The Life of Nakamura Tempu (3)

AWAKING FROM THE WANDERING DREAM—
THE LIFE OF NAKAMURA TEMPU
(Part Three)

By H. E. Davey
Photos courtesy of Sawai Atsuhiro

Returning to Japan
After approximately three years in India and Nepal, he left in 1913. Before he got back to Japan, he landed in Shanghai to exchange ships. There he met an old friend, Yamaza Enjiro, Japanese Ambassador to China. The diplomat asked him to be a bodyguard to Sun Yat Sen, who was engaged in the Xinhai Geming Revolution to liberate the Chinese people from the reign of the Chinese Emperor. Saburo agreed and eventually became a top consultant to Sun Yat Sen. As a reward for his service, Saburo was given a hefty amount of silver when he left China for Japan.

With this capital, he became a success in the world of business. In a few years, he was President of the Tokyo Bank of Business & Savings and served on the Board of Directors of the Dai Nihon Seifun Milling Company. He also profitably managed several companies, becoming quite wealthy.

After several years of playing a leading role in the Japanese business community, he had a powerful vision that he was to teach what he’d realized in India. He abandoned his social status, businesses, and fortune. At 43, he began teaching the public. It was June 8th, 1919.

The Wind of Heaven
Saburo renamed himself Tempu, “The Wind of Heaven.”(3) He derived this name from the characters ten and pu, substitute pronunciations of the characters for amatsukaze. The amatsukaze is a formal technique, or kata, in Zuihen Ryu swordsmanship, which Nakamura Sensei was exceptionally proficient at. This name likewise appealed to his spiritual nature.

He taught a combination of the different arts and forms of meditation he’d learned, but exclusively in private lessons. Gradually, he taught more openly. Every morning he presented free training in Shin-shin-toitsu-do in Tokyo at Hibiya and Ueno parks. Nakamura Sensei stressed the union of mind and body, which he christened Shin (“mind”)-shin (“body”)-toitsu (“unification”)-do (“Way”). At times the names Shin-shin-toitsu (“Mind and Body Unification”), Shin-shin-toitsu-ho (“The Art of Mind and Body Unification”), and Toitsu-do (“the Way of Unification”) were, and occasionally still are, used by practitioners. The authentic spirit of the teaching cannot be limited by a name.

He founded the Toitsu-Kai (“Association for Unification”), with the word “toitsu” being an approximation of the term “yoga,” meaning union and harmony in Sanskrit. In September of 1919, Mukai Iwao, Chief Prosecutor, noticed him and introduced him to Hara Takashi, Prime Minster of Japan. Hara said, “This is a man to speak in a proper place, not in the streets.”

He helped some of Nakamura Sensei’s students create a society to support his work. It was called Toitsu Tetsui Gakkai, the “Unification Philosophy and Medical Research Society,” and dedicated to improving mental and physical health. It was a nonprofit educational organization as opposed to a church or temple. Nakamura Sensei insisted that Shin-shin-toitsu-do is an inquiry into the core of spirituality, not an organized religion.

Well-known people in political and financial circles attended his lectures. General Togo Heihachiro; Sugiura Jugo, a famed educator; and Ishikawa Sodo, the renowned Zen master of Sojiji Temple are just a few of his early students. Later, other prominent people such as Ozaki Yukio (Justice Minister of Japan), Goto Shinpei (Interior Minister of Japan and President of Manchuria Railway), and Asano Soichiro (founder of the massive Asano Cement Company) began participating in his seminars. By 1923, his fame had grown to the point that Justice Minister Yokota Sennosuke asked Nakamura Sensei to intervene in a workers’ dispute involving the Korean Keinan Railway.

In 1924, eminent Navy Admiral Yamamoto Eisuke (President of the Japanese Naval Academy) advised Marquis Komatsu to study Shin-shin-toitsu-do. Through the recommendation of Komatsu (former Prince Kitashirakawa Teruhisa), Nakamura Sensei taught three Imperial princes (Higashikuni, Kitashirakawa, and Takeda).

When Nakamura Sensei was 49 his lecture “Yamai and Byoki” (“Illness and Worrying about It”) was put on radio throughout Japan by the Osaka Broadcast Station. On June 8, 1925 it was broadcast just eight days after the radio station was established. (He was one of Japan’s first on-air featured speakers. His initial lecture took place just a few months after Japan’s inaugural radio broadcast on March 22, 1925.)

From 1925 on, numerous branches of the Toitsu Tetsui Gakkai were established in Kyoto, Nagoya, Kobe, and Otaru, Hokkaido. In January 1940, the Toitsu Tetsui Gakkai was renamed Tempu-Kai (the “Tempu Society”). Seminars and activities were held nationwide until the start of World War II.

In March 1945 (the last year of WWII), Japan’s wartime military government ordered the demolition of Tempu-Kai’s headquarters in Tokyo. This was due to Nakamura Sensei’s pacifist philosophy and fearless public denouncements of the war. In October 1946, the first Shin-shin-toitsu-do lectures after the war took place in the hall of the Toranomon Building in Tokyo. From that date, monthly public lectures were held at various places in the war-ruined metropolis.

In October 1947, at the age of 71, Nakamura Sensei taught Shin-shin-toitsu-do for three days to an audience of about 250 officials of the U.S. Army General Headquarters. This seminar took place in the basement hall of the Mainichi Press Building. The millionaire John D. Rockefeller III happened to be in the audience. Impressed by the teachings of Japanese yoga, he offered to bring Nakamura Sensei to the USA to teach. Nakamura Sensei declined, stating that his first priority was reestablishing the health of war torn Japan.

Tempu-Kai activities began taking place again with much greater frequency at the dawn of the 1950s. In 1962, when he was 82, the Japanese government officially recognized Tempu-Kai as a nonprofit educational foundation, or zaidan hojin. This important and difficult to obtain status was acknowledgement of the work Nakamura Sensei had done for years to help people improve their health.

In 1968, the Tempu Kaikan (“Tempu Society Hall”) was completed in Tokyo. Among the past and present students of Shin-shin-toitsu-do are members of the Japanese Imperial Family, government officials, business leaders, famous scholars, Japanese Order of Culture recipients, Olympic gold medalists, well-known actors, and celebrated novelists. Students included Emperor Hirohito, Matsushita Konosuku—Chairman of Matsushita/Panasonic, Kurata Shuzei—President of Hitachi Manufacturing, and Sano Jin—President of Kawasaki Industries. Yet Nakamura Sensei never directly advertised for students. He preferred to share the Way of the universe with people who found him through the natural course of their spiritual evolution. New students joined Tempu-Kai via the introduction of senior members of the group.

While Nakamura Sensei did teach specific methods of mind-body coordination, meditation, and health improvement, they merely served as techniques for living well. These techniques, while useful, cannot mysteriously produce enlightenment. No technique can. Correct techniques can, nonetheless, greatly improve our health, and under the right circumstances, aid in giving birth to an environment within which meditation can occur. It’s within meditation, not within a copied method, that the opportunity for spiritual realization exists. Various historical influences can be seen in Shin-shin-toitsu-do.

Indian Influences
Nakamura Sensei practiced unique versions of Raja yoga and Karma yoga with Kaliapa, with an emphasis on Raja yoga. These yoga forms had a major influence on Nakamura Sensei’s teachings.

Karma yoga is the yoga of action, cultivating awareness of our actions and their aftereffects. Karma yoga is also the yoga of selfless service (seva, Sanskrit), recognizing that since we’re all one with the universe, to help others is to help ourselves. Nakamura Sensei’s writings, indeed every one of his actions after returning from India, were examples of his Karma yoga path.

Raja yoga is often thought of as “classical yoga,” the yoga of meditation outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the two-thousand-year-old seminal work on this subject. In the Yoga Sutras, a course of meditation, involving both mind and body, is explained as a way to spiritual liberation through union with the universe. Patanjali taught an eight-limbed path, one of the oldest and most respected interpretations of yoga in India. While several types of yoga evolved since the Yoga Sutras were written, the eight-aspect form that follows is considered by many to be most representative of ancient and traditional yoga:

1. Yama—The five outward characteristics of spirituality:
a. Aparigraha—Contentedness and not being materialistic
b. Asteya—To respect other’s property and boundaries; to not steal
c. Ahimsa—Nonviolence
d. Brahmacharya—To transcend lust
e. Satya—Sincerity and integrity

2. Niyama—The five internal characteristics of self-mastery:
a. Samtosa—Satisfaction in the present moment
b. Tapas—A burning determination
c. Saucha—Purity of mind and body
d. Svadhyaya—Self-awareness and introspection
e. Ishvara Pranidhana—Surrendering to the universe

3. Asana—Posture, which refers more to correct postures for seated meditation than to the postures of physical training practiced today in Hatha yoga

4. Pranayama—Breathing practices to balance, purify, and strengthen the mind and body

5. Pratiyahara—Nonattachment to the fleeting aspects of life; transcending the senses

6. Dharana—Methods of concentration that fix the mind on a single point

7. Dhyana—Meditation that progresses from dharana

8. Samadhi—An ecstatic state of union with the universe that is the essence of meditation

Nakamura Sensei’s teachings parallel the eight aspects of classical Raja yoga. His worldview embodied yama and niyama. The lotus posture he advocated for meditation is similar to one of the postures (asana) espoused in the Yoga Sutras. He also promoted pranayama breathing for health.

In his book Anjo Daza Kosho, Nakamura Sensei explained the advantages of not being attached to the relative world of fleeting phenomena (pratiyahara). He likewise indicated that in meditation, we transcend our five senses to “hear” a “soundless sound” that’s the quintessence of the universe, also an expression of pratiyahara. Nakamura Sensei further indicated his methods of meditation stem from dharana (concentration) that leads to meditation (dhyana). All of this culminates in what he called zanmai, the Japanese rendering of samadhi. His Shin-shin-toitsu-do shows the clear influence of classical yoga. True, it isn’t aligned with the Hatha yoga often popularized in the West, with its emphasis on physical training and body sculpting. It is, however, very much in line with the ancient Raja yoga outlined in the Yoga Sutras.

While Nakamura Sensei’s teachings don’t represent Hatha yoga, or even traditional Indian yoga, it’s wrong to think they’re only slightly related to genuine Indian yogic traditions. They are deeply connected to the time-honored meditative practices of Raja yoga.

Nonetheless, his teachings aren’t a mere copy of what he learned in India. They are, rather, a new way of explaining ancient truths . . . truths which transcend cultures and divisions. Drawing on medicine, psychology, and science, he sought a different, easier way of presenting these teachings to modern people. It is, therefore, mistaken to think that Shin-shin-toitsu-do no longer has an association with Indian meditation. Nevertheless, assuming that it’s simply a Japanese translation of the original Raja yoga is also erroneous.

Both Anjo Daza Ho and Muga Ichi-nen Ho meditations, which Nakamura Sensei created, were shaped by yogic meditation. Since Nakamura Sensei had limited training in Hatha yoga, the more physical style of yoga, it was natural for him to evolve stretching exercises and physical education based on the philosophy of Kaliapa, Japanese martial arts, and his own insights. Still, he sporadically taught a handful of asana, or Hatha yoga “postures.” And while he created new breathing techniques, some traditional pranayama exercises were also covered. I made a point, however, in Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation to avoid offering material readily available in scores of books on Indian yoga.


About the Author: H. E. Davey Sensei is the Director of the Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts, located in the San Francisco Bay Area (http://www.senninfoundation.com/). In 2001, he wrote the first and only book in English about Nakamura Tempu Sensei and his system of Japanese yoga and meditation. The book is out of print, but autographed BRAND NEW copies can be purchased exclusively from the Sennin Foundation Center. Supplies are limited, and if you’d like to read more about how Japanese yoga can help you improve your health and realize your full potential, order a copy of Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation here: http://www.senninfoundation.com/davey_yoga.html