Dana was late for class but jumped right into the calisthenics. The orderliness of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks helped calm her jangled brain. And it gave her something else to blame for rapid heartbeat and sweats. Then they began the drills. The students stood in lines, everyone wearing crisp white gis and colored belts; Sensei Miyu Sato and her assistant, Saturo, wearing starched black hakama, the traditional culottes of the samurai. As Saturo counted in Japanese, the students moved together, practicing footwork and postures, evasions and angles of attack, while Sensei Miyu paced up and down and studied them with a critical eye.
Then everyone was paired off for uchikomi, a drill for practicing attacking skills against a passive opponent. There was an uneven number of students in the dojo that night, so Dana found—to her dismay—that she was paired with Saturo. The exercise always began very slowly to allow students to see that every technical detail was correct. They started with tsukuri, the preparation for a throw, and repeated this twenty times. Then on the last run, the throw was executed with more speed and as much precision as possible.
There were a lot of components to a good throw, including interception of the opponent’s attack; achieving the correct and best angle; disrupting balance; establishing a fulcrum with a foot, leg, hip, or shoulder; generating power through speed and torsion; and then the actual throw, followed by a pin, pressure point, or finishing strike. The goal, according to the sensei, was to do every single technique at least ten thousand times to truly master them. As there were hundreds of techniques in jujutsu, Dana did not expect to become a master anytime soon.
However, the orderly, mechanical, and practical approach to these exercises steadied her. Nothing was mystical in jujutsu. It was all physics and physiology, cause and effect, logic and technique. She was far from the best student in the class, but she learned very quickly, and she loved deconstructing each move to understand how they worked. Leverage points, angles of mass displacement, velocity, and balance. It was machinelike in the best of ways, and as the class wore on, it pulled her back from the strange and formless places her mind had gone.
When they had completed these drills, Sensei Miyu ordered everyone to sit cross-legged around the edges of the large mat-covered area in the center of the room.
“I know this is not anyone’s favorite drill,” said the sensei, “but randori is important to the development of reliable self-defense.”
A few of the students groaned, and Dana had to suppress her own trepidation. Randori was freestyle practice, where one person acted as attacker and the other had to defend, but without knowing which attack was coming. Dana didn’t mind playing the role of uke, the attacker, even though it meant getting kicked, thrown, locked, or pinned. It was all controlled, though. What she didn’t like was being off her game when she was tori, the defender, because she was supposed to be the one kicking, throwing, locking, and pinning. She did pretty well against students of her own skill level, but things never worked out when she was paired with Saturo. She had never once successfully defended against his lightning-fast attacks. And Saturo was uncompromising. He never cut anyone a break. His philosophy was simply, “If you don’t want to get knocked down, be a better fighter.”
Easy to say, but since he was a black belt, Saturo was the demon they all feared.
“Dana, Saturo,” said Sensei Miyu, “you may lead us off.”
Saturo smiled. Dana’s heart sank.
They walked to the center of the mat and bowed to each other. Dana, being the junior of the two, was first uke, and she came in with a series of strikes, attempted grabs, and kicks. Each time Saturo seemed to turn into a blur, and then she was flying through the air and thudding to the mat. Over and over and over again.
She was hardly sure which techniques he used on her. All she saw was his smiling face, the winces on the faces of the other students, and then the mat coming up to greet her at thirty miles an hour.
“Mate!” called Sensei Miyu. Stop. “Change.”
Dana climbed to her feet, bowed to the sensei, bowed again to Saturo, and settled into a receptive combat stance, feet wide, knees bent, weight shifted onto the balls of her feet, her hands open and raised, palms turned slightly outward. She was tori now and it was her job to be in control of the encounter and defeat any attack. Saturo, playing the role of uke, began circling, much as he had done when they did the knife drill. He loved to circle, and it worked to confuse his opponents and make it difficult to ever predict the exact moment or angle of his attack. When he moved in at her, he was even faster, if that was possible, snapping a kick to within a half inch of her knee or heart or nose, or slashing an open-handed blow toward her with the speed of a whip.
He attacked five times and scored five times.
A sixth.
A seventh.