Patience and Perseverance

Chapter 7

Aug 03, 2024

Next Time

7 Patience and Perseverance

So I Married a Ninja, and he broke my arm. Of the horrible elevation of the (especially female teacher) martyr, and why being tough as a blade of grass sometimes isn’t such a great thing. Of the Four Heart Aspects of the ninja creed, the Powerful Light of Wisdom. The sad reality of abuse being inherited, and perpetuated.

Chapter 7 Patience and Perseverance

It was class night again—at that time, we were practicing around three days a week, plus one long weekend afternoon, each week. This was a weekday evening, a Wednesday I think. We were going to be covering advanced, particularly dangerous variations on some of the arm bars we already knew during this evening’s class. As I was senior student, and my husband was head instructor and owner of our school, we had the opportunity to practice the technique a little before class. We wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing with this difficult move before we demoed and taught it in the dojo.

The class was small, made up of only a few students that had been studying classical Japanese martial arts under Ninjaboy for about 7 years, and one of them was bringing his new girlfriend to watch the class. This was not an unusual practice: students would bring friends or partners to watch class pretty often—this was how we’d add new students to our little stable. This particular student was second senior as far as student rank goes, and was living in the same apartment as us, having been an old friend of Ninjaboy’s from when he worked at Naropa University.

This student-slash-roommate was also getting, so my husband claimed, way too arrogant and boastful about his martial arts prowess; he was overestimating himself and getting too full of himself. And since he was bringing a new girl to class whom he was obviously trying to impress, it was the perfect time to bring him down a peg.

I was accustomed to the feeling of being better than anyone around me when it came to movement arts. This was my experience with the Band of Young Men a few years earlier, from which Ninjaboy plucked me to teach me the real thing. My quick surging up the ranks of my husband’s school wasn’t just because I was his wife. Being so did mean I had a lot more potential practice time, and I certainly took advantage of that, until I was pretty much part uchi-deshi, but mostly wife.

Dojo: martial arts school.

Hai: yes.

Senpai: senior (top-ranked) student, second in command to sensei when in the dojo. They will usually be uke to sensei, and often will be in charge of the lower ranking or kids’ classes. One step down from sensei.

Sensei: teacher. This is whomever is first in charge of instructing students in the dojo. They may use other high ranking students as assistant coaches, but the sensei is usually the head of the school and the lead instructor.1 They may often be the owner of the dojo as well.

Shikin haramitsu dai komyo: loosely translated as: “powerful light of wisdom,” but within the phrase is embedded four aspects of the ninja’s heart: a ninja creed centered on these four heart-aspects, to culminate in that powerful light of wisdom. Calling upon this is a central part of each class’ opening ritual (rei-ho).

Shuriken: the throwing weapon used by the ninja, in the shape of an oblong, triangle, or star. Bo-shuriken are small iron throwing spikes with one pointed end.

Uchi-deshi: a special, elite, top-ranking student of the head sensei. The uchi-deshi would be the sensei’s top student, but unlike a senpai, would be a live-in devotee who not only would train daily, but in the Karate Kid cliché style of wax on/wax off, would often be a personal assistant, handyman, and all around constant presence to the sensei.

Uke: an experienced, high ranked, or merely favored student who is chosen to demonstrate techniques with the sensei.

Ninjaboy had trained in the arts of ninpo, ninjutsu, old school Classical Japanese jujutsu, and several Classical Japanese weapons for many years and more than one black belt, under the white guys that had learned directly from the Japanese teachers that had learned it from the real ninja from way in the earliest days of recorded martial arts in Japan. To look at these arts from outside, you’d notice it’s a very upright, formal-looking series of disciplines, with weird little hand positions that supposedly can break bones—and if you feel one hitting you, it’s easy to believe it’s true. Added to these powerful kicks and strikes are a series of acrobatic rolls, jumps, and even cartwheels which later parkour guys adapted for use in urban surroundings, but which classical era ninja would use to evade sword strikes, arrows, or attacks from horseback. These sneaky and deadly techniques are all passed down from those who survived feudal era Japan, from those shady characters whose goals were to protect their families from raiding ronin samurai, or quietly assassinate their emperor’s worst enemies from within.

I began training in this martial art directly after leaving the European style theatrical arts of the Band of Young Men. I took to it like a fish to water—what an interesting cultural legacy, how fascinating it was to research the techniques and how they could be used, and how good I got at it so quickly. I began training right as Ninjaboy and I began to date, then, not very long after that, he moved in with me at the invitation of one of my roommates and his own broken car, conveniently dead on arrival at one of his visits to me from Denver.

I was cool with this—after all, it was I who, after having heard that Ninjaboy used to be a high ranking martial artist and teacher of great talent, encouraged him to start again in practice, and restart a local dojo. When I first began dating him, I found he was living in his friends’ living room, recovering financially from an ugly divorce. His job was as a delivery driver for a bakery, delivering bagels and breakfast to the highly paid office workers in Denver he used to be one of. When I heard about his immense experience in the martial arts, I was amazed: why did he quit? He explained that those who had been his senseis through the years of his training would withhold his rightfully earned black belts as punishment (for what, he didn’t know). They finally begrudgingly gave him his rank, but he also suffered a few times from overly-robust techniques practiced on him as uke. He felt he was being physically punished for speaking up for himself, for being extraordinary.

Once he had an opportunity to train with the OG ninja, the teacher of those teachers and actually of the Japanese lineage, one Shoto Tanemura, Ninjaboy’s disillusionment with how his immediate teachers were running their dojo was complete. He quit his practice, quit his dojo, and when I first knew him, was searching for that authentic experience again, in vain. I suggested that if he couldn’t find it elsewhere, he should make it himself. He took my advice. And then I drifted away from the Band of Young Men, especially once they stopped doing renfaire gigs. The new dojo we called Genki Kai.2

Long after I had quit the Band, I was still training with Ninjaboy, and the adept, precise and spare Japanese style was right in line with directions I was going in my own stage combat teaching. I felt special to be included in the new venture, and shone in the real martial art at least as much if not even more so than I had in the theatrical combat arts. I was damn good, and though I knew it, I wasn’t boastful. I possessed the quiet, confident power that has no need for posturing. I was also used to hearing, from my husband mainly, how much better he and I were than pretty much any other martial artist around. I could see the evidence of this in his talent executing even the most difficult and precise techniques. He was frankly brilliant, and more: he knew how to describe and speak about what he did, and really seemed to care for his students and their progress.

Practicing and learning this discipline from him was a parallel process along with getting to know not only him as my fiancé but also, soon, the others that trickled in and who ended up forming the tight dojo and friend circle. Our partying habits, which happened organically along with the small group of students who stayed and became our close friends, made the martial arts school a lot like a chosen family, or relationship pod. We drank copiously after nearly every class, which were held 3-5 times a week, and shared stories, grand plans for expanded schools over pitchers of 90 Schilling, and as the nights went on and the pitchers went in, tried to use our bo-shuriken skills with the bar’s darts.3 This jocular and alcoholic friendship off the dojo mats, no doubt, was why this one particular student was slipping in his too-close familiarity and dismissal of Ninjaboy as far superior while in class. It didn’t help that he was also our roommate—he had aspirations of uchi-deshi-dom.

Whatever else you learn from me about Ninjaboy in the course of this narrative of abuse, understand that he was truly without equal in the martial arts, in my world, back then. I still haven’t witnessed a practitioner better than he was at that time. This is the main reason I married him. He was a beautiful and powerful movement artist—watching him made me feel similar to the deep attraction I had had to the alpha of the RenFaire Band. Masculine grace is a major attraction to me, and to watch Ninjaboy execute these formal, detailed, precise techniques with not only beauty, but deadly power? Please.

He, too, knew how good he was. How could he not? And tonight, he wanted me to help him remind the rest of his students (one in particular) of this fact. He felt that they were forgetting, and needed to remind them not only of their place, but of his rightful place up at an unattainable height as sensei. I was the only one accomplished and good enough at this difficult and disciplined art to be able to do so. I was happy to show him. To show the rest of them.

Class that night began as usual, with the addition of the young woman sitting in the sidelines, watching the opening bows, the shikin haramitsu dai komyo spoken with resonance, the following bows and rituals, intensive warmups that were more involved and athletic than most full class sessions in other arts. These last consisted of all the falls and rolls we knew, as well as hand-weapon pushups. These last looked a lot like regular modified pushups, except for the hands—ninpo boasts several different ways to inflict damage on an opponent with one’s hands, using various positions of the fingers. There’s basic flat fists, bent wrists, extended fists or pinkies, a thumb stab under the floating ribs, and the like.4 As part of our warmups, we’d make each hand weapon position in order, and do 10 modified pushups on each. And then,100 sword cuts. We never did full force sparring in this dojo: the techniques were not made for scoring points in a sport bout, they were made for self defense; for your opponent to suffer at least one broken bone before he hits the ground. And we scoffed at boxing gloves, though to be fair, most of these positions and precision strikes would be utterly useless in gloves.

It came time, that night, to show the featured technique. It went like this, as my husband and I had practiced extensively before: I, as demo partner to the teacher,5 threw a straight punch, with a step forward for momentum, at sensei’s face. He countered with an evasive step back, but, instead of also moving 45 degrees offline, so as to be out of my fist’s harm’s way even further, which was normal for most of our striking counter techniques, he pivoted towards my attacking arm. Then, according to the demonstration, he was to have shown the next part of the technique, slowly and not at full force: he would put one upright forearm outside my striking upper arm, and the other upright forearm, across and to the inside of my horizontal striking forearm. He’d then show how, if he were to use his hips and make the motion of meeting his two hands in line, what that would do to an opponent’s arm. It’s a pretty difficult thing, to be able to position oneself in just the right way with one’s footwork, then to be able to arrange one’s blocking arms just so. Even if you do those two things taking slow practice till you can get the hang of it at a natural speed, it takes a lot of full body force as well as precise placement to make it so that the opponent doesn’t just yank their arm back to safety.

I threw the straight punch, as I said. He positioned himself perfectly, of course. But then, instead of a slowed down showing of what would have happened, he used his significantly centered body weight to make one of his arms pull in, the other push out, perfectly simultaneously. Of course. He was damn good. My elbow, caught between those precisely laid, powerfully shifting forces, hyperextended—it bent the wrong way, like a flamingo's knee. As it was supposed to, were I a vicious attacker.

SHIKIN HARAMITSU DAI KOMYO:

A merciful heart, expressing love for everything

I had such trust, not only in my husband and teacher, but in my own not-insignificant skill, that it didn’t register for a moment that I’d been hurt. Of course, that’s part of how the ninja arts work, too—subtle yet searingly powerful damage gets done to you before you realize it. I truly didn’t expect to actually have been hurt. We planned it, my husband and I; this was supposed to be a wake up call for that one student. Wait, was I the arrogant student, and my partner hadn’t told me? Was this pain my fault? How had I let my sensei down? What did I do to deserve this pain from my husband? It must have been a serious infraction.

A heart dedicated to a chosen pursuit

I had been studying this intensive, precise art for about seven years at this point. How could I have let this happen to me? What had I missed, in our private planning and practice? Surely I was a good enough ninja that I could have seen this coming? And in the moment, how could I have just stood there and let him injure me? Where was any dodge, counter-move? Was I such a blindly dedicated uke that I was dumb enough to just stand there and take it? Was that all I was good for, as an uke? Just a punching bag? Moreover, how was I supposed to continue my practice now that I was injured?

A sincere heart to follow what is right

Why did he hurt me? Why did he do this to me? I did everything right—I was a diligent trainee and did everything asked of me without question. I loved this art because it spoke to me—was I wrong; had I misheard? I had thought, with my husband’s stories of past senseis of his punishing his (what they perceived as) arrogance with corporal punishment, withholding of belt promotions, etc.

I never thought he’d stoop so low as they had done to him. He was so much better than that—he did this art right, unlike those others. He was the real deal. Where did I mess up?

A heart in tune with the natural order

I wasn’t sure if the elbow was dislocated but it had definitely, flash-fast though the move had been, briefly bent the wrong way just a little, but enough. I could feel all the muscles, and especially each connective tendon and ligament, scream with the wrongness of what had just happened. I couldn’t let my arm drop, nor could I bend it to myself of its own accord. Instead, I had to cradle the elbow in my other hand, as my legs lost their ability to hold me upright.

I emitted some undignified squeaky noise, and fell into a small ball, cradling my throbbing elbow to myself like a lost child, unable to move it in any direction. I would not cry, I absolutely would not. Not in front of everybody. Later, maybe, if I could get away and be alone...

The other students stood by, shocked, as I collapsed. My husband stepped up to me and looked down, towering over my suddenly sitting, curled up form. His face looked innocent, surprised, concerned. The girlfriend ran over from the sidelines, boldly stepped onto the mats where she didn’t belong, and proceeded to administer Reiki. I didn’t feel an effect.

Nor, I think, did that student, her boyfriend, the one for whose benefit I had been told this display was supposed to be set up for, but now wasn’t so sure.6

I don’t think the arrogant underling ever did learn the lesson Ninjaboy was trying to teach him—that of humility, of remembering how dangerous this stuff was that we were learning, that we weren’t playing, ever, in class, even if we did party regularly afterwards. Seeing my very real injury was supposed to chasten the arrogant student, and make him take the art he was studying more seriously than how cool he thought he looked doing it.

As far as I know, nobody there learned those lessons that night; the big lesson they did learn was that my husband was not to be fully trusted.

I learned that lesson, too, though it wouldn’t drive me away from him completely for many years to come. But I had to wear a sling over that arm for a couple weeks after that night, and the dojo slowly dissipated from then too, like ripples in a pond from a plunked stone. Yes, we had learned dangerous techniques. And if sensei would do those things even to his senpai, or his wife… the guys thought that maybe they didn’t need to be learning from him anymore. If he’d injure that badly the only one whom he deemed worthy, what would he do to the rest of those that were not?

The word kusa in Japanese means roughly: blade of grass. The concept of kusa is a major one in especially the ninja arts. A blade of grass, after all, is a hardy and tough piece of greenery—if stepped on, it springs back up immediately. If cut, it grows back rapidly and even stronger than before. The blade of grass concept equals one of the definitions of ninja attributes: the combination of patience and perseverance. The main theme of ninja training is to be the blade of grass, to not buckle under duress, or to spring right back up, stronger, if you do. Kusa was the name of the green belt level of training at our dojo (the third of 5 levels including black), and it was a running theme. Unlike the flashy, honor-bound, caste-born samurai, the ninja are underground, common-born survivors. The emperor may have an impressively armored samurai, each with a fancy sword, posted on each side of his person. But he’ll also have three ninja dressed plainly, outside on the front lawn, working as his gardeners. That the ninja will take care of any hostile intruders with their garden implements before they can ever make their way through the doors to the highborn samurai guard is a matter of legend. As is the story of the ninja who hid inside the midden of an outhouse for 2 days and nights, until his nobleman quarry finally came in to use the facilities, and got stabbed in the perineum. Ninja do the dirty work, and have the dirty reputation to match. They also must train to be peculiarly, resiliently strong, like the kusa, to be able to do so. Patience, and perseverance. It’s what eventually wins the day, though doesn’t adhere to any code of necessarily honorable conduct.

Of course, the only way anyone can survive in an abusive relationship is to be the kusa, to be patient and persevere (just like that ninja, two days standing deep in filth). And if you’re being cultivated to think that enduring hardship is a ninja strength, talk about a major tool in a gaslighter’s arsenal. And if your sensei is that narcissist, and also your spouse? And if, in childhood, you were raised under the yoke of Irish Catholic working-class guilt?7 Forget about it.

Teaching me the peculiar resilient strength of the ninja indoctrinated me into thinking that if I lost patience with my husband, it was because of my weakness, not his. A real ninja, a skilled ninja, perseveres under the most terrible of hardships, and if I can’t handle it, I’m not worthy. It simultaneously glorified my suffering as well as made sure I was subservient within it. Of course, in classical Japanese culture, the role of subservient wife is very similar to that of the uchi-deshi: “hai sensei” and his word is law. We were modern Americans, not feudal era Japanese, so this dynamic was much more subtle between Ninjaboy and I, but you bet your bo staff it was still there.

Being a teacher, too—an overworked, underpaid adjunct—means embodying kusa is paramount. It’s the parallel myth of the martyr/hero teacher: It’s a virtue, after all, to suffer in silence. Though this is often a gendered reference to the massive invisible emotional labor of mothers, women teachers and other women caretakers, for me in this tiny tight family of ninjas, it was actually a form of hypermasculinity, a cousin to the constant testing and posturing performance of the same hypermasculinity I experienced in the Band. I was having to prove myself constantly here, too. Yet again, I was the only consistent woman student other than here and there one of the men’s girlfriends in and out briefly. I was senpai, even though a woman, just like when I was one of the Band, back with my swordmates, in the elite inner circle. And I was one of the very best—I passed all the ninja tests. Including the trial of the elbow. Patience, perseverance, kusa, and the Next Time myth are all intimately related: I’m sitting here in the shit, miserable. But if I stay strong; if I’m patient, persevere and wait, next time I’ll be triumphant. God forbid I get myself out of this outhouse. That’s weakness. That’s ungrateful. That’s failure.

Zuko's Musings

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