The instructors sat on the mats in two parallel lines. Each instructor faced a counterpart on the
opposite line, watching him attentively, with his back erect and chin tucked in – not moving
an inch. The hierarchy of the sitting arrangement was simple—at the top of the lines sat the
highest grade teachers and at the far end, the lower grades, namely David and I. We had only
just completed our senshusei course, our new black-belts paradoxically glowing dark with a
touch of blue over our white dogi.
Graduating from the course marked the beginning of our long road to become instructors. It
meant arriving at the dojo early every morning, cleaning and tidying the place before training
commenced. We would stay at the dojo until the evening, joining in every class and helping out
the senior instructors while they taught and demonstrated. The time between classes we spent
at the office, standing erect and attentive as the instructors performed their desk duties. We
would brew their tea, wash their cups, empty their ashtrays, and when the day was over, fold
their hakama and wait until they departed from the building before we went home.
Graduation from the course also meant that every Thursday, at five minutes before one o’clock
in the afternoon, we would join the instructors as they stepped onto the mats and sat in seiza
for an hour long conversation with the Yoshinkan Aikido founder, Master Gozo Shioda. For an
hour and five minutes, to be precise, as the first five minutes were dedicated to politely waiting
for the master. A wait in seiza for seiza.
Seiza, loosely translated as the correct way of sitting, was the traditional way in which the
samurai, the warrior of old, used to sit. It was a strict posture that kept him alert and focused,
allowing him to swiftly react to surprise attacks, or to launch an offence of his own, should
one be needed.
In fact, being able to fight from seiza was so vital that almost half of the curriculum was
dedicated to suwari-waza, martial techniques performed while moving on the knees. During
the senshusei course, we trained for hours on suwari-waza techniques.
“This is crazy,” I complained to Payet sensei, the senior foreigner instructor at the dojo, after
completing the first suwari-waza session of the course.
“What’s crazy?” he asked in his heavy French accent.
“I mean, look at these,” I pointed at the red marks that stained my dogi on both knees.
“Oh, the Japanese flag?” he smiled behind his glasses. “The Japanese flag?” I asked.
“Yes. Roll up your dogi pants and you’ll see.”
I sighed and followed his instruction, my eyes widening to the sight of the red raw flesh that
decorated both knees.
“The skin is off,” I whined and Payet sensei chuckled.
“Yes,” he nodded cheerfully. “And the wound is round and bright red, a taint that stands in
contrast to the white of the intact skin. Do you see?”
“Round, red mark on a white background.”
“Just like the Japanese flag,” he concluded and laughed heartily.
“But what’s the point?” I asked when he finally stopped laughing.
“The point?”
“Yes,” I said. “It hurts, it’s probably unhealthy, and besides, and no one fight on their knees
anymore. Why not drop the whole thing?”
He stopped smiling and stared at me for a while, as if looking at a madman.
“But suwari-waza is an amazing tool to develop your aikido,” he spoke at long last , his eyes
sparkling with inspiration. “When moving on the knees you can’t use the length of your legs in
order to move swiftly and smoothly. Instead, you are forced to use your hip-power, a practice
that ultimately help shape and strengthen your tachi-waza, the standing techniques.”
I could appreciate the wisdom behind Payet sensei’s words, but at the same time, couldn’t
ignore the pain in both knees and especially the worrying swelling in my left knee. I remember
quite a few suwari waza sessions during which the swelling became so severe that it caused
the joint to lock. Consequently, I would limp around the dojo until the instructor would bark at
me to stop training.
“Go sit in seiza,” he would usually order and I would be forced to sit and observe the class,
biting my lip against the urge to scream, my mind filled with images of future disabilities. But I
endured the pain, regardless of the intensity, knowing all too well that any other plan of action
would be considered a failure by all accounts.
There’s no rest for the wicked — not in this course. Rumor has it that even when a policeman
who participated in the senshusei course suffered a heart attack, he was written off as ‘Feeble,’
before being sent straight home.
A Japanese woman, a mother of two delightful girls, once told me that she would rather go
through the pains of childbirth- than having to sit in seiza for more then five minute. I lack the
experience to fully agree with her statement, but accept the fact that a prolong period of time
in seiza can be horribly painful. It is a sentiment that was shared by most Japanese instructors
at the hombu dojo.
The topic was openly discussed one day during lunch, when all the instructors were sat around
the dinning table at the kitchen. We were eating a bento, a Japanese ready-made meal that
was delivered to the dojo.
“Why do you sit in seiza, sensei?” David asked Chino sensei, who was the only one sitting on
his knees on the chair.
“It’s for my training,” Chino explained. “My thighs are quite thick and it makes seiza very
difficult. So I practice whenever and wherever I can.”
His words brought about a discussion regarding the length of time one can tolerate seiza
before the pain becomes overwhelming.
“About forty minutes,” said Chida sensei, the headmaster and the seiza record holder at the
hombu dojo. “After I sit for five minutes,” he explained, “my legs fall asleep and I feel zero pain
until they wake up again, around thirty five minutes later.”
The other side of the scale was represented by no other than Chino sensei, who claimed, to the
laughter of the other instructors, that five minutes in seiza was more than enough for him.
The pain in his knees must have been excruciating, so much so that after every seiza session
he would take up to two minutes just to get up to his feet. From there, he used to shuffle
backwards, dragging his straight legs as if they were heavy tree stumps.
“He must be the one who developed the ‘Moon Walk’,” David said when we first observed Chino
getting up from a seiza session. “He’s the Japanese equivalent of ‘BillyJean.’”
“Michael Jackson is such a cheat,” I nodded while my eyes followed Chino as he bowed and
moved out of the mat-area, slowly shuffling backward through the long corridor, on his way
to the instructor’s resting room, where he would collapse to the tatami floor and nurse his
agonized limbs.
“Seiza is terrible for the body,” I told David.
“That’s it? You determined this just by watching Chino?”
“Not only Chino. Didn’t you see how even Master Shioda keeps rubbing his knees when seated
in seiza? I bet he hates it just as bad as I do.”
“And I think you’re just being negative and only see the disadvantages,” David scolded me.
“So enlighten me, what do I miss here?”
“The benefits, the fact that seiza is an excellent way to develop spiritually and sensually. Seiza, for example, is a wonderful position for practicing meditation.”
“So is the cross-legged position.”
“True, but in seiza, it is much easier to remain centered and straight for a long period of time
without -exerting too much pressure on the spine.”
“And instead, exerting a lot of pressure on the poor knees.”
“Thank you, Gadi. You’ve just stated the second benefit of seiza — pain tolerance, you bloody
wimp.”
“Pain tolerance? Was that what you meant when you spoke of sensual-development, the ability
to suffer?”
“Oh, no,” he smiled. “Nothing like that. I was only referring to the ability to distinguish which
teacher is approaching the tatami by the sound of their feet.”
The tapping sound of tiny feet approached the opening to the dojo. Instantaneously, my mind
was cleared of wondering, and I looked at David who watched the entrance. He outstretched
his already over-stretched back and I copied his move. I held my breath as the tapping sound
stopped by the mats, preparing myself for the dramatic entrance of the one and only — Master
Gozo Shioda.
Although I couldn’t see him, I could clearly envision what he did and when he did it; my ears
picking up the slight sound of the master as he dropped to his knees and bowed to the shrine,
sensing and hearing him getting up and shuffling to his designated seat at the top of the lined-
up instructors. From the corner of my eye I saw him lowering himself down to seiza. To the
command of Chida sensei, we bowed, and he began his talk. His voice was sharp and powerful,
his palms rubbing his knees as he spoke, moving softly in a circular motion.
The conversation was as strict and as formal as the sitting arrangement. The Master would
present the topic of the discussion, and then ask the instructor of his choice to state his
views. No one spoke unless spoken to by the master, and the speech had to be clear and to the
point.
A few seconds into the talk I shifted my attention to David and the movements of his fingers. I
frowned as I tried to read his message. He started again, tapping his thighs, slower this time.
“Sweet,” I thought and swallowed a smile, pleased I remembered the code. I indicated my
understanding with a few taps of my own. The code is a system of communication that we
developed in order to combat the pain and boredom of the situation. Pain – from the obvious
reason of sitting in seiza, and boredom, due to what David first believed to be our superficial
understanding of the Japanese language and customs.
“We’ve got to know what’s going on,” David stressed. “I was told they discuss topics such as
training, dojo etiquette, dojo maintenance and who knows what else? We might be missing a valuable lesson here, Gadi.”
However, his theory was soon dismissed after we learned the particularities of those conversations
from Payet sensei, who spoke implacable Japanese.
“Master Shioda told us,” Payet disclosed after our first session, “that we focus too much on the
training and forget our duties. He said he had noticed, in quite a few occasions during the last
week, that the toilet-slippers weren’t lined up properly.”
“So we must make sure they’re lined up!” David said and Payet nodded.
“I guess this statement summons up the lesson of the day.”
On our next session we were bemused to find out that the lesson of the day was totally the
opposite.
“Kancho sensei scolded us for focusing too much on our duties and not enough on the
training.”
“So shall we pay less attention to the slippers this week?” David asked.
“I think it would be fair to say so.”
We kept our hopes up that the topic of the conversation would travel to more profound
regions, but after a few more sessions over the same subject, we began to wonder whether our
ignorance was actually bliss.
“I can’t believe all this ceremony is just to discuss how much attention should we give to those
damned toilet-slippers in comparison to training,” I complained to Payet sensei.
“I guess it’s near impossible to find the right balance between the two,” he chuckled.
“But how can you listen to it every week?”
“Listening is easy. The hard part is to speak to the point when Master Shioda asks for my
opinion?”
“Why is that?”
“Because I usually fall asleep as soon as the conversation begins.”
I heard the command to bow and it took me a second to realize the session was over not a
minute after it started. I bowed to David who looked just as baffled as I and the rest of the
instructors.
“What’s going on?” we asked Payet sensei. “What did kancho said?” Payet glared at us before
answering through a parched throat.
“Master Shioda said seiza is very unhealthy for the knees, and that we should stop these
conversations all together.”
It was indeed the last seiza session that Shioda sensei ever conducted.