Dracula as Historian

I admit to being a fan of the vampire genre: books and movies. Most recently, the BBC produced Dracula released in 2020 on Netflix.[1] It starts as a smart retelling of Bram Stoker’s novel with visual homages to classic movies along the way, but quickly takes new narrative turns. Unfortunately the series had a very short three-episode run despite quality production.

More episodes please!

My favorite scene in the series: Dracula is awakened in the current era after an entombment of a hundred years. His first encounter with the modern age is with a modest home owner. He has feasted on the husband and confronts the wife Kathleen in their house. Looking around the cluttered home:

Dracula “You are clearly very wealthy”

Kathleen (incredulous) “Wealthy?”

Dracula “Yes. Well, look at all this stuff. All this food. The moving picture box (nods to the television). And that thing outside, Bob calls it um … a car. Is that yours?

Kathleen (nods and breathlessly answers) “Yeah.”

Dracula “And this treasure trove is your house!”

Kathleen “It’s a dump.”

Dracula “Its amazing. Kathleen, I have been a nobleman for 400 years. I have lived in castles and palaces among the richest people of any age. Never … never! Have I stood in greater luxury than surrounds me now. (Scanning the cluttered room.) This is a chamber of marvels. There isn’t a king, or queen or emperor that I have ever known or eaten who would step into this room and ever agree to leave it again. I knew the future would bring wonders. I did not know it would make them ordinary.”

I love that line! A poignant reminder that we do in fact live in an age of abundance and ease. And we take it all for granted and anticipate even greater convenience in the future. The irony is that our modern conveniences make daily labor rare so that we have to pay to exercise. We struggle with obesity not famine.

And watching history unfold from a disinterested perch (mere humans are food after all) grants a vampire the ultimate perspective of the longue durée. The vampire is very aware of the changes through time.

With a nod to Neil Gaiman, I amuse myself thinking about how such perdurable creatures might manifest now. Think about the Moirai (Fates): Clotho spun the thread, Lachesis drew it out and Atropos cut it. I smile to think that they now own DNA testing laboratories thinly prognosticating our moment of death. Protein chains as the thread of life.

How the hell does this pertain to Aikido and the martial arts?

This morning we covered sword basics. In describing the fundamental use of the katana and how the blade must be stopped by wringing the hands inward, my observation was that we moderns do not have the necessary grip strength. We do not daily work with our hands or engage with the sword often enough to wield it with effective ease. What should be normal is now specialized activity.

I recall reading about a history professor skeptical of Herodotus’ assertion that at the Battle of Marathon, “The Athenians advanced at a run towards the enemy, not less than a mile away.” The incredulous professor asked the college football team to don hoplite gear and replicate the run. None accomplished it. The professor concluded that Herodotus yet again got the facts wrong; the Athenians could not possibly have run to engage the Persians and then battled them to prevail.[2]

The arrogance of moderns! That football players could not replicate the martial feat should come as no surprise. A bronze panoply weighs nearly 70 lbs, approximately 50 lbs more than football gear. When not in annual battle, the ancient Greeks were in the fields plowing rocky soil and walking everywhere. No modern conveniences, no mechanical advantages beyond the basic lever and wheel. Everything was toil and, yes, people were tougher then: Because life was harder, people had to be.

So, when thinking about techniques and how they are applied, understand that we are all under-conditioned. When dealing with weapons and control techniques, hand strength is a pre-requisite to efficacy. And mental toughness is mandatory. We now label grit as if it’s a trait to be curated and not a byproduct of life-as-lived. When was the last time you slaughtered an animal to fill your larder? I have had to ‘process’ pigs and chickens in the past but have only ever hunted for ‘fun’ and never out of necessity. I relish the convenience and ease I take for granted. As a result, I am weaker for it.

The point is this: better nutrition, education and training methods are no substitute for the raw experience of daily exertions.

Dracula marveling at our material gains and highlighting the creature comforts we all enjoy also gave me a twinge of guilt; a reminder that easy is not qualitatively better. I have to remind myself: If the goal is improvement, we must do what does not come easy!

_____________

[1] BBC’s “Dracula” was created by the same visionary team that created the earlier BBC series “Sherlock.” See the footnotes in >Mining the Moon<

[2] I found the proper citation while reading Victor Hanson’s The Western Way of War and correct my imperfect memory of the study in that post.

_____________

Update – >here< is a brilliant essay on Dracula, time and economic growth

OKAMOTO SENSEI – JANUARY 2020

Yoko Okamoto returned to Portland Aikikai for a workshop. This was the first visit to the new location after a four-year gap. It was not a publicized seminar so she was able to concentrate on Portland Aikikai students.

Okamoto sensei is much in demand and we are fortunate to have a familial connection to enjoy her undivided attention.

The highest expression of Aikido’s art is the connection between the players and the movement around the axis of the encounter. Okamoto sensei focused and drew upon exercises to develop that sensitivity and understanding of the art.

To develop that sensitivity, Okamoto sensei worked from gyaku hanmi katate dori and specifically on moving around the axis of the encounter without disturbing uke’s initial grab.

The point is that without information uke has no reason to change the connection. Uke should grab with sincere intention and nage must move around the point so as not to create a secondary action in uke and thereby create a cascade of reaction-action-reaction.

Hence a quiet connection but one where both players maintain their respective intentions. Therefore, once uke grabs (and properly with the lower three fingers primarily) and if the grasp is opened as a result of movement, then uke re-grabbing is a fiction. Uke needs to move with continuity through the engagement, not stop, grab and snatch again. Smooth engagement. Progressive training is the focus. Start from static and build slowly: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Superior position is nage’s intent and Okamoto sensei demonstrated this at first by controlling uke’s elbow. Starting from compression, Okamoto sensei’s demonstration and explanation is less polemic, but the function is what I call bone locking.

The second presentation was extension – a leading action. By extending uke’s elbow, uke’s balance is taken forward.

The techniques that follow from each of the entries are genuinely far less important than the means of gaining the position that makes a technique possible.

First principles!

Proper position is necessary for any and every technique that follows. That is the key take-away from the workshop.

Virtūs et Honos

1995 was a few years ago…

BAGUA OPENING HANDS

For some time now, I have incorporated a basic hand and body exercise into my “warm up” sequence from Bagua Zhang – “opening hands” (see 3:36 for a reminder).

The Bagua movement in isolation may seem awkward at first. I present it as a global body movement adding trunk and hip rotation and done one side at a time.

Why?

Learning a patterned movement sequence in isolation is good solo training especially when you can see that the flow pattern is irimi nage when using the head as the lever, and kotegaeshi when using the wrist.

Go through the motion solo: it is a circular dissolve. Now envision performing yokomen-uchi kotegaeshi. The Bagua will lead you to intercept the strike, control uke’s line to your center, then the wrist roll to the lock / disarm. Move up the body line and take the arm above the elbow and the pattern leads to irimi nage omote. Move higher still to the head and it becomes a neck break. Same pattern of motion resulting in three techniques.[1]

The nuances of each interaction requires explication in the dojo, but abstracting to and discussing the principles (the potentials) of the movement as a concept is its power. Same pattern, just different ranges as you move up the body from distal to core.

This leads us back to ranges of combat. Aikido is a ‘long range’ art because the weapons used to inform its principal techniques were long: the katana, bayonet, and to a lesser degree the wakazashi and tanto.[2]

Longer weapons extend the range of combat but they have the effect of necessitating using the musculature of the core. As a generalization, the longer the weapon, the larger muscle groups required to deploy it.

Hence, the weapons in Aikido are deployed two-handed. And because the tanto is used to pierce armor, it is used not as a knife, but rather as a spike.

The point is: Aikido’s range has been defined by its weapons and its development of the tanren (core) is a logical byproduct of the type of body engagement needed to effectively deploy and counter the weapons used.

Note that this is a rather specific development to a cultural point in time and therefore just one data set in investigating the range of human motion. Hence using a Bagua exercise to find the principle and potential of the movement rather than focus on the specifics of technique.

Change the weapons and the ranges change dramatically. I default to the Philippines where the confluence of Spanish and Filipino cultures preserved useful distinctions of range.

The family of Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) is essentially, Eskrima which is derived from Spanish esgrima, “fencing,” Arnis – short for arnés de mano, Spanish for “harness of the hand,” and Kali which may derive its name from the karis (kris), or a combination of the Filipino words for body (kamot) + motion (lihok).

The named ranges generally are largo, medio, and corto.

  • Corto Mano: close range, short movements, minimal extension of arms, legs and weapons, cutting distance
  • Largo Mano: long range, extended movements, full extension of arms, legs and weapons, creating distance[3]
  • Medio Mano: medium range, splits the difference (and often involves a long + short weapon: espada y daga)

The technical nature of combat changes as the distance between opponents changes and will have specific techniques to contend with those variables of time, distance and speed.

But in this brief review I want to emphasize one point: that by seeing the conceptual power of a pattern of movement one can deploy the same movement to solve for the problems created at various ranges.

Virtūs et Honos

________________________

[1] Review

[2] The typical dojo wood tanto is too short. The traditional blade length was between 6 to 12 inches. The typical wood tanto in the dojo is about 11 inches in total length.

[3] Good insights into the Largo Mano variables and strategies and connections to Western fencing.