I have had a couple of rewarding days of training. My main training partner/student from the embassy has improved a great deal. After only a few very short months of irregular training, he has developed his striking skills to quite an impressive level. While I still haven’t mastered Mune osae dori, last night I covered the last techniques in the Hakkoryu 3rd dan syllabus with the head instructor and was given an indication that I am doing quite well.
Shuhari is not a common term, even in Japan, but many avid martial artists will already be familiar with it. Shuhari is not exclusive to martial arts, originally being used to describe the pursuit within different Japanese cultural arts, such as the tea ceremony. Nowadays (or perhaps just in my circles), Shuhari appears most often in martial art conversations.
Shuhari describes three broad categories of mastery. The concept is that all students will proceed through these stages in this order, but certainly not all students reach the second or third stages. In fact, it would be fair to say that a large proportion of martial artists never progress past the first stage. Certainly in most systems, a shodan black belt would not be expected to have surpassed the first stage, and a black belt grading may actually require the practitioner to be in this stage of learning, as it shows a commitment to the basics and loyalty to the style.
The three stages of learning each are represented by one chinese character (kanji), as follows. Each character has at least two ways, of reading it, depending on the context.
守 Shu (Mamoru)
破 Ha (Yaburu)
離 Ri (Hanareu)
The first character 守 means to protect or obey. In this context, it refers to learning the basics exactly as taught, loyalty to the system, and protecting tradition. This stage of learning could be termed rote learning, the copy-cat stage. While this sounds negative, it is a necessary foundation to any form of learning. We can`t write a novel if we haven’t learned how to spell or string words together. Martial art instructors who tell us that they teach exactly as their teachers taught them have remained in this stage of learning.
破 refers to breaking traditions, researching, exploring, improving on the basics. I think of this as the `Bruce Lee – Jun Fan` stage. In this stage we adapt what we have learned to suit our own individual physiology, personality etc. This is the stage in which we objectively critique what we have learned. The following Matsuo Basho expression advises us not to follow the footsteps of past masters, but rather to seek for what they searched. This explains the second stage of learning well.
師の跡を求めず、師の求めたるところを求めよ
So, which stage am I at? Good question. I guess it depends on the system, and sometimes on the day! I know that I am aiming for the final stage! This blog won`t have a proper ending without that!
Further information on Shuhari can be found at the links below:
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