Well, what kinds of things are included in the physical training?
The program is based on taijutsu or “body arts”, including a broad range of physical skills: evasions, rolls and breakfalls, strikes, kicks, locks, throws, chokes, etc. The weapon arts are a natural extension of the taijutsu. Training is conducted in a supportive, “family” atmosphere. Since these arts do not rely on upper-body strength, they can be learned as easily by women as by men.
These arts developed in, and survived through, periods of warfare in feudal Japan. As such they are weapons-based arts, though the physical methods are designed to work in fundamentally the same way, with the same movement dynamics, whether the practitioner is armed or empty-handed. Even the empty-hand methods take weapons into account and affect the way we approach things. For example, in a purely empty-hand sport art such as boxing a practitioner might be willing to absorb a couple of blows in order to get to a point where he can do something really decisive to his opponent. The Bujinkan practitioner would tend to move as though the attacking hand held a concealed knife or other weapon which he simply had not yet seen, and would deal with the attack in such a way that the opponent would be unable to use a weapon effectively if there was one.
