It does not take long while searching the web to find a million different pictures about japanese schools and their styles. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to find any difference except the name.
As most of the people are aware of japanes people are also human beings.
I say that because in my profession sometimes it seems to be forgotten because some people tend to adore japanese so called „masters“ like a gods, who, and this is then not realized, first need to pass away before they can become a god.
Anyway, the rest of us is aware of the fact that these samurai usually are regular people like you and me.

Regular means they have a family, a job, classical sorrows and luck. Regular though.
And because in Japan, I would say especially in Japan, the pressure of rank, family, income and reputation is very strong, many take their hobbies as what they are.
A possiblity to forget the daily business and to be someone you always wanted to.
A Samurai, a hero, a person in charge.

Do you think westeners are so different from it? We call it sparetime to relax, when we take our mountainbike and drive downhill races or we go paragliding for fun.
For fun? The job costs us all energy during the week and then we spent the rest we have on sports and competition, this is called relaxing time?
I do not think so.
We want to be better as we are during the week.

The japanese very early understood that unsatisfied citizens might make problems some day.
So they gave all the different professions their own „matsuri“, their own official holiday.
And so there is one for Budo, of course.

All can go there and show a little bit of their schools, styles and practice.
And westeners sit there like in a movie and watch, get impressed and like what they see.

Home again some of them mutate to masters of art in that field of expertice.
As they have seen so many different styles the western mind finds it very easy to see patterns, which are repeated in all of them.
So a pattern to find is that what makes the western mind the western mind.
Our whole system of education is ruled by that idea.
Find pattern.
Break everything down to pattern, which are all the same.
Once you found a pattern, no matter if it is a moving pattern, a mathematic pattern, a language pattern, an atomic pattern, you will be able to understand the whole picture immediatly.

This is what the westeners think.
And suddenly we have a phenomenon never seen in human history.
The rise of the Sokes.

Soke is a japanese title given for the leader of an ancient school of martial arts.
Regulary it is family business, which means that the title is handed down from generation to generation in one single tribe.
In ancient times this was important because to have the school secured from being public gave an advantage in battle as the enemy did not know the techniques of that specific school.

The funny thing is that some westeners really think that this has changed today.
So there are many many westener Soke suddenly and most of them never had access to the information, which actually would make them Soke.
But the western people, who think in pattern are not interessted in that fact.
They do not care if the person is a real budoka or not.
They do not care if what this person is saying is right or wrong.
They do not care because they do only listen.
They just do not watch.

When you just watch and turn down the volume there is nothing more perfidious.
The westeners did not learn to watch. They learned to listen.
In school, in university, in life, in job explanation rules before showing.

Not in my dojo.
Everybody who started with me at some early stage in training wanted a book, where she or he could read the japanse translation for the words so that they can be memorized easier.
Words do not matter.
It is what you see that matters.
And after some time I hear words like.
„Today my ukemi (=suddenly the right japanese word is used 😉 ) was better because I changed a little bit of that and so…..
This makes me happy then because watching payed off.

Never trust a teacher, who has to explain the right etiquette in a dojo rather showing it without words.
If it is right people will do it the same way anyway.
Never trust someone, who comes with a laptop to a seminar, plays a movie and says „We are gonna do it this way“.
Never trust someone, who said that he has published the first book of a school summarizing its principles and then only writes japanese words in it, Of course with no explanation because he never understood.
Never trust someone, who’s only weapon in not getting defeated by a beginner is to make a counterattack, far beyond beginners level, simply because he has no other possiblity.
Never trust someone, who compares himself by rank and name to a japanese, who is doing this martial art for more then 60 years on daily bases, while he himself does not even have a dojo.
Never trust someone, who’s only way to prohibit fighting is talking about philosophy.
Never trust someone, who recites books and not his own experiences, because he has none.
Never trust someone, who is not training on daily bases, while having ranks of some who does.
All that happens today and of course much more.

Remember, ancient japanese samurai warfare is not about patterns. It goes far beyond.
It is about getting the right feeling for the right situation.
It is about getting the taste of fight in doing it.
It is about you and yourself in moving action.
it is about giving your life up for finding patterns and start a new one for finding feeling.
Fire burns, water is liquid, Bujutsu takes time.
Never forget that.