As we continued our descent to the parking lot where we had a picnic outside of the backs of our cars, Yanase-san was talking about the chanting and the ancient science of the "Spirit of the Word." In Japanese this is called Kotodama and recognizes a sacred power to each of the vowels. "But no one remembers the actual science of it any more," Yanase adds philosophically, in what seems to be an archetypal reflection of the loss of sacred values in the modern world. Still, a form of the Kotodama is transmitted through a "marital art" called Waraku, which is the budo of the spirit of the word. Waraku is a totally non-aggressive budo. A practitioner of waraku, Yanase-san then demonstrated some of the moves, transforming himself from former corporate executive to pure samurai.