Cleaning, obligations, and martial spirit

Ann Althouse noticed something on a recent night out:

Speaking of sweeping (and things Japanese), on Friday evening, we parked the car on the street in front of a lit up Aikido place. Inside were about ten men in traditional Japanese clothes, holding what at first I thought were swords. But they were brooms. They were sweeping the place, possibly ritualistically, and it was such a fascinating sight that I watched them as I walked a couple steps and knocked into a telephone pole.

In every dojo to which I’ve belonged over the years we cleaned the dojo after every practice. There were the practical considerations, of course. If we didn’t clean the dojo, who would? We wouldn’t want to practice in a dirty dojo. But there were other considerations as well.

Cleaning the dojo after practice is an obligation. It shows respect for your sensei and the dojo. It reflects the appropriate martial spirit. When I taught classes it was a tradition that I always maintained.

Those aikidokas should be be happy they didn’t have to do what we did after every kendo practice. After practice we’d fasten the legs of our hakama up and wash the floor of the dojo with only our hands, feet, rags, and water. It was considered bad form for your knees to touch the ground. We’d bend over with a rag grasped in our two hands in front of us and push with our feet, our bodies effectively becoming the mops that cleaned the dojo.

We had a certain amount of disdain for the tai chi class that preceded our kendo class. They never cleaned the dojo and left it to us to sweep up after them. No martial spirit.