I was flipping through A Book of Five Rings this morning, and landed in the Water scroll. This passage caught my eye (translated by Vicor Harris, Overlook Press, copyright 1974) :
The spirit of "Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body" is to stick to your enemy and not separate from him. When you approach the enemy, stick firmly with your head, body, and legs. People tend to advance their head and legs quickly, but their body lags behind. You should stick firmly so that there is not the slightest gap between the enemy's body and your body. You must consider this carefully.
I just went through an introductory class at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. One of the positions we practiced was what the instructor called the 'T-clinch.' If you have a brown belt in Shorei Goju-Ryu, you'd recognize the T-clinch as the position in the 2 man drill you should be in after your initial angle and strike. That is to say, your opponent's shoulder (preferably their weak side shoulder) is in the middle of your chest, and your feet are on either side of your opponent's foot. In the BJJ method I was shown, one of your arms would wrap your opponent's hip and one would trap his far side arm. The opponent's near side arm is trapped by your body, and so you are able to easily neutralize your opponent’s attempts to unbalance or strike you.
Which is exactly the point of Musashi's Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body.
Generally karate-ka seek safety in distance. More distance from an opponent means more time to react to techniques that are crossing the gap in sparring or more chance of successful escape in a self defense situation.
But there are times when distance is not the safest place to be. Jimmy Hoffa famously said (after being shot, I think) “Always run from a knife and rush a gun.”
I’m going to leave the gun situation to Mr. Hoffa’s greater experience, but at Broad Ripple Martial Arts we apply the same concept to defense against blunt object attacks. Clubs and guns both have as their main advantage that they extend the effective range of their wielder’s offense. By increasing the distance between us and an armed attacker we enter a range where we can be struck (and by a lethal weapon, no less) and cannot strike back. Extra distance causes the same problem if an unarmed opponent has a much greater reach, or if there are two opponents and there is no place out of reach of both them.
What Musashi was advocating with the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body is to bring yourself so close to your opponent that they have no opportunity to strike. And I imagine this is exactly what Jimmy Hoffa was thinking about gun fighting.
Remember that Musashi was writing about duels, and there are two major differences between the violence he is discussing and the violence that self defense training addresses. In a duel between two swordsmen they are both armed with approximately the same weapon and they are bound to fight within their cultural rules. A duel is a sanctioned fight, a bout.
The typical self defense situation addressed at Broad Ripple Martial Arts would not include a weapon in the hands of the karateka and it is assumed that the violence is predatory or criminal and therefore without rules. In particular, there is no ‘rule’ against running away!
What is interesting about this is that the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body is probably more commonly important in self defense than in dueling. If a swordsman presses close to his opponent, they will both be unable to execute common cuts, and both will be restricted in their grappling attempts if they retain their weapons. In the blunt weapon self defense situation, an unarmed karateka sticking close to a club wielding attacker has brought an asymmetric situation closer to parity.
But when is it best to ‘stick’ and best to run?
Anytime the exit is away from the club and I am physically capable of running, I’m sprinting as fast as I can. And that’s exactly what we teach:
“Run if possible”
“If it’s not possible, find a bigger and better weapon”
“If that’s not possible, ATTACK the club.”
Attacking the club should bring the karateka into close contact. And then it's time to apply the Glue and Lacquer Emulsion Body. Sometimes validation feels good, and having the most renowned swordsman teach a technique we teach is pretty solid validation.
