Winning without hands

By SKIP MENDLER

In the samurai scheme of things, apparently, there were four ways that one could respond to an attack.

The first was simple and straightforward: someone attacks you, you kill him.

But if someone attacks you, and you repulse the attack without killing the attacker—well, that was seen as more honorable, indicative of greater spiritual development then simple retaliation.

And there was yet another, higher, even more honorable standard, where not only do you not kill the attacker, but the attacker actually walks away from the encounter a better person, spiritually improved. Transformed, if you will—maybe even changed from an enemy to a friend. To be able to do this was a sign of the greatest spiritual development.

It’s somewhat difficult for us to get our minds around this idea. Fortunately, there’s a story from Japanese folklore that illustrates it quite well. (I found this story, “Winning Without Hands,” in the Pittsburgh library a few years ago, in a privately-printed book called “Tales from the Japanese Storytellers,” but there are other versions around. I’ll condense it a bit here.)

There once was a samurai named Tsukahara Bokuden, who lived from 1489 to 1571, and was one of the finest swordsmen of his time. In this story, he was traveling, between gigs as it were, and crossing Lake Biwa on a barge along with a number of peasants, merchants, priests—and one other samurai, a young, aggressive braggart. This fellow was from a wealthy family, as you could tell by the quality of his robes, and the fine workmanship of his weapons.

It happened that the barge hit a swell, and one of the peasants stumbled, bumping into the scabbard of the young samurai’s longsword. He, taking offense, grabbed the hapless peasant by the collar and threw him to the deck. He might have eviscerated the man then and there, had not Bokuden interrupted him. Words were exchanged, and the young samurai, declaring himself “a master of that school called Invincible,” challenged Bokuden.

“As for myself,” said Bokuden, “I am but a deficient student of a little-known school called Winning Without Hands. But I will accept your challenge—only not here on this barge, there’s no room to move properly. Let us wait till we reach the shore.”

But the youngster was eager to have it out. Bokuden spotted a small, narrow sandbar in the middle of the lake, and directed the bargemen to guide the barge to it. As the barge scraped up onto the pebbly outcropping, the young samurai leapt from the boat and bade Bokuden to follow. Bokuden picked up one of the barge poles, as though he were going to vault onto the island—but instead, simply pushed the craft back into the water, stranding his would be opponent, who could do nothing in response but howl curses at him.

“Now you see,” said Bokuden. “As I said, I am of the school called Winning Without Hands. To best someone like you, I don’t even need to draw my blade.”

And so this story was spread, bearing witness to a key tenet of the Warrior Way, which is called “Bushido,” coincidentally enough, that “the greatest victories are won without putting hand to hilt.”

Oh, and by the way—I said before there were four responses to attack, right? The fourth is the least honorable of them all, the most cowardly, the least moral, the least spiritually developed.

And that one is: find the enemy before he attacks you, and kill him first. Preemption.

Curious, isn’t it?