Koryu-wa Koryu-nari: Traditions, Their Sizes, and Their Goals (Part II)
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Students need to be held accountable. I've written before about doing so. In short:
One can have a well-defined and accepted lineage and still not be very good, for example if an art was never very good to begin with, lost too much of its curriculum or higher-level knowledge (the layers I allude to in Koryu-wa Koryu-nari ) or was taught to too many people, who thus did not learn the art at a deep enough level to convey it forward properly. This I believe was the case in the past with some lines of Jikishinkage-ryū and more recently with lines of Katori Shinto-ryū that have been taught to literally thousands of people.
I believe it is generally the case that high-level practitioners of martial arts, who developed and then were able to demonstrate martial skill (such as Matsumoto Bizen no Kami), developed a public reputation of their skill, and thus attracted many students, or several generations of students, so were both well known and influenced later traditions. Arts that are small and rare might not actually be very good on average – if they were excellent, they would have generally become well known. So, it is not always the rare or small predecessor art (e.g., the first people practicing a specific art) that would necessarily be the best exponents of the art, or the best exemplar of the art today. Instead, it may be more likely the most famous or well-known practitioners of the art, who had a chance to interact (both peacefully in exchanges of information, and combatively in matches, challenges, duels, or warfare) with other martial artists, that would potentially have the highest quality practice. The question is whether that practice survived to the same level of virtuosity. Some arts may have flourished once and then wound up small, barely surviving, but it is very rare to find a lost art practiced by only one or two people that has any relevance in terms of skill or impact in the broader community.
Counter intuitively, arts generally start with a small curriculum based on key insights that distinguish them from the founder's previous training – they are not birthed fully grown as sogo-bujutsu addressing all modalities of combat. This is despite the Japanese social construct of tenshin-shoden or shinden, "divine revelation", where a key insight is ascribed to a mythological figure who is revealed during a time of austerity spent in sacred space or hermitage. In China, there is a simlar concept of ascribing the invention of an art to an interaction with a wandering monk or hermit, or mysterious teacher. Both stem from the influence of Confucian concepts, where old knowledge is prized, and innovation held often in some level of suspicion. So, traditionally, Dong Haiquan does not invent bagua, he interacts with a mysterious Taoist who teaches him and then can no longer be found. Choisai does not invent Katori Shinto-ryū but instead receives diving instruction. Matsumoto Bizen no Kami follows in similar fashion. The list goes on.
Regardless of origin, from the divine (a dream encounter with Takemizukachi-no-kami) to the profane (killing seventy five men in battle using a spear ), what of the evolution of a core teaching over time?
Over time, a core set of teachings explaining or introducing or preparing practitioners for those key insights is typically put in place, either by the founder of an art or his senior disciples when they pass what they have learned on to others. Teachers tend to add material over time: their own embellishments, their own deeper insights, material from other traditions they have studied, material to address the tactics of other groups they have encountered, material to explain the core insights of the founder or make them more easy to later apprehend. In times of peace, arts may grow considerably given the creative impulse teachers might have to develop new routines beyond any specific reason listed above.
Wise teachers may rework or remove teachings, without remorse, if the result better embodies the key insights that define their approach to combat.
The modality of pattern practice (kata) in traditional Japanese martial arts preserves social order. Whether one knows a particular set of kata, and has been awarded a written license referencing (cataloging) their knowledge of that set, provides a signifier of their social status with their group and a reference to how other groups might treat them. Simply teaching the core of an art to a gifted student and sending them along their way would disrupt social order dramatically as the student would be required to demonstrate their skill with steel against those who would not know how to treat them. This probably happened less and less as the Edo period wore on, as it was a time of great social stability, but let us not forget martial practice was severe and at times atavistic in times past, something far from the hobby it is today.
In any case, gifted students without license would quickly develop their own reputation or fade into anonymity, but in either case the teacher might be held accountable for their (potentially violent) actions. Thus we see entrance oaths, creeds, and pledges made to obey rules that are both about social character (avoiding gambling, womanizing, stealing) but also the relationship between the swordsman and other established groups (not teaching, discussing teachings, or duelling until allowed). In the case of savants such as Takeda Sokaku — in both the positive and negative connotation of the word — they too felt a need to establish lineage (e.g., Minamoto, Seiwa, etc.) and structure (e.g., awarding scrolls and licenses, even if they evolved over time). They did not teach in a vacuum where students did not have an expectation of the kata modality — and we see different groups preserving in pattern practice what may have been extemporaneous demonstrations of virtuosity, akin to learning to transcribe and play a Jazz solo by a great musician, while never allowing yourself to play one of your own.
However, regardless of the social milieu and how social groups such as ryuha interacted, we are faced with a small paradox, possibly not difficultly resolved. If the best arts become large due to the fame and attraction of their founders, but then arts that are large are not transmitted easily or properly to most of their students (due to regression to the mean, an attempt to make the arts more accessible to larger number of people, more limited access to fully licensed instructors as the number of branch schools and students grow, faulty instruction as junior students are asked to mentor new students too early, etc.) — how to then determine what arts might be intact, especially as we no longer engage in combat with swords, glaives, or spears?
A general answer may not be possible. It seems to me the fact that arts continue today in small groups with a limited number of teachers is not something that is sad (with the arts in danger of fading away) but instead appropriate to the difficulty of transmitting older ways of movement, thinking, and being in the current day. Efforts to reach many people (hundreds, thousands) driven by altruism (in the desire to share something that profoundly, positively, affected one's life) or egoism (a desire for hundreds or thousands of followers, along with veneration and transfer of wealth that typically implies) may degrade the level of skill found in the average exponent to the point where the art loses its essential character in an effort to be accessible.
Senior students who seek to be teachers studying an older art might still cut in a modern fashion if they practice kendo or iaido from a standard renmei, or throw using aikido body mechanics and insist it is "the same" as an older style of jujutsu they are attempting to learn, if they remain stuck in their obligations to their first martial arts. There are other examples, but I hope the general idea comes across that in a desire to seek out the best instruction, it may not be possible to synthesize instruction from multiple sources and reach a great level of skill. This is albeit more common in taijutsu than kobudo, but changing styles due to preference or circumstance does happen — many people have studied multiple koryu over time and struggle to analyze, synthesize, or discard portions of their life experience and self-identity (e.g., "I do Shinto-ryu" or "I practice Aiki"). As someone who has given up on several arts in my career, I know that leaving each one behind was a unique struggle with its own challenges.
In the end, you have pick a path.