September 2019 – The Memory Issue

Welcome to September's Shinbun, the Memory Issue

Since I am now the proud caretaker of Soke’s trove of old Shinbuns, I have been taking frequent strolls down memory lane, and it has been very interesting. Like many other experiences I’ve had with Tsugiashi-Do, my memory has played many tricks on me. This is especially apparent as I work with our Kent Island, Maryland Sandan candidates and our Bayville, NJ Nidan candidates. So this month we’re going to reflect on Memory.

As always, please send pictures, pieces, ideas for pieces, stories, and upcoming events. I'll get them posted and sent out with the next newsletter.

Yours in Budo,
-Sensei Scot Lynch
Yondan, Tsugiashi-Do

Sunday, November 10th at 12:00 Noon.

Kent Island Martial Arts Center (thanks to the grace and hospitality of Sensei Tom Fox)
222 Shopping Center Rd, Stevensville, MD 21666

Kevin McKinney and Joel Berger will be demonstrating the Tsugiashi-do Sandan series.

Nancy Guerriero and Brian Guerriero will be demonstrating the Tsugiashi-do Nidan series.

I have been training with them and I can attest that they are looking good and THEY ARE READY!

Click for a full view.

Twenty years ago this month, Soke started his Shinbun with a review of “Ju-Jitsu Kata Sotai Renshu” and I cannot recommend these points highly enough. It is never too late to review great advice. I will be reading this out loud to the next class I attend.

There is also a classic Soke cartoon of Soke speaking with an injured student on crutches that looks suspiciously like me.

Thank you Sensei!

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman writes about the “remembering self” versus the “experiencing self” and how the intensity or negativity/positivity of the experience influences, later, how the “remembering self” stores the memory.

In The Organized Mind, Daniel Levitin writes with more specificity of our memory shortcomings:

Perhaps the biggest problem with human memory is that we don’t always know when we’re recalling things inaccurately. Many times, we have a strong feeling of certainty that accompanies an incorrect, distorted memory. This faulty confidence is widespread, and difficult to extinguish. The relevance to organizational systems is that the more we can externalize memory through physical records out-there-in-the-world, the less we must rely on our overconfident, underprecise memory.

This reminds me of the first time I went to the Hakko Ryu Hombu Dojo in Omiya Japan (now called “Saitama City”). I had finally made it. I asked permission to enter, then asked permission to get changed, then asked permission to rey on the mat (old school tatami), and there I was, seiza with a Japanese Shihan. As we began, he turned to his left, and looked at a wall filled with hanging shingles with Japanese symbols on them. These shingles were the actual moves. I was stunned to find out that in the most advanced Hakko Ryu school in the world, no one memorized anything.

My great friend, Sensei Mike Wilson, and I share a story: We both remember vividly where Soke first “gave us” Mochi Mawari (the foundational Sandan technique that the series is built on). He was given it at my wedding reception in July of 2000. There was a deck outside the reception area where the smokers congregated. Mickey went out to smoke, Doc went out to be with Mickey, and everyone else at “the Dojo table” went out to be with Doc. My father also hung with the guys, quipping “I figure….if a fight breaks out, I want to be out here with you guys!” It was on this deck, on that afternoon, at the Plumbush Inn, in Garrison, NY, in July of 2000, that Sensei Mike Wilson first “received” Mochi Mawari. He remembers it as it was yesterday.

But memory can be a tricky affair.

My turn was a few years later. I had promoted my first two yellow belts, and Doc travelled to Stamford to look them (and me) over. And since Doc can’t travel anywhere and NOT do a seminar, we held a seminar the next day at Shodai Sensei Faustini’s dojo, and we had a party at my home afterward. During the hustle and the bustle of the party, Doc took me aside, and we went to a side room where it was quiet. It was my turn, and Soke Sensie “gave me” Mochi Mawari. Like Mike, I remember it like it was yesterday. I remembered the exact room we were in. Or did I?

Years later, I recounted the story to a group during a Dojo event. Soke had a tremendously amused smile on his face as I retold it. He took me aside and said that were we were actually in my kitchen, and we were surrounded by people. My “remembering self” and my “experiencing self” clearly needed reintroducing.

And so I sit here, staring at the two three-ring binders open on my table (I just scanned a page out of one of them, it is open), I am surmising that somehow he anticipated this. My sensei is not watching me practice any longer, and so he has left me (and us) with a library of things we need to be reminded of. Corny cartoons we need to help us take ourselves less seriously. And the myriad of details we need to help us fill in the gaps between our standing wazas and our kneeling wazas, because there is so much more we need to remember, and we cannot rely on our memories.

And that’s the onions of risk.

July 2, 2000, Garrison, NJ

Senseis from left to right: Keith Wittenberg, Soke Sensei Doc Cohe, your humble servant on his wedding day, Mike Wilson, Mickey Bradle. This was within hours of Sensei Mike Wilson “receiving” Mochi Mawari.