E-budo Post: The Bujinkan's Shady Past?

[Plasma]

During this period, Hatsumi Sensei had determined that hard training does not sell well, and came up with the kata-based, free-variation, no-resistance training that made his fortune and has characterized the Bujinkan since the mid-eighties. Concurrently, he hyped up the ninja image once again, because Steve had proven that it worked, and stirred in all the trappings – the patches, black uniforms, construction worker’s tabi, exotic weapons, talcum powder, etc. Circa 1988-89 Fumio Manaka gave a series of private seminars in the States, for the most part to my own students, in which he presented the individual ryu-ha kata material. It went over really big. That was the final piece of the puzzle for Hatsumi Sensei. The Bujinkan took wing. Bujinkan students did kata, non-resisting, and did continuous henka, just like “The Old Man”. The difference was, the Old Man had a lifetime of serious martial arts training behind him, and he was, well, old.

That paragraph somes up the Bujinkan.

[Teh El Macho]

Both Hatsumi and Hayes followed the L. Ron Hubbard business plan; start a religion, make money.

Hayes' Quest Center/To-Shin-Do cult is the scariest of both in my opinion though.

So bujinkaners are like thetan with tabi boots?

[Plasma]

In any case, the more serious Shihan in the Bujinkan started to ask themselves… “what da f, homes?” Tanemura Sensei had already bolted out of there, establishing his own organization. Manaka Sensei followed. Several prominent teachers had also quietly resigned in the early 80s (I trained with one in 86, Kobayashi, just before he slipped away; he did not believe that the school should be opened to foreigners, but that is should be kept closed, esoteric, with the teachings only for Japanese). The continuous series of resignations, objections and quiet withdrawals by Japanese and Western students left Hatsumi Sensei in a quandary. What to do? Aha!! As it turned out, in fact Hatsumi Sensei had NOT imparted upon these instructors “the real knowledge” inherent to the Bujinkan (even though some of them had been with him for 35 years), but was in fact waiting to pass it on to the many Westerners now in the organization! Brilliant!! Hence in the last ten years we have seen, and continue to see, an onset of new material based on the secret knowledge of the nine ryu-ha.

lol....nice.

[eyebeams]

Thats is the jist of the document.

Still piques my interest. I follow the Booj stuff mostly because I briefly took instruction from a guy under Hayes who could actually fight. So I do have a few, strictly qualified, positive opinions about the delivery system, though not the implementation, of those arts.

[Plasma]

If you read the link in the first post it mentions how orginally BJK training was harsh, hard and brutal. That is was kata-ified for marketing purposes.

[Plasma]

Did Takamatsu invent seven of the nine ryu-ha of the bujinkan?

Virus this is never addressed in the article, what it attack is his "ninja" Ryu-ha. Aka the ones I posted above. The other 6 are real ryu-ha taught outside the x-kans. However, Hatsumi isn't the Soke of them.

[rw4th]

Virus this is never addressed in the article, what it attack is his "ninja" Ryu-ha. Aka the ones I posted above. The other 6 are real ryu-ha taught outside the x-kans. However, Hatsumi isn't the Soke of them.

So who is/are? Is there any documentation? Where are the students?

[Hannibal]

I'm not sure about this business where the Bujinkan is some sortof mystic religion. The Bujnkan system is a martial art amongst other martial arts. Hatsumi does not launch some mass marketing campaign.

Those that train in the Bujinkan, do so because they want to. Those that don't simply go train in another martial art instead.

[Plasma]

So who is/are? Is there any documentation? Where are the students?

::Sigh:: let me see.

Kukishin Ryu is still maintained by the Kuki family
Tagaki Yoshin Ryu's Hombu is Osaka
Gikan Ryu got its own World Wide Org
Tanaka Fumon teaches Gyokko Ryu and Koto Ryu as the respresentive Soke.

There is plenty of documentation through some of the Ko Ryu organizations, very accessable (at least in japan).

[Virus]

One thing seems pretty clear, Togakure isn't koryu. A 2000 year old lineage that goes back as far as the Roman Empire is very suspect. Japan at this time was not a proto-millitary state and the need for "ninjitsu" techniques is virtually null.

The togakure, which is the bujinkan's main ninjutsu school is a big marketing point for the organisation. With regards to Tanemura looking into the history of the bujinkan ryuha's lineage, real koryu have volumes of information about them and as one auther on koryubooks.com puts it; The problem faced when researching a legitamate koryu is too much information.