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Like Clouds and Water: The Natural Way of Manaka Unsui (Continued)
by Eric Baluja (2001)
Previous Page
Over time Hatsumi’s training friends drifted off one by one, eventually leaving the
young Manaka as the senior student. He was soon joined by others, including
Tsunehisa (now Shoto) Tanemura, Tetsuji Ishizuka, Hideo Seno and Koichi Oguri.
With Manaka Sensei, these gentlemen formed the nucleus around which Hatsumi
Sensei built his Bujinkan Dojo. These five were the first and among the very few of
Hatsumi’s students known to have been allowed into and granted licensure in the
specific ryu-ha that now make up Hatsumi’s syncretic art of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu
(lit. “body art” – unarmed combat methods).
It was during his senior year of high school that another key event in Manaka
Sensei’s life took place. “The reason I entered the military is an interesting story,”
he relates. “A guy who sat next to me in my senior year of high school asked me if I
wanted to take the entrance exam for the Self-Defense Force Academy. There was
no testing fee, so I decided to try it. In the end, I passed and that guy failed. When
the time came, I took other exams for universities I wanted to go to but I failed them
all. So,” he adds, sheepishly, “I decided to enter the military academy.”
Having to be re-stationed every two to three years made it difficult to consistently
train under the direct guidance of Hatsumi Sensei. “I covered for it by doing solo
training on the things I learned when I was home,” Manaka Sensei says. He
carefully scrutinized and assiduously worked on all the skills he was being taught in
minute detail. He did pushups on his thumbs and finger joints to condition his
hands and arms for the striking methods he was learning from Hatsumi Sensei. He
struck anything that could withstand his constant practice. He worked to perfect the
weapon skills he learned during his trips home to Noda, which included everything
from the Japanese sword to the hanbo (3' wooden staff) to the yari (spear) to
specialized weapons like the kyoketsu shoge, a hooked knife attached to a metal
ring by a length of rope. He wrote copious notes, and pored over texts related to
his field of study. He also engaged in matches and trained with practitioners of
other martial arts.
"I recall one time when I was facing off against a man who was very good at karate.
We started some distance apart, and as we closed in, it was as though the air
pressure between us eventually stopped us from coming any closer. This is what
ma-ai [timing and distance interval] means. It was an experience that cannot be felt
in regular training. When two people face off like that, they are like two dogs
bristling and barking at each other, with neither making a move. That feeling of not
being able to move forward has gone away, and I now feel like I can walk forward
without much effort even if someone is trying to attack me, but that was a
necessary experience to go through to come to an understanding of ma-ai."
(Fumio Manaka)
In 1971 Hatsumi Sensei took his students to visit his teacher, Takamatsu
Toshitsugu, for the first (and last) time. The gnarled old man left quite an
impression on them all, as their accounts of that experience all employ the same
word to describe him: eerie.
Takamatsu Sensei was running a ryokan [inn] next to the Ashihara Shrine in Nara.
Hatsumi Sensei, his wife, myself, Tanemura, Ishizuka, Seno, Kobayashi and Oguri
all visited. He watched our enbu [martial arts demonstration] and we had a chance
to watch his ken-mai [sword-dance] and taijutsu. It was only a year before his death
and his face was thin and gaunt. His eyes had a strange whitish color, which was
possibly from some disease. All in all he had an eerie appearance about him.
Hatsumi Sensei called on me to attack him, so I grabbed him, thinking from his size
that he would be easy to push down. He did something, lifted one of my hands up,
and attacked my ribs with his thumb. It was so painful it felt as though he had
stabbed a red-hot poker into my ribs. Takamatsu Sensei was a very eerie
individual. (FM)
Another such training experience took place in 1973, while then Captain Manaka
was stationed in Hachinohe City in Aomori Prefecture with the JSDF 5th Anti-
aircraft Technical Group Ground-to-Air Missile Unit. While engaging in cultural
exchange and English classes at a local U.S. Army base, he was introduced to a
Green Beret sergeant who was just back from Vietnam and was said to have quite
some skill with knives. “He was surprisingly slim, exceptionally handsome and had a
gentlemanly personality,” Manaka Sensei recounts. “However, I did sense a
terrible, weird feeling coming from his whole body, like a puma which had just
killed.” 4
The sergeant was interested in receiving some instruction, ...so to speak. Although
Manaka Sensei showed him some formal kata (movement patterns), the combat-
hardened soldier remained unconvinced and somewhat surly. Manaka Sensei
handed the man a short wooden training sword and advised him to attack any way
he liked. “I used the strategy ‘Let them cut your flesh as you cut their bones’,” he
recalls, “and while shortening the distance I exposed my left hand well within his
space. Very quickly, with a method very economical on movement, he went to cut
it.” Manaka Sensei ignored the knife, pulled back his left hand and kicked the
soldier powerfully, so powerfully in fact that the sergeant was knocked to the
ground. “This connected so well I even surprised myself. When I asked him, ‘Do
you want to do it again?,’ he replied, ‘That won’t be necessary.’” Manaka Sensei
felt that the American soldier had come to appreciate the Japanese martial ways.
“From that day his attitude changed completely and he came to address me as
‘Sir.’ I naturally continued to interact with him as before, with an attitude of respect
and affection.” The two soldiers became good friends. “I enjoyed teaching him how
to throw shuriken [hand thrown blades], and learning in exchange how to throw
knives the American way.” 5
Manaka Sensei believes that his years of training in the traditions that he was
accepted into by Hatsumi Sensei, which are devoid of competitive aspects and do
not overemphasize athletic ability, size or speed, formed the basis of his present
movement, way of thinking, and way of being. “Taijutsu has been the greatest
factor in polishing myself as a person.,” Manaka Sensei says. “Now, budo has
become a part of the rhythm of my life.”
Jinen (Nature)
Nature and natural adaptability are the core principles of Manaka Unsui Sensei’s
movement, thinking, lifestyle and interests. Nature is the primary element of the
names he has chosen for himself and his dojo and is evident in his skill in the
martial ways that he has studied for the last four decades. It also shines through in
his hobbies, his outlook, and his character.
He insists, however, that such ability and adaptability do not come... well...
naturally. He believes that to achieve any degree of naturalness a student of budo
must first pay careful attention to the fundamental skills of the path he or she has
chosen to study, practicing those skills diligently, correctly and repeatedly. The
essence of his message to all practitioners has remained the same over the years:
“Focus on proper basic technique,” just as he had to in order to achieve his
present skill level, freedom of movement and attitude. This may seem like a very
simple fact, but it is important to understand that there is absolutely no way around
it, no shortcut to the kamiwaza (“divine techniques”) that true artists like Masaaki
Hatsumi can now perform effortlessly. Manaka Sensei became Hatsumi Sensei’s
student only about three years after Hatsumi himself had begun studying under
Takamatsu Sensei. As a result, he witnessed firsthand the amount of sweat, blood,
effort and attention to detail that went into the making of the man who many now
call a martial arts genius. He knows that simply parroting such genius is futile. He
stresses the vital importance of the basics to his students because, as he says, “I
do not want to build castles on sand.”
“Soon after Unsui Sensei began the Jinenkan,” recalls Shawn Havens, Manaka
Sensei’s personal student and the first Jinenkan dojo-cho (training hall chief
instructor), “he came to Dayton [Ohio] and gave a private training session on the
very basic skills just prior to his seminar. That’s when I realized that I knew
nothing.” Mr. Havens felt compelled to remove the black belt he had been awarded
a decade earlier by a related organization. “I felt wonderful and terrible at the same
time.” 6
Manaka Sensei’s tendency has always been to teach the lessons he learned
during his thirty-six year relationship with Masaaki Hatsumi very directly, very
honestly. According to Mr. Havens, “Sensei teaches according to the tenets of
each ryu-ha. He passes the knowledge on in a very clear and thorough manner.”
Manaka Sensei presents the ideas behind each tradition in much the same way he
learned them: discretely and comprehensively. “Without these ideas,” Mr. Havens
says, “my practice would be about hollow techniques. By honoring these aspects of
the ryu-ha Sensei teaches, we each have a fair and equal chance of truly
understanding what we are studying.” 8
The focus of Manaka Sensei’s current teaching is, in his words, “Teaching people
to ‘modulate’ when to let things flow by and when to use their strength.” He uses
the forces of nature to explain this idea: “Natural phenomena, such as clouds,
water, wind or lightning, never force anything at all. They simply move in the
direction which conditions have set up for them.” It is this kind of attitude that
Manaka Sensei is trying to impart to his students, an attitude which he hopes will
affect not only their training but also their lives.
Next Page
by Eric Baluja (2001)
Previous Page
Over time Hatsumi’s training friends drifted off one by one, eventually leaving the
young Manaka as the senior student. He was soon joined by others, including
Tsunehisa (now Shoto) Tanemura, Tetsuji Ishizuka, Hideo Seno and Koichi Oguri.
With Manaka Sensei, these gentlemen formed the nucleus around which Hatsumi
Sensei built his Bujinkan Dojo. These five were the first and among the very few of
Hatsumi’s students known to have been allowed into and granted licensure in the
specific ryu-ha that now make up Hatsumi’s syncretic art of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu
(lit. “body art” – unarmed combat methods).
It was during his senior year of high school that another key event in Manaka
Sensei’s life took place. “The reason I entered the military is an interesting story,”
he relates. “A guy who sat next to me in my senior year of high school asked me if I
wanted to take the entrance exam for the Self-Defense Force Academy. There was
no testing fee, so I decided to try it. In the end, I passed and that guy failed. When
the time came, I took other exams for universities I wanted to go to but I failed them
all. So,” he adds, sheepishly, “I decided to enter the military academy.”
Having to be re-stationed every two to three years made it difficult to consistently
train under the direct guidance of Hatsumi Sensei. “I covered for it by doing solo
training on the things I learned when I was home,” Manaka Sensei says. He
carefully scrutinized and assiduously worked on all the skills he was being taught in
minute detail. He did pushups on his thumbs and finger joints to condition his
hands and arms for the striking methods he was learning from Hatsumi Sensei. He
struck anything that could withstand his constant practice. He worked to perfect the
weapon skills he learned during his trips home to Noda, which included everything
from the Japanese sword to the hanbo (3' wooden staff) to the yari (spear) to
specialized weapons like the kyoketsu shoge, a hooked knife attached to a metal
ring by a length of rope. He wrote copious notes, and pored over texts related to
his field of study. He also engaged in matches and trained with practitioners of
other martial arts.
"I recall one time when I was facing off against a man who was very good at karate.
We started some distance apart, and as we closed in, it was as though the air
pressure between us eventually stopped us from coming any closer. This is what
ma-ai [timing and distance interval] means. It was an experience that cannot be felt
in regular training. When two people face off like that, they are like two dogs
bristling and barking at each other, with neither making a move. That feeling of not
being able to move forward has gone away, and I now feel like I can walk forward
without much effort even if someone is trying to attack me, but that was a
necessary experience to go through to come to an understanding of ma-ai."
(Fumio Manaka)
In 1971 Hatsumi Sensei took his students to visit his teacher, Takamatsu
Toshitsugu, for the first (and last) time. The gnarled old man left quite an
impression on them all, as their accounts of that experience all employ the same
word to describe him: eerie.
Takamatsu Sensei was running a ryokan [inn] next to the Ashihara Shrine in Nara.
Hatsumi Sensei, his wife, myself, Tanemura, Ishizuka, Seno, Kobayashi and Oguri
all visited. He watched our enbu [martial arts demonstration] and we had a chance
to watch his ken-mai [sword-dance] and taijutsu. It was only a year before his death
and his face was thin and gaunt. His eyes had a strange whitish color, which was
possibly from some disease. All in all he had an eerie appearance about him.
Hatsumi Sensei called on me to attack him, so I grabbed him, thinking from his size
that he would be easy to push down. He did something, lifted one of my hands up,
and attacked my ribs with his thumb. It was so painful it felt as though he had
stabbed a red-hot poker into my ribs. Takamatsu Sensei was a very eerie
individual. (FM)
Another such training experience took place in 1973, while then Captain Manaka
was stationed in Hachinohe City in Aomori Prefecture with the JSDF 5th Anti-
aircraft Technical Group Ground-to-Air Missile Unit. While engaging in cultural
exchange and English classes at a local U.S. Army base, he was introduced to a
Green Beret sergeant who was just back from Vietnam and was said to have quite
some skill with knives. “He was surprisingly slim, exceptionally handsome and had a
gentlemanly personality,” Manaka Sensei recounts. “However, I did sense a
terrible, weird feeling coming from his whole body, like a puma which had just
killed.” 4
The sergeant was interested in receiving some instruction, ...so to speak. Although
Manaka Sensei showed him some formal kata (movement patterns), the combat-
hardened soldier remained unconvinced and somewhat surly. Manaka Sensei
handed the man a short wooden training sword and advised him to attack any way
he liked. “I used the strategy ‘Let them cut your flesh as you cut their bones’,” he
recalls, “and while shortening the distance I exposed my left hand well within his
space. Very quickly, with a method very economical on movement, he went to cut
it.” Manaka Sensei ignored the knife, pulled back his left hand and kicked the
soldier powerfully, so powerfully in fact that the sergeant was knocked to the
ground. “This connected so well I even surprised myself. When I asked him, ‘Do
you want to do it again?,’ he replied, ‘That won’t be necessary.’” Manaka Sensei
felt that the American soldier had come to appreciate the Japanese martial ways.
“From that day his attitude changed completely and he came to address me as
‘Sir.’ I naturally continued to interact with him as before, with an attitude of respect
and affection.” The two soldiers became good friends. “I enjoyed teaching him how
to throw shuriken [hand thrown blades], and learning in exchange how to throw
knives the American way.” 5
Manaka Sensei believes that his years of training in the traditions that he was
accepted into by Hatsumi Sensei, which are devoid of competitive aspects and do
not overemphasize athletic ability, size or speed, formed the basis of his present
movement, way of thinking, and way of being. “Taijutsu has been the greatest
factor in polishing myself as a person.,” Manaka Sensei says. “Now, budo has
become a part of the rhythm of my life.”
Jinen (Nature)
Nature and natural adaptability are the core principles of Manaka Unsui Sensei’s
movement, thinking, lifestyle and interests. Nature is the primary element of the
names he has chosen for himself and his dojo and is evident in his skill in the
martial ways that he has studied for the last four decades. It also shines through in
his hobbies, his outlook, and his character.
He insists, however, that such ability and adaptability do not come... well...
naturally. He believes that to achieve any degree of naturalness a student of budo
must first pay careful attention to the fundamental skills of the path he or she has
chosen to study, practicing those skills diligently, correctly and repeatedly. The
essence of his message to all practitioners has remained the same over the years:
“Focus on proper basic technique,” just as he had to in order to achieve his
present skill level, freedom of movement and attitude. This may seem like a very
simple fact, but it is important to understand that there is absolutely no way around
it, no shortcut to the kamiwaza (“divine techniques”) that true artists like Masaaki
Hatsumi can now perform effortlessly. Manaka Sensei became Hatsumi Sensei’s
student only about three years after Hatsumi himself had begun studying under
Takamatsu Sensei. As a result, he witnessed firsthand the amount of sweat, blood,
effort and attention to detail that went into the making of the man who many now
call a martial arts genius. He knows that simply parroting such genius is futile. He
stresses the vital importance of the basics to his students because, as he says, “I
do not want to build castles on sand.”
“Soon after Unsui Sensei began the Jinenkan,” recalls Shawn Havens, Manaka
Sensei’s personal student and the first Jinenkan dojo-cho (training hall chief
instructor), “he came to Dayton [Ohio] and gave a private training session on the
very basic skills just prior to his seminar. That’s when I realized that I knew
nothing.” Mr. Havens felt compelled to remove the black belt he had been awarded
a decade earlier by a related organization. “I felt wonderful and terrible at the same
time.” 6
Manaka Sensei’s tendency has always been to teach the lessons he learned
during his thirty-six year relationship with Masaaki Hatsumi very directly, very
honestly. According to Mr. Havens, “Sensei teaches according to the tenets of
each ryu-ha. He passes the knowledge on in a very clear and thorough manner.”
Manaka Sensei presents the ideas behind each tradition in much the same way he
learned them: discretely and comprehensively. “Without these ideas,” Mr. Havens
says, “my practice would be about hollow techniques. By honoring these aspects of
the ryu-ha Sensei teaches, we each have a fair and equal chance of truly
understanding what we are studying.” 8
The focus of Manaka Sensei’s current teaching is, in his words, “Teaching people
to ‘modulate’ when to let things flow by and when to use their strength.” He uses
the forces of nature to explain this idea: “Natural phenomena, such as clouds,
water, wind or lightning, never force anything at all. They simply move in the
direction which conditions have set up for them.” It is this kind of attitude that
Manaka Sensei is trying to impart to his students, an attitude which he hopes will
affect not only their training but also their lives.
Next Page
| Hatsumi Sensei in 1972 with four of his five top students (from l. to r.): Koichi Oguri; Tetsuji Ishizuka; Hatsumi Sensei; Hideo Seno; and Tsunehisa Tanemura. The picture was reportedly taken shortly after the students received their 5th dan ranking. |
A photo taken on the
occasion of Hatsumi
Sensei’s students’ only
meeting with Takamatsu
Sensei in 1971.
Front row, from l. to r.:
Ishizuka; Takamatsu
Sensei; Hatsumi Sensei.
Second row: an
unidentified individual;
Tanemura; Oguri;
Manaka.
Third row: Kobayashi;
Seno.
occasion of Hatsumi
Sensei’s students’ only
meeting with Takamatsu
Sensei in 1971.
Front row, from l. to r.:
Ishizuka; Takamatsu
Sensei; Hatsumi Sensei.
Second row: an
unidentified individual;
Tanemura; Oguri;
Manaka.
Third row: Kobayashi;
Seno.
Manaka Unsui Sensei faces off
against Shawn Havens, Jinenkan
Baltimore Dojo Dojo-Cho, in
Atlanta (October, 1999).
against Shawn Havens, Jinenkan
Baltimore Dojo Dojo-Cho, in
Atlanta (October, 1999).
