Years ago, I read the book Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American Samurai. One of the scenes I remember from the book is a description of an iaido exercise involving a simultaneous draw and strike that cuts through a falling dewdrop.
I was a lot younger then (Amazon’s listing is for the 2001 printing; there’s an earlier one from 1985), and I had difficulty imagining that such things could actually be done, or verified in a training environment. I could see hitting a raindrop, but splitting it? I thought it more an ideal to reach for, in a “the journey is the destination” sense.
Well, now I’ve seen something that removes any lingering doubt that I had. Some of what is done in this video can be verified just from the end results, but the use of a high-speed camera to provide super-slow motion shows how truly impressive a skilled practitioner can be.
