The woman gave her a tiny, tolerant smile and bowed by nodding. Not very formal. That was how she was. Sensei Miyu Sato ran her dojo with some—but not all—of the formal strictness of traditional Japanese martial arts. Everyone wore uniforms, they used a handful of words and phrases—mostly hai for yes, iye for no—but there wasn’t any of the stern, humorless rigidity Dana had experienced in the karate dojo back in San Diego.
Of course, the Kakusareta Taiyou Dojo did not teach karate. The Hidden Sun style of jujutsu was an amalgam art developed by Sensei’s mother, aunts, and a few other women who were living in Japan during and after World War II. She told Dana once that after the war ended and the American occupation began, there was a rash of attacks on Japanese women. Martial arts were outlawed and all the dojos had closed, but women who were skilled fighters and also descendants of ancient samurai families banded together to form Kakusareta Taiyou, which skipped over much of the time-consuming formality of traditional martial arts and focused on actual lifesaving skills. The techniques were built on defense rather than attack.
Miyu waved Dana to the side, and she bowed off the mat, turned, and knelt in her place. Almost all the students in this dojo were girls and young women, with only a few boys mixed in.
“I know you’ve been going through a rough patch,” said Miyu. “No, don’t look surprised. It’s a small town and people talk. None of that matters. None of anything matters when your life is on the line. Muggers and rapists don’t schedule convenient times to attack. That’s not how the world works. Danger is real, and its potential is constant. We must always be prepared.”
“Sensei,” said Dana, “how does that work, though? If Saturo—or a real bad guy, I mean—just jumped out at me, how am I supposed to get myself ready all at once?”
Miyu smiled, as if that was exactly the right question to ask. “Defense is not about being prepared in the moment,” she said as she padded quietly across the tatami mats. “It is about being prepared before the moment.”
Saturo shifted and began pacing with her, eyes focused on his aunt, knife loose in his hand, his body moving with the oiled grace of one of the big hunting cats. Stalking the much smaller Miyu, his face set, unsmiling, intense.
Dana watched them move around the mat, trying to predict how Saturo would attack. And when. Her dad had told her a lot about angles of attack and seizing the opportunity, but most of his lessons were broader, more about military tactics than personal combat.
Suddenly Saturo seemed to blur as he lunged in at a sharp right angle to how he’d been pacing. The blunt aluminum training knife was almost invisible as it slashed in a tight, vicious arc.
He’s really trying to hit her, thought Dana, aghast.
Miyu was right in the path of that blow, caught flat-footed and unprepared.
Except …
Except she suddenly became part of the attack.
It was bizarre. The blade sliced a line through the air at face level, and instead of trying to back away from the attack, Miyu turned into it, pirouetting along the inside of Saturo’s arm so that the circular cut wrapped around her, the blade missing by inches. Then Saturo was staggering, tilting, falling, and there was the after-echo of soft thuds from the flurry of strikes that Miyu delivered to stomach, groin, throat, face. Saturo crashed to the mat, and the knife went flying, landing, bouncing, and finally sliding to a stop four inches from Dana’s knees.
It was all so fast.
Too fast to follow. How many times had Miyu hit him? Six? Eight? More?
Miyu stood wide-legged, her hands low and open, her body now angled toward the fallen attacker, positioned to offer every opportunity to continue the attack while allowing no real or useful opening. Suddenly she moved again, cat quick, and chop-kicked Saturo in the face.
So fast.
And then stillness.
Miyu gave a short, soft exhale and stepped back, her body instantly transitioning from combat to calm.
Saturo rolled onto his knees, then hopped to his feet. He bowed low, and Miyu returned the bow. Only then did Saturo smile. He was completely uninjured, because the blows had lightly tagged his denser areas and merely brushed the skin of his face and throat. This was kime, focus, the skill of absolute precision that allowed deadly arts to be practiced at full speed.
And that speed had been awesome.
“If you wait until an attack happens in order to plan a defense,” said Miyu, “then you’ve already been defeated. We train our whole lives to be ready for attack so that in the moment we react correctly, using muscle memory, reflexes, and deeply ingrained repetitive skill development. There was a saying among the samurai that we train ten thousand hours for a single moment that may never happen. Ah, but if it does, then all of that training has been worth it. And … if it doesn’t, then those were hours well spent, because a samurai was not judged on the sharpness of his sword but on the sharpness of his mind.”
“Osu,” said Saturo, using the general term of emphatic agreement.
“Now,” said Miyu as she walked over to stand in front of Dana, “try it again.”
“Hai, Sensei,” said Dana as she got back to her feet.
“Oh, and this time try not to get your throat cut.”
Dana looked at Saturo, who was still smiling.
“Hai, Sensei,” said Dana weakly.