Praying Mantis Kung Fu

After my adventure in Nanking-machi, I am faced again with the difficulty of finding somebody on an unknown train station platform without a mobile phone. Not having my phone, I don’t even have the number I’d have to call to find out. But I remember the memorable mobile e-mail address and ask Manager to lend me her phone. That way, walking in search of a cinema where she will savour her free Sunday afternoon watching “Dororo”, I get the number and, as I will be late, ask for directions to the actual training grounds, so I can find them by myself without making anybody else late.

I see off Manager to the cinema and take the JR circle line to Osaka-jō-kōen, the giant park around Osaka Castle. From the station, the castle is nowhere to be seen. A few stalls selling yakisoba and takoyaki frame the broad path when I leave the station. Crowds of people are enjoying the overcast but spring-like weather in Osaka-jō-kōen this late February afternoon. I heard there were plum blossoms, which bloom in February before the cherry blossoms unfold their seductive pink petals, but I cannot find any on my little dander in search of praying-mantises.

Get out at the only exit, follow the road on the left, and stop when you see a group of people practising kung fu in the park. When you reach the Kyudojo, you’ve gone too far.

It is indeed the Kyudojo that prompts me to walk back and finally spot some martial movements behind a secretive constellation of skinny trees. No more than three people, two foreigners and the Japanese teacher, are practising in a hidden little patch of park, and yet it is immediately obvious that they are praying mantises. This is how you recognise them: they wear comfortable Sunday afternoon clothes, they bend and batter their bodies into long, low strides interspersed with cat stances and twisted squatting positions; their hands change shape swiftly from round fists across flat tiger paws and back to the eating mantis claws that are their own, index fingers touching the thumbs, and the rest of the fingers rolled up.

Respectfully and quietly, I approach the group. “Is this the one you were talking about?” Sensei wordlessly asks B-san who has kindly told me about this training ground. “Yes,” B-san replies wordlessly, and Sensei, a small, smiling man with glasses, starts doing something new for me, and I try to join in. We practise a kata that starts with a fourty-five degrees sideways leg movement into a cat stance. Sensei picks up a stick and draws the angle in the sandy ground for us. B-san, an extremely dedicated Canadian martial artist, already knows the kata, and the second student has done kung-fu before, so knows a lot, but still has more to learn than B-san, or so it seems, as Sensei repeatedly asks B-san to watch his movements and correct them. He does the same for me, as I still have to learn everything. I enjoy the multitude of different movements, which are called “dōsa” in this branch of martial arts, as Sensei tells me when I ignorantly use the term “waza” that we use in karate and aikido. To clarify the meaning of a particular dōsa for us, he picks up a stick and writes the kanji in the sand. This is the name of the kick. Sensei’s kanji are very complicated, and I wonder whether any of us can be fertile ground for his valuable teachings scratched into the ground. Listening to his explanations, and recognising the first kanji, however, I can integrate some of this into my dōsa. The first kanji means bullet. And a variety

of other things including “spring off” and “be generous”. Sensei emphasises that it contains the kanji for “arrow” on the left. The kanji on the right means leg, he says. When I look it up later, I learn that it usually spells “thigh”. So your leg becomes an arrow when you kick.

“Pew!” sings Sensei in a rubber-like high-pitched voice, turning temporarily into a plucked shamisen string, and kicks with a springy action that makes lower leg snap forward as soon as the thigh is pointing the right way.

We do lines of kicks and punches, kicking and punching with opposite hands and legs, fists upright, palms facing inside. We always finish pulling our invisible opponent towards ourselves with one hand that takes his arm hostage from the outside, locking his elbow, and then rising through underneath his armpit with the other arm so one arm finishes pointing up, the other pulled back. We stand on one leg like a crane, now ready to move to the other side again with another row of arrow legs, or dog-handed cat-stances, or one of the other ten zillion dōsa I have yet to remember and practise.

Moving back and forth in easy-to-remember basics, however, is not the praying mantis way. There are complicated kata and combinations that will take a while to settle in my mind and body. But I can’t wait for the settling and flowing to start.

Finally, we practise tsurugi. This is a light Chinese sword with a wobbly pointed blade, sharp on both sides. It is never only the sword hand that moves. The other hand elegantly pointing with index and middle finger while the other fingers touch in the middle, moves along, drawing graceful curves in the air that aid the thrusting and cutting of the tsurugi.

Again, B-san knows the kata, and helps us learn it along with Sensei’s explanations.

Gradually, however, it is getting dark in the park, and we have to finish. “Sensei always stays till it gets dark,” B-san tells me. Also, Sensei doesn’t ask for money. “Not until you’re sure you want to do it,” he says. “I just want people to get good. That’s the most important thing.” When you really want to do it. May. When it gets warmer. Then it will be 3000 Yen a month. Nothing compared to this new world I am let into. Sensei is light and smiley. Sometimes he forgets the next move while explaining something and has to start a few movements ahead to recall it. He makes the impression of a slightly scatterbrained professor who is wise beyond caring, happy, and extremely forthcoming and friendly.

After the darkness closes our session, he hands out soft, delicious anpan, and little candy-shaped chocolates to everyone. B-san gives us chewy candy he has brought back from a recent trip to New Zealand. I feel bad that I can’t contribute to this picnic and resolve to bring something next time. B-san cycles into the night, and Sensei, Second Student and I walk up to the Hankyu line station. Sensei has to take the same train as me. He has his own dojo, too, he tells me. Sometimes, to get better, they go on trips to China and learn from Chinese teachers. When I tell him I would like to have his kanji lessons written on paper, so I can study them, he hands me eight A4 pages tightly packed with Chinese characters and smiles broadly. “There you go. Now you have something to study. I thank him. Finally, he has to get off the train, and I have to stay on it. “Come again,” he says with a slightly bowing semi-wave and disappears into the crowd on the platform. Yes, I will.