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INTRODUCTION

How This Book Came to Be

On a sunny afternoon in the fall of 1963, a friend and I were walking home from middle school. We passed the drug store, where at the soda fountain counter sat the notorious Philip “Sonny” Mantia along with his buddies. He was three years older than the rest of us in our class, as he had spent three years in juvenile prison. Mantia had 26 felonies to his name, most of which were aggressive fights he had been convicted of starting and finishing.

To my shock, Mantia and his buddies suddenly poured out of the drug store and surrounded us. In confusion I tried to reason with the aggressors, but they focused their attention on my friend. Had he done something to rouse their wrath? It was all happening so fast. My mind spun in bewilderment. I was not ready at all.

Mantia was shouting at my friend, taunting him with abrupt shoves. Horrified, I stood and stared. I was frozen, unable to move. Some of Mantia’s cohorts surrounded my friend so that he could not escape. Two of them positioned themselves in front of me so that I could not move to my friend’s aid.

I was 13 then. Up to that point, I had experienced only a few playground skirmishes with bullies at school. Most of those encounters had been mere shoving and shouting and amateurish grappling, and were over with before anyone had been seriously hurt.

This guy was another reality altogether. He had grabbed my friend by the wrist and was spinning him around in a circle, increasing his speed and jerking until my friend was on his knees in the dust. Once he had him down, Mantia began pounding his fists into the back of my friend’s head. He was swearing horrifically, using savage language shocking to my young ears in the 1960s.

An older man walked by and saw what was happening, and shouted at Mantia and his buddies to knock it off. But the hangers-on moved at him aggressively and chased him away with curses and threatening fists. Time moved in agonizing slow motion. I beheld in horror Mantia’s fists bouncing off the back of my friend’s head. Swearing fiercely and swinging his arms in over and over, he appeared to be the embodiment of pure uncontrolled raging evil.

I felt cold. I was doubtless shaking. Cut off by the older boys blocking my way, I was powerless to help my friend. But truth told, those boys blocking me had little threat from me. I was immobilized, paralyzed with shock and trepidation and adrenalized lock-up. I stood there frozen. My mouth twisted in a silent scream. I was incapable of moving. I watched in horror as my friend went from resisting, to attempting to cover from the blows, to defeated resignation. I could not believe what was happening.

And then it was all over. Mantia was done. He and his buddies moved as a pack of wolves back to the drug store, tossing savage insults at us over their shoulders. My friend rose to his feet. Amazingly, he was still very conscious, and no blood was showing from the pummeling he had taken. He dusted himself off, mumbled something, and we were once again walking home.

I was so furious and confused and embarrassed. I could not speak. We walked in silence, awkwardly trying to put the past moments behind us. But deep inside, something primordial had come awake in me. A strange blend of rage, and oddly at the same time compassion, overwhelmed me.

I vowed I would do whatever it took to never be forced to stand by in helplessness while a pure and wholesome innocent took a beating again. I had no idea how I would do it. But I would make a difference in the world. I would find a way to stand up to senseless violence, to stop it in its tracks. When others chose brutality and savagery, I would make there be peace. I would be there for the defenseless. I would show the beautiful and kind the way to temporarily become a raging force for good.

I knew of no martial arts schools in Dayton, Ohio, back then. I had no idea how I would accomplish my vows. I only knew in my core that I would devote my life to righting the wrong I had just witnessed. I made a solemn promise. I pledged a holy vow.

Thus Began a Life of Studying Violence and How to Overcome It

In 1967 I picked Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, because I had seen a boy in a white do-gi training suit walking in the gym. “Must be a member of the judo club,” commented the tour guide casually when I quickly grabbed him and asked about the boy. I made up my mind right then and there that I would attend Miami. At last I would begin my long-awaited study of judo, the Japanese secrets of self-defense called “the supple art.”

Unfortunately, once I got to campus, it turned out there was no judo club at Miami. The guide had been mistaken. There was however a Tang Soo Do training group. But it was run by a Navy Commander and restricted to members of the Navy ROTC in the Vietnam War days. Daunted but nonetheless determined, I somehow prevailed on the Commander to accept me, even though I was not in the Navy. I took to Tang Soo Do training with an unexcelled passion. Nobody at Miami trained harder. Nobody was more determined. None made practice sessions more often than I did.

Years of training added up. During summers away from college, I trained with other martial arts clubs wherever I went. I made Black Belt by late in my junior year.

One evening during a play rehearsal in my senior year, when a group of us was sitting around waiting to go on, I got to chatting with a fellow theater student. He had grown up a tough street scrapper in a miserably poor neighborhood, but had miraculously ended up at the university. I was telling him about my karate training, a strange and rare thing back in those days. I demonstrated a twisting punch to his up-held palm. The punch started out up-side-down, pierced straight out, and twisted into palm-down position at the moment of impact. I held my shoulder upright and in place. His hand moved back with the hit.

The boy cocked his head in admiration. “Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that. So cool!” He then looked aside, seemingly in embarrassment. “On the streets, we’d just throw our fists and hide behind them until we connected.” He lifted his hand and leaned in with his shoulder and sent a loose relaxed looping strike that suddenly tightened into a hit against my up-held palm. The smack noise and follow-through sent my hand flying back behind my shoulder.

I was stunned. In all of my years of Tang Soo Do training, I had never dealt with a typical American street punch. If someone had thrown one of those at me in anger, I had no idea how I would have responded. It was a chilling revelation of my ignorant vulnerability.

My world collapsed. I felt breathless, naked, and invaded. I was confused and angry. How could my training completely ignore the reality of the streets like that? At the same time, I felt strangely excited. Instantly I was somehow bigger and freer than I had been. It was indeed a huge world out there — the study of violence and how to subdue it — and I was in an instant more awake than I had ever been. I would take that freedom and rejoice in it. I would follow it as far as I could for as long as it took.

Now Fifty Years Later…

Throughout the decades of my involvement in the Asian martial and meditation disciplines, my own purpose continued to be to discover those methods, attitudes, and insights that could advance me in my quest. I ran out of lessons in karate and boxing, and I became disappointed in champions my own age who had succumbed to the allure of ego, who lived shattered lives, and were victims of the drug culture of the 1970s. I turned my attention to Japan and the long-admired secret art of the ninja. I had read about the mysterious art in a James Bond novel in high school. I would go to Japan. I would meet and train with elders who handed down the ninja martial art for generations of secrecy. I would learn punching and kicking skills of course. But I would also learn the grappling and choking and weapons that I had so missed in my training. Also hinted at were the secrets of mental and even spiritual power that awaited.

Meditation plays an important role in gaining control of the mind’s reactions in To-Shin Do.

Ninja training in Japan turned out to be quite different from what I had expected. The dojo was tiny, a mere cleared out storage room in the grandmaster’s house. In remote Noda City, student numbers were extremely small—15 at the highest. 33rd Togakure Ryu ninja grandmaster Toshitsugu Takamatsu had just died over a year before, and the 34th grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi was using those few nights per week to review and explore what he had been taught.

There was no curriculum at all. There was no class for beginners as opposed to senior practitioners. All just trained together in the tiny room. Random kata fight examples were read from handwritten books and acted out. Most times, the kata was not identified as to its ryu lineage or scroll.

Things would start out far apart. A punch or kick or grab would bring the training partners closer to each other. A defense or two would be thrown up. Control of the attacker would be gained. He would be taken to the ground where he was broken or killed. Each student kept his own notes as to what was studied each night.

1980s outdoor seminars gave the author a chance to test his martial arts.

After only a short time, it became clear to me that this was not a training hall where clear and paced instruction was the usual approach. More often than not, I had to “steal” the technique being practiced. The seniors would try out various movements without explanation. Techniques would be performed differently from man to man. I had to pay close attention to discrimination. I had to find my own way in the middle of all the variations I saw. I had to find my own movements.

Techniques were presented in literal form from the many books handed down from Takamatsu Sensei. I began to sense that not all things practiced in the dojo were fully understood by the practitioners. Years became decades. I came to focus on bridging the gap between source and destination realities. What was the hidden meaning behind why that technique was preserved? What was the abstract principle being transmitted in the concrete movements of the kata? What was the key?

I discovered I had a knack for diving into an ancient foreign culture and extracting principles that I would translate to fit my own culture back home. That involved knowing very well the foreign culture as well as my own. I went to the East and brought back unheard of information to the West. I traversed the time span from ancient hidden conceptions to modern broad-based applications.

While I shared what I discovered with all who would listen, it has been an admittedly intimately personal career. I have sought out experiences and contacts with the purpose of positively advancing my own physical, intellectual, and spiritual being. I still explore to a significant degree every day. I am a product of all I have faced. I continue to refine.

Because of my intensely transformative involvement in my subject matter, it has been impossible to even pretend to be capable of a classical scholar’s aloofness from that which he studies. I am that which I study. I have always internalized all experiences gathered in the pursuit of knowledge. Some of those experiences were taken to heart and formed internally held concepts. Other experiences were rejected as not relevant to my needs. Nonetheless, all knowledge encountered was happily (and sometimes not so happily) experienced from the inside looking out.

I became well known for my pioneering work as the first American to become a dedicated disciple of the 34 generation old Togakure Ryu ninja tradition in Japan. What I encountered in 1975 when I first entered the Japanese dojo seemed revolutionary. So many mind-expanding ideas were a dizzying delight. I described my eye-opening adventures with the ninja in my very first book, The Ninja and Their Secret Fighting Art, published in 1981 and now available in a newly revised edition from Tuttle.

As the years went by, it became increasingly obvious that the Japanese teachers were practicing an antiquated fighting art. They seemed loyally dedicated to preserving Eastern ways of the past. They were not particularly interested in exploring modern Western ways of attacking and handling aggressors.

Unconventional techniques are standard fare in To-Shin Do.

In the mid 1990s, 20 years after I had entered the ninja dojo, I was compelled to create a modern Western art based on timeless ninja principles aimed at solving contemporary challenges. We needed an updated method of ninja protector combat for today. I described the basics of my modern self-defense program in The Ninja Defense, published by Tuttle in 2012.

It would be awkward to use an established historical name like ninjutsu to describe my contemporary personal protection system. I needed a term to differentiate between the classical ninja martial arts I had been taught and the modern form I built. To label my modern version of ancient ninjutsu, I came up with the new name To-Shin Do. The new name is based on the form of the old name. I separated the single letter character for nin 忍 of ninja and their secret art of ninjutsu into two parts (minus a small dash). To 刀 for “sword” carries the meaning of our technology—how we practice survival fighting. Shin 心 for “heart” communicates our intention—how we evaluate the moment to moment decisions as to what to do and when. Do 道 translates as “road” for the pathway to mastery—a lifetime of exploration if necessary.

An-shu Rumiko gives pointers at a training convention.

This is not something I just made up or pulled together. From roots deep in the principles of classic Japanese ninja martial arts, To-Shin Do training is a thorough system of personal preparation for facing the kinds of conflict and opposition that can surprise us in the course of daily living. Our training program leads to the ability to live life fully, fearlessly, and freely.

The lessons in our training method are based on ancient well-tested warrior disciplines handed down through historical martial traditions I studied with the ninja grandmaster in Japan. I also include the spiritual and ethical lessons I learned traveling with Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, as his personal security escort in the 1990s. At the same time, To-Shin Do training is built around a very modern approach to handling successfully the kind of threats and confrontations most likely in our own contemporary culture, and for seeking answers to the deepest questions of life. In what ways do your martial discoveries parallel the conflicts you face in the workplace, at home, in school, or out in the marketplace?

When I put this book together, I was admittedly conflicted as to what I intended to include. The ego part of me wanted to include outrageous advanced material, things that would impress seasoned martial artists. But this book is not designed for martial artists with oh-so-many years of training. It is to be used along with The Ninja Defense. This book specifically targets intermediate students looking to learn valuable survival techniques and advance their skills and knowledge about dangerous confrontation. The attacks come more from YouTube clips than UFC footage or the ancient scrolls of Japan. “What would a street hostile throw at us,” was more the consideration than what professional competitors or warriors of another age might do. What about those assaults that surprise us, catch us off-guard, cause us to take a moment of doubt to recognize what is happening? That is what I wanted to address in this book.

To-Shin Do was developed from an ancient Japanese ninja model. Intelligence agents needed a fighting system to cover their escape from a compromised mission. The assumption was that fighting is way down on the list of possible ways of restoring peace. How do you handle a potentially murderous situation with unknown numbers of assailants? This is very different from a fighting system designed to go as many rounds as needed to defeat another person who has agreed to a contest of skills.

To-Shin Do is a realistic martial arts training system that includes instruction in techniques and strategies for dealing with:

• grappling, throwing, choking, and joint-locking

• striking, kicking, and punching

• stick, blade, cord, and projectile weapons

• handling multiple assailants and surprise attacks

• overcoming psychological intimidation or bullying

The hanbo cane is one of the traditional ninja weapons.

Through exposure to the physical, intellectual, and spiritual challenges posed in the many facets of our training program, you will gain first-hand experience in identifying and enhancing those aspects of your life that facilitate growth, confidence, peace of mind, and the joy that accompanies living well and powerfully. You will change and grow and advance as a human being. You will be bigger, broader, with more resources to draw from.

To-Shin Do martial arts training is as well founded on a very strong and bluntly stated code of mindful action — how to live a worthy noble life. You cannot learn how to become a winner by spending time with losers. Ally yourself with proven role models who have been through the battles and can demonstrate what powerful living looks like. You will develop the momentum of accomplishment that leads to being a winner in life. It is that simple.

I am still inspired to this day by exaggerated images of intelligence, compassion, and strength I saw in TV shows, novels, and movies of my youth. You mean there is a tradition of inspiration for people longing for mythic-level self-expansion, in pursuit of an ideal so high that we never will surpass it? I have to have that!

Author An-shu Stephen K. Hayes with some of the leaders of To-Shin Do today.

Preparation for the cultivation of new strengths begins with intelligence gathering. Enjoy this book, and any new awareness it might spark in your life. Discuss its ideas with others. Remember to re-read these chapters several times. Look for the direct applications to life right now. Use the insights to plan ahead for future confidence and power. By all means, use it to inspire ever more happiness in your life. The world needs your bright strength. We are counting on you.

Graduates at author’s home dojo in Ohio.