The Concept of Ikiyōyō  in the Teaching of Jujutsu

Tom Wells

I remember the night that our sensei, Jacob, raised the subject of finding a name for our dojo. We were in The Bar for a post-training pint. (The Bar is in fact the name of the bar we frequent) Fuelled by beer we bounced ideas around and tried to find a name that reflected the spirit of our dojo. I can’t remember most of the suggestions but I went away and tried to find the kanji for the “laughter” dojo. When Jacob announced that he had found the name, Ikiyōyō I felt the rightness of it immediately. By a curious serendipity I had come across the kanji for Ikiyōyō in my investigations into kanji writing.

Ikiyōyō translates as:

“spirits soaring, cock-a-hoop, elated in spirits, flush, in fine feather, in high snuff, to be in good cheer, to be in a buoyant mood, to be over the moon, in triumph, in high spirits”

Why is this an appropriate name for a dojo? Doesn’t it go against the idea of the serious business of studying martial arts? I don’t think so.

When we train, the dojo is often filled with laughter. When a technique is applied that is particularly effective in effecting destroying the Kuzushi (balance), or will to fight of Uke, a burst of laughter often ensues, particularly from the Uke. When practising Shioku Waza (pain or nerve techniques) we find ourselves laughing, often in direct proportion to the pain we experience as Uke.  This is not just a reaction to a shock to our systems, or a mixture of fear and pain; it is the elation that accompanies the feeling that this is right, this works.

jujutsu, as I understand it, is about defeating opponents through a process of yielding; yielding to what is offered in the form of attack, yielding to the possibilities inherent in the physical nature of the combatants and the environment. This principle of yielding allows for a real sense of discovery when a technique is demonstrated.  It is as though the technique was always in plain view, but we had not recognised it until foregrounded by the demonstration. Like an optical illusion that suddenly reveals a picture that was always there. The moment of revelation produces a sense of elation ~ the spirit soars.

There are many schools of Martial Arts that are grounded in a belief that, “this is the best way to do this because this is the way that we have always done it”. I believe that techniques have evolved through a process of refinement and that if a technique has been passed down to us through tradition there is a damn good reason for it. But we are part of that tradition and we should be in the business of refining techniques, not merely copying them. The practice of the martial arts is an alert and creative process: not a rehearsal of dead forms, but a constant renewal of a living tradition. And in order to be alert and creative we must be alive to what we are doing; our spirits must soar at the rightness of technique.

I remember the smile in my Sensei’s eyes as he praised an instructor’s techniques for their wonderful elegant simplicity and I have felt my spirit soaring with each realisation, with each moment of appreciating the elegant simplicity of the principle of Ju. You can see it in the power of circular movements in Aiki Waza or Fu No Kata. You can see it in the flow of strikes in Atemi Waza: each movement torquing the hips for the delivery of the next strike; each strike capitalising on Uke’s body’s reaction to the previous blow; each strike arising out of the body’s natural weapons and way of moving; each strike attacking the natural vulnerabilities in the opponent’s body and movement.

I remember a demonstration of a block, using Koshi Jutsu (Striking into muscle) where Uke swung with a roundhouse punch and hurt himself on the fist that was merely placed to intercept. There is a joy in such things, not to do with sadism I hope, but to do with a realisation of how a certain economy of movement can create devastating effect by yielding to the situation as is. A powerful block surging to intercept an incoming strike would not, I think, trigger such a response, the feeling is generated through a sense of the physical irony of the attacker being caused to attack themselves on the fist of the defender. In the style of teaching in the Ikiyōyō dojo this appreciation of irony, of the aesthetic of the Martial Arts, and jujutsu in particular, is encouraged, through laughter, through soaring spirits.

Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, conjectured that humour arises from anything mechanical or automatic in someone’s behaviour so that they are acting unthinkingly to their own disadvantage, with the sense that we are superior in knowledge in thus escaping their fate. When in jujutsu, through the creative application of the principle of yielding, an opponent is made to act to his or her own disadvantage, we are reproducing in physical terms the structure of a good joke.

I am particularly fond of the terminology used in the book “Jiu Jitsu Complete” by Kiyose Nakae in which techniques are described as “tricks”. When someone plays a trick on us, if we have a sense of humour, we laugh. The “tricks” of jujutsu may be deadly serious, “real danger-tricks” as Professor Nakae terms them, but the structure is the same. In the safety and mutual trust of the dojo it is perhaps appropriate to respond in buoyant mood to being involved in a good “trick”, whether as trickster (Tori) or dupe (Uke).

Another way of understanding jokes is described by Prof. Richard Wiseman who currently heads the Perrott-Warrick Research Unit at the University of Hertfordshire and who set up The Laugh Lab investigation into humour. “Most jokes work because they surprise us – they set us thinking in one direction, and then we hear the punchline and realise that there is a completely different way of seeing the situation.” jujutsu often mirrors this pattern: a powerful attack is transfigured by a technique into a disastrous disadvantage for the attacker. It is not surprising that watching this demonstrated can release feelings akin to humour, to being cock a hoop. It might even prove enjoyable and enlightening to analyse Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick encounters with comic bullies as examples of the principles of jujutsu.

The way that we train in the Ikiyōyō dojo encourages an aesthetic appreciation of the rightness of technique through an understanding of the principle of Ju that causes our spirits to soar, which is expressed through laughter and a generally feeling of being “cock a hoop”. The emphasis, at the Ikiyōyō Dojo, is always on the intrinsic rather than the extrinsic: we are motivated to practise and learn for the joy of practising and learning, rather than enduring practice and learning to achieve the goals of becoming experts at self-defence and achieving the next grade. Does this imply that we are moving towards a Do form rather than a Jutsu form? I think not, although I can see the paradox. The perfection of technique is always contextualised by the physical nature of the practitioners, the nature of the environment, the singularities of the moment. A technique is tested by its application: does it work? Has it relevance in a real, if possibly historical rather than contemporary, situation. It is this relationship between technique and the world that I think roots us firmly in the Jutsu form rather than the Do. It is the style of teaching and learning that is distinctive, rather than just the content of the curriculum.

Alertness and creativity are attributes of play. There is a spirit of playfulness in the Ikiyōyō Dojo. That is not to say that there is a lack of discipline, for true play requires the security of boundaries. Through play we recover the understandings that have been passed on to us. Through experimentation we echo the process that created the forms that we are striving to learn. Play is an important part of learning: it is experiment, trust and creativity. Creativity and responsiveness are essential to the Ju of Jujutsu. In a dojo where the mood is buoyant, where spirits soar, learning becomes easy. Mutual trust, so necessary for training, flourishes in a dojo where the students and sensei are in fine feather, in good cheer. As John Holt asserts in his book “How Children Fail” the fear of failure creates in many a desire to fail in order to avoid the stress of trying and then failing. But in an environment of playfulness, where all are cock-a-hoop, every “failure” is an opportunity for learning and a cause of amusement and fascination.

Each technique studied is not a mechanistic solution to a problem: “if an attacker does this, then use this technique”. Each technique is an example of application of the principles of jujutsu in action. And so each technique can be explored as it is practised; each exploration deepening the understanding of the principles at work. Variations and refinement can be developed. Many of these will fail to be effective and thus throw into relief the rightness of the structure of the original technique. This willingness to explore and to fail is fostered by a spirit of play. Play takes the place of randori as the testing ground for one’s understanding and ability.

At the Ikiyōyō dojo we tend to practice techniques using the pattern “you take three goes at it, then I take three goes” and if one person is having problems he or she is usually invited to have another go. My experience of training with people from other clubs suggests that it is more usual to alternate “your go, my go” I would suggest that the Ikiyōyō pattern encourages a more analytical, reflective attitude to learning. One can rehearse the technique, exploring the quality of movement involved, more effectively if one is not constantly switching from Tori to Uke. On the first turn Tori (helped of course by Uke) can notice an area of weakness in technique. On the second turn Tori can attempt to rectify that weakness, and on the third Tori can, hopefully embed the knowledge gained by performing the technique with confidence using the knowledge gained from the second go. Equally Uke experiencing the technique three times in a row has time to focus on the nature of the technique as well as being able to discern any weakness, or indeed strengths in Tori’s form. It is the difference between an argument, in which both parties are only waiting for a pause so that they can have their say, and a conversation, in which both parties listen attentively and respectfully to the other’s ideas and opinions. It encourages engagement of the mind as well as movement of the body.

The respected Judoka and physicist, Moshe Feldenkrais, explored the ways we learn and function in movement. He suggests that “engagement of the mind” ~ “analysis rather than repetition” is the key to developing and improving movement. He posits that we should use, “directed attention to facilitate self-awareness”. It may be stretching things to try to make the term Ikiyōyō encompass even this concept, but as it is something that I have found distinctive in the qualities of teaching and learning at the dojo, I shall try. The concept of “buoyant mood” contains that link between the psyche and the soma, the mind and the body; in fact it might be said to deny that such a dualism exists. Also, because our spirits are soaring and we practice for intrinsic rather than extrinsic gratification, we do analyse, reflect and engage the mind. The joy is in the learning, not in the thud someone makes hitting the mat.

This joy in learning, this high-spirited, cock-a-hoop elation manifests itself in the atmosphere in the dojo. We deashi (students) do not need to be driven to learn. It is not the norm for anyone to seem bored or listless, and although people may be tired there is no sense of fatigue in the way they practice. I have been in martial Arts clubs (not part of the Ryu) where the students seemed to grind to a halt, or merely go through the motions by rote, if the instructor did not constantly exhort them to new efforts, this is not the way at the Ikiyōyō dojo. Everyone is in too good a mood, in too fine feather, for this to happen. I wish I could pin down and model the exact prerequisites for this phenomenon; as a secondary school teacher and one who hopes some day to, perhaps, run his own dojo, I would love to be able to replicate this in all my classes. I believe that there is a synergy between the teaching and the students that works, and that new students fairly rapidly become infected by the Ikiyōyō bug and start modelling this behaviour.

The maintenance of such an atmosphere demands a positive strategy and monitoring by the sensei, but once established the culture can become to some extent self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. We are all working, or perhaps playing, together to extend our understanding of jujutsu. Each individual triumph is celebrated; each individual problem is addressed by the group in a spirit of enjoyment, “in a buoyant mood”. People learn best in an atmosphere of play. Play is evolution’s tool for teaching and learning. In a spirit of play it is perhaps possible to find a freedom from the self-consciousness of ego, and perhaps to approach the spirit of Mushin (no mind or void mind) that is so important to the martial arts.