Essay

A wise young master

By Francois Du Bois

I am finally back in Tokyo after my extraordinary training in Wudangshang, China. As I was gone for three months, many people are asking me questions about my experience over there.

To be honest, I think I have changed a lot since I left Japan. I feel more calm and stronger — both mentally and physically.

The person to thank for this transformation is my master, Guan, whose attention and patience guided me through his teachings.

When I tell people about my master and the series of training steps he taught me, I always show pictures. When I show his picture though, people always say the same thing:"Wow! He's so young!" And he is young — he's only 25 years old.

When people hear me talking about how clever and mature my master is in his teaching, they always seem to imagine someone much older.

I found it very interesting that most people seemed to react the same way to his picture. Maybe this is not a uniquely Japanese reaction, but I think there is a tendency to assume a master must be older because of the structure of the Japanese society.

In Japan, as you know well, at school, especially in club activities, or companies, when you have a sempai, he or she is considered superior to you so you should respect the person automatically, even if you don't personally. Gradually, by forcing you to respect your sempai, somehow you start to expect that age will help you obtain maturity as well, and then you start to calculate people's maturity based on their age.

This explains to me why people expressed surprise and said "He's so young!" about my master. It is true that a person who has lived longer than you may have more experience in terms of quantity.

Yet, there is no guarantee that those quantities give cleverness and reflections or understanding on the essentials of life.

At the martial arts academy where I studied in Wudang, we have to respect those who are older than us, but if you are superior to someone in martial arts or maturity, you will be ranked above them, as I believe is fair.

My master is only 25, yet his maturity, level of martial arts and passion for teaching are immense. He must have learnt the maximum from his short life-time of 25 years. And that is why we all respect him.

In French, there is a very famous saying by Corneille, the father of the French tragedy, "For well born souls, value does not need to wait for the lapse of years."

I hope that this "esprit" speaks to the Japanese people as well.

Shukan ST: March 20, 2009

(C) All rights reserved