Magical kurihanashi

Today we worked on jodo, getting onto some great hints that Henry gave me last weekend. Henry said one of his Henryisms that I wish I'd written down verbatim, but the gist of it is that the jo-man never stops moving long enough to bust the sword-man. This is because if tori stands still long enough to do something to the sword-guy and anything goes wrong then tori is stuck within striking range. We worked on this idea last weekend and today in the context of kihon #7, 8, and 9 - kuritsuke, kurihanashi, and taiatari. Sure enough they worked much better when tori lost the idea of trying to stick uke at a certain point. The most amazing thing that Henry showed me was a variation (i guess it is a variation - it's different from what I've been doing for years) of kuritsuke. If I understand Henry right, then the difference between these techniques is how uke is trying to get off the stick after he's caught. If he picks up and retreats, he gets kurihanashi. If he leans on the stick, tori takes one step under he sword to uke's other side, turns, and whips the sword into uke's groin. If uke tries to come off the end of the stick then tori controls the sword with the upper hand while pushing/striking uke with the butt of the stick. I'll have to get some video of this to post. Today we worked on how these relate to aikido ideas. these three traps are basically variants of oshitaoshi. We got a ton of practice on these in both nijusan and chain#1 forms.