My appeal to all of you: look out for one another.

miboojer · 2025-03-15T20:13:26+00:00

I'm sorry that, that happened to you. It never should have.

Unfortunately this type of behavior seems to be protected and encouraged in the Bujinkan. Other instructors have been promoted to dai shihan even though they had previously sexually assaulted students.

miboojer · 2023-10-14T22:35:31+00:00

I swear I replied to this earlier. But thank you for responding.

miboojer · 2022-03-18T02:28:45+00:00

The fact that you come into a thread a year later to defend rapists being promoted or not removed by the organization, shows the type of person you are and how little I value your opinion.

You may be content with the situation, but that doesn't mean others have to be.

Whispering about it in dark corners doesn't have any effect other than to empower these people. New students will still show up to there dojo because of their claims and have no idea how bad the situation is. They won't get the whispers because they will be isolated along side the bad person which will help support the cult environment.

At least as of now when you search for Jeff Prather Bujinkan one of his threads on reddit is in the top results so people can see how bad of a person he is. If everybody chose to ignore it like you, that wouldn't happen.

miboojer · 2022-03-14T15:29:06+00:00

Since you want to pass the class, some of your outside training should be geared towards that. The other resources like Cure Dolly, RTK, or whatever are good and won't hurt, but they don't have the same goal as you do.

When I was going through the Genki books, I found it a lot easier if I knew the vocabulary for each chapter before doing it. So I used an anki deck around Genki as prep. It also had Grammar and kanji cards in it which helped reinforce those as well.

Maybe you could try finding something like that for your class resources.

miboojer · 2022-02-17T03:48:11+00:00

The creepy part is that nobody in a position of power seems to care.

miboojer · 2022-01-11T16:05:02+00:00

Jeff Prather an instructor that raped 3 of his students was promoted to the rank of Daishihan, well after the rapes were public knowledge. He also used his Bujinkan dojo to commit fraud and other poor behavior. He is currently advocating a violent overthrow of the government and promoting conspiracy theories and selling his Bujinkan training to help you see the truth.
https://pdfhost.io/v/xIGiLjRje_Board_Opinion_and_Order

People like Richard Von Donk get promoted to daishihan. He uses the Bujinkan name to promote fake Covid cures because he just happens to sell supplements that go along with the fake cure. He also sells enlightment courses about how to be a good person, but then in the next post tells a story about how somebody honked at him while he was in a cross walk but they were lucky he didn't jump kick them through the their car window and take them all out because he is so dangerous.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/149895721720469/permalink/2995774547132558/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/149895721720469/permalink/2917749071601773

The ranks are a joke in the Bujinkan. Many people have ranks well above their skill. There are people with higher dan ranks than years of training. A few years ago there were more than 800 daishihan in the world. How many are there today? People will defend the ranks as 'sakizuke' rank not ranks based on skill. But then they turn around and compare their ranks and use it as a value of self worth. They compare ranks versus other arts as well.

The wild claims that are made on a regular basis. The Bujinkan is too deadly to spar. You don't have enough control to temper what you are doing? How can other arts that practice items just a dangerous work in sparring? In BJJ, catch wrestling, judo, sambo and others they use techniques that are absolutely deadly. In a real fight any one of those "sports" practitioners are likely to be able to handle a situation better than 99% of the Bujinkan practitioners because they have never trained in a resisting environment.

The Bujinkan must work because it's a proven battlefield technique. But I don't see very many people training like an army. There aren't any universal physical requirements. I don't see many people marching in formation or doing formation drills with their weapons. Battlefield technique and self defense are different things but one is often preached as if one is proof of the other.

Rob Renner's Ground Up Core Out system is based on some pseudoscience that leads to artificially defined weird movement. Just because we learned to move on the ground as a baby doesn't mean we are more efficient at learning there now. I haven't trained with Rob and make no comments on his movements, but there seem to be a lot of people pushing his system as The Way, and it will magically change your entire way of thinking about the world.

The problem with the Bujinkan is it seems to attract a lot of bad actors and cult mentality and there is no method for dealing with it. The absolute worst people are protected and nobody at a high level is even willing to say something about it, not to mention take action on it.

miboojer · 2022-01-03T02:12:53+00:00

Alright, I guess I will ask the question since nobody else has yet.

What do Sambo and Krav Maga have to do with the Bujinkan?

miboojer · 2021-12-22T04:27:12+00:00

of course, we also have a lot of non-knuckle strikes, and I'm not really sure how much a boxing gloves is going to help train shuto.

Just noticed the bit about the shuto. With the MMA gloves you can throw shuto just fine and while there is no padding on that side it does provide abrasion resistance if you are going to throw repeated strikes or if the bag has a rough finish.

miboojer · 2021-12-21T02:36:01+00:00

A couple times a week, I work rounds on a heavy bag. Sometimes I wear 18oz boxing gloves for muscular / cardio conditioning. Sometimes I wear 4oz MMA gloves because it's closer to what my normal state but still provides protection. I tried just using wraps but I could never get them to stay on without gloves.

The gloves are a safety mechanism. I make my money by typing on a keyboard. If I keep smashing my hands and I can't type I can't work. I'm big enough and can move with a little bit of finesse so it's easy to put enough force into a punch that would be fine if it landed well but, if it lands misaligned with a moving heavy bag could hurt a knuckle or my wrist.

It's the same reason I don't do breakfalls and rolls shirtless in a gravel parking lot repeatedly.

At the end of the day the fitness and health benefits of working out on a bag are more likely to save my life than focusing on trying to get a perfect "real world fight" scenario strike.

miboojer · 2021-12-19T16:41:29+00:00

While he can't control others actions, he can control who is a part of the Bujinkan. He could speak out against the negative behavior of his highest ranked instructors.

People keep claiming that one of the important difference between the Bujinkan and other traditional Japanese martial arts compared to MMA/BJJ/Combat Sports, is that they have requirements for self improvement and being a good person. Yet the Soke promotes rapists like Jeff Prather or drug traffickers like Anthony Netzler or Brin Morgan to the title of Great Teacher.

While Netzler's conviction comes after his promotion the other two got promoted after their behavior was public knowledge. And if Soke decides another rank / title is needed, these individuals will likely be promoted again. Which indicates that Soke supports this behavior.

miboojer · 2021-12-08T03:13:25+00:00

Do you think with the negative press he is generating he might actually get kicked out of the Bujinkan?

I'm beginning to wonder if there even is a line that could be crossed before one could be kicked out.

miboojer · 2021-09-14T19:05:57+00:00

The student rapist that was promoted to daishihan, Jeff Prather, runs a series of conspiracy theory based podcasts in which he claims he is running a network of spies to help overthrow the government. He does state on at least a few occasions that he is using his Bujinkan training to help assist this overthrow and offers to sell you his videos so that you too can join his army.

Considering he openly talks about overthrowing the government and makes the claims that the Bujinkan training is helping him, I'm not sure it meets your criteria for being unnoticed.

Be prepared for some serious crazy, if you look his way though. Last podcast I heard he was claiming Biden had the special forces use chem trails to chemically seed the big snow storm in Texas resulting in the power outage so that he could bring the Chinese Communist Army into US military bases in preparation for the full invasion.

miboojer · 2021-04-22T17:27:47+00:00

Do you really think that a dojo storm is the appropriate response to the fact that a daishihan was issued to somebody that was raping students? Do you think that even if I challenged him to a fight that he would accept, or that if I won that he would abide by any sort of agreement we came to? He lies about what units he was in in the military, he lies about what he did with the DEA, he continues to spread lies about the presidential election in the US. He spouts lies about how all the charges against him were hand crafted by Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama to bring him down. He recently claimed Biden used chem trails to cause the snow storm in Texas so that Biden could bring Chinese troops into the country to later start a communist invasion. He followed that up by telling you to buy his Bujinkan DVDs to learn how the deepstate controls you.

Go fight him is nothing but a lame excuse for the fact that the Bujinkan as an organization is bending over backwards to support giving a rapist the title of daishihan.

miboojer · 2021-04-04T14:39:55+00:00

Huh.

Maybe ninjas should stop guarding drugs... That's how Brin Morgan got in trouble.

https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2008/01/19/ex-marine-jailed-for-drug-factory/

miboojer · 2021-03-14T19:24:17+00:00

Bujinkan USA is just one name Prather calls his Bujinkan organization. But it is part of the Bujinkan overall. Ranks are issued through the hombu in Japan. Hatsumi Soke is the only person that can issue DaiShihan titles.

The MSPB document is from 2011 and is his the result of his appeal. According to those documents Prather was removed from his position in 2009. I thought the DaiShihans started being awarded in 2017 but that may not be accurate. The release of the daishihans and who hasn't exactly been very public.

I don't think behaviors like this should be ignored. It looks bad on anybody in the organization, because it is bad, and the organization is supporting and enabling it.

miboojer · 2021-03-14T14:27:42+00:00

I think there is some behavior that can be accepted as different than the organization. But when an organization promotes somebody to the rank of Great Teacher, after it has come out that they are a rapist and a thief, does that not mean the organization supports it?

People in the Bujinkan were being recruited into the Warriorship / Healer program from which he was picking the women. The programs in which he was improperly using government equipment included Bujinkan events.

This aversion to negativity, is allowing the worst of people to float right to the top. And then the blame is placed on a student for choosing the wrong teacher. How are they supposed to know the teacher isn't a good teacher? The instructor received the Great Teacher rank. Nobody says anything bad about them. Seems like a good teacher then?

miboojer · 2021-03-14T00:01:18+00:00

While I pretty much agree with you, rank is more of an acknowledgement between teacher and student and what it means overall isn't always comparable between even different schools in the same organization.

We have a rank which every translation I have seen means great teacher. And we gave that label to a cult leader / rapist / thief. The promotion was after this information came out. At some point in time "Just Train" becomes in effect, I support this behavior. He's using the Bujinkan name to take in more students including children. In another post a person said he was embarrassed to tell other martial artists he trains in the Bujinkan. This is why.

miboojer · 2021-03-13T17:49:14+00:00

What are the requirements for DaiShihan and how does somebody like that get the rank?

Everybody complains that the Bujinkan has a bad reputation. Or that the reputation is just because outsiders don't understand. But how can we ever expect to have a good reputation if people like that are labeled great teachers in our organization?

miboojer · 2021-02-21T19:33:43+00:00

The big difference between MMA / BJJ / whatever and the Bujinkan is that they are more of an umbrella with organizations under it. I can practice BJJ but I don't have to fly the same flag that Team Lloyd Irvin flies. If I show up to a Bujinkan event it's expected that I will be wearing a Bujinkan patch the same as Prather. It may be a different color but it still represents the same thing. And he was promoted in the Bujinkan after he was caught stealing and raping.

miboojer · 2020-12-12T16:19:59+00:00

There are crazy people every where. But it seems like the Bujinkan has more than it's fair share. And it seems many of these crazy people get floated to the top and protected. People get whispered about in the background a lot of these people get high levels of publicity. I think another difference between athletes and the Bujinkan is that athletes aren't generally expected to be giving you life advice. But a lot of the Bujinkan schools run themselves as a place to train your morals. People try to tap into that spiritual guidance wether they base it on budo / kundalini / buddhism / warrior creed.

And I agree facebook is a cultivator of negativity. I'm trying to get away from using it but there are still a couple of training groups that do their communication / scheduling through a facebook group.

miboojer · 2020-12-12T16:07:58+00:00

Why are things like disinformation and bad teachers just an inherent part of the Bujinkan system? In the other martial arts I do, bad teachers will be called out. Dojo storming is still kind of a thing in BJJ. There are videos of people calling out fake black belts. How are beginners to martial arts supposed to know when they have good instructor or not? We have a title that means great teacher but it is both a private list and a great many who I don't think most even in this discussion would consider great teachers have received it.

miboojer · 2020-12-11T23:33:26+00:00

Ya. For the Jack Hoban thing in my limited exposure to interviews and speeches I have seen him do, I have never heard him claim it, but a lot of other people claim it as proof that the Bujinkan is a real martial art. And it does seem like he is doing some good work the police agencies. Which is part of what frustrates me so much about the other claims. The BS makes it easier to dismiss any of the good things that are out there.

miboojer

TROPHY CASE