Tomoe Nage

What is your understanding of what tomoe nage is? I ask because I have lived my whole life thinking that it loosely translates to 'stomach throw' or 'circle throw'.

I have however recently realised how loose that translation is, when, in reviewing a recording of the seminar held after the Malaga Kata World Championships, the presenter Fujita Sensei of the Kodokan described Tomoe as being comma shaped.

"I explain about tomoe. Tomoe is like, comma shape design. You know? English. Comma. In Japan, we use the symbol of the house, temple, shrine, and, japanese drum design. But we use 2, not only 1. Sometimes 2, sometimes 3. (gesticulates to illustrate). So comma shaped design. So tomoe nage, like this principle.

The misunderstanding arising, arising from what I believe to be in a problem in translation (or inability to translate nuances) is further shown when the self-appointed translators used 'circle' when Fujita Sensei clearly said 'comma'.

Crescent throw is how I describe it. It is my tokui waza. Spent a solid 5 years after breaking my arm studying tomoe nage and all its variants

I sort of understand what you mean. I had a chance to join a training session conducted by the head coach of a leading school in Japan, and he described it as being extremely important for the arms to move in a curved motion as tori is breaking uke's balance.

That said, never thought / seen the comma analogy.

Japanese scholars please feel free to correct me, just be gentle.

As near as I can figure this out, the Kanji for this throw is 巴投 (activate asian character display if you can't see that).
The second character is nage, or throw which needs no further explanation.
The first character seems to have various meanings and pronunciations depending on the language and context, but in Japanese seems to be mainly pronounced "Tomoe" and refers to a particular graphical design, in the same way "swastika" and "yin-yang" invoke particular graphic images.

In this case the symbol is a common one in Japanese crests and imagery and is like a slightly more complicated yin and yang symbol, but with two dark components against a pale background.



Full details here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoe

We can thank our forefathers for not naming this the "Swirly symbol that looks like two commas rolling over each other Throw".
The description of "commas" is again misleading, because although it looks like commas, I don't believe it has anything to do with punctuation.  Once you see the actual tomoe graphic symbol though, the etymology of the waza name becomes abundantly clear.

This is similar to the use of "juji" in various waza names, which refers to the kanji for the number ten, which is a cross, so the waza are named for the shape of the number, not the number itself.  (Can think of it as Roman numeral Ten = X rotated 45 degrees if that helps you.)

Hope this helps.

This certainly helped. I have been provided with an educational pointer by a senior who was also presented with this question - his answer was similar to yours as well. I can see where the links between the image and the throw are.

To expand the question a little - does this have implications on how the throw should be done? Like the shapes, rolling over each other (and away), rather than directly down towards the ground?

cokiee wrote:This certainly helped. I have been provided with an educational pointer by a senior who was also presented with this question - his answer was similar to yours as well. I can see where the links between the image and the throw are.

To expand the question a little - does this have implications on how the throw should be done? Like the shapes, rolling over each other (and away), rather than directly down towards the ground?

There are a range of variants, but in general tomoe nage is usually most effective when tori "swings" under uke such that they are pulling uke forwards (off balance) before the foot pushes up, rather than tori just dropping to their back, pushing up with their foot, and then pulling forward at the end.  See the video embedded below for some examples.  This does correspond to the "rolling over each other" image that you get from the Japanese symbol.  The examples at 1:26 and onward illustrate this particularly well.

cokiee wrote:This certainly helped. I have been provided with an educational pointer by a senior who was also presented with this question - his answer was similar to yours as well. I can see where the links between the image and the throw are.

To expand the question a little - does this have implications on how the throw should be done? Like the shapes, rolling over each other (and away), rather than directly down towards the ground?

I would say yes, but I would be careful not to read too much into it. The name is just a name that is easily understandable to people brought up in a Japanese cultural milieu. For instance in the tomoe symbol, the two figures are head to tail, but in real life judo, tori and uke are head-to-head, so one can't take it too literally.

I would take it as a shorthand reminder of which waza we are talking about and look to standard Kodokan teaching resources for hints on execution. I doubt much insight can be gained by spending hours staring at the symbol expecting it to release its secrets to you.

(My older siblings generation, did spend some hours staring at black and white "psychedelic" wallpaper, but they were usually stoned at the time. )

I love this throw. You have to get deep into and not do what we call the “William Shatner” Kind of an inside joke but remember the foot is a ledge and it is really about the hands as much as anything.

NittyRanks wrote:I love this throw.  You have to get deep into and not do what we call the “William Shatner” Kind of an inside joke but remember the foot is a ledge and it is really about the hands as much as anything.

Careful now.
When you converse with us Canadians, thou shalt not mock The Shatner, nor shalt thou cast aspersions against the 'Captain Kirk throw".

LOL