Tomiki defined seventeen fundamental techniques in aikido - things that you should know how to do in order to have a basis to do good randori. There is also a set of counter-techniques for the fundamental techniques. In this set of counters, called urawaza (perhaps it should have been named kaeshiwaza?), uke begins one of the seventeen fundamental techniques, and tori turns the tide, ending in a classical counter.
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But where there are seventeen fundamental techniques, there are only ten counters. What gives?
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Obviously it's not that the other seven techniques are fool-proof, undefeatable things. All techniques can be countered. There even exist classically-known counters for some of the seven non-ura techniques. For example, most anyone that has done any randori knows that wakigatame can be countered with gedanate, but a wakigatame counter does not appear in the urawaza.
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To some degree, the counters in urawaza are representative ways of countering aikido techniques. For example, the principles learned in the kotegaeshi-kotegaeshi counter and the shihonage-shihonage counter can be used to bust any of the floating throws. But the floating throws only account for three of the seven non-ura techniques.
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This also brings up a topic I posted about a couple of weeks ago - the idea that some of the 17 fundamental techniques are probably more fundamental than others. If you notice, the urawaza closely matches the techniques that I listed in that previous article as being the "main ideas" of the seventeen. The only technique missing from urawaza to make it match my list of "main ideas" is #10 - wakigatame. The techniques that I left off my "main ideas" list, like udegaeshi and udehineri, also don't show up in urawaza.
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Also, I think it is sort of odd that the urawaza is a open set, meaning that wakigatame is used to counter both shomenate and tenkai kotehineri, but wakigatame is not part of the set of urawaza (there is no official counter to wakigatame). I would prefer a closed set of techniques, which could best be done by adding the wakigatame-gedanate counter to the official set of urawaza. This would allow us to easily practice chaining the counters together into a sort of chain or pseudo-randori.
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Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Tomikiryu Ura Waza. What do you think of this kata?
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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282 木蓮
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