On the passing of Anthony J. Bryant/Edward of Effingham/Hiraizumi Tadanobu

It was Pennsic 29 (I think). Well, it was in 2000, because it was the year I started dating Gaius and he'd squired James and James had recently decided he wanted to do a Japanese persona.

I'd just arrived on site that day, gotten through a whirlwind set-up, and was headed down to the merchant area by the barn to use a pay phone to check in with Gaius and let him know I'd made it. If you know the area, there's a building across from Cooper's Store which had a pay phone or two against a side wall on its lower level.

I heard my name called and looked up to see James in his brand new Japanese garb waving over the railing up above me. Next to him was a balding, bearded, prosperous looking guy with glasses in a black surcoat with red and gold something on the front. My initial thought was "You rat, you said you couldn't come!"

As I bolted for the stairs, my brain started going "Click: hair's too dark. Click: glasses are the wrong shape. Click: the heraldry on the surcoat is all wrong." So at least I didn't leap on Master Edward of Effingham like some random nutjob when I was introduced to him, even though he and Gaius fit the Generic SCA Male Type# 14A. (James maintains he didn't see a resemblance.)

That's how I met Tony, AKA A.J. Bryant, AKA Baron Edward of Effingham, AKA Hiraizumi Tadanobu. Author, mentor, pain in the ass, inspiration. That week is also when I decided the polite thing to do as James' knight's lady was to act interested and try to hold up my end of the conversation. It resulted in my introduction to pre-Edo Japanese culture. I got dragged to a class about court rank, titles and honorifics that completely baffled me. James loved it. I was lost.

In the intervening years I became interested enough to pursue the literature and clothing - and eventually whatever else I thought Saionji no Hana "needed."  I discovered early on that Tony was THE Go To Guy on doing Japanese in the SCA, particularly for the armor and militaria end of it. Somewhere along the way I started publishing informational how-tos on the things I was working on, clothing to start, then other bits of Japanese material culture.

I was never formally his apprentice or anything. And honestly, for the kind of things I was doing, he didn't really do much other than surface, make a comment on the sca-jml Yahoo Group or Tousando forum, and vanish again for weeks or months at a time. "The fan's wrong," he commented when I posted photos of myself in one of my first Japanese outfits. I asked what was wrong. I asked for the Japanese word for "fan" so I could do a search. He never answered. Screw him, I'll find it myself. And eventually did, and did some research on fans used in period.

When I jokingly complained about his lack of response causing an incurable brain itch until I found a satisfactory answer, he claimed he'd done it on purpose. I didn't believe him. He had more in common with Gaius than a physical resemblance.

He didn't suffer fools lightly. When you're the Go To Guy, you get a lot of correspondence and some of it is from people who want to be spoon fed, or validated for making stuff up or being sloppy just because that's what they wanted to do. I think that's why he would go to ground for long periods of time.

He could be impatient, particularly if someone didn't get it - I remember an escalating situation on the Tousando involving a novice armorer with poor geometry skills. Tony and all the armor nerds kept saying, "That's wrong, go back, look at it again!" with increasing stridency as the New Guy kept going back and getting it wrong. I had to PM him and ask him to shut up for 24 hours - then I taught New Guy how to use a grid to blow things up and explained that if there was a curvy line in the grid, he had to cut a curvy line even if his brain was saying "This Is A Rectangle." New Guy eventually got a helper with a better eye to assist with his armor patterning.

That said, he never had a bad thing to say about what I trotted out for critique or approval. When he did come down off his virtual mountaintop to see what I was working on, he approved.

I was never his apprentice or anything, but he was someone the Japanese SCA community has always looked up to. I learned from him. If he said I was on track I could trust it. If he praised it, I basked in the glow for days afterward.

Yet in a funny way, I learned the most from the hard-to-reach curmudgeon. He taught me, "Screw it, I'll do it myself." I looked at Hiraizumi Tadanobu Sensei AKA Edward of Effingham's curmudgeonly example and became the mediator. I chose to be the patient one, to go back and do it again if it wasn't right, to answer my emails promptly and remember that it's still new to someone whether I've answered the question fifty times before or not, to say "I don't know," if I didn't and go back and try to find out more.

2013 is fired. For the second time this year, I have lost a long-distance friend and member of the SCA-Japanese community.

His obituary is at http://www.dailyjournal.net/index.php/view/obit/16748/#.Ur7rdPv4KNd