Kihon Happo

by Soke Hatsumi Masaaki

I have trained myself and instructed others in Kihon Happo and felt that those
who have had previous training in Karate, Judo, Aikido, Kung u, and other
fighting techni!ues tend to stay with those forms and have trouble learning
"udo #ai$utsu from a %blank slate&% #he fighting forms stay with the student
even though he starts the training of "udo #ai$utsu& 'hen do the previous
learned techni!ues disappear( I think it is up to a person)s individual talent&
#he phenomenon is $ust like a dialect disappearing after one lives in a different
part of the country&
*o matter how hard one tries, he will never be a professional announcer if he
speaks in dialect& #he same can be said for "udo& I also studied various martial
arts such as Judo, Karate, Aikido, old+style "udo, and ,hinese "udo& In other
words, until I encountered #akamatsu Sensei, I was a "udoka -martial artist.
with many dialects& /ne day I began to wonder why and when did I lose those
%dialects(% I reali0ed that it was after I lost all my muscle tone after five years
of illness&
1iscovery of your own dialect is one way of improving "udo& 'hen one reaches
a certain degree of skill, he comes up against the %wall,% something he has
trouble overcoming& #his is the so+called dialect of #ai$utsu&
I want to write about how to train yourself when you reach a higher rank
during "udo training& I would like to use a ,at ,ompetition as an e2ample& I
have had lots of e2perience in the competition because my wife served as
$udge of the 'orld ,at ,lub and I was also vice chairman of the club&
Suppose five top cats are chosen out of hundreds of cats& All of them are
wonderful and beautiful, but that alone cannot be $udged& 'ith no other way to
$udge which cat is more beautiful then another, the $udges start to look for
faults& #he one with the most faults drops to fifth, the ne2t, fourth, then third,
and so on& #he one with the least faults becomes 3rand ,hampion&
"ugei is the same way& If one reaches to a higher rank, he need only eliminate
his faults& It may sound easy, but eliminating faults is very difficult to
accomplish, because we tend to think we are faultless& aults can be translated
into something different in "udo& #hey can be suki -unguarded points., or
carelessness, presumption, arrogance, etc& they all become our fault& *o fault,
0ero condition is the best& I am 0ero& I $oke that the Soke has no 1an& 4ero, no
fault that is the target of "ufu Ikkan -living through the martial winds.&