"Donahue, John - Sensei" - читать интересную книгу автора (Donahue John)

The bokken is a hardwood replica of the katana the two-handed long
sword used by the samurai. It has the curve and heft of a real sword
and so is used to train students of the various sword arts that have
evolved over the centuries in Japan. In the right hands, hardwood
swords can be very dangerous. They have been known to shatter the
shafts of katana, and people like the famous Miyamoto Musashi, armed
with a bokken, used to regularly go up against swordsmen armed with
real swords. The results were never pretty, but Musashi used to walk
away intact, bokken in hand.

Bokken are also used in set series of training techniques called kata,
which is typically how Yamashita had us tram with bokken.

Kata means "form": they are prearranged exercises. Don't be fooled,
though. Kata practice in Yamashita's dojo is enough to make your hair
stand on end. When we perform kata, we do them in pairs of attacker
and defender, and the movements flow and the blade of the bokken moans
through the air as it blurs its way to the target. There's nothing
like the sight of an oak sword slashing at your head to focus your
mind.

I was backpedaling furiously to dodge a slashing kesa-girl the cut that
with a real sword would cleave you diagonally from your shoulder to the
opposite hip when movement on the edge of the practice floor caught my
eye.

The visitors filed swiftly in, bobbing their heads briefly in that
really poor American version of bowing. There were three of them in
street clothes and the fourth was dressed in a ha kama and top. The
outfit caught my eye: the top was crimson red and looked like it was
made out of some silky sort of material, the ha kama was a crisp jet
black. Quite the costume, really, especially when its wearer had a
shaved brown head the shape of a large bullet. He had come to make a
statement, I guess. They sat quietly with their backs against the
wall, watching the class with that hard-eyed, clenched-jaw look that is
supposed to intimidate you. I suppose I should have been impressed,
but my training partner would not let up. She was about as fierce and
wiry as they come. And her sword work had a certain whip and quick
snap to it, a slightly offbeat rapid rhythm that was hard to defend
against,

even though in kata you theoretically know what's happening. She
wasn't at all impressed with the visitors. She was a relatively new
student who was mostly intent on making one of Yamashita's senior
pupils me look less than accomplished.

So even though I was pretty curious about these guys Yamashita did not,
as a rule, tolerate visitors and one of them was dressed like he came
to play I quickly got more interested in not making a fool out of