Martial Arts World News Magazine - Volume 22 | Issue 2

NINJA BUSINESS TACTICS
Ah-shu Defined
People have asked about the meaning of the An-shu title that Rumiko and I use.
Though the world knows our school as SKH Quest Center for Martial Arts in Dayton,
the original Japanese name for our dojo is Kasumi-An.
I have used that name since the 1980s to describe my dojo and
the training method of that dojo, way before we founded the current
SKH Quest network in the mid-1990s.
The Kasumi-An is specifically the house I live in and the dojo
and meditation halls in my house. People come to that Kasumi-An
for private lessons with me. By extension, Kasumi-An also refers to
the training curriculum system program taught in all dojos across
the globe that operate as branches furthering my work in the world.
Kasumi translates from Japanese to “haze” in English. There
is the obvious homonym where “haze” sounds like “Hayes”, but
beyond that, ancient legends from Japan’s warrior past
often give kasumi an association with the lore of
the ninja. For example, the recluse mountain
yogi Kasumi Gakure Doshi was the teacher of
Daisuke Togakure in the historical Japanese
tradition I studied on my way to developing
To-Shin Do. Kasumi implies that the enemy
thinks he sees and knows what and who
we are, but he is deluded and we encourage
him to hold that delusion.
The An is a place of refuge, usually a
small cottage temple on the grounds of a
larger temple to which warriors or monks
could retreat in the old culture of Japan. The An
is a place you can go to get a break
from all the craziness in life, all
the heartbreak and heartache,
the frustration, the
overdone pointless
competition, all the
meanness, all the
compelling distraction
from what is
truly important.
Taking refuge in
the An, you get your batteries re-charged, your juices re-bubbled,
your vision re-focused, your intentions re-calibrated. You get back
in connection with the touch of life itself. On retreat, you get back
to what is real for you, or you practice arts or meditations that allow
you to expand to new broader horizons what is real. After your time
in the An, you are ready to re-enter your community refreshed and
renewed and re-pledged to making the world a better, healthier,
saner, safer place for all.
Shu in Japanese means one who runs an operation or facility of
some sort. The common translation is “master”, but it really implies
more like “facilitator”, in the sense of being the stable master
where horses are trained, or range master where firearms are
taught. An-shu is then retreat master, or “one who facilitates the
retreat cottage”. I hyphenate the title so the English hints at the two
Japanese kanji letters for An and Shu that form the word; it could
just as well be written Anshu.
An-shu is a very humble title of service, deliberately chosen in
my mid-40s when I went from 30 years as a self-oriented student
of the martial arts to a new focus on assisting others to find the
martial truths that I had attained. An-shu is not a ninja title as such.
Yes, I am aware that a few individuals pretending to a past of “secret
ninja training” have adopted my An-shu title in imitation; that
is so predictable that there is little I can say about it. You cannot
properly be titled An-shu if you are not head of an An.
Others suggested I use an impressive title like soke, which
means “original founding family”, or saiko shihan, which means
“top-ranked master”, or kan-cho, which means “training hall headmaster”.
Those are oft-used titles for head of a martial group, but
those seemed to miss the mark of what I wanted to communicate.
I want to be on record as a person who vowed to devote himself
to assisting others as a guide on the path. An-shu as “custodian
of the spiritual inn” seems warmer and more in line with my focus
these days in my 60s. No need for a grand and formal high-falutin’
title, because as I have often commented before, my real rank is
“Stephen K. Hayes”, the most honest and powerful title I could use.
AN-SHU STEPHEN HAYES has authored more than 20 books, worked as a body guard for the Dali
Lama, supervised over 30 school locations worldwide, and was named “A legend; one of the 10 most influential
living martial artists in the world” by Black Belt Magazine
62 MARTIAL ARTS WORLD NEWS VOLUME 22 | ISSUE 2