Saturday, April 20, 2002. 2:35PM.
Hatchobori Market, Tokyo, Japan.
Hey! Why you videotape me!
I had seen the man in the corner of my camcorder viewfinder. I was using the last of my camcorder’s battery life to videotape the Hatchobori street market. I lowered my camera as the man approached. He stood out in my mind for two main reasons.
(1) He approached me at a quick pace
(2) He was black
Point #2 doesn’t normally attract my attention, but Africans tend to stand out in a Japanese street market. This gentleman was definitely African, not African-American. His accent and general manner didn’t fit that of an American tourist. His manner did fit that of somebody who was not in a good mood.
The man had rapidly moved to within three feet of me. He was obviously under the impression that I was specifically videotaping him instead of the bustling street scene. He had a very offensive posture towards me, staring me down as he approached. He was wearing a Hawks jersey, shorts and hi-top basketball shoes. By his dress, I assume he was working for one of the shops in the market.
I had noticed three or four Africans standing in the middle of the street market, an impressive task considering the street was a constantly moving mass of tourists and shoppers. Most merchants stood in the doorway of their shops, out of the path of the maddening crowd. The market is the width of a standard alley. Saturday afternoon is prime time in Hatchobori, attracting the maximum allowable capacity of shoppers.
The Hatchobori market isn’t a typical Japanese market. This is the counter-culture section of Tokyo. The perimeter of this district is made up of safe middle-class shops like The Gap. Here in the center you find a different scene … punk t-shirts, piercings, NBA merchandise, leather clothing. Most stores blast modern rock or ganster rap into the crowded sidestreet. Imagine a cross between Atlanta’s Little Five Points and the street market from an Indiana Jones movie.
Now that I’ve established the mood, I should probably get to back to the large black gentleman who might want to hurt me.
This is the part of the story where we talk about martial arts. Today’s lesson is entitled “the fight that never happened”. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I made several adjustments that probably kept me from being in a fight:
- I acknowledged the threat. This seems like a minor point, but I was paying enough attention to realize that this man could become a threat to my safety. His movement indicated his hostility. He had a certain energy to him (we’ll discuss energy later). Had I not been paying attention, he could have been on me before I could react.
- The camera came out of my hand. I was wearing the strap across the left side of my neck. This put the camera resting on my right side, and left both of my hands free (don’t worry, I had no intention of dropping my birthday present onto the pavement).
- I took note of my surroundings. The crowd in the market was thick, clogging the narrow street. It would be hard to move suddenly in any direction without hitting a wall or a person. The street is cobblestone, an uneven surface of randomly sized bricks.
- I located his possible allies. This wasn’t hard, since the other two Africans stood out in the crowd more than I did. One was several feet behind him, still keeping his post. The other was behind me … I had seen him before I started videotaping the market. Even if I could take an attack from the first man, the other two would quickly become problems. I would have to turn my back on one of his friends to deal with the threat from another. This is not an ideal situation.
- I changed my posture. I faced the man as he approached, looking him directly in the eyes. I didn’t just turn my head … I turned my whole body to face him. This change allows me the opportunity to throw everything at him, in case things really go wrong.
These things happened on auto-pilot … I didn’t have to think about them, they just happened. All of these things happened in a few seconds, yet it took about 20 minutes of recollection to note every change I made. Everything on the above list happened from the time I spotted the man moving towards me. I was ready and facing him immediately after he spoke to me.
This is the place where martial arts training pays off. Even though I didn’t have to hit anybody, I relied on Sajido training during that moment. Master Sams is of the opinion that people who get into fights already made several mistakes leading up to that point, and the fight is their way of attempting to compensate for those mistakes. I had no intention of letting it go that far.
Sorry man, I wasn’t trying to single you out. I’m just videotaping the whole scene.
There was no fear in my voice, no sense of timid apology. I didn’t look away, and I didn’t dare look down. His eyes never left my gaze. I don’t even think I blinked. He paused for a few seconds, probably trying to make his own assessment of the situation. It was almost like he wasn’t expecting my response and had to readjust to handle it. After a few seconds, he spoke.
“We cool,” he said. Then he walked away. I did the same.
The entire sequence took about ten seconds, from the time I saw him in the corner of my viewfinder to the point where I walked away. At any point in that ten seconds, the situation could have escalated. He produced a certain vibe, a certain energy that screamed threat. I had to balance that with my own energy, one that whispers not in the mood to take your crap without crossing into testerone-filled macho grandstanding.
For those of you that have never seen me, I am not a man of great physical presence. Your mild mannered silionchef is 5’7″ and only weighs 145 pounds. I’m not the type of person who lifts heavy objects for fun or profit. The idea that I can deter a fight with only a few words can be considered laughable. The thing that amazed me most about the encounter wasn’t that it didn’t come to blows … it was the number of things I did without thinking.
People in the martial arts talk about an opponent’s energy. Master Sams talks a lot about it in Sajido class, how you can sense an opponent’s energy and use it against them. It sounds like a lot of mystic junk until you encounter it. In class you try to feel the opponent attack before it happens, feel the energy change as they respond to your attack. That man’s energy alerted me to a problem. The energy I returned changed the way he responded to me.
There is a good chance this encounter would have never moved into the realm of physical violence. But given the man’s mood, he could have easily decided to use force in place of clever conversation. He could have tried to take the videotape or break my camera, which I would not have appreciated. But it never came to that. Despite years of study, very few martial artists go around looking for a fight … especially not a street brawl.
The lesson: Nobody looses a fight that never happens. I wasn’t expecting to have such an experience in Japan, but sometimes that’s the way it happens.
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