David Glover

Ninpo taijutsu is the body skills and movement of the ninja from Japan. The Sakki test assesses a ninpo taijutsu practitioner’s ability to sense and evade a sudden weapon strike delivered with harmful intent. Despite literature describing the test, there does not appear to be any research on the phenomenological experience of test participants. This study aims to fill that gap by exploring the lived experiences of two test takers (the participants who evade) and one test giver (the person who strikes). Methodically, this study will employ video analysis to investigate the non-verbal cues between participants and interviews with participants to capture in-depth subjective narratives, thereby enabling both thick description and, because the researcher will participate in the test as one of the two test takers, thick participation. Theoretically, the study will use Gendlin’s concept of felt sense (a body’s sense of itself) to explore the internal body experiences of participants, while Gibson’s ecological approach will illuminate the relational interplay between participants during the test. This dual-framework analysis will potentially offer new insights into the human potential for developing the ability to project and sense threats, with wider implications for social psychology, experiential learning, and personal safety. By intersecting phenomenology with somatic psychology, this research offers a novel contribution to martial arts studies, providing a rich example of bodily initiation of, perception of, and response to harmful intent.

Keywords: martial arts, ninjutsu, sakki test, intent, perception, embodied awareness, phenomenology, somatic psychology, social psychology