2010 - NinZine 3.0

Yoroi without yoroi

kumafrApril 20, 2010

Not long ago a student told me that he finally understood the importance of thinking we are wearing a yoroi when training the tachi kumiuchi techniques in the dôjô.

Since 2003, each black belt in my dôjô have been wearing the yoroi on a regular basis and they have experienced physically how to train with it. When you wear the yoroi, your movements are modified and you cannot move as freely as when you only wear your gi. Many practitioners have a tendency to move only their arms and/or to keep them too close to the body this is wrong. With the yoroi the extension as well as the bending of your limbs are limited. Imagine that your torso and your arms draw a pentagon (a geometrical shape with five sides). the five sides are: chest,left arm, left forearm, right arm, right forearm. Each angle between two sides is a body joint (shoulder, elbow). Because of the encumbrance of the yoroi your arms are always extended (not fully) and limited in their movements. It is as if your uppe body could not move indepedently.

This is why the key in yoroi fighting is footwork. Your shoulder line is always parallel to your hip line making your walking look strange. Because of the yoroi the Japanese developed the famous nanba aruki or way of walking where arms and legs move one side after the other and not in opposite way as we do in the west (left arm with left leg and right arm with right leg). You can still see this way of aruki in use with the sumotori.

Actually the “modern way” of walking (military) was brought to Japan at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate when the Japanese began to learn modern military warfare. Historically (sorry Mr Cruise), the first westerners to teach the Japanese samurai were the French military advisors, rapidly replaced by the Prussians after the loss of the 1870 war with Napoleon III.

I often say that if we are centered in the tanden we can easily pivot like the hinges of a door. This is what I learnt by wearing the yoroi often. Footwork is the most important thing.

♦

More on the French military mission of Capitaine brunet: http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Jules:Brunet.htm

More on nanba aruki: http://kikuko.web.infoseek.co.jp/english/namba-aruki.html

Seminar with Shihan Paul Richardson in Tallinn, Estonia

Bujinkan.me / seminarsApril 19, 2010

2010-05-14/16 – Takagi Yoshin Ryu

[email protected]

From http://bujinkan.me/seminars/…

Tachi tips & tricks (3)

kumafrApril 19, 2010

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

up and down, inyo, omote ura

Tachi waza is mainly done katate (one hand) the other hand holding the reins of your horse or another weapon like the yari. The two-handed grip was developed later with the use of the katana. Sometimes you can use the second hand to reinforce the momentum of your blade but it is not its general use. When riding a horse the left hand holds either the reins or the second weapon (yumi, yari, naginata) and the blows are given with the right hand only.

In general, sensei said that you do not cut, or hit, nor crush with the tachi but that you should move around the opponent in order to stab through the openings of the yoroi. Tachi kumiuchi fighting is to understand how to stab the opponent who is fully protected by his yoroi by aiming at the holes in the protection opened by your actions.

If the yoroi is the utsuwa (container) and the opening is kûkan (open space), don’t fight for the omote, but for the ura. In life, the invisible is more important than the visible.

Become an artist and make the invisible visible!

balance your tachi, balance your life

kumafrApril 18, 2010

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

Tachi kumiuchi is fighting with sword and yoroi but tachi alone also means standing up. In fact tachi kumiuchi is about acquiring the ability to keep our balance. The tachi (sword) too is balanced but on a horizontal plane, sensei insists on this in each class. When the tachi is in the belt with the cutting edge down, it protrudes more than the katana. The way it is balanced in the belt is linked to the size and weight of the weapon.

Datô no kamae

By having your body standing up vertically (ten ryaku) and your sword balanced at the hip (chi ryaku) you link the ten and the chi through the jin (adapting the movements to the situation).

You are free to move in all directions balanced by the tenkan (axis, pivot). Juppô sesshô is created because your movements can go in any direction during the encounter with the opponent (kumiuchi). Adding the perception of the dragon to the movements of the tiger, you are fed by the kaitatsu and flow (nagare) naturally with things.

Training in tachi kumiuchi develops the knowledge on how to use the weapon but enlighten us also on how to handle our life better. What sensei is teaching is to bring things to life, ikasu and get a happy life.

Rokkon shôjô!

Tachi tips & tricks (2)

kumafrApril 17, 2010

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

The tachi is not a katana and therefore should not be used in the same way.

Sensei explained that we have to understand the evolution of warfare in feudal Japan in order to be able to adapt our techniques to the moderne world. He was mainly referring to the goshin. At first there was 1) the chinese ken, then 2) the tachi, then 3) the the ju (rifle), then 4) the katana, then 5) the cannon. These are the five spirits of warfare.

When you look at this list of periods, you are surprised that you can actually put dates on them. The chinese ken preceded the muromachi period. The muromachi was mainly tachi. Then with sengoku jidai the rules changed by the extensive use (Nobunaga and his followers) of the rifle (teppo – musket type) that led to the Tokugawa/Edo period. It is only when peace time was established and heavily controlled that the katana began to widely used by the samurai.

The muromachi and azuchi-momoyama periods were times of nearly permanent wartime. Samurai would wear the yoroi everyday and a heavier weapon like the tachi was of good use. The sengoku jidai introduced the rifle and the yoroi was no more the safest outfit. One day in his home, sensei showed the helmet of a shogun‘s personal guard. Even though this antique helmet was in a very bad shape, sensei pointed out to me a big inward bump the size of a musket ball (approx. the size of a kid’s marble). The helmet was not pierced through but we can imagine that his former owner did have huge headaches afterwards.

So the introduction of teppo into the wargame created a major change in battlefield experience. It must have been painful to the samurai to discover that their techniques were not good anymore after the introduction of rifles. Eventually this is how the Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Tokugawa managed to get the unification done.

When the Tokugawa period began, there were no big battle anymore and the yoroi was abandoned. No battlefield, means no need for yoroi anymore. The regular gi (reminder kimono is only for women) was no more protected. This was the beginning of the katana period when cutting abilities were developed (battôdô). This led to Meiji (1868) and the use of heavy cannons, the fifth big change.

From all that it is easy to understand that the tachi and the katana being used in two different periods, their practical use should also be very different.

A few tips and tricks to remember when using the tachi:

1. the tachi is a shield and the yoroi is the weapon, use the tachi more like a stick than a sword. This is also why you can flip the blade from one hand to the other the same way you use a hanbô.

2. the tachi being held cutting edge down, hontai nuki gata is the only logical way to draw it.

3. the tate nuki gata, doesn’t mean vertical as in modern japanese but shielding as in the ancient understanding of the term.

4. the koshiate *(holster hanging down from the belt onto the thigh) made it possible for the samurai to have more freedom in his movements.

5. as the tachi is used katate, the other hand would carry the yari. In this case, the yari becomes the shield and the tachi is the weapon.

So please during your tachi trainings do not use the tachi as if it were only a big katana. With the year of tachi kumiuchi you are learning a totally new way of fighting.

As sensei was saying recently: the real sword masters are the tachi masters. The samurai who were using the katana did it because the didn’t understand the tachi.”

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*to see drawings of various koshiate, please refer to “Samurai Sword Fighting” by Hatsumi sensei. Page 19 in the English edition.

picture taken from http://www.teppojutsu.com/