"Hands Up!" in Japanese

Would someone be willing to share the words that should be spoken by Uke during the pistol techniques of Kodokan Goshinjutsu?

I asked several people at a recent kata clinic, but the responses of both Japanese and English speakers seemed (to me) garbled. Among the ones I wrote down were:
te wo agero!
te o aguro!
te a gare!

Thank you for any guidance you can provide.
James

Accordiing to unofficial official Kodokan guide (the appearance of which is postponed indefinetely) the first "te wo agero" is right.

rjamescook wrote:Would someone be willing to share the words that should be spoken by Uke during the pistol techniques of Kodokan Goshinjutsu?

I asked several people at a recent kata clinic, but the responses of both Japanese and English speakers seemed (to me) garbled. Among the ones I wrote down were:
te wo agero!
te o aguro!
te a gare!

Thank you for any guidance you can provide.
James

The second one does not mean anything in Japanese; the third one means that you are commanding your hands to behave.

The first one is an option. Beware though that the 'w' is not pronounced. It is written when using Rômaji to distinguish from the vowel'o', though '(w)o' s pronounced exactly the same as 'o'.

It is not necessary to use the '(w)o', and alternatives are:

"Te agero"
"Te ageru"

During the 2005, Kôdôkan International Summer Kata Seminar I asked a similar question after hearing the teaching staff used "te ageru" while I remembered both Takata-sensei and Kotani-sensei use "te (w)o ageru, or at least the uke they performed with. The teaching staff smiled and said that "te (w)o ageru" was just fine.

Inserting the '(w)o' makes it sound less brutal. Then again threatening someone with a pistol is never not brutal.

While Finarish is correct that the term he uses is what is in the translation (no hard feelings to NBK who I trust will know more), the expression that is in most of the original documents on Kôdôkan goshinjutsu is: 手を上げる or "Te (w)o ageru".

There is no requirement for you to give this command in Japanese. You may do so in your ow language ... but by preference only when performing with someone or in a country where they understand the language. Few things are more ridiculous than to give commands or start cursing someone in a language you know they don't understand a word of it ...

You should also give consideration to the fact that very spontaneous expressions such as "Stick 'em up, S.O.B., or I'll blow your brains out" maybe too bold for some especially if you're doing this for a promotion test at the Kôdôkan ...

Thank you all for your help!

Best,
James

finarashi wrote:Accordiing to unofficial official Kodokan guide (the appearance of which is postponed indefinetely) the first "te wo agero" is right.

Any idea why the guide is 'postponed indefinitely'?

I have nothing but guess; Publishing them would make the texts 'official' and unchangeable without a lot of fuss. Better to continue to refine them untill everybody either agrees or is dead.

Japanese is not so big problem because they will not argue with sensei that the 'official booklet' says this but you teach that!

finarashi wrote:Accordiing to unofficial official Kodokan guide (the appearance of which is postponed indefinetely) the first "te wo agero" is right.

I think this is the one I translated and augmented, and was later edited by helpful but not particularly young folks on the Committee, which is fine. The 'wo' is largely considered archaic now, and would be written 'o' in almost any modern transliteration.

If I was demonstrating this kata to a foreign group in a foreign country, I'd simply say 'hands up!' in the local language. It's kind of nutty to say 'Woof! woofwoof!!' (or anything else for that matter) to a cow and expect to be understood, so why would you speak Japanese to a Finn in Helsinki?

Most folks understand this, thanks to the constant barrage of Hollyweird crime shows.

NBK wrote:

finarashi wrote:Accordiing to unofficial official Kodokan guide (the appearance of which is postponed indefinetely) the first "te wo agero" is right.

I think this is the one I translated and augmented, and was later edited by helpful but not particularly young folks on the Committee, which is fine. The 'wo' is largely considered archaic now, and would be written 'o' in almost any modern transliteration.

If I was demonstrating this kata to a foreign group in a foreign country, I'd simply say 'hands up!' in the local language. It's kind of nutty to say 'Woof! woofwoof!!' (or anything else for that matter) to a cow and expect to be understood, so why would you speak Japanese to a Finn in Helsinki?

Most folks understand this, thanks to the constant barrage of Hollyweird crime shows.

Hollywood? You mean like "te o ageru mother-f***er!"



Little known is the fact that uke actually has a verbal response "geri o shiteimasu." (with apologies to Isaac Adamson ... when is that next Billy Chaka mystery coming out? ... Taigyo get over there and kick his butt until he gets to work on it.)

Hollywood? You mean like "te o ageru mother-f***er!"

Little known is the fact that uke actually has a verbal response "geri o shiteimasu." (with apologies to Isaac Adamson ... when is that next Billy Chaka mystery coming out? ... Taigyo get over there and kick his butt until he gets to work on it.)

Not sure who Chaka (cousin of Khan?) is or was.

There was a sad incident back in 1993 when a Japanese exchange student and a bud showed up at the wrong house, a couple of weeks before Halloween looking for a party, scared a guy's wife who screamed for her husband. Hubby shows up with a .44 and yells 'Freeze!' but the Japanese kid whips out a camera, which the hubby thinks is a weapon, and shot him.

This engendered many hours of examination of the terms 'freeze', 'don't move', etc. on Japanese TV news and wide shows.

NBK wrote:
There was a sad incident back in 1993 when a Japanese exchange student and a bud showed up at the wrong house, a couple of weeks before Halloween looking for a party, scared a guy's wife who screamed for her husband. Hubby shows up with a .44 and yells 'Freeze!' but the Japanese kid whips out a camera, which the hubby thinks is a weapon, and shot him.

This engendered many hours of examination of the terms 'freeze', 'don't move', etc. on Japanese TV news and wide shows.

I recall the incident ... sad indeed ... and stupid.

But what I think you were really doing in your post was making a plea for an encore presentation of ...



Good night ... up in 5 hours for kata practice ...

Cichorei Kano wrote:

rjamescook wrote:Would someone be willing to share the words that should be spoken by Uke during the pistol techniques of Kodokan Goshinjutsu?

I asked several people at a recent kata clinic, but the responses of both Japanese and English speakers seemed (to me) garbled. Among the ones I wrote down were:
te wo agero!
te o aguro!
te a gare!

Thank you for any guidance you can provide.
James

The second one does not mean anything in Japanese; the third one means that you are commanding your hands to behave.

The first one is an option. Beware though that the 'w' is not pronounced. It is written when using Rômaji to distinguish from the vowel'o', though '(w)o' s pronounced exactly the same as 'o'.

It is not necessary to use the '(w)o', and alternatives are:

"Te agero"
"Te ageru"

During the 2005, Kôdôkan International Summer Kata Seminar I asked a similar question after hearing the teaching staff used "te ageru" while I remembered both Takata-sensei and Kotani-sensei use "te (w)o ageru, or at least the uke they performed with. The teaching staff smiled and said that "te (w)o ageru" was just fine.

Inserting the '(w)o' makes it sound less brutal. Then again threatening someone with a pistol is never not brutal.

While Finarish is correct that the term he uses is what is in the translation (no hard feelings to NBK who I trust will know more), the expression that is in most of the original documents on Kôdôkan goshinjutsu is: 手を上げる or "Te (w)o ageru".

There is no requirement for you to give this command in Japanese. You may do so in your ow language ... but by preference only when performing with someone or in a country where they understand the language. Few things are more ridiculous than to give commands or start cursing someone in a language you know they don't understand a word of it ...

You should also give consideration to the fact that very spontaneous expressions such as "Stick 'em up, S.O.B., or I'll blow your brains out" maybe too bold for some especially if you're doing this for a promotion test at the Kôdôkan ...

In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Jonesy wrote:

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to 'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

[quote="NBK"]

Jonesy wrote:
Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to  'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

It must be an old saying that is revealed only to the initiated

Must control myself, must control myself ...

NBK wrote:

Jonesy wrote:

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to  'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

Trust me, it's not Dutch !

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Why would someone use a guideline, or as reference for that matter, how to say something in Japanese prescribed by an author who does not even speak a single word of Japanese except perhaps konnichi wa ?  That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Are there footnotes, references as where any of the stuff claimed in there is coming from ?  Does not anyone wonder about this ?  How can you write text without references unless you yourself are the creator of what it is that you explain ?

Contact the author and ask him for the kanji !

Or maybe ...

Hatta kero --> Hatt akero --> hat--t--agero --> ha--t te agero --> aite te ageru --> 相手手上げる !

NBK wrote:

Jonesy wrote:

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to  'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

There was a discussion about this at the last Kodokan Kata Course in Amsterdam. There were some people surprised about the use of 'hata kero'. There were many people present there who attended the Kodokan Summer Course in Tokyo a few weeks before, who all stated that there are indeed several versions, but that at the Kodokan they were told that hata kero was the one to go with. At that time I was not aware of the alternatives, so I did not participate in this discussion. But now reading this, I can say that Mas Blonk was not the one who invented this himself. I will meet Mas in March again, so I will ask him who told him this.

No one should make a mistake on this - hearing and writing a reasonably correct version of a foreign language's pronunciation is not trivial - especially something like Japan. The multiple systems in use to transcribe Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are the results of at least a hundred years of hard work by some serious people. All have limitations, and some are subject to interpretation, etc.

So, if it's not what Japanese say (and it is not, I really believe) then, hopefully they can learn and move on.

Look at this clip. From 5.36 onwards - "te ageru" can be clearly heard.

Jacob3 wrote:

NBK wrote:

Jonesy wrote:

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to  'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

There was a discussion about this at the last Kodokan Kata Course in Amsterdam. There were some people surprised about the use of 'hata kero'. There were many people present there who attended the Kodokan Summer Course in Tokyo a few weeks before, who all stated that there are indeed several versions, but that at the Kodokan they were told that hata kero was the one to go with. At that time I was not aware of the alternatives, so I did not participate in this discussion. But now reading this, I can say that Mas Blonk was not the one who invented this himself. I will meet Mas in March again, so I will ask him who told him this.

I was not in Amsterdam, so I cannot say anything about that. Several reasons. One, I was at virtually all the courses at the Kôdôkan International Summer Kata Course that they were. I was just not there the last two years. On all of the previous courses, what was clearly said was the option "te of ageru" or "te ageru". Thirdly, and even much more importantly, none of the people there for speaks a word of Japanese !!  In fact, I am the one who had to translate for them every time they had to ask something or they did not understand what was being said because they do not speak Japanese !

NBK wrote:No one should make a mistake on this - hearing and writing a reasonably correct version of a foreign language's pronunciation is not trivial - especially something like Japan.  The multiple systems in use to transcribe Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are the results of at least a hundred years of hard work by some serious people.  All have limitations, and some are subject to interpretation, etc.  

So, if it's not what Japanese say (and it is not, I really believe) then, hopefully they can learn and move on.

NBK,

It's nonsense what was said. They don't speak any Japanese whatsoever, and have each year asked me to translate everything they needed to say or ask to one of the sensei because they couldn't even express in Japanese anything except sayonara, hai and arigato.

Cichorei Kano wrote:

Jacob3 wrote:

NBK wrote:

Jonesy wrote:

Stevens wrote:
In the book Kodokan Goshin Jutsu by the Dutchman Mas Blonk is written: "Hata Kero" (hands up!).
This is also what we use, but we don't know about the right saying of hands up. Are there more options to say hands up in Japanese?

Never heard this used - always te ageru.

Is 'Hata Kero' meant to be Japanese?

If so, it translates to  'Kick Hata!' who is a judoka and drinking bud of mine.

I would not suggest you kick him if you care for your legs.

Maybe it's Dutch?

There was a discussion about this at the last Kodokan Kata Course in Amsterdam. There were some people surprised about the use of 'hata kero'. There were many people present there who attended the Kodokan Summer Course in Tokyo a few weeks before, who all stated that there are indeed several versions, but that at the Kodokan they were told that hata kero was the one to go with. At that time I was not aware of the alternatives, so I did not participate in this discussion. But now reading this, I can say that Mas Blonk was not the one who invented this himself. I will meet Mas in March again, so I will ask him who told him this.

I was not in Amsterdam, so I cannot say anything about that. But, in terms of the rest I can tell you that such is manifestly not true. If they told you that, then they are lying. Why ?  Several reasons. One, I was at virtually all the courses at the Kôdôkan International Summer Kata Course that they were. I was just not there the last two years. On all these courses, what was clearly said was the option "te of ageru" or "te ageru". Thirdly, and even much more importantly, none of the people there for, Christ's sake, speaks a word of Japanese !!  In fact, I am the one who fucking had to translate for them every time they had to ask something or they did not understand what was being said because they know shit about Japanese !

Well, as you say, you were not in Amsterdam, nor in Tokyo last summer course. At least 8 of the people present in Amsterdam, WERE in Tokyo last time and I cannot imagine that they are all lying as you say. Misinterpretating perhaps, but not lying. But hold you temper please. I will ask him and perhaps things might clear up. Mas is the first to admit any faults or backdated information in his books ( unlike so many others ) so that will not be a problem.

Jacob3 wrote:

Well, as you say, you were not in Amsterdam, nor in Tokyo last summer course. At least 8 of the people present in Amsterdam, WERE in Tokyo last time and I cannot imagine that they are all lying as you say. Misinterpretating perhaps, but not lying. But hold you temper please. I will ask him and perhaps things might clear up. Mas is the first to admit any faults or backdated information in his books ( unlike so many others ) so that will not be a problem.

No temper here, just disbelief. Well, fair enough, I edited my post. That being said, no one implied that 8 people were lying for the simple reason that I do not find it credible that all those 8 people who happened to attend last year were actually teaching goshinjutsu and formed some kind of panel in which each of them were asked what precisely was being said, the more since this issue seems to have popped up only now. Some of them are experienced in goshinjutsu, some of them are not at all.

While I take your point, I still fail to understand how someone who does not speak a word of Japanese, or 8 people of whom to the best of my knowledge no one speaks Japanese, would conclude what needs to be said when, for example, take NBK, who is fluent in Japanese, who has translated the official Kôdôkan Goshinjutsu brochure, and who so far is the only one who in recent years as a foreigner was asked to translated during the actual Kôdôkan Kata Summer Course specifically for Goshinjutsu, and who also is the only one of all the people who translated whose translations were in correct English, lucid and to the point. In essence this is the same issue that we have been having in Europe since the 1970s. Someone comes back from the course in Japan, says that we have been doing it all wrong and they now changed it all, usually people who do not speak a word of Japanese.

It would be very strange --yes, perhaps not impossible-- that in all of the previous courses that come to memory something else was said, but most importantly no matter what one might claim it still needs to be a Japanese, and as someone qualified in Japanese linguistics I am dying to know which Japanese words were used. It is a bit the same as me telling you that we had a Dutch teacher here yesterday who told us that when the Dutch meet each other they say "Frmpffflt aksssprt" which is a common expression used in colloquial Amsterdam speak. By the way, none of use speak nor understand a word of Dutch but we are all sure, all 8 of us (who also speak nor understand Dutch) that this is what he said.