in doing research as a foreigner in Japan.

Let me start by having you introduce yourself. You have been living in Japan for quite a long time. What brought you here in the first place?

Basically, I wanted to come to a country that I couldn’t see myself surviving in because I could only speak English and a smattering of Hungarian. Japan had always held some kind of attraction because I’d studied karate for three years. Because of the type of karate training I did in Australia, I thought that the training itself would be a lot better in Japan. So the decision to come here was not based on one single ambition.

This was about 1976?

I made the decision to come earlier than that, but I didn’t have enough money, and it took me a long time to get a visa to enter Japan. I arrived in September of ‘76, so that’s sixteen years now.

After you arrived here in Japan, did you continue your karate training?

No. In Australia there was too much commercialism of karate. I started in Kyokushinkai karate under John MacDonald, who was what they call a “karate baka.” He was very good at teaching and was a very hard and demanding trainer. However, when he left the area so did his type of training. In the end I joined another dojo made up of people from various other styles. From this experience I got to understand the martial arts scene from a broader viewpoint. I saw what was happening with commercial ideas and such. When I came to Japan, I intended to avoid a similar situation so I had contacted a style of ninjutsu. This was before the popularization and commercialization of that art. I was completely ignorant as to what ninjutsu was. Even the Japanese at that time knew it only through TV shows and comic books and I suppose a lot of people nowadays think ninjutsu is flying around in the air, swimming under-water—doing superhuman feats. So I came to Japan and did about eight months of training out at Noda City in Chiba Prefecture with Hatsumi Sensei. I think the reason I did not continue there again was the commercialization. I distinctly remember one night getting changed with a Frenchman, Laurent Tressiere, who had trained there for a long time. Hatsumi Sensei came into the changing room, and said in the course of the short conversation, “Study here, take the techniques back to your country, charge a lot of money for them, and send it back to me.” That’s what turned me off. By this time I had developed an interest in Japanese weapons. The catalyst for this were samurai dramas on TV. In one of these dramas I saw a truncheon, a jutte, being used and I thought I’d like to have one of those. So through an associate of mine I came to know my present sensei, Yumio Nawa, who is perhaps the largest and best known collector of “unusual” weapons, i.e., other than swords and such.

He’s also an authority on the history of ninjutsu and an author of a large number of books concerning his interests.

He is in a very good position for the type of research in which he specializes. He is quite often employed as a historical coordinator/researcher for various samurai dramas. He has actually used stuntmen to try out some of the things he’s researched. And he has made some real discoveries. I remember watching a documentary on TV about mizugumo. They were what the ninja supposedly wore to cross tracts of water. Nawa Sensei was employed to find out whether it was possible to “walk across water” using mizugumo. So he got together some stuntmen and acrobats —men expert in balance —and methodically constructed the mizugumo. In the old ninjutsu manuscript Bansenshukai two mizugumo are depicted, supposedly one for each foot.

Like paddles?

Well, they’re circular and interpretation so far supports that they were to fit on the feet for walking across water just like a mizugumo (lit. water spider). As Sensei completed each example of the flotation device — firstly, one for each foot in line with the old documentation—these were tested by the acrobats and stuntmen. Initially walking across water was impossible. Further experimentation resulted in the construction of one large raft-like device upon which one could sit and paddle across water. The end result, when placed in the correct context of six hundred years ago is that a so-called ninja could not have crossed a moat or a waterway without being spotted quite easily. First he’d have to carry a huge round device, which would be very suspicious, and second, he couldn’t have put it in the water and paddled across without being seen by castle guards, especially given that these guards were trained for the unexpected and that environmental conditions were very different from those of today. After all, Japan was in a state of continual warfare.

At our first meeting he told me that he taught the manrikigusari, which is a length of chain with two weights, one on either end, developed by a samurai, Toshimitsu Masaki. When I heard it was a formal tradition, based on historical fact traceable to a samurai link, I was quite excited. He asked if I would like to join. Of course I said yes. The dojo was at Hongo and practice was held every Saturday.

What year approximately was this?

Probably about 1977. I went along to the dojo. Nawa Sensei wasn’t actually teaching, Koichi Shibata was. There were quite a few people in the class. It was the first time I’d ever seen anything like this. Not many Japanese, let alone Westerners, would know about such a weapon. Of course, everybody knows the manrikigusari nowadays because it is mistakenly presented as a “ninja” weapon. But to the people who train in this art, it is firmly held in high respect as a traditional samurai art.

I was not able to join the dojo immediately, because Shibata Sensei felt there were more than enough people training in the limited space available, and even though Nawa Sensei was the person who introduced me, it was Shibata Sensei’s decision to make. So the first time I went along, I said to myself, “Well, OK, I’ll come back next week.” Then I went back the following week, and then I went a third time. It was persistence on my part. There was a Japanese guy there that third time who also wanted to join. He was obviously wealthy. When Shibata Sensei turned to me and said, “Why don’t you start next week?” this guy got up, and muttered something under his breath about Shibata Sensei playing favorites with me. He didn’t realize that I’d been there for the past two weeks. That’s when I joined, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.

A few advantages in belonging to the dojo soon surfaced. Shibata Sensei also teaches jujutsu, so through that introduction I was able to start jujutsu with him. Another student at the dojo, Yokoyama-san, introduced me to Negishi-ryu shuriken-jutsu. Nawa Sensei, who is also knowledgeable in shuriken-jutsu, helped to clarify these techniques. He drew on his experience of having as a very close friend Isamu Maeda, a recognized shuriken-jutsu teacher, who is now deceased.

The art is called Masaki-ryu today, and that entails basically the chain and also the kusarigama (weighted chain and sickle). Edo Machikatta jutte-jutsu is also now a part of the curriculum, as is hojo-jutsu (tying and binding techniques). However, my research reveals that there never was a Masaki-ryu, it was always just considered to be the chain that was taught by the Masaki family or the kusarigama taught by the Masaki family and so on. My research in original documents of the Masaki family has not uncovered any reference to anything about a Masaki-ryu by any generation of the Masaki family. This is quite significant when viewed culturally. However it is probably just as easy to label it as Masaki-ryu—it does save a lot of explanation.

The reason we have asked you to sit down and talk with us is not only because of the fact that you are a foreigner studying martial arts in Japan, and not only the fact that you are studying kobudo, because there are other foreigners studying kobudo, but the fact that you’ve done a large amount of research. Would you talk first of all about how it’s been for you to do research on a Japanese classical tradition as a foreigner in Japan? Are there any advantages to being a foreigner in conducting this research; on the other hand are there any disadvantages?

Well, there are advantages. If you are researching in a country area, the people try to do their best to get you on the right path—it seems to be on a more personal level. Most of the research I’ve done is probably on the Masaki family, and the chain. What drove me to it was the lack of sufficient answers to questions that I thought should be easy to answer by the people who were supposed to know.

About the origins and the traditions?

Yes, you’ve got to understand that Nawa Sensei was born around 1912, so he’s about eighty or eighty-one years old now. Ms own use of the chain is different from someone half his age. The late Kiyoshi Watatani Sensei often said that it’s very difficult talking to old teachers, because they don’t know too much about things, other than what they were told because they weren’t in a position to ask questions. Their options were extremely limited — accept and respect what they were told or not practice the school. So, to a point I understood why Nawa Sensei wasn’t able to respond to some of my questions. But I thought that if I ever taught this art back in Australia, the questions I was asking Nawa Sensei were the ones the Australians would be asking me, and I’d really have to know, so I decided to start doing research in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture. This is where the Masaki tradition originated. I first contacted the library down there, and I had very good luck in that the librarian, a very nice lady, took it on to really help me. I didn’t get a lot of information straight away, because the library was being rebuilt. Eventually I had to wait for about a year or so, before I could go down to do active research. Ogaki itself was a small fief provisioned with a 100,000 koku revenue in the old days. Don’t forget that the decisive battle of Sekigahara took place right near Ogaki, and the side that won basically took over Japan. The Tokugawa bakufu cut up the center of Japan into small fiefs to keep it weak.

To keep it weak politically?

Yes, and they put their own people in there. Ogaki’s a flat area, there are no mountains to build a castle on, like in Gifu. In Gifu City, you’ve got Gifu Castle on top of that steep mountain. Ogaki is a small castle surrounded by a very defensive moat system, and because of that the clan’s martial arts were primarily devoted to bow and arrow, spear, and hinawaju (fuselocks) — the “long distance” weapons. By this I mean that every samurai was trained in these arts as well the sword. To keep the edge in their training it was very common to seek skills outside the clan’s basic curriculum. In the Ogaki fief you had the situation where the sword of the clan was taught by the Kotoda family (Kotoda Itto-ryu), however there was also the sword taught by the Masaki family. This diversity is seen in all the martial arts of the clan. When viewed over the long term it can only be thought of as healthy for the survival of the clan.

Toshimitsu Masaki was bom in 1688 and I think he was like Morihei Ueshiba Sensei and Sokaku Takeda Sensei, who were reputed to be able to control the “ki” force that surrounded them. I found a lot of information about Masaki Sensei’s duels. He almost never used weapons, relying only his hands. He actually fought one against a sumo wrestler, Goroji Ayakawa. He allowed the wrestler to do tsuppari (sumo style thrusting) against him, but the sumo man couldn’t budge Masaki because of his strong control of his ki. And when Masaki did the same, the sumo wrestler went flying through the air.

Toshimitsu Masaki served three different lords, and died when he was 88. He earned a great deal of respect within the clan. The Masaki family went right through to the Meiji period when it almost died out. Fortunately it was succeeded by relatives and is still thriving today. The chain that Masaki developed also survived, not only as a weapon but also a talisman. I have found examples of the chain being stored in family altars, carried on one’s person in a religious manner, placed over the main entrance of houses to prevent evil from entering. I even interviewed a family whose grandmother slept with her husband’s chain after he passed away until she died.

I found that prewar sources of history were merely reproductions of reproductions. A book written and produced in 1992 referred to a book produced in 1990, which referred to a book produced perhaps in 1970. Interpretations change, and people don’t bother to do original research anymore.

An interesting episode occurred toward the end of my first research trip. At the library just as I was leaving, a Japanese man was coming in and he asked, “What’s a foreigner doing here?” The librarian explained, “He’s an Australian, who works for the Australian Embassy, and he’s researching Toshimitsu Masaki, who was a samurai in the Ogaki clan and who apparently developed this chain.” Of course, the chain was what I think really attracted him, not only that I was a foreigner. And he said, “Ah, what was the man’s name again?” I said, “Toshimitsu Masaki.” He said politely, “Well, I’ll keep an eye out for anything about him, and look into it.” His name was Kenji Yamada and besides writing for Nishi Mino Wagamachi, a small historical magazine for Ogaki, he also worked for the local bank at that time. Lo and behold, some time later he contacted me and said that he had found the present head of the family. To add to my surprise, they had found all this information, a meter or two stack of boxes full of information all about the Masaki family.

Unpublished?

No one even knew it was around until I started the ball rolling. Apparently some material had been borrowed by a person in Tokyo a long time ago. It took a little while but it was all assembled and chronologically recorded. In fact the chronological record is almost a book in itself. I’ve been going down there a great deal ever since to do research. I specifically wanted to find something to do with the martial arts, the chain. My gut feeling was that someone somewhere had a box full of chains, and someone somewhere had a book or something pertaining to the way the chain should be taught. I remember the only public demonstration the school has ever given was at the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Ogaki clan, held at a temple. The priest told a couple of friends who told a couple of friends, and one of these people brought a box to the temple. It was full of chains. We thought they were probably made in the Meiji period for students at the Ogaki Shogyo Gakko, which was like a high school, where the chain was being taught. Apparently the teaching of the chain at this school was discontinued after some of the students became involved in fights with the chains. From that point on, however, a small group of people in Ogaki couldn’t or didn’t want to believe that I could be the most knowledgeable person about the history of the Masaki family and chain. They did not make loud noises as they were very aware that I had a very high rank in the chain school and that they could never outrank me. This did not stop them trying to make a big splash themselves. One of this group I remember actually appeared on a local TV program depicting himself as an “expert” of the school and its history. They even had the nerve to query the authenticity of the present head of the Masaki family. There was no need for me to argue, as in drawing up a very comprehensive family tree of the Masaki family, I used not only the documents uncovered but also official documents held in local government offices which were kindly supplied by the Masaki family.

I am aware that rumors have also been used against me. I am careful not to announce where I go or who I visit in Ogaki to those I cannot trust. In fact, I have been warned by people in the library there not to trust this group as they have a reputation for ripping off research, rushing a publication and thereby becoming the expert in that field.

In the end though I suppose what I am trying to say is that the good outweighs the bad by a long shot.

I’ve also found that there is what is essentially a technical book out there. The owner is translating it from old Japanese into modern and has so far taken over three years. When I visit the family, they show me little bits and pieces of it. I figure that by the time I’m ready to leave Japan, it’ll be ready. It’s funny how I think I’m doing a great deal of good, but I never hear anything from anybody. In fact, I found some things that I didn’t like. For example, there are techniques that aren’t taught now, that were taught in the last century. I have found the original notes for kusarigama techniques written by the founder. This placed me in a dilemma. I didn’t know how to tell my teacher. I kept very quiet about it.

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