Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

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As you have probably discovered by my descriptions so far, shikaku is a difficult concept of the budo to describe. Too often, exponents have only a fragmented view of shikaku, and so they are not able to exploit it fully in an opponent or minimalize its effects in themselves. The stance experiment described above is illustrative of just a small facet of shikaku, for example. Against a stable, stationary position (such as a stance), it is possible for even an unskilled person to find another’s shikaku. Rotate 360° around him, pushing at every angle of the circle and you’ll eventually strike it. That, however, is a controlled experiment, where there is no moving resistance. Try finding the shikaku against someone who is moving, shifting his balance point constantly along with his stances, closing and lengthening his distance from you (and trying to find your shikaku as well). That is shikaku in real life.

Since, except for very good meditation disciples and your average dedicated couch potato, we tend to be mobile in our waking lives, our shikaku are mobile, too. The angles of vulnerability in our posture are in constant flux and flow and just as importantly, they are multidimensional. This latter can be observed when the tai chi expert seems to pull in a partner in “pushing hands,” drawing him forward and down and then shooting him up and back, uprooting his stance dramatically. In karate, a properly executed rising block takes advantage of an attacker’s dead zone, up and to the rear of the attacker’s punching arm.