Yagyu Shingan ryu jujutsu

I love this school - it loos so weird but there's a beatiful underlying logic.

Emanuele2 wrote:

Some guy by the name of Kanô Jigorô was a student of ... Yagyû shingan-ryû ...

Kanô Jigoro ? Um, yes the same one.

"But, but, I read on the Kôdôkan website and in the Kôdôkan books that he was a student of Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû and Kitô-ryû." Um, yes, that's what you are reading alright ...

NBK wrote:I love this school - it loos so weird but there's a beatiful underlying logic.

I'd really like to know what that underlying logic is.

DougNZ wrote:

NBK wrote:I love this school - it loos so weird but there's a beatiful underlying logic.

I'd really like to know what that underlying logic is.

It is kuden - a secret teaching only verbally given to senior practitioners - or, in my case, being fluent in Japanese and plying the right guy with adult libations then slipping in the right question late into the evening.....

The question was:

Why are YSR motions so weird?

The answer is right there in front of you - if you can figure it out.

NBK

NBK wrote:The answer is right there in front of you - if you can figure it out.  

NBK

My guess is that which is not in their hands.

DougNZ wrote:

NBK wrote:The answer is right there in front of you - if you can figure it out.  

NBK

My guess is that which is not in their hands.

You mean their kara-te (empty hands)??

NBK wrote:

DougNZ wrote:

NBK wrote:The answer is right there in front of you - if you can figure it out.  

NBK

My guess is that which is not in their hands.

You mean their kara-te (empty hands)??  

Not quite. Okinawan empty hands were different from Japanese empty hands.

The reason this looks so strange is that these are techniques for fighting in armor being practiced. They make a lot of sense when both parties are armored. Out of armor, they just look silly.

Peter has a point but DougNZ is closer.

I like Peter's point though. I am going a bit on a tangent and extrapolating it to what we see in Kôdôkan's koshiki-no-kata. It's hilarious to see most Westerners perform it. I was once looking at it with a koryû menkyo kaiden proficient in wearing and fighting in yoroi. He said the Westerners walk like Westerners. At the Kôdôkan summer kata course Daigo or whoever is in charge points out they have to walk as if they are in armor, to which the Westeners start walking even funnier since about all of them are then attempting to mimick wearing something they have never worn and have no idea how it feels.

Then you have the real smart ones who manufacture their own 'yoroi' wearing a bike helmet and parts of some secondhand kendô equipment and everything moves from merely hilarious to excruciatingly painful to watch.

But it doesn't stop there. You see some of the Japanese jûdôka even at the Kôdôkan donning some yoroi and something just not working. Showed it to the koryû sensei who promptly pointed out that the Japanese Kôdôkan sensei with the yoroi was clueless about how to wear a yoroi and likely simply was self-taught looking from some diagrams. It's no surprise, really, if one considers what kind of nonsense they tell and demonstrate sometimes (I mean in Kôdôkan; I am not talking about the properly trained Yagyû shingan or other koryû students). My point really is that to master proper walking, to mater proper body position, to master wearing yoroi, one needs to be taught by someone who is proficient in it, taught in a dôjô. It's not stuff one learns from reading a couple of books or some improvisation.

If you have a strong stomach, here are some of those examples:










I think that the best way to describe these clips is considering them as a remake of Last Tango in Paris, but then without the butter ...

If, as you say, CK, one must understand moving in armour to be proficient at koshiki-no-kata, then why does Kodokan persist in teaching it? Such experience with armour is out of the realms of reality for most practitioners so the kata, if it is to be done properly, it must surely be confined to the few purists / eccentrics willing to seek out armour-wearing sensei or be consigned to antiquity.

DougNZ wrote:If, as you say, CK, one must understand moving in armour to be proficient at koshiki-no-kata, then why does Kodokan persist in teaching it?  Such experience with armour is out of the realms of reality for most practitioners so the kata, if it is to be done properly, it must surely be confined to the few purists / eccentrics willing to seek out armour-wearing sensei or be consigned to antiquity.

It's a good question but one I'd like to steer free off to reply in depth as it really goes to a core idea of which the historic justification is everything but easy and which would take us into the hard academic area. Maybe one could limit the your post to the first sentence and generalize it a little bit. No running before walking, and similarly, not walking without standing. This is a somewhat easier topic. One of the most important things in jûdô is shizentai. Kanô wrote lengthy piece of text on it. Somewhat surprising since few schools actually 'teach' shizen hontai and few practice it. Shizen hontai is is more perceived by people as ... "doing nothing and just standing there". But that is not what it is. Similarly to walking, most Westerners in jûdô do not properly understand shizenhontai. The entire basic qualification of Kitô-ryû really is called 'hontai'. I am taking some liberties in what I am going to say, assuming that people are not actually reading classical Japanese and studying these densho thus with those limitations since obviously there is a lot more to it, it makes you wonder what is so special about it that one has to actually train it, learn it and qualify in it. Seriously ?  People would have to spend actually time training this, when today they basically are sent to competition from their second class onwards !

Bowing is another similar issue They have no clue how to do it. It looks ridiculous. Sword handling in kime-no-kata, similar issue, so many Westerners (but also a considerable number of Japanese) have no idea how to handle a sword. It shows. It's like one is watching one of those Hollywood movies where some guy is some supposed martial arts expert and it is embarrssing. When they jump it is obvious they are attached to a wire, like for example Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Computer animation does the same. I always wonder "am I the only one who sees this ?" "Does no one in the audience notice that those are not normal jumping dynamics.

F = m g where F = force, weight (N) and m = mass (kg) and g = acceleration of gravity (9.81 m/s2)

v = g t where v = velocity

s = 1/2 g t2 where s = distance traveled by the object

Every superbly trained Olympic high-jumper is affected by this. They excel in their discipline, and can't escape these basic mechanics. But the average Hollywood actor can stay in the air or slow down vertical acceleration as if driven up by a rocket and coming down by parachutes. They are merely 'acting'. The same in these kata, they are not doing kata, they are 'acting' trying to depict something they do not master.

From the other side, judo is of course not limited only to those who know how to do everything perfect. It's training, practice, learning. It's OK to not now how to do things properly and studying them. But when at that level it may be wiser to focus on studying instead of deciding that one is clear to hold public demonstrations showing one's expertise when one clearly does not have that expertise. Kanô defined the purposes of jûdô as physical training, martial arts training and moral training. He did not put in there "and showing off your supposed skills to an audience and the cameras.