The Curse of Being a Generalist?: A Review of “Classical Swordsmanship of Japan: A Comprehensive Guide to Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu” by Serge Mol.

The Curse of Being a Generalist?: A Review of “Classical Swordsmanship of Japan: A Comprehensive Guide to Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu” by Serge Mol.

By Rennis Buchner
Copyright © Rennis Buchner, 2010. Not to be used without permission

About a decade ago, a little known martial arts researcher named Serge Mol released the book Classical Fighting Arts of Japan: A Complete Guide to Koryu Jujutsu. Having some mutual acquaintances with the author, I was interested in seeing what kind of work this person I had heard so much about had produced. I was doubly interested, as the author was also a senior foreign student of a Japanese martial arts teacher who was somewhat controversial among many of the circles I was moving in, for recreating and then actively teaching the lost kogusoku sections of our ryu from a number of surviving, and highly detailed, documents. The author, having been a long time resident of Japan and, by all accounts, quite skilled in Japanese, seemed to potentially be a new source of information from the small pool of people who had “been there” and “done that” (although I have been unable to find out exactly how long the author actually lived in Japan, outside of numerous comments of “several years” scene in interviews). I was obviously curious as to whether he would have any new insights into the ryu that I had not been aware of, not to mention a wide ranging overview on classical jujutsu written by one with experience in Japan is always a welcome addition to the English market. The resulting book has been better reviewed by others elsewhere (for example HERE), but suffice it to say that there was much that was considered problematic by many.

In the years since Classical Fighting Arts of Japan: A Complete Guide to Koryu Jujutsu arrived, Serge Mol has published three more books, the last two of which have been done independently. While two of those three books (Classical Weaponry of Japan: Special Weapons and Tactics of the Martial Arts and Invisible Armor: An Introduction to the Esoteric Dimension of Japan’s Classical Warrior Arts) have been on more specialized and somewhat minor topics in the grand scheme of Japanese martial arts , the most recent, Classical Swordsmanship of Japan: A Comprehensive Guide to Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu, is potentially of great interest to those wanting a good source of information on Japanese swordsmanship. As the work seems designed to be something of a companion piece to his first, I was interested in seeing if any of the issues apparent in the first book were still apparent now several years later. One of the biggest issues in writing a book that tries to cover all of the major ryuha with in a given art is that one almost inevitably spreads oneself too thin. The amount of research necessary to to justice to all of the ryu presented in such a work is a massive undertaking. Doing the work required to be able to critically discuss each individual ryuha and its history, much less be able to give the reader some idea of the technical flavor of the ryu, is daunting to say the least. This is further compounded by the somewhat incestuous nature of modern overview works on Japan’s martial traditions published in Japan. One is almost required to both spend significant time with people actually practicing the tradition, as well as go back and work with original source materials. If one is merely claiming to have written a general overview, this is perhaps not such an issue, but when claims of being “complete” or “comprehensive” are made, I personally have reservations about one individual being able to produce such a work while maintaining a high level of quality throughout. Classical Fighting Arts of Japan: A Complete Guide to Koryu Jujutsu very clearly suffered from this problem.

Which brings us to the new book itself. For those interested in the physical details of the book, Classical Swordsmanship of Japan is a hardcover weighing in at 320 pages. It is contains numerous illustrations and photographs (I lost count after 300), many taken by the author or of items in his collection. First impressions of the book as a physical product seemed solid and the pages are fairly thick with seemingly quality paper being used. With that said, after reading through the book once and flipping through it while working on this review I have noticed that the corners of the cover have dented inwards fairly easily and the binding feels noticeably looser so how solid the book is in the long run seems questionable to me at the moment. Being privately published now, the author can spend some extra time on subjects that perhaps may have been edited out if the book had been published by a major publisher aiming for a larger market. The book is rather expensive (possibly prohibitively so with a list price of $79.95 USD a copy, not including shipping). Unfortunately actually purchasing the book is not easy as one is forced either to buy directly from the publisher, Eibusha, with payment methods that are impractical for those outside of Europe, or go purchase through one other website in the US, in either case, the additional shipping and/or money transfer fees further add to the cost of the product.

In some areas, the work has improved. In Classical Swordsmanship of Japan, the author has spent far less time covering schools that he is personally involved with and covers a much wider range of material than his first work. There are fewer controversial schools shown and he does appear to have had at least some direct contact with representatives of a number of the ryu he discusses. He also appears to be far less dependent on the help of his teachers, not only in material, but also in obtaining pictures to use in the text (readers familiar with his instructors quickly pointed out that Koryu Jujutsu contained a disproportionately large number of pictures related to ryuha practiced by his two major teachers). This time around the majority of the pictures are supplied by the author himself. While there are still a large number of pictures of documents from his personal collection shown, there is a wider range of pictures of various ryuha in action shown this time around. As was the case with Koryu Jujutsu, many of these were taken at major demonstrations in Japan, but this time around there are more that make it clear that the author went to visit these ryu directly. Overall, the demonstration pictures are of better quality that in his first book, in which the embu pictures were generally rather dark and of lesser quality than those supplied by his teachers. While the quality does vary, this time around the author’s pictures are generally clearer and easier on the eyes than in Koryu Jujutsu. Many of the photographs of actual practitioners in action do help one get something of a feel for the traditions being shows and there is a much wider range of ryuha presented in the photographs (not to mention a dramatic reduction in the number of pictures showing more “controversial” schools). However the numerous pictures from scrolls and other documents coming from the author’s collection do occasionally feel more like filler, if not the author showing off what seems to be a rather extensive personal collection of densho rather than adding useful information to the work. In addition, although I am not sure of the laws concerning likeness rights and photography in his home country, I must admit I think that publishing this book through one of the major publishing companies in Japan would probably have been extremely difficult due to the issue of having to secure permission from all the people photographed at these demonstrations.

While there are improvements over the author’s first work, many of the problems in terms of actual research and the information presented remain. Despite the claim of being “comprehensive” in nature, there still seems to be too much use of what I would call “popular-history” type materials and not enough hard research and critical thinking on the author’s part. For a work that claims to be comprehensive, there seems to be far too much sourcing of modern works, which in Japan have a strong tendency to just be rewritten segments of other modern works, or the famous Bugei Ryuha Daijiten (henceforth referred to as the BRDJ). In addition, outside of the pictures, there is very little information included to give the reader any sense of the technical flavor of each ryu, instead focusing almost entirely on historical issues. I also feel the work suffers to some degree from being privately published. While this work seems to my eyes stronger in writing than his first privately published work, Invisible Armor, which was filled with spelling and grammatical errors, there are still some careless mistakes found in Classical Swordsmanship that a professional editor could have caught and corrected (for example, page 277 “Using habiki, that is steal (sic) (practice) swords with unsharpened blades, also did not make contests or practice fights any safer” ). With that said, Classical Swordsmanship is a vast improvement over Invisible Armor in this regard.

While it is beyond my skills and knowledge to give a critique of every entry in the book, I believe a somewhat in depth look at the section on Hoki-ryu, the one area I am somewhat qualified to comment on, would be illustrative of potential problems that could be lurking elsewhere in the book. (for those wondering what those “qualifications” might be, I have been a member of the ryu since 1998, and first began “proper” research of ryu using original source documents in 2000 in a university setting in Japan. Since graduating I have continued my research privately in Japan for the majority of the past decade.) While not even filling three full pages of text in the book, this section serves well as a microcosm of what is good and bad with the entire book. While the author obviously makes use of a number of different sources, his use of much of the material seems to be lacking in terms of viewing it with a critical eye and, in my opinion, he mixes the information from actual historical documents and what could at best be described as “pop-history” sources far too freely. The usage of modern sources in and of themselves is not a bad thing as clearly stating what the commonly held perception about a ryu is the most logical place to start. However I personally would expect one to then flesh out the commonly held view with more in depth historical documents, commenting on what seems correct and where errors are evident. Here the approach seems closer to taking the information contained in the entry in the Bugei Ryuha Daijiten and more or less adding additional material when found wherever it fits and without much regard given to the “weight” of the source material.

The first problem is that the author has listed the ryu as a member of the Hayashizaki Jinsuke family of ryuha when this claim is highly controversial (which I will go into later), although considering that most modern literature makes that claim, perhaps he could be forgiven if only for the sake of ease of organization. While that issue is perhaps a bit flexible, there are a number of outright errors, starting with the name of the ryu itself. The author states that “Hoki-ryu is the more common name for Katayama Hoki-ryu”. The surviving historical record of the ryu simply does not support this idea. Within all the surviving documents left by the founding Katayama family based in Iwakuni, the name Katayama-ryu is the only name given to the ryu. Unlike most bugei ryuha, Katayama-ryu was documented in extreme detail by the founding family since nearly the time they arrived in Iwakuni. There are thousands of pages of documents surviving, the majority of which I personally have copies of, so the fact that the name “Katayama Hoki-ryu” simply does not appear is fairly significant. In fact the only time the name “Hoki-ryu” appears in the documents at all is in documents recording events when members Hoshino family of Kumamoto came to Iwakuni to train under the Katayama family directly. In those documents it states that the Hoshino family practiced Hoki-ryu. The art was considered a legitimate lineage descending from the founder Katayama Hisayasu, but it was also clearly considered distinct from the Katayama-ryu kenjutsu they taught. Following the visit of the second head Hoshino Ryusuke to train under the founding family, the Hoshino family was also recognized as a legitimate shihanke of Katayama-ryu and from that time the majority of the mokuroku of the Hoshino family’s Hoki-ryu was based on that of Katayama-ryu kenjutsu (see figure 10-13 on page 222 for a partial listing of the Hoki-ryu mokuroku), with the addition of a number of techniques unique to the Kumamoto lineage, however while they also taught Katayama-ryu, they still called their art Hoki-ryu. The name Hoki-ryu does appear to have been used by some members of the Katayama family in lineages broken off from the Iwakuni mainline, but again, the name “Katayama Hoki-ryu” does not appear in any of the family’s own documents. In fact the first potential usage of the name “Katayama Hoki-ryu” I have found to date is actually in the transcription of letter written in the 1930′s from Katayama Busuke (the last Katayama family head) to Hoshino Ryuta, the head of the Hoshino dojo. This letter was written in conjunction with a visit Katayama Busuke made to the Hoshino dojo and the impression one gets is that Katayama Busuke is trying to emphasize the close ties between the two families over the past several generations. The most common version of this letter in the possession of researchers of the ryu has been typed out based on the original hand-written copy and this typed version contains “Katayama Hoki-ryu” as the name of the school. However it has been suggested by some that the original hand written letter only said “Katayama-ryu” and the “Hoki” was added later during the process of typing it out. Unfortunately the original is privately owned and until such a time as I can gain access to it, I cannot confirm for a fact which name was used in the original. If Katayama Busuke did indeed use the term “Katayama Hoki-ryu” one might venture a guess that he choice to use it, combining his Katayama-ryu and the Hoshino’s Hoki-ryu, as one way of emphasizing their close relationship, but in any case this is the first potential recorded example of the use of “Katayama Hoki-ryu” I have found to date.

Soon after, the author brings up the often made claim that the founder, Katayama Hisayasu, was said to have been a student of Hayashizaki Jinsuke. He rightly points out that this claim is made in nearly all modern literature regarding the ryu, some of it even coming from modern teachers of Hoki-ryu iai. In addition he mentions that another “theory” is that Hisayasu learned from one Katayama Shoan, in modern literature claimed to have been Hisayasu’s uncle, although documents in the ryu also state him as his father. Both could be true as some claim that Shoan was Hisayasu’s uncle and adoptive father, but that discussion is not really relevant here. He also mentions a third theory (which I cannot recall having seen in print before) that Hisayasu studied from both. While I applaud the fact that he mentions all these “theories”, his presentation here seem to give each one equal weight when in fact every person I have come into contact with who has done serious research on the ryu dismisses the idea that Katayama Hisayasu was a student of Hayashizaki Jinsuke, while all of them support the idea of Shoan being his teacher. Considering that Shoan’s name appears multiple times in the Katayama family documents in conjunction with the roots of Katayama-ryu and Hayashizaki Jinsuke’s name never appears at all, it is perhaps rather obvious why this claim is the one which the vast majority of serious researchers support.

Mol’s connections to his teacher Nakashima Atsumi again pay off as the later supplied him with a number of the photographs of Katayama-ryu densho that appear in the book (while Nakashima is given credit for the pictures, no mention is made of the fact this document as well as nearly all the other documents used by most researchers of the ryu and referred to in this review are actually the property of the Chokokan in Iwakuni). The document he uses in his discussion he refers to as “Jirinden” (which is in fact not its full name, as can clearly be seen in figure 10-10 on page 220) and his usage of this document is hit and miss. On the plus side he does discuss and include photographs of one section where Shoan’s name appears in a discussion with the iaidai of Katayama-ryu (a sort of stand vaguely resembling a ladder with a rung-like cross piece that can be moved to one of three positions, which the practitioner then practices draws and cuts against) and mentions the obvious influences on the ryu’s philosophical outlook that can readily seen in this document. On the other hand he, perhaps understandably considering his own training is in a recreation of the ryu rather than a line with some form of direct transmission, mistakenly misrepresents some of the information regarding the teachings of Iso-no-Nami section of the densho.

The discussion of the iaidai does give wider exposure to a fairly unique aspect of the ryu and thus is a valuable addition to the entry. Then suddenly in mid-paragraph he returns to modern sources discussing Hisayasu’s relationship with Hayashizaki Jinsuke and that some think Shoan was Hisayasu’s uncle, while others claim that he was Hayashizaki’s uncle, which is a claim I have only seen in one other work, a modern short technical manual on Kumamoto Hoki-ryu with a couple of very poorly written paragraphs on the history of the ryu in which they basically just paraphrase the Bugei Ryuha Daijiten‘s entry on the ryu, with some errors. (As an aside, while I can identify the sources of much of the author’s information in this section, I also find that he has not included many of these sources in the book’s bibliography). The author discusses the popular view of the location where the founder had studied under Shoan in his youth and then mentions that the book Hayashizaki Myojin to Hayashizaki Jinuske Shigenobu suggests that it was in this period and location that Katayama Hisayasu had also studied under Hayashizaki Jinsuke. While he is correct in that this work does suggest this, this is another example where the author appears to be cherry picking information to add to his entry, rather than viewing the information with a critical eye.

Hayashizaki Myojin to Hayashizaki Jinuske Shigenobu is in fact a wonderful book for those interested in Hayashizaki Jinsuke and the Hayashizaki Iai shrine in Yamagata. It is, however, not without it’s problems. The book’s primary merit is in that is has collected and reprinted information related to Hayashizaki Jinsuke from a wide range of sources, some Edo period (1600-1868), others fairly modern, and put them all in one place. It also contains photographs of a large number of related densho and other documents. The work however is not without its problems, in particular an understandably strong bias towards Hayashizaki. As one would expect, this book also lists Katayama Hisayasu as a student of the Hayashizaki. To the work’s credit, it mentions that Shoan is also thought to be the founder’s actual teacher, but then completely destroys any objectivity by stating that the ryu was passed on by the descendents of Hisayasu, the Katayama family living in Iwakuni, as Katayama-ryu with Hayashizaki Jinsuke as the teacher of Hisayasu (“久安の子孫、岩国に住む片山家では、片山流と称し道統を継いでお り、久安の師は林崎甚助重 信と している” Page 156). As was mentioned previously, Hayashizaki’s name does not appear anywhere in the thousands of pages of Katayama family documents surviving today. Such a claim is never made anywhere by the Katayama family in Iwakuni. The authors of this book then go on to suggest that Hisayasu could have trained with Hayashizaki during this period in his youth based solely on the fact that we simply no nothing about Hisayasu’s life at that point in time and Hayashizaki Jinsuke was also a live at that time. Regardless of the fact that there is zero evidence to back this up and no such claim is made anywhere else, Mol has no problem quoting this as a theory of equal weight to anything else printed up to this point.

The author continues trying to find possible evidence of a connection between Hayashizaki and Katayama. He returns to basic Bugei Ryuha Daijiten entry based information which most modern works quote and repeats the often made claim that Hisayasu saw the character “kan” in a divine dream while on Mt. Atago and named this ryu “Ikkan-ryu” (as an aside, Watatani Kiyoshi seems to have included this information based on some scrolls of a different ryu which had branched off of the teachings of Katayama Hisayasu. The Katayama-ryu densho mention a different character entirely and no mention of an Ikkan-ryu is ever made). From here he then continues to try and show that there is possible evidence in the Katayama-ryu mokuroku because the character of manji (卍)  appears in the Katayama-ryu mokuroku in the gokui section under the heading Manji-no-Kan (using the same character as the above mentioned kan) and Hayashizaki had also placed a strong emphasis on the manji. While that is all well in good, it is quite meaningless when one considers that the manji ranks as probably one of the most commonly appearing characters/designs in bugei ryuha out there.

Following this, the author again returns to the standard information found in the BRDJ entry, quoting other names the ryu has supposedly gone by (in almost all cases actually names used by other lines of teachings descended from the founder and outside of the Iwakuni Katayama family), before going into brief discussion of the connection between Katayama Hisayasu and Takeuchi Hisamori (the Katayama family documents do discuss their understanding of the exact nature of the relationship between the two, but the details of that do not appear in either of Mol’s books). The last paragraph of the entry again mostly follows the information in the BRDJ, and is at least for the most part accurate in its particulars outside of again implying that the Iwakuni Katayama family used the name “Hoki-ryu” for their art. Outside of the mention of the iaidai, nothing is mentioned at all about the technical nature of the ryu and even in the case of the iaidai, very little is written as to how or why such an item was used.

In the end we have some commonly held ideas (student of Hayashizaki) presented as, if not most likely true despite the opinions of most experts on the subject (whose views are never really expressed), being on fairly equal footing with the far more likely roots of the ryu (Shoan). We have some legitimate historical material used with mixed results and intermingled with source material more modern in nature and of varying degrees of quality. All of this is presented in a fairly seamless way that makes it next to impossible for the less knowledgable reader to discern what comes from where and how reliable it is. Having researched this ryu personally for over a decade, I am in a position to readily notice such issues here, but I am not nearly as knowledgable in the other traditions presented in this book. Do similar problems exist elsewhere?

So what went wrong here? Due to the author’s training, teachers, and their connections, here he has a certain degree of “insider” knowledge and sources and yet still manages to go astray. While it may just lazy scholarship going on here, I think a major issue in both Classical Swordsmanship and Koryu Jujutsu was that the author has simply bitten off more than he can chew, which is the primary danger of all works of this nature. There are very few works like the two books Serge Mol has produced available in English. The others that spring to mind include Draeger’s Martial Arts and Ways of Japan 3 volume set, Hurst’s Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery, Sugawara’s Lives of Master Swordsmen and more recently de Lange’s 3 volume Famous Japanese Swordsmen series. While some of these works are more successful than others, all of them suffer to some degree from spreading themselves too thin. Even highly respected works like the Bugei Ryuha Daijiten in Japanese are filled with errors so this is by no means a problem unique to the English market. The problem is that claims of being “Complete” or “Comprehensive” are simply not achievable in works of this nature.

While works in Japanese like the BRDJ do get criticized for their errors from time to time, it is important to realize these works are not places for “one stop shopping” that will give you all the information you need with complete accuracy. Rather they should be used merely as starting points, to get the general view of the tradition in question and then using that as a base for further inquiry. Unfortunately for those native English speakers lacking the required skills to continue such investigation in Japanese, works such as Classical Swordsmanship of Japan: A Comprehensive Guide to Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu more often than not will be be first and last stop in a line of inquiry. As such I feel that special effort should go into the writing of these types of works to insure that they are as accurate as possible. While the ideal situation would be a collaborative work, with different sections written by experts in that field (or in this case, each individual ryu), this is not really possible at the moment so other steps must be taken to reduce errors.

In the case of this book I think the author would have benefited from either have his information double checked by practitioners of the individual ryu when available, or by simply dropping the goal of “Comprehensive” and going for just a basic overview guide book sticking more directly to what are considered the “standard views” of the ryu in Japan (obviously while making it clear that these views may be refuted by other experts of specific traditions). In any case much of the speculation and intermingling of popular and historical source material makes Classical Swordsmanship a somewhat confused book and leaves the more knowledge reader questioning just what, if any, information he should trust.

As I asked earlier, do problems similar to those in the Hoki-ryu entry exist elsewhere in the book? And if so to what extent? Having heard from members of other ryu of similar issues in entries for their respective ryu in the author’s previous book Koryu Jujutsu, and judging on what I have seen in the section on Hoki-ryu, I would be hesitant to trust many of the particulars of other ryu detail-wise, while admitting that much of the general information is probably fairly accurate. This “hit and miss” factor makes Classical Swordsmanship a tricky book to recommend. On the one hand there is a distinct lack of books such as this in the English language market and there is probably a good deal of information readers may not be able to get otherwise. On the other hand, there appears to be some real quality control issues regarding the reliability and presentation of the at least some of information presented not only here, but in much of the author’s work to date. Considering this, not to mention the hefty price tag, I would consider this book an optional purchase for most readers. If one has the money to burn, the serious reader may find some of the information in this work somewhat useful when used in conjunction with other books to get a more “balanced” view. For the casual reader, the price vs quality makes this a hard book to recommend and one’s money would probably be better spent else where, while for readers with a solid grasp of Japanese this book is probably entirely unnecessary considering much of its source material is still available.

(Updated 11/04/2010: Included new information on the letter from Katayama Busuke to the Hoshino dojo regarding the use of the term “Katayama Hoki-ryu”.)