Why is Seitei so Changeable
copyright
© 2009 Kim Taylor, all rights reserved
At a seminar recently I
overheard such comments as "hey it's back to where we orginally did it"
and "they're not going to like this at..." and "do it the new way for
grading but we'll do it this way here".
I've said it myself I
must admit, but I don't any more. In fact I have sometimes argued that
seitei doesn't change much at all since it's written down and only
changes when the written manual is changed in some way. That doesn't
happen very often. But we all know that it does change, every new
sensei we meet has some different way of doing the kata so let's take
the changes for granted and go from there.
Specifically I'm
talking about the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei iaido set in this article but
this applies to any art that has a similar seitei gata, a set of
representative forms which are supposed to be taught in a consistent
way to everyone.
I've come to believe that seitei is a
conversation. It's a discussion between many very highly skilled
swordsmen who all have their own ideas but come together to examine
their art. At the very top is the chairman of the iaido committee who
will have a big influence on the art, but who is not usually at the top
for very long as he retires and is replaced in a few years with someone
else. Below him, we have a set of folks who, as I said, are highly
experienced and they will agree with the current practice in certain
ways, and disagree in others. This is the continuing conversation, and
you need to pay attention to keep up.
What? You figure there's
only one right way to do an iaido kata? If that were true there would
only be one school and no need for a seitei set at all.
The
conversation is the same one that goes on in any society about any
topic, and in the same way you can be current or not, participate or
not. It won't make a great deal of difference unless you are many years
out of date and can't understand what everyone else is talking about at
all.
Some folks will be closer to the seitei discussion, some
will live further away. Some will have time to devote to the topic,
others may not. In some cases folks will stop listening, or they won't
have the time, or they will be happy with things the way they are /
have always been.
It's all good, but out of the conversation you
will get "changes" to seitei, and out of those changes, if you pay
attention, you will learn many things and your own practice will become
richer and deeper.
So, seitei is a conversation, a big party
full of interesting people discussing something you love. In that case,
what's koryu? In the west we usually call it a family. An extended
family with a strong matriarch I suppose, it can be peaceful or
disfunctional, usually depending on the personality of grannie. Members
may not get a lot of say in what goes on unless grannie is interested
in their views, and grannie may be around for a very long time. In
other words, koryu may not be much of a discussion at all compared to
seitei.
Does that mean that koryu don't change? Of course not,
in fact koryu can change extremely fast, with a single decision by the
headmaster, and no other opinions need be sought. Koryu can also change
when the headmaster dies and the new headmaster takes over with a
determination to put his or her stamp on the school.
In this way you might get changes in koryu that are a lot more dramatic than the discussion that is seitei can produce.
So,
the discussion and the matriarchy, two ways that you can think about
seitei and koryu and how each of them can produce changes in the arts
they represent.
I have written two articles which deal with changes in seitei and in koryu and you will find them at:
Riai and Technique: The Story and the Performance and
Changes in Koryu: A Case Study from Hyoho Niten IchiryuIn
the first, I discuss how a change in a single action by the imaginary
opponent has changed the way one of the seitei iaido kata is performed.
In the second, I give my view that a koryu has changed in many ways due
to a decision by the headmaster to train his students in a different
way.