New Hirano Tokio-footage, or ... jūdō as I remember it ...

Hirano Tokio Nage-waza


Also, check out the tsukuri for his hidari-ippon-seoi-nage:


Hirano Tokio Hidari-ippon-seoi-nage

Thanks a lot. This brings memories back! I was BTW not aware how much his judo influenced me until I showed Ulla some of Hirano´s clips....

Interesting. In the second throw of the second clip, the fulcrum almost seems to be placed on uke's forearm! I don't think any two throws were the same, either. He was certainly a dynamic judoka.

Many thanks.

I love such old clips of great masters like him or Mifune. A problem I have though is, that I see what they are doing, but not really see what they do. Could anyone elaborate about what he is doing in that ippon seoi nage clip, please? What is the purpose of his hand movements? How does he generate the kuzushi ...? What are the key points in this specific way of executing the technique?

Deshi wrote:I love such old clips of great masters like him or Mifune. A problem I have though is, that I see what they are doing, but not really see what they do. Could anyone elaborate about what he is doing in that ippon seoi nage clip, please? What is the purpose of his hand movements? How does he generate the kuzushi ...? What are the key points in this specific way of executing the technique?

As you know, most people can learn some jûdô, but very few people master very advanced jûdô and exceptional skill. One of the reasons for this are flaws in the teaching methods of jûdô. The way Kanô left jûdô with us when he died in 1938, some parts are very well developed others are not so well developed. A simple example of this is that the structure and pedagogical methods of tachi-waza are clearly better developed than those of newaza.

In performing a throwing technique, the didactic method of Kôdôkan jûdô splits it up in tsukuri, kuzushi and kake. The gokyô essentially depicts the kake of 40 throws, but there is very little structure and didactic to teach tsukuri and kuzushi. Traditionally we know that there are two positions: shizentai and jigotai, and we know that there are 8 horizontal directions of kuzushi (happô-no-kuzushi). There is no didactic about the vertical directions of kuzushi (the third dimension of unbalancing), and kuzushi is reduced to lifting and pulling. How we need to lift and to where we need to pull and to what extent does not exist as part of a didactic model, and is therefore left to your own inspiration, talent and experimentation. Because people have different abilities, some are able to learn this all by themselves pretty well, but the majority does not, hence the natural selection that eventually leads to producing many very poor and mediocre jûdôka and only very few technically accomplished jûdôka.

There are some other things in Kôdôkan where culture matters, that is ... they exist in Japan, but in the West where jûdô was developed by people who did not speak nor understood Japanese, some concepts have never really transpired to the masses. An example of this are the various types of entries; these are named in Japan, but that material is not very well known among Western jûdôka, who entry of throws, is usually limited to tsuri-komi or mawari-komi. Hirano has attempted to fill up some of these gaps in didactic methods. In addition to tsukuri, kuzushi, kake, he defines kumi-kata and links it to tsukuri and kuzushi. He defines several methods of kuzushi and kumi-kata and unlike Kanô's happô-no-kuzushi model, his do contain a 3rd or vertical dimension. The kumi-kata as shown in the clip involves reactions of uke; the way you grab and perform kuzushi depends on this interaction. In this way his approach is far more comprehensive than the classical Kôdôkan approach. There is no doubt that Hirano's approach works, but the downside is that it makes the whole tsukuri-kuzushi-kake concept far more extensive, which presents a challenge to the teacher in that he needs to understand it before he can properly teach it. In addition, the taught learning component becomes also much more vast for the pupil who needs to be willing to devote considerable time to learn all these different methods and understand the structure. To make such a method realistic for teaching the challenge for the teacher is that he needs to prime his students for such an extensive and lasting learning curve. The average jûdô culture in the West is that many students are not so much interested in learning a long and extensive network of preparing movements, and are impatient and eager to just throw their opponent on the ground and hard and quick as possible and this after minimal learning. The teacher will need to present his jûdô as an educational method in this way making it clear that there is a considerable learning curve. By presenting jûdô as a mere sport, this is not evident because jûdô then has to compete with other sports. In most sports, such as soccer, basketball, tennis, you have two, three, four basic techniques, and from the moment you know them you can quite successfully participate in competing. All the rest is strategy and becoming more dynamic. But take a standard jûdô class for a beginner. His first lesson, he will likely have gone through at least 20 different technical things. Just the basic three ukemi already involves a plethora of skills that have to be learnt that in number are larger than what someone needs to learn before you can compete in soccer, basketball and tennis. In those three sports, people can play matches after a single class.

CK-san, You being up a neat subject that was only mentally inferred in my youth, but years later I became to understand it clearly; in my mind Judo was in Japanese and not in English. Many years later, when teaching, it was a struggle to define or explain certain things to students, so I shut up and just made they watch. Yeah, I had a propensity to yak, so that helped me keep my mouth closed.

In keeping with my training much of the practice time was spent developing timing, feeling the movements and allowing the opponent to enter in an unbalanced position before going through the elements of a technique. Not sure why but after years of this practice I could readily defend myself and/or complete a technique with swift ease. But, teaching this was a struggle, so in time students watched and learned. Our teenagers began to learn and quickly make me come up with better stuff, and more often than not defend against my Judo. I dreamed for the day when one defeated me; but that would require a much higher skill level of teaching than I had.

This training was in contrast with many of the western sensei types I encountered; however, as time went by so did my skills. What were needed were higher learned teachers here. So, after four decades of doing Judo I opted to do something else. Finding no more skilled teachers than me was very frustrating and it left a bad taste in my mouth ever since. Finding myself in a no win situation Judo became just a memory; my skills never reached the height I had dreamed and learning stopped before my Judo was perfected. That is the big problem with the western Judo culture – too many of us stopped learning early in life; I mean real learning. Another problem is that so many of us taught Judo before we were actually ready to teach; and I mean too many of us.

Cichorei Kano wrote:

Deshi wrote:I love such old clips of great masters like him or Mifune. A problem I have though is, that I see what they are doing, but not really see what they do. Could anyone elaborate about what he is doing in that ippon seoi nage clip, please? What is the purpose of his hand movements? How does he generate the kuzushi ...? What are the key points in this specific way of executing the technique?

As you know, most people can learn some jûdô, but very few people master very advanced jûdô and exceptional skill. One of the reasons for this are flaws in the teaching methods of jûdô. The way Kanô left jûdô with us when he died in 1938, some parts are very well developed others are not so well developed. A simple example of this is that the structure and pedagogical methods of tachi-waza are clearly better developed than those of newaza.

In performing a throwing technique, the didactic method of Kôdôkan jûdô splits it up in tsukuri, kuzushi and kake. The gokyô essentially depicts the kake of 40 throws, but there is very little structure and didactic to teach tsukuri and kuzushi. Traditionally we know that there are two positions: shizentai and jigotai, and we know that there are 8 horizontal directions of kuzushi (happô-no-kuzushi). There is no didactic about the vertical directions of kuzushi (the third dimension of unbalancing), and kuzushi is reduced to lifting and pulling. How we need to lift and to where we need to pull and to what extent does not exist as part of a didactic model, and is therefore left to your own inspiration, talent and experimentation. Because people have different abilities, some are able to learn this all by themselves pretty well, but the majority does not, hence the natural selection that eventually leads to producing many very poor and mediocre jûdôka and only very few technically accomplished jûdôka.

There are some other things in Kôdôkan where culture matters, that is ... they exist in Japan, but in the West where jûdô was developed by people who did not speak nor understood Japanese, some concepts have never really transpired to the masses. An example of this are the various types of entries; these are named in Japan, but that material is not very well known among Western jûdôka, who entry of throws, is usually limited to tsuri-komi or mawari-komi. Hirano has attempted to fill up some of these gaps in didactic methods. In addition to tsukuri, kuzushi, kake, he defines kumi-kata and links it to tsukuri and kuzushi. He defines several methods of kuzushi and kumi-kata and unlike Kanô's happô-no-kuzushi model, his do contain a 3rd or vertical dimension. The kumi-kata as shown in the clip involves reactions of uke; the way you grab and perform kuzushi depends on this interaction. In this way his approach is far more comprehensive than the classical Kôdôkan approach. There is no doubt that Hirano's approach works, but the downside is that it makes the whole tsukuri-kuzushi-kake concept far more extensive, which presents a challenge to the teacher in that he needs to understand it before he can properly teach it. In addition, the taught learning component becomes also much more vast for the pupil who needs to be willing to devote considerable time to learn all these different methods and understand the structure. To make such a method realistic for teaching the challenge for the teacher is that he needs to prime his students for such an extensive and lasting learning curve. The average jûdô culture in the West is that many students are not so much interested in learning a long and extensive network of preparing movements, and are impatient and eager to just throw their opponent on the ground and hard and quick as possible and this after minimal learning. The teacher will need to present his jûdô as an educational method in this way making it clear that there is a considerable learning curve. By presenting jûdô as a mere sport, this is not evident because jûdô then has to compete with other sports. In most sports, such as soccer, basketball, tennis, you have two, three, four basic techniques, and from the moment you know them you can quite successfully participate in competing. All the rest is strategy and becoming more dynamic. But take a standard jûdô class for a beginner. His first lesson, he will likely have gone through at least 20 different technical things. Just the basic three ukemi already involves a plethora of skills that have to be learnt that in number are larger than what someone needs to learn before you can compete in soccer, basketball and tennis. In those three sports, people can play matches after a single class.

Dear CK, thank you for your elaborate reply. I often read your comments in this forum. Thus the majority  of this information is unfortunately not new to me. I am aware of the huge didactic problems regarding judo, it's incomplete approach, how more or less talented people tried and still try to improve it.  How judo's dissemination is a global game of "chinese whispers". I am one of those poor judoka you mentioned. That why I'd like to understand how Tokio Hirano does this technique, but your description only gives me vague hints. I see how he puts his left hand on uke's arm from the inner side, as if he wanted to press down a lever, does he also push it to the outside (hard to tell)? How does all this affect uke? Or better: what reaction is it supposed to provoke and how is it used? Is he moving his right hand in circles to prevent uke from grabbing it or is there another/different purpose to it? Is it futile trying to understand this specific technique without knowing the underlying priciples of Hirano's approach?

afja_lm139 wrote:CK-san,  You being up a neat subject that was only mentally inferred in my youth, but years later I became to understand it clearly; in my mind Judo was in Japanese and not in English.  Many years later, when teaching, it was a struggle to define or explain certain things to students, so I shut up and just made they watch.  Yeah, I had a propensity to yak, so that helped me keep my mouth closed.  

In keeping with my training much of the practice time was spent developing timing, feeling the movements and allowing the opponent to enter in an unbalanced position before going through the elements of a technique.  Not sure why but after years of this practice I could readily defend myself and/or complete a technique with swift ease. But, teaching this was a struggle, so in time students watched and learned.  Our teenagers began to learn and quickly make me come up with better stuff, and more often than not defend against my Judo.  I dreamed for the day when one defeated me; but that would require a much higher skill level of teaching than I had.

This training was in contrast with many of the western sensei types I encountered; however, as time went by so did my skills.  What were needed were higher learned teachers here.  So, after four decades of doing Judo I opted to do something else.  Finding no more skilled teachers than me was very frustrating and it left a bad taste in my mouth ever since.  Finding myself in a no win situation Judo became just a memory; my skills never reached the height I had dreamed and learning stopped before my Judo was perfected.   That is the big problem with the western Judo culture – too many of us stopped learning early in life; I mean real learning.  Another problem is that so many of us taught Judo before we were actually ready to teach; and I mean too many of us.

Thank you for sharing that. I think you worded that very well. I think the same thing that you just described happens in many jûdôka, but I don't think all of them realize that with the same degree of lucidity.

Deshi wrote:
Dear CK, thank you for your elaborate reply. I often read your comments in this forum. Thus the majority  of this information is unfortunately not new to me. I am aware of the huge didactic problems regarding judo, it's incomplete approach, how more or less talented people tried and still try to improve it.  How judo's dissemination is a global game of "chinese whispers". I am one of those poor judoka you mentioned. That why I'd like to understand how Tokio Hirano does this technique, but your description only gives me vague hints. I see how he puts his left hand on uke's arm from the inner side, as if he wanted to press down a lever, does he also push it to the outside (hard to tell)? How does all this affect uke? Or better: what reaction is it supposed to provoke and how is it used? Is he moving his right hand in circles to prevent uke from grabbing it or is there another/different purpose to it? Is it futile trying to understand this specific technique without knowing the underlying priciples of Hirano's approach?

I understand. I am, unfortunately, not able to help you any further at this point. The reason is that I am addressing some of these issues in an upcoming academic publication. Academic authors must submit to editorial and ethical standards, and editors check the originality of the contents of a manuscript. For that reason I cannot afford to write anything more about this here until after the manuscript has been published.

Cichorei Kano wrote:I am, unfortunately, not able to help you any further at this point. The reason is that I am addressing some of these issues in an upcoming academic publication. Academic authors must submit to editorial and ethical standards, and editors check the originality of the contents of a manuscript. For that reason I cannot afford to write anything more about this here until after the manuscript has been published.

We shall hold you to a full explanation after your publication is released. When is that, by-the-way?

Cichorei Kano wrote:

afja_lm139 wrote:CK-san,  You being up a neat subject that was only mentally inferred in my youth, but years later I became to understand it clearly; in my mind Judo was in Japanese and not in English.  Many years later, when teaching, it was a struggle to define or explain certain things to students, so I shut up and just made they watch.  Yeah, I had a propensity to yak, so that helped me keep my mouth closed.  

In keeping with my training much of the practice time was spent developing timing, feeling the movements and allowing the opponent to enter in an unbalanced position before going through the elements of a technique.  Not sure why but after years of this practice I could readily defend myself and/or complete a technique with swift ease. But, teaching this was a struggle, so in time students watched and learned.  Our teenagers began to learn and quickly make me come up with better stuff, and more often than not defend against my Judo.  I dreamed for the day when one defeated me; but that would require a much higher skill level of teaching than I had.

This training was in contrast with many of the western sensei types I encountered; however, as time went by so did my skills.  What were needed were higher learned teachers here.  So, after four decades of doing Judo I opted to do something else.  Finding no more skilled teachers than me was very frustrating and it left a bad taste in my mouth ever since.  Finding myself in a no win situation Judo became just a memory; my skills never reached the height I had dreamed and learning stopped before my Judo was perfected.   That is the big problem with the western Judo culture – too many of us stopped learning early in life; I mean real learning.  Another problem is that so many of us taught Judo before we were actually ready to teach; and I mean too many of us.

Thank you for sharing that. I think you worded that very well. I think the same thing that you just described happens in many jûdôka, but I don't think all of them realize that with the same degree of lucidity.

Hear, hear. Thank you for a very well-put, frank reflection.

DougNZ wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:I am, unfortunately, not able to help you any further at this point. The reason is that I am addressing some of these issues in an upcoming academic publication. Academic authors must submit to editorial and ethical standards, and editors check the originality of the contents of a manuscript. For that reason I cannot afford to write anything more about this here until after the manuscript has been published.

We shall hold you to a full explanation after your publication is released.  When is that, by-the-way?

Perfectly logical question, but I am afraid that the answer is not so simple. For academic papers, when sending in a manuscript, the reviewers generally have 2 weeks to review it. To give you an idea, I have papers, even very short and simple pages, which have been under review since August of last year. In other words, not all reviewers and journals take their job seriously, and sometimes reviewers intentionally delay papers, for example, when they have themselves a paper in the pipeline on a similar subject which thy want to see published before you to attract news value themselves.

Depending on the reviewers' decision, which either can be 'accepted' (rare), 'accepted with revision' (common), or 'rejected' (common). Rejections in our area are frequent because no normal person could care less about jûdô, and because scholarly journals are interested mostly in dry, brief, experimental work, that is ... a hypothesis that is tested on subjects, results are measured, the data statistically processed, the hypothesis rejected or accepted, and the results plotted in a couple of bar graphs or scatter plots. All, the rest, no one cares about and chances for rejection are high. The author then has to do over the entire cycle and submit elsewhere.

In the other case, if 'accepted with revision', we revise the manuscript, which in most cases I do in less than a week. Usually (but not always) we then get final (usually positive) decision within 4-6 weeks. Then it is waiting until they schedule your manuscript for publication and we get proofs to correct. How long this last depends on how large the journal is and how frequently its issues appear. Unfortunately most journals that will take this kind of work are relatively small journals that only appear 2 to 4 times a year rather than every month. It is impossible to anticipate how long it will take before the journal informs you that your paper has been scheduled or that galley proofs appear. I have manuscripts that were accepted for publication in July of last year and of which I still have not been informed that it has been scheduled for publication nor have I received the proofs. After proofs it usually takes about 4-6 months before it appears in print if a paper journal, and between 2 weeks to 2 months for an electronic journal.

Everything together, my experience is that the process between submitting a manuscript that ultimately is accepted for publication by the same journal without rejection, and when the article appears in print, is about 8 months for an electronic journal and 18 months for a printed journal.

Factors that can delay the whole process is that on top of all the work, I also often have to pay myself out of my own pocket for the material to get published. No judo federation, club, private sponsors or anyone else is willing to help when it comes to finances and the research is about judo. In judo the money all goes to top athlete infrastructure and the travel of officials, not to research. There also exists almost no third party organization where you can apply for grants to publish work on judo. In other words, publishing working in judo is an extremely ungrateful job, an exercise in futility really.

It was not my intention to provide a very convoluted response to your simple question, but I cannot answer it by a simple yes, no or number. What I have written above is an honest reflection of the situation, something that at its briefest could only be translated into "I have no clue".

The world of academia ...!

Thank you for your answer; I was interested in how far into the process you are.

Of course, be it on your shoulders all poor seoi nage habits developed by my pupils, students and me from earlier this month until such time as I have access to your publication or you have clearance to answer a backlog of questions on this forum.

DougNZ wrote:The world of academia ...!

Thank you for your answer; I was interested in how far into the process you are.

The manuscript is finished but unfortunately still only at the initial stages of the publication process.

The Hikite neutralizes the stiff arm Uke.
Interestingly this movement was showed to me in relation with O-Soto-Gari.
The Tsurite handles the problem of the other arm, which could prevent the turning of Tori.
The turning is done in two ways: "Omote" (leg turns in front of Tori) and at the end of the clip where Hirano seems to explain his reaction to an attempt of Uke to "block" the arm, he shows the "Ura" version (leg turns around behind Tori)
After that he seems to explain the next way against stiff arm (pressure from below) in combination
with jumping in, we refer to this as "shifting" or so...

Its a pity that there is no audio track...

Fritz wrote:The Hikite neutralizes the stiff arm Uke.
Interestingly this movement was showed to me in relation with O-Soto-Gari.
The Tsurite handles the problem of the other arm, which could prevent the turning of Tori.
The turning is done in two ways: "Omote" (leg turns in front of Tori)  and at the end of the clip where Hirano seems to explain his reaction to an attempt of Uke to "block" the arm, he shows the "Ura" version (leg turns around behind Tori)
After that he seems to explain the next way against stiff arm (pressure from below) in combination
with jumping in, we refer to this as "shifting" or so...

Its a pity that there is no audio track...

Thank you very much for your input Fritz!

I am still wondering about the kuzushi though. It doesn't look as if he sets up uke at all. If there is some sort of provoked reaction from uke, that is used to unbalance him, I don't see it. He just jumps or steps very quickly into throwing position and it seems as if uke is pulled into the throw as if his arm was suddenly caught in some kind of machine (for the lack of a better comparison). To me it looks as if he uses a sudden drop of his own center of mass after the turn to pull down uke into the throw, but I am not sure about that.

Deshi wrote:Thank you very much for your input Fritz!

I am still wondering about the kuzushi though. It doesn't look as if he sets up uke at all. If there is some sort of provoked reaction from uke, that is used to unbalance him, I don't see it. He just jumps or steps very quickly into throwing position and it seems as if uke is pulled into the throw as if his arm was suddenly caught in some kind of machine (for the lack of a better comparison). To me it looks as if he uses a sudden drop of his own center of mass after the turn to pull down uke into the throw, but I am not sure about that.

CK stated that the sequence Kuzushi, Tsukuri, Kake is not always
true... ;-)
Lets look at the Hikite action, this is part of kuzushi. Maybe the reaction of Uke can't be seen,
but its there - either Uke loses his grip, then he has not so many options against tori or he tries to hold the grip and
maybe he is focused on the grip, maybe he will become a little bit stiffer than normal and maybe
he will lose a little bit agility, maybe he pushes up against Hiranos "top down grip" and makes himself "light"...

Thank you so much for posting this. I study Judo with an emphasis on ashi-waza in the style of Osawa. My Sensei came across some youtube Tokio Hirano videos a couple of years ago and has been looking for more information on him since, and I have joined in. In the US he is virtually unheard of, and I have desperately been trying to find someone, anyone who learned from him and can shed some light on exactly what he is doing. A roku-dan in our organization worked with Ruska years ago and showed us his version of Uchi-mata which he learned from Hirano, and I have been hooked ever since. I posted a thread on Reddit a few days ago which is what led me here. Has anyone here been to the Tokio Hirano commemorative course hosted by Frank Thiele and Tom Herold?