One of the most identifiable characteristic of Iaido is the concept of nukiuchi, which is extracting and cutting in one single, flowing and effective action.
Its physical and logical opposite, putting the sword back in its saya or scabbard at the end of the fight, is called noto. As we saw in a previous article about the "blood shedding" (chiburi), also noto presents a great variation of style, form and execution depending on your Iaido School. At the fundamental level, it requires the practitioner to use both hands to put in a same line the sword and the scabbard. The movement is performed rather quickly in the vulnerable first moments and it slows down as soon as the tip of the sword is covered. Save for these principles, which are in common, different schools will perform this movement in completely different fashions: in Muso Shinden-ryu, our school of reference, it is performed horizontally at the center of the body, and the sword gets slowly verticalized at the end of the action. But in Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu, for example, noto is performed vertically and on the left side of the body, and so on. When training and performing the 12 forms of the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei Iaido (formerly known as "Seitei") the practitioner is allowed to still execute noto as in his style of origin, provided that the hands still meet at the center before starting it. If the student doesn't have any old school of reference, and is only a ZNKR Iaido practitioner, then the standard noto used is the same as Muso Shinden-ryu's beginner's level. Beginner's level? Yes, because to further add to the complexity of noto, in many schools to different levels of the art correspond different types of it! In MSR, for example, there are 3 levels, each with a corresponding set of forms to be learned and mastered: "Shoden" (the "beginner's level" also known as Omori-ryu), "Chuden" (the "intermediate level" also known as Hasegawa Eishin-ryu) and "Okuden" (the "secret level" also known as Okuiai). The noto is different in each of these levels and is overall harder and harder to master; and it is a requirement - executing a "Chuden" form with the "Shoden" noto, because it is easier, totally nullifies anything good we did, even if the form itself was performed flawlessly. Learning and performing noto well is therefore almost an art in itself, to be practiced and mastered alongside the rest of Iaido, and used to convey both the technical ability of the student as well as the presence of spirit to express with it, the right "zanshin" (the heightened sensory moment after the cut, when you are ready to follow through again on the same or a new opponent). And as always the basics are the fundamental bricks on which to build your ability: it would be utterly impossible to learn the Okuden noto without having assimilated properly the Shoden one. Noto is the mirror image of the extraction, that completes the yin-yang circle of the form harmoniously, and it is therefore one of the most important part of the beautiful art of Iaido. We regularly organize Iaido courses in Singapore and we welcome students of any physical ability or condition, sex, experience and any age (as long as major). Please contact us for more info!
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