Author Archives: John Butz

About John Butz

John Butz graduated from Messiah College with a degree in English literature. He is an assistant instructor at the Itten Dojo in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where he has trained in the traditional martial arts of Japan since 1997.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold pays tribute to Silver Age

Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Cartoon Network)
Where to binge: All three seasons available on Netflix

Since 1992, the Dark Knight Detective has been a television staple, beginning with the ground breaking Batman: The Animated Series and continuing through to Beware the Batman. Outside of and before the Batman-centric cartoons of the past 20 years, Bruce Wayne’s alter ego could be found guest-starring on The New Scooby-Doo Movies or fighting nonsensical crime alongside Aquaman and Wonder Woman as a member of the Justice League as imagined in the sundry Super Friends series.

The common thread that runs through these appearances (well, with the exception of the lighthearted humor of the Super Friends) is that Batman is consistently depicted as a grim avenger of the night, a man who has been consumed by his quest for vengeance against the superstitious and cowardly criminal lot that killed his parents and brought Gotham City to the brink of ruin. Sure, there are moments of deadpan humor, and the occasional bit of outright comedy — what fan of the DC animated universe didn’t love the tongue-in-cheek humor of the Justice League Unlimited episode “This Little Piggy“? — but the overall feel of the character is one of driven, determined seriousness.

Which brings us back to the Super Friends. There was a time in Batman’s history when he was more lighthearted and fun. The Silver Age of Comic Books was a wacky time, with time travel, utterly ridiculous villains, and dozens on dozens of obscure and short-lived heroes with offbeat powers. It was a very different time in comics than today, a time when some stories were being written to children, where the art was still getting its feet under it. The industry was trying to figure out what it would become. It was a time of imagination and exploration, and much of what we consider as the mythos of comic books was established in these formative years.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold was the first, and so far only, animated series to truly embrace the entirety of the wonderful, off-beat, imaginative world of the Silver Age. And it is absolutely brilliant.

This is no small achievement. Following on the heels of the incredibly popular DC animated universe meant that The Brave and the Bold had some big shoes to fill. Had they chosen to play up the darker and edgier elements of the Batman, the show would have felt like a pale imitation of the widely successful Animated Series (a trap that Beware the Batman, the current animated incarnation, is at risk of falling into).

But by choosing to celebrate the madcap fun of the Silver Age, The Brave and the Bold has carved out a unique space in the world of comic-book-inspired animated shows. The animation uses a much brighter color palate than previous animated DC shows. The art feels very much like a four-color comic book. The characters are drawn in a style that smacks of classic Silver Age aesthetics. The occasional computer-generated animation sequence pays tribute to that other famous style of animation, anime. All of these elements come together and form a unique and wonderful look and feel.

The show, which is based on a concept first introduced in the pages of DC Comics, is structured with a short lead-in story that pairs Batman and another hero, usually one of DC’s more obscure characters, in a fight against some evil. These lead-ins serve as character development, allowing the audience to meet many of the show’s recurring characters before they appear in a major storyline. The lead-in story doesn’t usually connect to the rest of the episode, but it is always used to expand the universe.

The show is very episodic, building a world over the course of a season while creating the setup for a two-part grand finale for each season. This “problem of the week” model of storytelling allows the writers to pay tribute to the vast scope of classic comic book storytelling. Episodes range from time-and-space travel, cosmic-level hijinks, classic storyline references, to down and dirty crime drama. Heck, there is even a musical episode, guest-starring none other than Neil Patrick Harris himself.

Voiced by Diedrich Bader, Batman is a deadpan snarker, delivering puns and one-liners that come directly from the Adam West school of Batman acting. The rest of the voice cast includes many well known names (Dee Bradley Baker, John DiMaggio, and many more) voicing just about every major, minor, and throwaway character that has ever graced the pages of a DC comic, along with several created exclusively for the show.

While The Brave and the Bold willingly embraces that Super Friends sense of camp, as well as the Silver Age predilection for storylines that are way over-the-top, it does so with respect and an honest admiration for the classic nature of the characters and the time period that birthed them. What distinguishes The Brave and the Bold is that it treats what the characters will become in the Bronze and Iron Ages of comics with just as much respect. The Brave and the Bold doesn’t just appeal to our retro-comics sensibilities; it uses them as a springboard for innovation.

Just look at how the character of Aquaman got a much-needed shot in the arm here, going from the guy who talks to the fishes to the brave, bombastic, and completely outrageous king of the sea. Or perhaps at the Starro invasion and its study of heroism through the sacrifice and death of B’wana Beast. The episode “Chill of the Night!” is one of the best explorations of the tragic death of Batman’s parents and how it shaped a young Bruce Wayne that has ever been put on the small screen, combining classic and modern Batman sensibilities and Dickensian representations of the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre seeking to claim Batman’s eternal soul.

It’s hard to sell a series to people by talking about its final episode, but I would be remiss not to mention “Mitefall!” Not only is it a zany, hilarious, self-referential adventure romp, but it is a work of love, a good-bye letter to the fans who took a risk on a different kind of Batman show and, in so doing, found themselves rewarded beyond their expectations. In a series where every episode is a love-letter to DC comics, “Mitefall!” is the capstone, the last chance the writers and the cast had to pay tribute to all the great stories of the Silver Age, be they serious or funny, dark or full of laughter, drama or comedy.

All three seasons of Batman: The Brave and the Bold can be streamed on Netflix right now. If you want to take a retro-themed romp through the DC Universe, put aside your preconceptions of what makes a good Batman story and give The Brave and the Bold a watch.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold originally aired from 2008 to 2011 on the Cartoon Network.

Virtues of X-Men: The Last Stand often overlooked

It has always surprised me that fans of the X-Men films really don’t like the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand. Admitting that you like X-Men 3 is enough to get you sidelong looks from your fellow nerds at best and scathing criticism about your nerd-cred and taste in films at worst. Say that you enjoyed The Last Stand in the company of your fellow comic-book fans at your own risk.

But with X-Men: Days of Future Past making its way to theaters, I felt it was time to revisit the third film in the franchise and talk about what it does right and why I like it. And I don’t mean that I like it in comparison to, say, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a film that deserves the vitriol heaped upon it by fans (a proper destruction of which warrants an article in itself). I think The Last Stand deserves its place among the X-film pantheon and is, in fact, the perfect film to set up the translation of the iconic “Days of Future Past” storyline from page to screen.

There are legitimate criticisms leveled at The Last Stand. I really don’t think Halle Berry is a strong enough actress to pull off her role as Storm, successor to the leadership of the X-Men. James Marsden’s Cyclops and Ben Foster’s Angel were both chronically underused. This is particularly regrettable with regards to Angel, a character that could have given us some serious insight into the world created by this film.

I really think the producers of X3 dropped the ball on Vinnie Jones’ portrayal of the Juggernaut. There were any number of other, just as recognizable, bruisers in the pages of the X-Men comics that would have been easier to translate to the screen. The Juggernaut has a complex relationship with Professor X and, to boot, isn’t even really a mutant; his powers derive instead from the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak. While I like the character in the comics, I don’t think he has a place in the film universe.

The same can be said (and has been by my colleague Charissa) of the incredibly abbreviated version of the Phoenix sagas that begins in X2 and concludes in X3. There is no space travel, no Shi’ar, really none of the defining aspects of that storyline outside of Jean Grey’s incredible psychic powers. But that really doesn’t bother me as much.

That might come as a surprise to you. After all, one of the marks of the true nerd is the desire to be technically correct, because it is the best kind of correct. But if you enjoyed the Lord of the Rings films despite the innumerable differences between the book and the movies, then you really don’t have a leg to stand on with this complaint. Film and comics are different mediums with different rules.

It would take a lot of time and effort to do an accurate adaptation of the original and Dark Phoenix sagas, and I don’t blame the writers and the director for opting to take a shorter route, less grounded in comic book lore. The Phoenix sagas are cosmic stories, and the X-Men movies have been about human stories: a group of people who are born different, trying to make their way in a world that doesn’t want to treat them as human. X3 director Brett Ratner made the right choice here, and because of that choice, the movie remains thematically consistent with the other entries in the franchise.

Perhaps Dark Phoenix should have been left out of the third film altogether, but I don’t want to dwell on what The Last Stand does wrong. Let’s look instead at what it does right.

First, this movie sets up and connects the sundry X-Men films. Putting aside the atrocious Origins: Wolverine film, the X-Men film series has had two acts so far, and with the release of Days of Future Past, we will be moving on to a third. X3 acts as the bridge from the prequels, through the original trilogy, and into the next era. It introduces elements of the Future Past saga: Trask and the Sentinels show up here, and the plot includes several references to the massive power of mutants, which makes a good connection to the newest film. X3 also segues directly into the rather enjoyable The Wolverine, which is a really fine film that primes Wolverine’s character development for Days of Future Past.

The relationship between Professor X and Magneto is handled wonderfully in The Last Stand, and the groundwork is laid for the first-act prequel X-Men: First Class. While that film would explore the beginnings of the friendship between the two mutant leaders, X3 explores the endings, showing a troubled Professor X who has to live with the consequences of his choices and a Magneto who is finally depicted on screen as the mesmerizing and influential leader of a violent revolution.

This character exploration leads directly to another thing X3 does very well. The actors, on the whole, absolutely nail their characters. I love Kelsey Grammar as Beast (complete with an “Oh, my stars and garters!” line). I think Hugh Jackman is dead-on with his Wolverine. I love the conflicted Professor X and the charismatic and driven Magneto. I love the near endless little shout-outs to the X-Men universe in the form of the extended cast of mutants. And the way Bobby Drake finally lays the smackdown on Pyro is just epic.

The action sequences are top-notch. The fight in Jean Grey’s house, the subtle and effective depiction of Magneto’s convoy takedown, the incredibly rewarding and exciting final conflict — each action sequence is fast and exciting and chockablock full of mutant powers and comic-book references. I particularly enjoyed the Fastball Special (a true X-Men classic) and the casual yet overwhelming power of Magneto. The characters move in a way the evokes the comic book action sequences, and I get a thrill watching Beast somersault through a battlefield or Bobby Drake do the full Iceman transformation.

I get that The Last Stand is not as cerebral as some people might have liked, and it is definitely aiming more for “big-budget action flick” than for “accurate-as-can-be comic book film,” but it retains elements of that intellectual, questioning nature, and it does something that no other film in the X-Men franchise had yet done: It shows, for the first time, that this is a world where there are mutants who aren’t X-Men or members of the Brotherhood. The film portrays the mutant community in a moment of crisis, and that’s what makes it brilliant.

The first two X-Men films are essentially superhero movies. Sure, the superheroes are born with their powers instead of getting them from gamma radiation or power armor or a super soldier serum, but they still pretty much use those powers to fight the bad guy who wants to do bad things. Those films are either conflicts between the Brotherhood and the X-Men or between a small group of mutants and a shadowy government agency. We never get a sense of the rest of mutant-kind.

With the central conflict of The Last Stand revolving around the so-called “mutant cure,” Ratner had a reason to depict the larger mutant community. Thats what makes X3 special. Whereas the other films are full of mutants who are heroes and villains, many of the mutants in The Last Stand are citizens, or students, or politicians, or community activists. We get to see how the cure impacts the world beyond the scope of super-powered combat and action. We get to see how this community reacts to the presence of a drug that can take their mutation away. They wrestle with the implications and challenges of this new reality.

The X-Men provide us with a way to look at how we treat the “Other” and the outsider, the marginalized and the misrepresented. By allowing us to see the broader scope of the mutant community, by turning them into people and not just heroes and villains, we are forced to reckon with the question of how we would use a drug that would change the Other. And when that X-factor that we seek to change is a source of potentially overwhelming power, we have to ask ourselves if we want to change the Other to make them more like us … or to take their power away so they don’t threaten our way of life.

While The Last Stand is far from a deep and philosophical look at how we treat our fellow man, it does a great job of creating an exciting and immersive film that highlights a crucial aspect of the human condition. If you plan on catching Days of Future Past in theaters this weekend, you may want to reacquaint yourself with this movie. You just might like it better the second time around.

Giri, burden of obligation, falls on those above, below

Sweat streamed down my face, into my eyes. My glasses slipped down my nose, the strap that held them to my head barely enough to combat the onslaught.

The tendons and muscles along my shins were burning. My muscles were sore and heavy. Every time my body hit the mat, part of me said, “Stay down here. Just stop moving. You know you want to.”

I had been at the dōjō for about a month, and the honeymoon was most definitely over. My ukemi (falling technique) had improved enough that I could do a slow front-roll. I could tie my belt. I knew where to line up. I was always at the dōjō the minute the doors opened so that I could get as much training as possible. I was meeting expectations.

So the expectations increased.

Before I had joined the dōjō, I had never done a regular workout. Push-ups and crunches were foreign to me. I couldn’t keep up with the group. And that was OK in my first week.

But I was a month in, still training. So it was time to get with the program.

No one ever said anything to me, or told me to step it up. I just knew that I had to do more. I would dread the opening of class, the conditioning set followed by the group ukemi practice. My legs would burn, my lungs would struggle to breathe air that was suddenly liquid with heat and humidity. I longed for a rest. I longed for a drink of water. I longed to lie on the mat after a technique just long enough to catch my breath.

When I threw them during practice, my seniors just got up and let me throw them again. It was the rhythm of things. They would teach me: a pointer here, a subtle hand-shift there. My technique was improving because these men and women kept getting up and helping me get better.

So I hauled myself off of the floor again, judo-gi heavy with sweat, short of breath, full at times of fear, at times of weariness.

I didn’t want to. But I owed it to these people to get up, and to attack again, and to be thrown again.

No one ever needed to tell me that.

***

Just a day before, the room had been a middle school basketball court. But today it was a dōjō.

This was Tai Kai, the annual gathering of our ryu. We come together and train hard, and party hard, and part ways with the regret and sorrow that can only come from intense and challenging activity done in the company of your brethren and in the service of something larger than yourself.

The morning session was physically demanding, a series of exercises that focused on shikko-sabaki, the Japanese method of knee-walking. We moved around the mats, shins and thighs burning with the exertion.

The most junior student in the room was to my left. He had only been training for a matter of weeks, and I could feel his suffering without needing to see the rictus on his face or hear the hiss of his in-drawn breath.

He was ready to quit.

I grabbed him as the room split into pairs to do the next exercise. It wasn’t a matter of encouragement, of supportive, kind language. It was a matter of pulling his spirit up. In between drills, I would bodily lift him to his feet and drag him along as I ran back to our place in line, push him down to a kneeling position as we received instruction. I would pull him up and drag him to the next drill.

He didn’t quit. He wanted to. It was written on every part of his face, on every line of his body. But he didn’t.

I nodded at him, said “Good job,” and watched as he ran off to scribble a few quick notes before the next session. I had seen what he was made of. So had he.

He was strong the rest of the day.

***

Giri, or the “burden of obligation,” is the debt you incur as you follow the path of budō. It takes time before the student realizes the full impact of this.

You start in the budō with red in your ledger; you owe giri to the men and women who have been working for decades to preserve the art, to give you a place to train, to get good enough to teach you. You owe them a debt that you literally cannot ever repay.

Giri doesn’t flow one way. When your juniors meet expectations, when they ask you to teach them, when they show up and work hard, they have placed you in debt to them. Their care and education are your responsibility now. You must give them your best. I owe my juniors a debt that is every bit as significant as that I owe my Sensei. They struggle in the trenches with me, doing their part without question or hesitation. I have to be the best model I can be for them, be able to answer their questions, be the example they deserve.

I remember being promoted to a green belt. It is the first formal promotion ceremony in my dōjō, marking the first significant step on your journey through budō. Sensei called me up in front of the whole class and presented me with the new belt. As I bowed and took it from him, he whispered to me, “Thank you for doing what was expected of you.”

We say these words to a newly promoted student as a reminder. No one gets here on their own. Everything I have that is of value to me in the budō is a gift, given to me without expectation of recompense. Everything I do, I do with an eye to this fact — that I must carry this debt, and that I must be worthy of it, and that I owe everyone, senior and junior, to be the best that I can be in all areas of life.

I shoulder my burden, and bear up under it for another day.

Rebuttal: Prequels are fine sci-fi, bad Star Wars films

Your regular Nerd/Wise contributor and my esteemed colleague, Kevin Hillman, made a very strong argument for the value of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. As a lifelong Star Wars fan, I largely agree with him. There are a lot of fun and exciting things in the prequels.

If there ever was a series that has attracted more outrageous and unfair criticism than Episodes I to III, I surely haven’t heard of it. Kevin calls out the most fallacious and unsustainable criticisms directed at the films and, one by one, knocks them down with reasonable arguments. I see no reason to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal.

Because Kevin is missing the forest for the trees.

I disagree with the basic premise that Kevin is trying to argue, namely that the prequel trilogy is good in some objective sense, and therefore is of the same quality as the original trilogy. Art — whether cinema, television, literature, poetry, painting, sculpture — can by its very nature only ever be experienced subjectively. Nonetheless, there is an element of objectivity to good film-making. Indeed, there are basic tools that can objectively improve the structure of a work, thereby increasing its subjective appeal.

That’s where George Lucas dropped the ball with the prequels.

I see four major, overarching issues with Episodes I to III: a lack of editing, an abundance of sub-par humor that doesn’t serve the story, a lack of continuity between the films, and the squandering of cultural capital earned among fans of the original Star Wars trilogy. It’s hard to keep these areas entirely separate, so expect things to get a little blurry around the edges at times.

Let’s start with what I feel is the biggest issue: Lucas chose to squander the overwhelming good will he had with Star Wars fans by making pointless and frustrating edits to the original trilogy. In 1997, the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition was released upon the fan base, followed immediately by much gnashing of teeth. It was full of edits and CGI additions, all of which felt forced and unnecessary.

I’ll pluck the low-hanging fruit first. The infamous “Han shoots second” edit reduced Han Solo from a cunning, dangerous, and lightning-quick gunslinger to a man who got lucky. Never mind that the edit is awkward and obvious: it was a bad storytelling decision.

Though none of the other edits are as egregious, the CGI additions just don’t fit. They lack the solid, grounded feel of the practical special effects, model work, and puppetry of the trilogy as it was originally designed. And some of the new scenes are just pointless. Did we really need an extended musical performance in Jabba’s Palace? Did we really need any more dewbacks in Mos Eisley?

Fans, by and large, didn’t think so. And then Lucas added insult to injury by making it so that the original, unedited Episodes IV to VI would never be available again. If you wanted the original trilogy, you had to settle for Han shooting second. The fan base feared that this was a sign of things to come.

Now, to be fair, Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm have always been innovators in the special effects world. A lot of what they were doing with digital sound, green-screen work, and CGI effects would revolutionize the film-making industry. And despite the hatred heaped upon them by disgruntled fans, the prequel episodes will always have a place in the world of film making, along with The Matrix and James Cameron’s Avatar, as hallmarks of technical innovation in cinema.

But why did Lucas choose to spend his cultural capital by changing the movies we loved into something we didn’t like? Why did he change a pivotal scene and alter the nature of a popular character forever? Why did he do all of this right before releasing a series of films that were aimed straight at those same fans?

Obviously, I can’t answer those questions definitively. But it is my opinion that Lucas could have side-stepped some of these issues had he held off on the release of the remastered versions of his original films until the prequels had been completed. Further, if he had edited the original trilogy in such a way that would patch some of the continuity holes that exist between the two sets of films, the fan base would have been more positive going into the 1999 release of Episode I. (One example: Lucas could have explained where the heck R2-D2’s rockets, present in Episode III, disappeared to in the 20 years before Episode IV, when the droid could have used them.)

My esteemed colleague Mr. Hillman likes to say that arguing against changes to the original Star Wars films is an appeal to nostalgia, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But my point is that Lucas chose to open that door for us; revitalizing a 20-year-old franchise was inherently an appeal to nostalgia. If I could still get my hands on a licensed DVD or Blu-ray version of the unaltered original trilogy, I would gladly buy it from Lucas. And I would be a lot more tolerant of his prequels.

Moving on, we come to issues of editing. As a storyteller myself, I have come to believe that the guiding principle behind all storytelling is simple: everything you put on the page or screen must serve the story. Do otherwise and you run the risk of losing the audience. Stephen King said in his On Writing, “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because ‘it got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

The prequels fall victim to this misdirected enchantment, stuffing in extraneous material that stretch Episodes I to III to a total run time of about 45 minutes longer than the original movies. Let us consider the pod racing scene in Episode I. This thing lasts the better part of 12 minutes; that’s about one-tenth the total run time of The Phantom Menace. While the scene certainly starts out exciting, it rapidly descends into self-indulgence. In fact, scene after scene of the prequels degrades into what are essentially long special effects demo reels. The battle between the droids and the Gungans, the precarious duel on floating platforms over rivers of lava on Mustafar, traveling through the droid factory on Geonosis: these are but three examples of scenes that started out interesting but went on just way too long.

This is another wasted opportunity for Lucas. As the scripts for these two film trilogies were written 20 to 30 years apart, the temptation to alter the original films, due to both hindsight and new technology, proved irresistible for Lucas. The tinkering resulted in many continuity errors that brought aficionados of the older films to their feet in frustrated outrage, shaking their fists and demanding explanations.

For example, how can it be that Tatooine, described in A New Hope as: “if there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet it’s farthest from,” appear in the prequels to be just a few hours travel from the galactic center? How can the planet have an economy that supports a racetrack long enough for one lap to take 12 minutes at jet-fighter speeds?

I posit that, had Lucas devoted those extra 45 minutes in the prequels not to showcasing special effects but to strengthening the connections between the two trilogies, giving us explanations for the seeming inconsistencies, the movies would have tied together more cleanly and caused less cognitive dissonance in the moviegoer familiar with the original trilogy.

That cognitive dissonance also rings loudly with the humor of the prequel films, which would have benefited had Lucas shown better editorial judgment. Jar Jar Binks is all slapstick and fart jokes, and those elements do nothing to support the story. The long, painfully awkward, unfunny sequence where C-3PO and a battle droid swap heads and act confused neither adds drama nor cuts the tension of the Battle for Geonosis. It should have ended up on the editing room floor.

In the original films, R2 and 3PO were funny because of the way their personalities interacted with each other and the rest of the cast as they went about doing things that moved the plot along. Han was witty and sardonic — while moving the plot along. Jar Jar bumbling his way through a battle with droids, obviously incompetent and clueless, does not move the plot along and, to boot, is not funny. In a real army, “General Jar Jar” would have been put out of commission by a subordinate officer as a danger to the unit, and no one would have batted an eye.

The sum of these weaknesses manifests in the overarching problem I have with the prequels. I sometimes refer to it as continuity, and sometimes as a tonal shift. It’s the hardest of the criticisms to explain, and some of its impact is deflected because Lucas was obviously going for a different feel to Episodes I to III than he had used in Episodes IV to VI. Still, I feel the tonal shift and incongruities between the two sets of films are unforced errors.

This is another one of those areas where Mr. Hillman likes to pull the nostalgia card on me, saying that I am looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. I disagree. After all, I am one of the few people I know who liked X-Men: The Last Stand, and I cheered when I heard there would be a Batman reboot. I like The Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men: First Class. I’m not averse to change. Sometimes things are done better the second or third time around. I get that.

But that doesn’t excuse the prequels. They are not a reboot; they exist in the same universe. To that end, there must be a coherence in tone and in story throughout the entire hexalogy.

My complaint is rooted in my own experience. I watched Operation Desert Storm unfold on television 23 years ago. I remember the footage from smart-bomb cameras, the scenes on the ground the day after the air war, the broadcasts from the Baghdad hotel as the U.S. Air Force spearheaded the attack. I remember the event. This is one of those things that happens as you travel through life — you remember significant things from the past.

So how is it that in the original trilogy, 18 years after Episode III, no one remembers the Separatist Droid Army, the nature of Clone troopers, the home planet of the famous General Skywalker, or Naboo? Why didn’t Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi, both preeminent trainers of Jedi, ever mention midi-chlorians and their role in the Force? For that matter, why didn’t anyone recognize the power of the Force? (Consider the disbelieving Imperial officer, Force-choked by Darth Vader, or Han’s dismissive attitude; these men, both of whom were alive during the Clone Wars, don’t believe in the Force in Episode IV.)

I can go on. Why didn’t Anakin ever consider checking in on his only surviving relatives (OK, step-relatives) at any point? How come Anakin, as Vader, doesn’t recognize R2-D2, who spent nearly 20 years as his constant companion, or C-3PO, who Vader built with his own hands? Why do all the Jedi wear Tatooine desert garb? Why is it that no one, anywhere, remembers the miracle of the virgin birth of Anakin, an event the Weekly World News would still be milking for all its worth if it had happened 20 years ago in this country?

There are dozens and dozens of little details like this. And that’s what drives me nuts and keeps me from enjoying the prequel trilogy.

In many ways, I think that what the prequels did wrong was that they didn’t diverge far enough from the original films. The story of Anakin parallels that of Luke Skywalker a little too closely. The mythic background of the Clone Wars, set up by the original trilogy, loses something by being broken down into a rather mundane political crisis and armed conflict. There are loose plot threads everywhere — and I can’t even buy a DVD with Han shooting first.

It’s frustrating.

At the end of the day, the prequel trilogy was very successful. It spawned a whole raft of new tie-in novels, television shows, and video games, many of which are excellent (Star Wars: Republic Commando remains one of my favorite Star Wars experiences of all-time). It gave the writers of the Expanded Universe a new playground to work in, and they worked hard, doing their level best to re-imagine a Galaxy Far Far Away in the light of Lucas’ new vision. The heroic effort to tie everything together seamlessly is admirable.

But it’s a patch job that was necessary only because of the poor choices that led up to the prequels and the slap-dash nature of the scripts for the prequel films — scripts that more or less ignored the events of the original trilogy and just assumed that no one would question the details.

In conclusion, just as the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot is a fine science fiction movie but a terrible Star Trek film, the Star Wars prequel trilogy is a perfectly serviceable space opera — and a terrible Star Wars film, at least according to my entirely subjective criteria. And that’s a tragedy, because with all of the technical know-how and special effects wizardry that Lucas had at his fingertips, there is no reason he couldn’t have taken the effort to go back to the original trilogy and bring it in line with his new vision. Sure, we would have bitched about that, too, but at least the loose ends would have been tied up and the story would be complete.

At least, from a certain point of view.

Clone Wars: Restoring magic lost in prequels

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Cartoon Network)
Where to binge: All six seasons available on Netflix; Season 1 through 5 on Amazon Prime

I went to see Return of the Jedi with my father when it was released in 1983. I owned the original Star Wars trilogy on video cassette. I read Star Wars novels. I owned the Star Wars role-playing game (the one published by West End Games in 1997, not the D20 knockoffs that followed).

The epic, three-part saga about the the rescue of a princess, the return of the last Jedi Knight, the defeat of an Empire, and the destruction of a space station so large it was mistaken for a moon shaped how I looked at stories. I have come back to Star Wars throughout the years, reconnecting with Luke and Leia and Han.

In short, I love Star Wars.

And, as might be obvious from my curriculum vitae above, I dislike the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Most of the fans in my age bracket (i.e. way past 20 years old) were disappointed in the prequels. We felt that George Lucas had traded in heartfelt mythological storytelling for green-screen effects, wooden dialogue, and a confusing, directionless story. Sure, the music was great, and the lightsaber duels were amazing, but Lucas had gone CGI mad, remastering the originals and changing them to paper over continuity lapses between the new films and the old.

And I didn’t like it.

I did, however, like Genndy Tartakovsky, of Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory fame. He did a tie-in cartoon, called Star Wars: Clone Wars, that covered the years between the second and third movie episodes. It was a fun, exciting, heartfelt romp through epic Star Wars action. The show was hand-drawn, stylistically very similar to Samurai Jack (which I loved) and, hey, it was Star Wars, so that was a plus.

In 2008, LucasFilm Animation built upon the foundation laid by Tartakovsky with their own series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I avoided it at the time but kept hearing solid recommendations from people I trusted. When Netflix started to stream the entire run of the show, as well as the previously unaired Lost Missions, it was enough to convince me to watch it.

And, boy, was I glad I did.

The Clone Wars is a computer-animated show that follows Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in their roles as Generals of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars. It has a large cast of well-developed recurring characters, both old and new. The show splits its focus between military action and political manipulation, as it sets up the long, slow fall of the Republic into the grip of the tyrannical Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and his servant and apprentice, Count Dooku.

The Clone Wars tackles the events that take place between Episodes II and III and fleshes out the Clone Wars, the Clone Troopers who fight for the Republic, and the Separatist forces they fight against. Each season is comprised of several long arcs, and each arc builds cleanly upon the last.

Like all good sci-fi, The Clone Wars lets us look at our own world and its issues in a different light. Though there are a lot of space battles and Jedi duels (and the show doesn’t pull any punches on the violence front: named characters are killed on-screen so often I found myself wondering how they managed to show this on Cartoon Network), the real standout aspect of the show for me was its portrayal of the politics of the Republic. The major plot devices were usually things like negotiating treaties, securing bank loans to purchase more troops, and passing laws to deregulate industries. By taking this tack, the show fills in the sizable plotholes in the prequel films, as well as giving it a topical, relevant feeling.

While there are a great many things that the show does well, the most fascinating thing for me was how it handled the Clone Troopers. Instead of the faceless legions depicted in the films, the Clone Troopers are shown as brave and determined, excellent soldiers who are loyal to their cause and to each other. They are all given distinct personalities, and the viewer comes to admire and respect them. They are used to tell stories about what it means to be human, what it means to fight for what you believe in, and how far you are willing to go for a friend.

Despite all the things The Clone Wars does right, it’s not a perfect show. Like the prequel films, many episodes are bogged down by stilted storytelling and hampered by the writers assuming the audience knows things they might not know. There are a few throwaway episodes that were either too weird or too silly to feel like they belonged among the rest. It takes about one full season to really pick up steam, and I don’t think it found its voice until season 3. But once it finds that voice, it is often brilliant. And when it is brilliant, I was very willing to forgive its failings because of how strongly the writer’s love of the franchise shines through the material.

There are six seasons, for a total of well over 100 episodes, so the show covers far more ground than I can hope to address in one review. It is ambitious in its scope, though it sometimes falls victim to that ambition.

But The Clone Wars does something that I didn’t think it could do. It made Star Wars awesome again, and not just the old Star Wars I knew and loved as a boy. It fleshed out the narrative framework of the prequel films in exciting and challenging ways. It brought mysticism back to the Force and heroism back to the Jedi. It makes you fall in love with the Star Wars world and the characters again, and as a fan, thats the strongest praise I can bestow on anything.

Watch it while it’s still streaming on Netflix. It might just make you a fan again, too.

What you bring and what you surrender

It was the Big Day. My friend and I had called the dōjō, spoken to the sensei, made an appointment to watch a class. We had been sent a package of information, giving specific instructions as to what was expected of us. We were dressed for a job interview — or at least the college-kid version of dressing for a job interview. We found the building and walked up to the second floor.

Stepping into the dōjō felt like stepping into another world. You could feel that the rules were different here. Sensei introduced himself. We sat and watched class. Once the class ended, Sensei began the interview.

Over the intervening years, I have listened to Sensei interview dozens of potential members of the dōjō; I have even done it myself on occasion. Though the questions asked vary somewhat, there is one we always pose. I remember being asked it myself, all those years ago.

His demeanor serious, Sensei locked his gaze onto mine: “Why do you want to do this?”

I am sure I babbled a bit, trying to justify my existence to this man, trying to convince him that allowing me to train would benefit his dōjō and the arts he studied. I knew as soon as I started watching the class that I wanted to join. I knew I would do anything to be given the opportunity to train. I remember struggling to say something that would prove to this man that I was worthy.

Sensei allowed us to join, though I am certain it was our obvious enthusiasm rather than our verbal dexterity that convinced him.

***

Forging a katana is a very work-intensive process. Japan is a mineral-poor land. Unlike Europe, where iron can be mined from the earth, the Japanese had to use iron found in sand. These iron sands would be refined into tamahagane, the steel from which swords are forged.

The form and artistry of the katana results from the necessity of refining poor quality metals into strong, flexible steel. The tamahagane is heated, hammered, folded, over and over, to refine it. Every step of the forging process is designed to maximize the potential of the materials by removing everything that is unnecessary. Along the way, an object of great beauty is formed.

***

The dōjō is like a forge. The traditional martial arts are predicated on the idea that the practitioner changes for the art. The art doesn’t change. In the dōjō, with the Ryū as the anvil and the art as the hammer, we are forged into something stronger.

Budō should enrich life. It shouldn’t replace it. While the study of budō is a transformative experience, the goal is to refine the self, becoming more capable, more driven, more focused. Like the iron sands that become tamahagane, you already contain everything that is required to be transformed.

I have written before about how there is no moral aspect to the mastery of martial arts. In fact, the ideal warrior is one who is at odds with society. Society teaches us from a young age not to yell and not to hit. The warrior learns to disable their societal programming, so they can deploy violence as appropriate.

If you sacrifice the fundamental aspects of your personality on the altar of budō, you run the risk of being consumed by this aspect of martial study. Budō is the study of power and its applications. Power is addictive. Applying your abilities against another person is physically pleasurable, in the same way that winning a foot race, sinking a three-point shot, or scoring the game-winning touchdown can be pleasurable.

And yet, training in budō requires sacrifice. The budoka must maintain shoshin (the beginner’s mind) and nyunanshin (pliable mind). The dōjō is not a place for individuals. This is a difficult concept for Westerners. Our culture tells us that our individuality is sacrosanct and inviolate. But the process of refinement requires heat and pressure. Submission to the demands of the budō provides that heat and pressure. Dedicated, consistent practice is the hammer that shapes the student of budō.

One of the reasons I have stayed on the path I chose those many years ago is that, when I look at my teacher and my seniors, I see what they have gained by submitting to the demands of the Ryū. They are focused, determined, powerful, intense, and disciplined. They can lead, and they can follow orders. They act without hesitation, often without concern for their own needs. They put the good of the group ahead of the good of the individual. When they are seated in the same room, it is obvious to even a casual observer that they are cut from the same cloth.

And yet they are all very different men, with their own deeply held beliefs. They have full and complete lives — careers they excel at and families they care for. They have sacrificed, and in doing so they have become more than they were.

Submission to the demands of the group and to the external standard of the Ryū is a core martial value. You model the behavior of your seniors. When you are given an order, you follow it. It is a conscious choice to give up your individuality in order to serve something larger than you, and to become something more than you were.

This is yet another of the many contradictions of budō: omote and ura, the obvious and the hidden. Through submission, one finds strength.

***

Forging a sword is a process with a beginning and ending, but forging the practitioner of budō is an endless struggle. As we pass through the world, we acquire impurities — distractions that keep us away from the dōjō, obstacles thrown up by work and life, the siren song of leisure activities. The budoka make the difficult choice to submit, to continue refining both technique and spirit through diligent practice. Perfection is unattainable, but striving for perfection is transformative. It is a process that only ends when the practitioner leaves the budō.

I am all too aware of my own failings. I return to the dōjō, to forge myself anew once again.

A duty to fight shadows, refine self, lead others

“When you started, we didn’t think you’d keep training,” my sempai told me.

I asked him what he meant.

“We just didn’t think you’d make it. You didn’t seem cut out for it.”

When I began training in martial arts, I was a college sophomore. Academics had come fairly easy to me, and so I had never learned to work hard. Near-sighted and bespectacled, I had never been very physical.

Seventeen years later, I have no answer as to why I am still training. If pressed, I would say it is because it has never been easy. It forces me to struggle every day.

There are two characteristics that are essential to the pursuit of budo, or martial arts training: a bullheaded stubbornness, and nyunanshin. Nyunanshin, “pliable mind” or “malleable spirit,” allows a person to continue to force himself to change, to empty his cup each and every day. It forces the budoka never to cease the quest for self-improvement, to view his study not as a destination to be reached, but as a journey to be taken.

It is necessary to cultivate this flexible, malleable mind, lest it harden.

Jungian psychology deals extensively with the shadow-self, the aspects of our psyche of which we are unaware, that we suppress. According to Jung, we encounter the personifications of these shadow-selves in dreams and visions. Though the shadow is not uniformly negative, Jung did say that “the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” When we meet our shadow self, we meet a dark reflection of our own positive aspects, and we must choose: either continue to live in ignorance of the things that influence us, or confront the shadow.

Wrestling with the shadow illuminates parts of ourselves that we are ignorant of. The process is unpleasant and uncomfortable. Marie-Louise von Franz, who worked alongside Carl Jung, said in her work Process: “If and when an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions.” It is, she continues, “…[a] painful and lengthy work of self-education.”

Joining a dojo is like becoming a member of a family; you inherit a teacher to guide you on the path and brothers and sisters who will support you, push you, challenge you. When you begin to lose your pliable mind, more senior students are there to set you back on the correct path. When it comes time to fight your shadows, they will stand beside you.

As one grows ever more senior, training becomes an ever more solitary effort. The work is something you must do on your own. You don’t spend as much time with those who are your seniors. It becomes easy to presume you are in the right, both in your training and your life.

Seniors are seen by their juniors as examples, models to follow. This is the challenge of all people in positions of teaching authority: those they teach will look to emulate them.

Despite the many portrayals of wise masters of martial arts in the media, the raw fact is that mastery of budo is exactly that: mastery of budo. Nothing more. There is no inherent morality to a proper sword cut. This lack of morality complicates the task of being a responsible senior, because it is inevitable that juniors will emulate their seniors’ behaviors, both for good and for ill. The onus, therefore, is on seniors to strive to be excellent examples in all areas of life.

There is a saying in my martial tradition: “My sensei didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” It was not until recently, when I found myself confronting a dark aspect of my own personality, that the ramifications of this saying became evident to me.

I owe a debt to the ryu to be the best example that I can be. This is how I honor those who have come before me and strengthen those who will carry on after I am gone. Over the years, I have observed my seniors, and my sensei, and seen that they are men of discipline in mind, body, and attitude. They are thoughtful men who speak only after deliberation and consideration.

When I look at myself, I find the difference between my reality and my aspiration is far greater than I had hoped. There are aspects of my own personality that I am unaware of, and that I must confront, understand, and acknowledge. I have become rigid in my thinking, and my nyuanshin needs to be strengthened.

Obviously, it is not wrong to support a belief or a position. Nor should one change his or her opinion simply to fit in. But it is dangerous to avoid looking into the “why” behind one’s beliefs and opinions. Ignorance of your motivations is a weakness, and a warrior cannot allow himself the luxury of deliberate ignorance of his own mind. The enemy we face most often is not external; it is ourselves that we must fight and overcome every day. It is through awareness of our dark side and willingness to confront it and change our actions that we prove to be worthy exemplars.

There is no excuse for leading those who look to you astray. They are the future, and we must be worthy of them.

I sat down today to capture moments in my training for posterity. Instead, I find a reminder of how far I still have to go before I am worthy of my ryu and of the respect of my fellow travelers along this difficult path that is budo. There is no excuse for my actions and no apology that will take back words already spoken. The only path forward is to own my choices, strive to be better, and leave these thoughts as a guide for those who follow after me.

The road is hard.

I sit in a quiet space, and do battle with my own shadows.

Our Pale Blue Dot, floating in the Cosmos

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The year was 1990. Nelson Mandela was released from prison. East and West Germany reunified. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The Human Genome Project began. The United States engaged in Operation Desert Shield, in what would become the opening moves of the first Gulf War. Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server, which would become the foundation for the Internet when it was released to the public in 1991. Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister of England after serving in that capacity for 11 years. The Warsaw Pact began to collapse as Poland became the first of its member states to withdraw from that treaty and abolish its state socialist economy. The Channel Tunnel was completed. The Cold War ground to a halt.

And nearly four billion miles away from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe turned its eye back toward home for the last time to take a series of pictures that would be known as the Family Portrait. It captured a shot of Earth, caught in a shaft of light — a single blue pixel hanging in the great vast blackness of eternity.

Voyager 1 was launched September 5, 1977. It completed its primary mission in November 1980, having taken detailed pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their respective moons. It will continue operations until sometime in the year 2025, at which point the probe’s generators will no longer be able to power its sensors and transmitters, and it will continue eternally onward, a lonely traveler far from home. At the time of this writing, Voyager 1 has been in operation for 36 years, 6 months, and 3 days.

Voyager 1 and its sister probe, Voyager 2, each carries a golden record in the hope it encounters an advanced civilization. The record, an audio-visual disc, contains, among other things, images of the Solar System, human DNA, and the music of Beethoven, Mozart, and Chuck Berry. The golden record is more a time capsule than a serious attempt to communicate with another civilization.

Carl Sagan, the cosmologist and author who pushed for the inclusion of the golden record on the Voyager probes, said, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

Sagan was involved with assembling the contents of the golden record. He had been a researcher and a science advocate for many years, working on the cutting edge of the science of space exploration. Sagan had been instrumental in the discovery of Venus’ high surface temperatures. He hypothesized about the oceans of liquid gases on Saturn’s moon Titan. He was a member of the SETI Institute board of trustees, guiding its mission to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sagan’s most well-known contribution to science is the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which premiered on PBS in 1980 and remained the most highly watched series on public television until the broadcast of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War in 1990, the same year Voyager would take its famous photograph. Sagan released a book, also titled Cosmos, at the same time as the television series, and it became the best selling science book ever published in the English language.

The Cosmos television series will be rebooted this Sunday. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey will be presented by today’s most popular astronomer, Neil deGrasse Tyson; the executive producers are Seth MacFarlane and Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan.

As the Voyager 1 probe reached the edge of the Solar System in 1990, Sagan managed to convince NASA to turn the probe’s cameras back toward the Earth. The narrow-angle camera that Voyager carried was far better suited to this sort of distance photography than the wide-angle camera’s the Mariner probes had carried. The photographs of the first six planets in the Solar System would be the last pictures Voyager 1 would take.

In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan would eloquently describe this picture of Earth, distant and alone. He would speak from his perspective as an early activist about the dangers of climate change, as a man who spent a sizable portion of his career struggling against anthropocentrism, and as a survivor of the Cold War, a time when the possibility of mutually assured destruction in a hail of nuclear fire was no further away than a single moment of irrational international saber-rattling.

Sagan’s words are powerful. (Read Sagan’s full reflection; listen to Sagan read it in full; view the image in full) He speaks of the reality that there is as yet no other world that we know of that can harbor human life. He reminds us that we have been engaged in our many internecine struggles over possession of a section of a tiny mote of dust.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Sagan speaks to the ties within humanity. We are alone in this universe, and yet we throw ourselves at each other in bloody conflict over minutiae of ideology and nearly indistinguishable differences in genetics. Sagan reminds us there is no help coming from elsewhere: if we are to survive as a people, as a species, we must look to each other for the answers.

Today, the world is a very different place than it was in 1990. With the end of the Cold War, the specter of nuclear apocalypse has largely disappeared. The Internet has created a world that is more interconnected than we had imagined possible. We have created an International Space Station that might become the staging area for future explorations of the Solar System and beyond. Computer technology has become far more compact and powerful than once thought possible. The world we live in today is, in many ways, the future predicted in the dreams of science fiction.

Despite the progress we as a species have made, we must regretfully acknowledge that Sagan’s words still ring true.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

In the United States, political acrimony and partisanship have deadlocked the government. Africa and the Middle East remain hotbeds of ethnic and religious tensions, where being a member of the wrong tribe or worshipping the wrong god can lead to death at the hands of one’s neighbors. Venezuela and Ukraine are wracked by violent protests, and the ghost of the Soviet Union and Cold War imperialism stalk Crimea. The reality that we live in a post-9/11 world hits us every time we go to an airport, apply for a loan, or open a bank account.

We face the challenges of global climate change and its potentially devastating effects on our ability to produce food and have access to clean drinking water. Increasing denialism about the validity of scientific research has created a society ever more ignorant of the way the world around them works, leaving questions about how to handle genetically modified crops, vaccinations, and medical ethics in the hands of people willing to consider unrefuted scientific evidence as nothing more than an opinion.

While we may have made many amazing advancements, our future as a species is inexorably tied to the same realization that Sagan had when he spoke of the Pale Blue Dot. We feel that we are important, enthroned among our achievements. We need to be reminded on occasion of how big the universe is, and of how small a piece of it we have managed to master. When we look at the last picture Voyager 1 took of its home before turning its electronic eyes outward, toward the vast and unknowable distances between the stars, we should remember the words of Carl Sagan:

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Spirit fills room, students in Japanese martial arts

Traditional Japanese martial arts training takes place in a space that is set apart from the work-a-day world in many ways. In the dojo, there is a strange time dilation, like an adrenaline dump, that stretches the smallest moments out into impossibly long events. There is an informational density that is hard to explain to the uninitiated. Body, mind, spirit, history, and technique layer endlessly, one atop the other, stratifications of tradition and knowledge and intense physical activity. It is a transformative process.

I am often asked how martial arts has shaped my life. I can’t answer that question. My life is ongoing, my training is ongoing. The man I am today and the man I have been along the timeline of my life are only part of a narrative if I force one onto it. Real life is not a story.

The room is quiet. The mat spreads out before me, glowing in the last light of day that comes through the single window. The high ceiling is lost to shadow, metal rafters just visible through the gloom. It is a spare, uncluttered space. The few things hanging on the walls accentuate the emptiness, the blank space. The wall on the far side of the mat is covered with racks. Bright, colorful bags protect the live steel swords, the katana, that are prominently placed above the rows of the wooden bokken, aligned in precise, identical fashion. There is the sense that everything is in its place, and that there is no other place it could be.

It is the same room it has been for my 17 years of training, though it is not in the same space it was in 1997, when I climbed to the second floor of an office building in Camp Hill, Pa., for my first lesson. The space has moved, but it has not changed.

High on the front wall, right below the shadow line, is the shrine: the kamidana. My eye is drawn to it, the same as it always is, and to the banner above: bold kanji spelling out the name of the dojo. My body snaps to attention, a subconscious reaction, as I turn to face the kamiza and bow, back straight, hands sliding down the seams of my trousers, an action that I seek to make as precise and correct as I can every time. Every time it falls short of the ideal.

The room is quiet, still, ready for the students to arrive, to fill it with the noise of practice, of bodies slapping onto the mat, the war-eagle shriek of kiai, the distinct shuffling-sliding noise of feet gliding across the mat. It is patient, existing in a space both physically and spiritually different from the outside world. It is a room with its own rules and demands, and it brooks no deviation.

It is still and quiet and ready. But it is not empty.

It is never empty.

There are spirits here.

“Remember,” Sensei said, “people died for this.”

We stood, sweat-soaked, in a circle on the mat. Our wooden swords hung at our sides, hilts stained with the sweat of hours and days and years of practice. We were studying a classical system of swordsmanship, with an unbroken history hundreds of years long. The swords were heavy, the techniques subtle and powerful. Sensei had decades of practice under his belt, and was skilled and fast and strong. Working with him and with his senior students was an intense experience. Knuckles got busted. Heads got smacked. In the heat of the clash, minute mistakes in technique would be exploited.

In short, it was a demanding practice session, as all sessions with this Sensei were.

“People died for this,” he said.

Formalized swordsmanship emerged from combat. The winners would return home, and share the tricks and techniques that they had discovered and with which they credited their survival. If those techniques and tricks continued to work, they would be further refined. Successful schools were founded by men whose hands were bloody with victories.

The techniques we have today, the arts we practice, are built on the foundations of the defeated. We show up at the dojo and put on our uniforms and have a blast training for a few hours, but the fact remains that what we do is based on the skills of war and grounded in the deaths of those long-forgotten vanquished foes, the ones whose techniques and tricks were not quite good enough.

The Japanese are a complex people, with a language that can be exactingly technical and beautifully poetic, often at the same time. They talk about the meaning and the “meaning behind the meaning.” Ura and omote. Front and back.

Four times a week, I walk into a room that exists because people took the time to study the arts I love and to pass them on. People spent the currency of life: money, time, moments with family, friends, and loved ones. They sacrificed for us. I can name two men without whom the dojo would have folded, both deceased within my lifetime. I can name several others who have passed through on the journey of their lives, enriching all of us in the process. Kami is alive, and it retains some of everyone who passes through the dojo.

I am a lapsed Christian at best, and a man who feels that spirituality outside of religion is a pretentious concept. I am not superstitious. And yet when I speak of spirits and kami, it is as real as air, as water, as food. And as vital. Paradox and dichotomy. The budo are full of these contradictions.

When I walk into the dojo, these are the spirits that are waiting for me. The honored dead. They demand that I be worthy of them.

Someday, if I am strong enough, if I stay the course, my name will be counted among those who died for this.