Video -Adorable Young Japanese Girl practicing Sword -Iaido

[Paul E Ester]

4. Adorable or Evil?

Iaido (居合道 Iaidō or just Iai 居合?) is a modern Japanese martial art associated with the smooth, controlled movements of drawing the sword from its scabbard or saya, striking or cutting an opponent, removing blood from the blade, and then replacing the sword in the scabbard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido

Now, Koryu Iaido dogma claims that Koryu arts are pure because they were created and tested by warring samurai. Thus, current practitioners are unfit to alter swords arts because they have not been in real sword fights. However, this article makes it clear that for certain men, Japanese militarization gave them a combat opportunity to re-test and then alter their arts.

In some ways this sounds good for the martial arts, in other ways it is deeply, deeply disturbing. Nakamura discusses exchanging ideas with Takayama Masayoshi, a war criminal who was sentenced to twenty five years "because of his sword testing in China." As footnote #4 explains, the euphemism "sword testing" translates to "killing 10 Chinese prisoners of war with his sword."

That image--a dedicated martial artist killing prisoners to perfect his technique--is a haunting one. It is perfectly understandable that many teachers refused to keep the lessons from the War and "reverted to old-school sword techniques." In fact, I think I now understand why many lineages of iaido discourage tameshigiri (test-cutting).

But yet...as horrible as the Japanese war crimes were, were the samurai of old any better? Or do they just seem safe and pure because of the distance of history? Swords are designed for killing. We may play at creative-anachronism, but the real truth is messy and tinged with evil.

http://www.yachigusaryu.com/blog/2006/06/thoughts-on-iaido-by-nakamura.html