Uchideshi- Walking with the Master- book review

Many moons ago and fresh from finishing the Senshusei course in Japan, I, with two fellow aikidoka, Christopher Ross and Ben Forster embarked on a series of travels which ended with us training with the Border Defence Force in India. It was in India, that we came up with the notion of going to the South of France and training with Jacques Payet Sensei who was living near Cannes at the time but did not have a dojo or formal classes. We rocked up and he found us a place to live for free and took us under his wing and it was then I began to understand many of the points he makes in his fascinating memoir UCHIDESHI, that learning is not just about attending classes, it’s about entering the right headspace to be able to practise at any time. As we went in to train at a kickboxing gym, which we had made an agreement to borrow, Payet suddenly jumped up on to a low car park wall instead of laboriously stepping up and over it. It was a signal, now we’re going to train let’s be sharp. Yet when we were in the gym and desperate to do some jyu waza to impress the onlookers he kept us doing basic movements quite slowly but with a focus on what he had earlier talked about- sensing where your centre is (most people get locked into a notion of how to stand without thinking about their centre and so they can’t regain balance easily). The lesson here was obvious- you do what the teacher says, not what YOU think is best. 

Another time we went around to his house (he was immensely kind and hospitable to us all) and instead of speaking in English as he usually did he started speaking in French. And we all had to keep up. And so we did- and then after about half an hour we went back to English. The lesson was gentle but firm- you’re in another country now- learn to speak the language. All his teaching was like that- definite experiences rather than just admonitions to do this or that. These lessons were mixed with things to contemplate- like the connection between balance and centre- because it is a fact remarked on by the rawest beginner- top martial artists don’t lose their balance. But of course what is really going on is they regain it before falling over. They have strategies and ways of moving that mean falling over is just not an option. And one such strategy is knowing where your centre is and keeping it in the right place.

I realise now that Payet Sensei was giving us a little of the experience he had of being an Uchideshi. We hung around with him. We went to see others train, we had meals, we walked about, we drank beer and we saw how he lived in his everyday life and that gave us an insight into how to train even when you are not training. And this aspect of learning by osmosis, by simply having low level everyday contact with a teacher is really how you learn. I once watched the way Chino Sensei used a pair of nail scissors to cut open a rice cake packet for a New Year’s ceremony. It was precise, each move with an exact flair, a pleasure in doing something small in a concise and unsloppy way. There was a lesson there in how to move during any aikido exercise.

This kind of experience is what Jacques Payet details in his memoir of the first five years he spent in Japan, a kind of experience it is getting much rarer to have. He was born on the distant island of Reunion and early on had an interest in martial arts. After military service his interest in getting to the source of jujitsu took him to Japan in 1980 where he was able to train under the founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, Gozo Shioda. He left in 1985. These five intense years studying a Japanese martial art, form his book UCHIDESHI. It is written by someone at the top of their game, and is of interest to anyone who wants to make progress in any art. As well as providing a fascinating look at a lost side of Japan it also provides great insight into the learning process and how one actually achieves mastery. Payet Sensei did his 10,000 hours as an Uchideshi- but it is the manner of the training that counts in determining just much you progress rather than simply repeating errors. He identifies many helpful states of mind that allow openness and transparency when it comes to learning, something Western models of learning - which tend to be over systematised - miss. 

The book’s subtitle is ‘Learning what cannot be taught’ which is an intriguing clue as to the author’s sophisticated understanding of the way any art or skill is passed on. By ‘taught’, in the West we mean ‘put into words and a system of some kind’. But everything of value is more complex than a reduction into words and systems. Sometimes, often, you need to hold two contradictory notions in place at the same time. All kinds of subtleties cannot be ‘taught’ because the teacher may not even be conscious of them, but the students, by deep observation of the teacher in all his or her modes, are eventually able to learn them. But how do you develop the mental state needed to accompany this kind of ‘deep looking’. Well, this is what Payet Sensei does so admirably in showing and explaining, you have to be humble- but not in a passive grovelling way (which is how we often see it in the West) but in an active, looking, but transparent and utterly interested way- but with no premature judging, no ‘what’s in it for me’ mentality. This kind of eager and ‘open for business’ mentality is what gets the deshi through his daily round of sometimes tedious and sometimes strenuous activities. Finally Payet learns about Shugyo which is really a combination of being present in the moment and allowing that to enable you to do your very best. This is very different from straining to do your best, ‘trying too hard’, it is about building an alertness which enables you to pick up from a situation enough to enable you to do your best and therefore strengthen your intuitions and make progress.

There are many wonderful moments in the book – obviously his first hand experiences of the founder, Gozo Shioda, but also his training with the tireless Kimura San, who shared a tiny apartment with a pet rabbit, and was more dedicated to becoming strong than any male aikidoka, encounters with world famous teachers such as Takeno and Inoue Sensei and others still in their relative youth- Chida, Ando and Nakano Sensei, his ‘spirit training’ for the famous powerboat racers of Japan; all this makes the book speed along in the first reading (indeed it is so compelling I read it in one long sitting). However it is the many telling comments on learning what cannot be taught, how to structure one’s own learning program and how to make progress in a skill towards mastery that makes this book such a resource to keep going back to and re-reading time and again. Every serious artist – of any kind – will benefit greatly from reading it.

You can buy the book here:

 http://www.shindokanbooks.com/uchideshi.shtml