Budo Beat 56: Gen

A Final Tribute

The “Budo Beat” Blog features a collection of short reflections, musings, and anecdotes on a wide range of budo topics by Professor Alex Bennett, a seasoned budo scholar and practitioner. Dive into digestible and diverse discussions on all things budo—from the philosophy and history to the practice and culture that shape the martial Way.

A few days ago, I received an email from some fellow I have never met.

I was sitting in the departure lounge at Arlanda Airport waiting to board my flight back to Japan. Outraged at the exorbitant price of fish ‘n chips, scrolling through messages, killing time on FB before boarding, as you do.

I almost ignored that mail in my inbox as the name meant nothing to me. It could easily have been another piece of spam, and I very nearly deleted it. I’m really glad I didn’t!

It was from Y. Gen’s son. He wrote to tell me that his father had passed away.

Gen never spoke about his family. In the three or so years we trained together from the mid-90s, I don’t recall him mentioning a son. Or much of anything about his private life. So, the fact that his son thought to take the trouble of contacting me means that I must have come up in conversation at some point.

What I keep returning to, though, is a phone call I received late last year. Gen rang me completely out of the blue. We hadn’t spoken properly in years. The last time I actually saw him in the flesh was almost thirty years ago now. I had been sending New Year greeting cards each year, and sheepishly sent him my translation of Musashi’s works. That felt appropriate given that he’d taught me Niten Ichi-ryū kata; he deserved to see where that thread eventually led. I got a congratulatory postcard back a few months later with a couple of points to fix in the reprint.

On the phone he said he had been following my career. He knew about the books and the university positions. Somehow, he even knew about my translation of the novel Miyamoto Musashi by Yoshikawa Eiji due out in March this year.

He sounded like his usual calm, direct self, but there was a slight strain in his voice. I noticed it but didn’t think much of it at the time. He must be well into his eighties now, I remember thinking. That would explain it. Now, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t only age.

I can’t help wondering if, in making that call, he knew the end was edging closer. Whether he was quietly tidying up loose ends, reaching out to people who he had encountered at different stages of his life to square the ledger in his own way. That would’ve been very like him.

I first met Imai Masayuki (1915-2006) at the 2nd International Seminar of Budo Culture in 1990. Imai-sensei was the 10th Sōke of Musashi’s school, Niten Ichi-ryū. At the time, that meant little to me beyond “some kind of important dude”.

We kept in touch through the tradition of New Year’s cards, as I did with many people I met at the seminar. When it was decided I would study at Kyoto University from 1994, I wrote and asked if there was someone in Kyoto who could teach me Niten Ichi-ryū. That’s how Gen entered my life, or, I entered his.

He was around fifty(ish) at the time with a compact frame and forearms that looked like they’d been carved out of hardwood. He was a kendoka who originally hailed from Oita. By day, he was an unassuming banker at Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. He was not running a dojo and certainly wasn’t trying to build a following of any sort. In fact, he told me quite plainly that he didn’t want to teach me at all. He only agreed because Imai-sensei asked him to. I suppose it also gave him a good excuse to keep it up himself.

He would not let me call him sensei. “Imai-sensei is sensei”, he said. “I’m Gen”. If I slipped, he corrected me immediately with an uncomfortable look.

Reading his son’s email, I saw his full formal name written properly. It struck me that during the years we trained together, I only ever knew him as “Gen”. I never asked what it was short for. It may well have been something longer. It didn’t seem important.

He also made me make a promise to never tell anyone that he was teaching me Niten Ichi-ryū. There didn’t seem like there was any real drama attached to it, other than he simply didn’t want his name circulated. From what I could tell, he was not a part of any organisation, and clearly didn’t want any attention. He was adamant about that.

Years later I figured that perhaps he couldn’t be arsed with all the political BS that seems to cling to the tradition. Ye olde lineage rivalries and disputes. I’ve unwittingly run into it on three separate occasions when helping foreign and Japanese TV networks in various capacities.

In any case, I kept my promise and didn’t mention our ad hoc arrangement to anyone. It was time spent training off and on incognito in a somewhat small, dingy hall with a man determined to stay well and truly off the radar. To be honest, at the time I was doing a lot of different things. I was training in Tendō-ryū, Hōki-ryū, Katayama-ryū, along with kendo, iaido and naginata. Niten Ichi-ryū was one strand among several, and I had no intention of building any kind of identity around it. I was simply training wherever I could and learning what I could from whoever was willing to teach me. Very loose morals, I know.

I remember Gen wasn’t the sort of guy who was interested in titles or ranks. I believe he held 5th dan in kendo and 6th dan (?) in iaido, but he never mentioned things like that unless you cornered him. I don’t even know if he held any kind of teaching licence in Niten Ichi-ryū. What he did say was that he was searching for something in budo, but he never explained what exactly that was.

Ironically, given the timing of all this now, it was Yoshikawa Eiji’s Musashi that piqued his interest in Niten Ichi-ryū in the first place. He had been doing kendo since he was a kid, but it was that novel which he read in his teens that led him through the dojo doorway to Imai-sensei. I don’t know how long he studied under him, but it was clearly not casual. I sensed a strong bond there. He spoke of Imai-sensei with a kind of discreet loyalty that was in no need of elaboration.

Anyway, we trained about once a month. Sometimes twice. Occasionally three times if schedules lined up. We would start with the Niten Ichi-ryū kata, and it was all very meticulous but informal at the same time. If I tried to spark a discussion about Musashi’s philosophy, he would cut me off with, “Mō ii kara, keiko yarimashō.” Yeah nah. Enough of that. Let’s just train mate!

After kata we’d put on bōgu for a good old kendo bash. I was 4th dan at the time, but he was light years ahead of me. His kendo was compact and controlled, and if I tried to be clever, he’d summarily take me apart without even building up a sweat.

This casual arrangement continued for three years or so. Then stomach cancer.

He informed me he was going in for a “seppuku operation”. It was his way of acknowledging the seriousness of it without dwelling on it. We trained less after he finally recovered. There was no official ending as such. Eventually, we stopped and that was basically that.

This was all in the years before smartphones so, regrettably, I have no casual snapshots of those evenings, and no grainy videos tucked away on some forgotten device. I don’t have a single image of us at training. I think I’ve got one old photograph somewhere, a real one, of him demonstrating iaido. I hope I can dig it out when I get home.

I’ve kept quiet about him and my brief foray into NTIR for over thirty years. But now, I would like to acknowledge what he did for me. I know the experience has shaped me in ways I only partially understand. His humility, resistance to unnecessary display, and his instinct to return to basics when conversation drifted too far... His demeanour is something that I really respected then, and more so now.

I find myself wishing I could invite him to the Jigokuden dojo, the small training hall and library I’m building in Uji. I told him on the phone that it should be finished sometime this year, but I’m not sure it really registered. He probably would have waved the invitation away with a “Mō ii kara…” anyway. Even so, I would’ve liked him to see it, and perhaps step onto the floor for one more round of kata and a bash of kendo.

That won’t happen now. So, I’m breaking my promise and mentioning his name here for the first time. I hope he doesn’t mind.

Thank you, Gen.