Zach Biesanz and Michael Shane both studied aikido and later sought instruction in battodo after repeatedly hearing aikido teachers say aikido movements “come from the sword.” Turns out, there’s a lot more to cutting with a sword than mimicking the external movements. Biesanz, after training with Sang Kim, opened his Zentokan Dojo in 2016 with Shane joining within that year. Since then, Biesanz relocated to Minnesota and has helped establish Shane as the chief instructor at Zentokan Dojo. Today, Biesanz and Shane took some time to discuss their enjoyment, approach, and knowledge of battodo in the United States. All images provided by Zach Biesanz and Michael Shane. This is the first part of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Welcome senseis! Thank you for joining to talk about battodo in the United States!
Zach Biesanz: Thank you for having us.
Michael Shane: Yes, it’s great to be here.
Part 1: From Aikido to the Sword
MAYTT: How did you come to find battodo and when did you realize that battodo was something you wanted to do long term?
Zach Biesanz: I started aikido in 2000, and aikido teachers often tell students to move the body as if wielding a sword. It’s a useful visualization technique – bringing your hands down your center line, together, as you would with a sword. But I found myself wondering, “Do any of us really know how to use a sword?” I was pretty sure that I did not.
So, in the interest of making my aikido better, I began thinking about finding a sword teacher. Lucky for me, Doug Firestone Sensei overheard me thinking out loud about it after a class at New York Aikikai. He said, “You know, there’s a terrific sword teacher just down the street…” And that’s how I found Sang Kim Sensei and Byakkokan Dojo, which was indeed conveniently located, and the class schedule lined up just right.
So, a couple times a week for several years, I would take an evening aikido class, quickly change into my street clothes, hustle down the block, change into my sword clothes, and work on something that felt totally different.
Initially I only wanted to check it out for a year or two and then turn my full focus back to aikido. However, Kim Sensei showed me how much depth there is to swordsmanship. His love for battodo completely infected me. He has so much talent and enthusiasm, and is an excellent teacher who strikes a careful balance between gentle encouragement and driving his students to take on new challenges. Over time, he became not just a teacher but a friend, and even best man at my wedding.
Today, I’m still actively involved in both disciplines, which is a testament to the power of finding a teacher who not only knows his stuff but also inspires a deep passion for the art.
Michael Shane: Zach Sensei and I share similar journeys with some minor deviations along the way. I started practicing aikido in 2013 in Brooklyn, and Zach Sensei and I met not long after that on the mat of the New York Aikikai. We’ve shared many training sessions together over the years.
Like many aikido practitioners, I often heard the phrase, “This movement comes from the sword.” This sparked my curiosity, especially considering my pre-existing interest in Japanese history and antique swords. The concept of swords as objects where form and function seamlessly merge fascinated me.
After several years of training under Kim Sensei, Zach Sensei obtained permission to establish a study group (and later an official branch dojo) in Brooklyn, where we both lived at the time. This group became Zentokan Dojo.
I think everybody who finds themselves doing traditional Japanese martial arts very seriously will tell you that they were lucky to have met the people they met or the teacher they met when they met them at that moment of their life in that location. That has been the case for me – I’ve been lucky.
For Zach Sensei, aikido remained very much in focus. While I still love aikido and train from time to time, the sword naturally became the primary expression of my budo practice.
MAYTT: When you started battodo, how many similarities were you seeing with aikido or were there more differences than you could count?
Michael Shane: While there were certainly synergies between the two disciplines, the primary advantages I found had little to do with the technical aspects of using so-called sword “techniques” while practicing aikido.
This is my personal opinion — I think many people assume that a lot of the weapons work in aikido is martial. I do not believe that is the case, strictly speaking. I think it’s a pedagogical tool, and in some ways it reflects O-Sensei’s internal practice as much as external aikido concepts.
For me there were other benefits related to things like maai (間合い), spacing, and ma (間), timing. My sense of timing completely changed when I got serious about the sword, and I found that when I was on the mat doing aikido, I had to modulate a lot of things to continue blending and meeting my partner in the proper way. The way that the sword moves is quite a bit different than the way an empty human hand or arm moves. That probably sounds obvious, but when you experience it, it’s really visceral. Learning to use the lower body properly, learning the proper relationship between the upper body and the lower body – the truth is all of that became much clearer to me with the sword, and that went back into my aikido.
Zach Biesanz: I thought I was going to learn how to use a sword like in aikiken, but… better? Imagine my surprise when I found out pretty quickly that the footwork, hand positions, and cutting arc were all totally different.
In aikiken – and there are different approaches but I’m thinking specifically of Saito Morihiro Sensei – the cutting motion typically initiates with the shoulders descending, followed by the unfurling of elbows and then wrists. That’s a great motion to use on an opponent’s arm, so it’s a totally valid and valuable supplement to aikido, but Toyama Ryu emphasizes using big, reaching cuts to cut through one’s opponent decisively. This perspective stems from experiences in the Japanese Imperial Army, where even officers who had studied traditional sword styles were getting stuck in enemies’ bodies in combat and getting killed by ai-uchi (相打ち), mutual strike. So, Nakamura Sensei changed his approach to emphasize big cuts and cutting through, to avoid being killed by a dying enemy.
So, at Byakkokan Dojo I learned to cut with what felt like a reverse sequence of motion, starting with fingers, then wrists, elbows, and finally shoulders. Not that either way is wrong, just that they’re such different approaches that I wondered if battodo was really going to help my aikido after all.
There were these obvious external differences, but studying sword is one of the best things that ever happened to my aikido because I learned so many concepts that rarely get attention in aikido classes, like posture, alignment, and the acceleration we call jo-ha-kyu (序破急) But chief among these is “seme” (攻め), pressure – using distance, timing, and intention to create openings in an opponent’s defense. By forcing their movement on your own timing, you can respond instead of merely react. It’s something you have to learn for kendo or any kind of free sparring practice because it’s how you set up your opponent so you can land an attack even if they’re faster than you.
In aikido, particularly at the beginner level, the emphasis is on cooperative practice rather than combat. Beginners are often instructed to go along with techniques, focusing on understanding the lines of motion without resistance. It’s a non-confrontational approach aimed at exploring the basic movements of aikido before making the attacks more realistic later on.
However, aikido students often ask questions like: Why would anyone attack in such a manner, like by grabbing someone’s wrist? Why would anyone who has grabbed you keep holding on when you start your technique? The answer I’ve come to is that it’s because you’ve made them feel that grabbing and holding on is the safest thing for them to do. It’s an expression of seme that communicates that letting go is even more dangerous, perhaps because holding on is actively preventing a strike to their face. This pressure creates the connection that creates the opportunity to apply aikido techniques.
Developing seme certainly informed my aikido technique, but it also improved my aikido practice. We’ve all had partners who come at us with half-hearted attacks that give you nothing to work with. My secret trick for wringing a strong attack out of those people is to change my position just a little bit to pressure them during their attack. I try to be subtle enough that it doesn’t consciously register, but when I get it right, I can watch their eyes change from sleepy to aggressive in half a second. It’s a chance to quietly practice seme but it also means I get to practice doing aikido techniques against better attacks. Maybe I shouldn’t say it so publicly, because it works best when it’s a secret.
In our line of Toyama Ryu, we do a significant amount of sparring, which we call “gekken” (撃剣). We use foam-padded swords with a solid core that have enough heft and rigidity to both parry effectively (no flop-over) and to motivate you to defend yourself properly because getting hit can hurt a lot. This sparring is entirely free form, with a simple rule set: if the “sharp edge” of the sword touches you, you’re “dead,” and both parties reset. The whole body is a valid target, unlike in kendo where only specific targets count.
Gekken serves as both a tool for studying techniques under pressure and as a laboratory for experimentation that allows us to test unconventional movements and strategies. However, beginners often face a learning curve in gekken. They may attack relentlessly, but without proper setup, even their attacks that land usually end up in ai-uchi – both dead. Learning to set up attacks becomes crucial in gekken, as it teaches the importance of strategy and timing in combat scenarios.
Michael Shane: A lot of students focus on speed, but it’s not really about speed. It’s about rhythm. In the “Scroll of Wind” from the Book of Five Rings, Musashi talks about how “speed is not part of the true way of strategy.” He’s talking about cadence and creating openings and disrupting the rhythm of your partner. This concept applies in both swordsmanship and aikido, as Zach Sensei described.
Part 2: Learning to Cut for Real
Michael Shane (continued): In our lineage of Toyama Ryu, and particularly in Nakamura Ryu, we emphasize “enkeisen” (円形線), which refers to the circular arc of the blade during a cut. As beginners, we are often instructed to “cut big,” which is a good starting point, but it ends up being a much more sophisticated idea as one advances.
Our style is for unarmored combat, and the cutting technique is designed to leverage the sori (反り), or curvature of the sword. When you cut with enkeisen, the cutting action automatically produces a slicing action without having to overtly “pull” the sword through the cut. Because you are cutting on a curved arc and the sword is curved, as it touches the target it will also slice. Those mechanics are really important to the way that we cut.
The direction we give from day one is that every cut in any context should be a real cut, even if there’s no target present.
When students first experience tameshigiri (試し斬り), the traditional practice of test-cutting with a sword, they often try to cut using the muscles in their shoulders, chest, and arms, but it quickly becomes apparent that successful cutting requires more than just brute force from the upper body.
In the dojo, I often discuss the concepts of emptiness — “kyo” (空) — and fullness —“jitsu” (実) — emphasizing that the lower body and tanden should be full while the upper body remains empty. This allows energy to flow smoothly from the lower body through the tanden, spine, and upper body and into the sword, enabling free movement, powerful cuts that can be completed firmly, and natural transitions.
This emphasis on always “cutting for real” fundamentally alters not only the mechanics of our movements but also our understanding of how to effectively utilize our bodies in martial arts practice.
Zach Biesanz: Absolutely; body structure and alignment are so important in both swordsmanship and aikido, and daily life for that matter. The integration of a relaxed upper body with a strong lower body forms the foundation of effective technique. However, it’s not just about maintaining a static posture; it’s about actively extending and integrating the body to maximize power and efficiency in motion.
In battodo, standing with proper alignment ensures that power generated from the ground is efficiently transferred through the body and into the sword. Conversely, a compromised posture results in power leakage and weak cuts. Learning to straighten up and maintain a solid base also makes good technique possible because that’s when you can involve your hara in a meaningful way.
Back to aikido for a moment, I’ve found that maintaining proper body structure enables the kind of relaxation that both makes the techniques work and facilitates better connection with my training partners. Dan Harden is another figure who changed my aikido forever, and his whole thing is teaching people how to integrate the whole body and control the hara/tanden to generate power and stability. Sometime after meeting Dan, I was failing a test that requires extremely precise cutting and Hasegawa Sensei, one of my Toyama Ryu teachers in Japan, said to me, “You can’t cut forty-five degree angles with arms. You must cut forty-five degrees with hara.” That blew my mind and underscored for me just how important structure is, if his “center” is not only strong and stable but also directionally precise to that degree.
Michael Shane: It’s very difficult to use the tanden effectively unless your posture is perfect. If you’re lucky enough to have great teachers who can systematically teach you to achieve perfect posture and awareness of the tanden in the context of what we’re doing, it is easier to understand and achieve.
Based on Nakamura Sensei’s principles and under the guidance of Hataya Sensei, our style places a premium on practicality. We believe that theoretical knowledge must be coupled with the ability to apply it effectively, and our curriculum reflects this philosophy.
This is the first part of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 