Storage Room 1: Ancient Japan and the Martial Arts
"The further back in time we go,
The fainter grow the echoes of the past"

• The research for this article was based on the assumption that the murder of Soga no Iruka could not have been committed without having consulted the Yi Jing oracle. As the most crucial piece of information, the date on which the murder was committed, is known, I thought I might be able to find out what had led to the choice of this date. Read on and see what I came up with. Reality is ALWAYS stranger than fiction! Clicking the link will take you to the password-protected area. Request your password now.
  

• The story of Emperor Yozei (876-884) who killed his milk brother inside the Imperial Palace (dairi) of Heian Japan, and the historiographical implications of this murder. Clicking the link will take you to the password-protected area. Request your password now.

• This article was originally written for a panel on the martial arts organized by Karl Friday and chaired by Paul Varley for the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies at Los Angeles in 1993. Clicking the link will take you to the password-protected area. Request your password now.

• I still remember the afternoon I sat at my desk in the rainforest of Hawaii when I had the idea for this article. Three years later it became the thesis of my paper for the graduate seminar on premodern Japan conducted by Prof. V. Dixon Morris. The article later went on to win several prizes. Clicking the link will take you to the password-protected area. Request your password now.

• Invited by the Aikido Master Joël Chemin to his mountain retreat near Toulouse (France), I repaid his hospitality in some small measure by lecturing his students on my ideas about the origin of the martial arts.