FEATURED AUTHOR
RICHARD W. BABIN

Born in San Francisco at the beginning of World War II, Richard Babin was the only son of a journeyman wooden-boat builder and his artistic wife. One grandfather was a carpenter, the other a cabinet maker and wood-carver. Early and extensive experience with maintaining and using woodworking cutting tools undoubtedly influenced his later vocational and martial arts choices.

His parents had great respect for Asian cultures and had many Chinese and Japanese friends. His mother studied classical Chinese painting from a distinguished artist in Chinatown, and their home was full of her work. The anti-Japanese sentiment from the war was still intense on the West Coast during the 1950s, and Babin had difficulty reconciling that with the Japanese-Americans he encountered daily. The families of many of his Japanese school friends had been interned in relocation camps during the war, and he was very familiar with, and ashamed of, the losses—financial and emotional—that they suffered.

After getting an undergraduate degree from the University of the Pacific, Babin attended UCLA College of Medicine, earning his MD degree in 1969. He found the concept of helping patients through technically challenging surgical procedures particularly appealing because it was a chance to use his extensive experience with tools and his well-developed hand-eye coordination. He continued on at UCLA, serving first as a surgical intern and resident and finally specializing in head and neck surgery. Following the completion of his studies, he joined the U.S. Air Force, where he served as the head of the eye, nose, and throat department at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

After his stint in the Air Force, Babin chose a career as an educator and joined the faculty of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Iowa, College of Medicine. There he taught residents surgery, did basic vestibular research on animals, and treated patients, first as an assistant and then an associate professor.

After seven years, he moved to Memphis to serve as professor and chairman of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery of the University of Tennessee. While there, he joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and was commissioned on the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy. Over the years he did annual training on the USS Iwo Jima, participated in an amphibious landing in the Philippines, and trained in desert warfare at Twenty-Nine Palms with the Marine Forces Reserve. He also served as a surgeon at Yokosuka, Japan, for five weeks and eventually rose to the rank of captain and served as executive officer of a 500-bed fleet hospital. After 15 years, he resigned his commission, left academics, and opened a private practice in rural northwestern Tennessee. He closed that office last year and currently serves as an emergency physician at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Lauderdale County, Tennessee.

When he relocated to Memphis from Iowa, Babin began to study Yang-style tai chi chuan as a form of exercise. That rekindled an interest in Asian martial arts that had begun with judo in 1958 but had remained dormant during his academic career. Through his sifu, Milan Vigil, Babin became acquainted with the instructors of the various arts practiced in the community: in particular, Sensei Harry Dach, a retired Marine who had gained his godan in iaido in Japan. Babin found iaido an extremely satisfying and expressive art and is now in his 12th year of study with Sensei Dach. This study stimulated a strong interest in Japanese sword esthetics and mechanics and Japanese military history. An increasingly large sword collection and a growing number of students resulted in the need to repair or restore more and more swords. He first started making saya (scabbards), moved on to habaki (blade collars), and then began to build and wrap tsuka (handles). When he began to use live blades to cut wrapped tatami targets, he used his polishing skills to sharpen his and his students’ blades.

Just about the time Babin’s tai chi partner got too busy to practice, Sensei Gary Chase joined Sensei Dach’s iaido class. Sensei Chase had been practicing aikido for most of his life, with his father as his first instructor. Babin found aikido to be a practical extension of his tai chi movements, which, in retrospect, had never seemed complete to him. He has been studying aikido for five years with Sensei Chase.

His medical and especially surgical career has given him an unusual insight into the martial arts. He has a three-dimensional picture of his opponent’s body in his head, knows what is under the skin beneath the Chinese medicine meridians, and can direct a strike, either empty-handed or with a weapon, to a specific internal organ, artery, or nerve. The sword arts seem to be an appropriate hobby for one who has been cutting people’s throats his entire career.

Babin’s latest academic interest is in finding the similarities and differences between the Eastern and Western martial arts. At his age he hardly expects to become a competitive Western swordsman, but he enjoys studying the existent English, German, and Italian technical manuscripts, particularly of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He does drills, strikes a pell, and free-fights with a partner using the German hand-and-a-half sword and a sword and buckler. He believes that there is a great opportunity for a researcher to bridge the gap between the philosophies and techniques of these two groups of swordsmen.

Q&A

Paladin: With all the texts on Japanese martial arts and swords, what sets your book apart from the rest?
RB: Other books on Japanese swords have taken one of two tacks. Some describe the minute artistic features necessary to know for collecting nihonto (traditionally made Japanese swords) or the processes undertaken by a skilled smith to produce them. Other books outline the forms, ritual, and philosophy of either kendo (a sport) or iaido (a zen activity), both of which aim for self-improvement and only hint at practical sword techniques. This book takes a pragmatic approach to the factors needed to learn how to cut with a sword. It also describes techniques to modify 20th century military swords that will probably infuriate both collectors and polishers of traditional Japanese blades (e.g., “amateurs have no right to modify swords”).

Paladin: What do you consider the major differences and similarities in Eastern and Western cutting arts?
RB: First, let me say that I think that there are more similarities than differences. How a swordsman fashions and uses any blade is limited by human anatomy and Newtonian physics as well as less rigid variables such as the steel-making ability, use of armor or horses, and the uniformity of weapons to be encountered. The strength and weakness of the Eastern martial scholar is that there is a living tradition stretching back 500 years upon which to draw, but no written texts. The skills of each school were held secret. To the extent that the tradition has been corrupted over time, it is an incomplete or false record.

The Western martial scholar can study no living tradition but has a wealth of medieval fighting manuals. What limits him is the problem of translation: the fact that the writers assumed a basic knowledge of swordsmanship that we no longer possess today and that the illustrative art of the time interpreted perspective differently than it does today.

Two of the myths still perpetuated by most Eastern martial artists are that medieval European swordsmen did not study systems and simply hacked away at each other, and that there was no spiritualism involved with European swordplay. A casual review of a single codex will show that this was simply not true.

Paladin: Which medieval Western texts have you been studying, and which ones have you found to be most interesting or instructive?
RB:The finest instructional manual on an entire system I have found so far is Fighting with the German Longsword by Christian Henry Tobler. I was so inspired by the book that I attended a seminar by Tobler, something I would recommend to beginner or seasoned swordsman alike. In my naiveté I had long thought there were only two schools of note in Europe: German and Italian. I have been enlightened to the English system by Paul Wagner in his book, Master of Defence: The Works of George Silver. This has been fascinating to read and takes reading over many times to digest all that is there. Finally, for the sheer joy of trying to solve its mysteries, I have often pondered The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship: A Facsimile and Translation of the World’s Oldest Personal Combat Treatise by Dr. Jeffrey L. Forgeng. This is a translation of a very early illustrated text on German civilian sword and buckler play. Rest assured, the mysteries are still there!

Paladin: Have you found that the Western arts have been greatly influenced by the Eastern arts, or vice versa?
RB: It is my belief that the two systems began and evolved independently of one another. The only indirect common denominator that I can think of is that both systems had to triumph over the forces of Kubla Khan or become extinct. That means that the similarities between the two that do exist were probably dictated by commonalities of anatomy, steel, and physics, while the differences are more likely to be cultural.

Paladin: Did the experience of writing your first book, Iaido Sword, help when you began this second book? Was the experience more enjoyable the second time?
RB: Writing this book was very different from writing the first, but I’m not sure it was just experience. In the first I was determined to use appropriate quotes from the sword literature I was familiar with, so the first thing I did was reread about 20 classics from cover to cover. I felt compelled to do that because years before I had read a martial arts book that randomly used inappropriate quotes from a book, Power Quotes, I owned and recognized. I really thought that was cheap. I also was writing about something I personally consider very spiritual. I agonized over how to explain certain concepts so that they made sense but didn’t sound pompous or arrogant.

For the second book I decided on mostly classical European quotes, and I had to dredge them up from my distant memory. I was aiming for a much more straightforward, pragmatic book on cutting and sword restoration, so I tried to keep as much spirituality, history, and Japanese jargon out of it as I could force myself to do. I am very pleased with the results of each book, but in the first, I bared my soul; in the second, my skill.

Paladin: How are Western students of such a traditional Japanese art received by their counterparts in Japan?
RB: My experience with Japanese sensei of high rank at national-level U.S. iaido seminars and contests is that they are polite, to the point, and unapproachable. This has not been the case at battodo seminars, where they are much more likely to socialize with the students informally, as well as the American sensei. I have no firsthand experience, but based on what I have been told by those who do, an American in Japan is going to be a gaijin no matter what his rank. He will most often be treated fairly but not warmly, unless he is a close friend of someone of high rank, either socially or martially.

Paladin: You write about testing the sword’s edge by cutting, but is the tip ever tested by thrusting?
RB: The tip of a Japanese sword is so well formed for thrusting that, even dull, it would easily pierce the flesh of an opponent. A dull alloy practice blade can become a deadly missile if it breaks during a swing. I have thrust informally into corrugated cardboard boxes. I have never heard of formally testing a sword with a thrust, but iaido or battodo tests the swordsman with a thrust within kata but not with targets.

Paladin: Do you still repair your own swords?
RB: I sharpen and repair the swords with which I or my students cut, as well as similar swords belonging to others. I would not touch the blade of any traditional Japanese sword, but I would repair or replace its scabbard or make a new collar or handle for it.

Paladin: Can any Japanese sword be used for cutting targets?
RB: It depends on your definition of “Japanese sword.” If you mean “any sword that meets the Japanese criteria for a nihonto (Japanese sword)” – yes, they can all be used to cut targets. But should they? No! With very few exceptions, nihonto are too valuable to cut with because, at the least, their polish will be destroyed and they might be chipped or bent. If you mean “any blade that has the general form of a katana” – absolutely no. There are many reproduction swords, even made of stainless steel, that are unsafe to attempt to cut with because they, or their fittings, will not stand up to the rigors of cutting and will break, and might cause considerable damage to the cutter or those observing the cutting. In between, there is a subset of swords that are not made in a traditional manner so are not considered nihonto but are strong enough to sustain cutting, that have little intrinsic value to a collector, that in fact would be destroyed by the government if returned to Japan, and that can be sharpened and cut with. That is the entire point of the last two sections of my book.

Paladin: Why is learning to cut with the sword so important to battodo? Can’t you simply learn the forms and practice without targets?
RB: Actually, it isn’t so important! In Japanese, iaido and battodo mean essentially the same thing: draw and cut. Over the past 60 years, battodo has taken on the mantle of “cutting” as part of the curriculum, especially in the United States, compared to iaido. But practitioners of both arts do cut in some fashion. There are at least three supervising bodies in Japan that oversee cutting activities: the All Japan Battodo Federation, the All Japan Batto Iai Federation, and the All Japan Toyama Ryu Federation. They pretty much cut the same but study different kata. Until recently this has been a source of major confusion to me, as I had my students doing the wrong kata. The thrust of the book is not how to do battodo; it is how to cut for whatever reason the reader wishes to learn.

CUTTING TARGETS WITH THE JAPANESE SWORD
Practical Tameshigiri and Battodo for the Modern Swordsman

IAIDO SWORD
Kamimoto-Ha Techniques of Muso Shinden Ryu