As many people must have experienced for themselves, the greater accuracy of a blow from a boxing glove or a fencing sword, the more it is felt as a counter-blow rather than as a direct assault on the opponent’s person. One’s own blow, one’s own strength, creates a kind of hollow. A blow is successful if, at that instant, the opponent’s body fits into that hollow in space and assumes a form precisely identical with it. How is it that a blow can be experienced in such a way; what makes a blow successful? Success comes when both the timing and placing of the blow are just right. But more than this, it happens when the choice of time and target - ones judgement – manages to catch the foe momentarily off guard, when one has an intuitive apprehension of that off-guard moment a fraction of a second *before* it becomes perceptible to the senses. This apprehension is a quantity that is unknowable even to the self and is acquired through a process of long training. By the time the right moment is consciously perceptible, it is already too late. It is too late, in other words, when that which lurks in the space beyond the flashing of the fist or tip of the sword has taken shape. By the moment it takes shape, it must already be snugly ensconced in that hollow in space that one has marked out and created. It is at this instant that victory in the fray is born.” - Sun and Steel 太陽と鉄, Mishima Yukio 三島由紀夫。
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 22:54:55 +0000
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