Aikido Ground Fighting by Walther G. Von Krenner

A relatively new addition to the body of literature about aikido is Walther G. Von Krenner's, Aikido Ground Fighting.  This is a really interesting book in a couple of ways.

Things Karl taught me

There was so much that Karl taught me, and so much that Karl taught my teachers who then filtered the lessons to me, that it is difficult to condense it to a handful of memorable teachings,but here goes...

• Karl was a master of heuristic-based teaching - He was very good at coming up with specific, measurable, rules of thumb to guide practice, but he always phrased them as absolutes, like,"always keep your arms exactly centered and unbendable."   This sort of rules-based aikido got a lot of us emulating some form of jutsu pretty quickly, but the rules-based thing is a self-limiting form of aikido.  He would often tell us, "There will come a time to break all the rules, and that moment will make itself known.  Until then, follow this rule religiously and it'll make your aikido work better."  Even with him telling what he was doing, it was years before we figured out that they were rules of thumb instead of absolutes.
• And that brings up eidetic learning and the difference between explicit and implicit teaching - There is always, necessarily some difference between what a master teacher tells you he is doing and what he is really doing. A lot of times the masters are not even sure what they are doing to make something work, so they grasp at straws trying to describe it.  The secret is you have to know this phenomenon happens and carefully watch for yourself what the instructor is actually doing (as opposed to what he says he is going to do) so that you can "steal the technique."  Karl taught us this, or else we learned it from dealing with Karl.
• Karl was a master of finding aiki in fun places in everyday life and bringing it back to the dojo in innovative ways - We were always experimenting with ping pong, dart-throwing, tango, BOSU boards, electronic surfboards... the list goes on and on.
• What Karl called "Kihara" in the later years was essentially what Ueshiba called "takemusu aiki" in the early years.  A lot of folks gripe about the changes Karl made in his class structure and teaching methods around Y2K, but I think they are probably missing that he was looking for a way to get at that ineffable mystery that Ueshiba had described years earlier when he said, "Whenever I move around, that is what aiki is."  They were both getting at a kind of movement that is spontaneously generative of infinite technique.
• Do it while it's fun, and when it's not any fun any more, stop doing it - Similar to Becky's proclamation that she "has a religion and aikido ain't it," Karl often advised me to "do aikido and judo while it is fun, and if there comes a day that it is no fun, then stop."  Several times during the last years of his life he told me that he wanted to move away from Houston to some tiny Nowhere-ville and start over with maybe a half-dozen brand new students at a tiny house dojo (similar to mine).  I don't know if he was blowing smoke up my ass, or if that was a real dream of his that he never got unstuck from, but like the rest of Karl, it was interesting and memorable.

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Energy, Frequency, Vibration

Many of the worlds' greatest thinkers and warriors have been telling us the same thing.  Ueshiba, Tesla, Hirano, Laban, Tohei, Solomon.  The influential school of jujutsu, Kitoryu, was all about the waxing and waning of energy.  Henry Kono said (in essence) that he didn't understand aikido until he realized that Ueshiba was talking about yin-yang, and the implications of that.

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Karl Geis was fond of telling us, "You can do anything you want if you have perfect timing."

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Tomiki's murky past

I posed the question the other day, just because I was curious...

When Tomiki went to study with Ueshiba (in 1926), did he take some ukes with him to practice with, or did Ueshiba already have a bunch of other students for Tomiki to practice with, or do you suppose Tomiki actually got to throw Morihei around a lot?  I was curious because you don't hear much about the folks that were practicing aikido that far back.

Well, during my searching, I found this old video of Ueshiba throwing some guys around.  It says it is 1930, but it was probably closer to 1935 - in any case, It's the oldest Ueshiba film I've seen, and the one closest to Tomiki's time.  Some of the ukes mentioned on the video include Tsutomu Yukawa and Shigemi Yonekawa.  Someone also responded (but I haven't checked the reference) that Rinjiro Shirata mentions Tomiki in his book.

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Anyway, Tomiki remains a murky sort of mystery.  We have a bunch of his writings and we can touch people who touched Tomiki, but we don't have any film of him doing judo (except for goshinjutsu - no kumijudo), and we have little or no info about his time with Morihei.  There is, however, this great old pic of Tomiki and Morihei lounging around on the porch in matching bathrobes :-)

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It seems odd to me, and sad, that someone as prominent and as recent as Tomiki sensei can be so thoroughly obscured by time.

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Kisshomaru shihonage

Looking for something else, I came across this 1957 video of Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba, the Founder's son, doing a demonstration of some very nice aikido.  The first three minutes are shihonage - watch how nicely Doshu synchs with uke's ups and downs!  You can really start to see it at about 1:30.

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It almost looks like he is throwing uke up in the air and turning under him as uke becomes weightless.  Profoundly nice.  Something to work on for a year or ten...
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Also of interest, look how much the preparatory exercises he does for the first few seconds look like Tomiki's old taiso videos.

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Don't make your own job harder

A natural corollary to all this "Be gentle with uke" stuff I've been writing the last few days is...
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If you are doing something that makes uke frightened or uncomfortable

Then he will naturally resist,

Therefore, you are making your own job harder.

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So STOP.  You'd probably be better off doing nothing at all than doing something to make the other guy fight against you more desperately.
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Ueshiba said not to do aiki that everyone can see, instead do INVISIBLE AIKI!

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(...because if they  can see it and they know it is directed against them, it will make them spazz out and fight harder.)



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Beginning and ending kihon

There is this practice seen mostly in pre-war aikido guys, like Tomiki and Shioda, and their students - the practice of measuring ma-ai by crossing handblades prior to practicing a technique.  This practice is not seen as much (at least in this form) in post-war aikido folks, and I have not seen video of Osensei doing this, but Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba talks some in his videos about the idea of precisely setting up each practice condition.

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I suspect that the practice of measuring ma-ai is currently in disfavor because of some misuses or misunderstandings related to it, like the zombie attack.  But it is a valuable training tool, when used properly.  This sort of practice is valuable for improving kamae, ma-ai, metsuke, and zanshin

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How we were taught to begin techniques - prior to practicing a kihon (basic form) technique,

• Uke and tori stand in front of each other in a proper stance (kamae) - whatever that is according to their teacher Tomiki-students and Shioda-students prefer different basic kamae. 
• Uke and tori extend their lead arms, nearly straight, with fingers touching or hands slightly crossed. This defines the basic operational distance for kihon (ma-ai).
• Then both partners lower their arms and look at each other for a moment.  This allows both partners to get used to judging ma-ai distance visually instead of by measuring.
• When tori is ready for the attack, he establishes the visual connection (metsuke).  Different folks will tell you to do this eye-control differently, but we were told for tori to watch uke's center while measuring and when ready for the attack, make eye contact and maintain it.
• Then uke attacks.

How we were taught to end kihon - 

• Uke falls.
• Tori follows uke into a lock or pin (unless the throw is a projection)
• Whenever possible, tori lands uke either face-down or side-lying facing away from tori
• Tori places a knee and two hands on uke, chocking him and keeping him under control.
• Tori maintains as straight a posture as possible and looks around for more attackers.
• Uke submits
• Tori backs out of ma-ai moving toward uke's head instead of his feet.
• Uke turns to face tori, gets his feet between him and tori, and gets up moving away from tori.

Again, this applies primarily to kihon (basic forms) of techniques.  You will want to get some variation on these beginnings and endings, and perhaps even drop it from most of your practice once you've done it for a while.  But I think if you implement these scripts for beginning and ending kihon, you will get  some additional practice at kamae, ma-ai, metsuke, and zanshin.


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Get some jo in your aikido

I read it somewhere - not sure where - that the old jodo guys said that it was relatively unimportant to correct students on the things that go on in the middle of the kata.  He was saying that the really important thing to get right was the beginning and end of the kata.

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This jives to a large degree with what little teaching I've had from SMR jojutsu guys - they were very peculiar about the beginnings and the ends, and they seemed perhaps slightly less interested in the in-between actions than I was.

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They were emphasizing principle over tactics - the intangibles - ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, zanshin.  By paying close attention to the beginning and to the end of the encounter you get reinforcement in these intangibles.

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You see this same sort of attention to beginnings and ends in some of the pre-war aikido folks (like Tomiki and Shioda), and perhaps a little less in some of the post-war guys, though I have heard Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba speak on his videos about the importance of precision in setting up the conditions before each technique.

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In experienced jo guys there is a psychological (or dare I say, "psychic") pressure between them, as if there were terabytes of interaction being beamed back and forth between their eyes.  Because of the extreme consequences (jo or sword embedded in skull), neither partner dares break that line-of-sight communication until they see how it all works out.  I have found as an observer, it is easy to get drawn into and lost in that psychic communication between two good partners.  Often I have to make a concerted effort to watch their feet instead of their faces, or I won't know what happened after they are through with a kata.  

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There is value in carrying this type of practice with you when doing aikido taijutsu - (improvement of ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, and zanshin) but there is also potentially stupid tangents (e.g. the zombie attack, the no-touch ki masters), so beware the stupidity, but be aware of the potential value to your practice.

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Judo rank vs. karate rank

When I was digging through Wikipedia for information for that last post about karate ranks I noticed an interesting thing.

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When you read through any of the articles on the famous big-name judo guys, almost all of them contain pretty extensive detail about when they received each of their ranks.  for instance, 

After 15 months of training, Mifune achieved the rank of shodan ('beginning dan,' indicating 1st dan ranking) in Kodokan judo,[2] and after the remarkably short time of four more months, nidan (2nd dan).[2] Through timing and speed, Mifune quickly gained a reputation, and was never defeated at the annual Red and White Kodokan tournament.[2] By 1912, he was ranked rokudan (6th dan) and an instructor.[2] He was already being called the 'God of Judo.'

and...

Tomiki was one of the early students of the founder of aikido Morihei Ueshiba, beginning in 1926, and also of Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo.[2] In 1928 he obtained 5th dan in judo and in the following year he represented Miyagi Prefecture in the first judo tournament held in front of the Emperor—this tournament became the All Japan Tournament the following year. From 1936 till the end of the second world war he lived in Manchukuo (Manchuria) where he taught aikibudo (an early name for aikido) to the Kanton army and the Imperial Household Agency. In 1938 he became an assistant professor at Kenkoku University in Manchukuo. He went on to be awarded the first 8th dan in aikido (1940) and an 8th dan in judo (1978).

But when you look at the articles about the big-name karate guys (Shimabuku, Egami, Harada, Itosu, etc...), trying to find info about their ranks, it's mostly absent...  There could be several reasons for this relative lack of info...

• Maybe it took a while for the karate guys to adopt Kano's kyu-dan belt rank system.
• Maybe karate was at that time more of a rural thing and they weren't as interested as the cosmopolitan judo guys in record-keeping.
• Maybe this was just a curious oversight on the part of the Karate authors at Wikipedia.

Or maybe this suggests a real difference between judo folks and karate folks in how they think about the rank thing.

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New eyes and fresh hearts

Over the past few years, maybe 10 or 15 years, I've heard several practitioners of various schools of koryu kenjutsu and jojutsu say that they just don't get the attraction of aiki-jo and aiki-ken - that there is just not that much martial skill involved in aiki weapons practices as compared to koryu.

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Some of this I can attribute to koryu snobbery.  Nothing but the inside teaching is going to be good enough for some folk that fully buy into the propoganda about how they are the real guys with the real knowledge.  Brand loyalty plays a large role in this - but brand loyalty gets old eventually.

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And some I can attribute to Ueshiba's lack of structure in passing down his weapon skills.  His students, and to a far larger extent, their students have a very un-even skill set ranging from great skill to cut-your-own-arm-off incompetence.

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And some of this I can attribute to a difference in goals.  The SMR guys (for instance) are not trying to use the jo to get at takemusu aiki, so it makes sense that aiki-jo may differ from SMR jo because they are aiming at different endpoints.

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But the snobbery of some (certainly not all) koryu guys and the resentment it engenders in some (again, not all) aiki guys is tiresome.   I like practicing with and learning from both groups and my personal practice has benefited from allowing myself to be influenced by each group, but I've gotten to the point that I don't especially want to be included in either group.  

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Perhaps both communities could benefit from each looking at the other with new eyes and fresh hearts.

[photo courtesy of Magali Veldhuis]

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Toward an Aiki Renaissance

Much of Tomiki's contribution to aikido was in the formation of rational, sequential teaching methodologies for getting beginners up to speed rapidly.  He was teaching in a University setting and only had the students for a few years - maybe 3-5 years - and wanted to get them up and running, exploring and working on aikido within that time.

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So he created primers - small sets of techniques - 12 taiso, 7 offbalances, 15 (later 17) techniques... That represented a rational way to get students emulating Ueshiba's intuitive genius - particularly with respect to getting students doing randori quickly.

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But here's a thought for you - In what other domain of knowledge do grad students recite their primer or their catechism for most of every class, year after year?  I'm not trying to downplay Tomiki's teaching and organizational genius, but these things that he gave us are primers (very good ones) meant for kyu grades.

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So, along comes Hideo Ohba, another very talented student of Kano, Ueshiba, and Tomiki, and he organized a group of 5-6 kata (#3 might have been Tomiki's work) representing some of the pieces of Ueshiba's art that didn't fit into Tomiki's primers.  These kata represent most of the "advanced" work that we do in most Tomiki aikido classes.  But these things are still like High school textbooks - they point and hint at phenomena within the larger world of aiki but they are still somewhat superficial.  It is hard (if it is even possible) to get to the magical aiki by repeating those 6 kata ad infinitum.

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In my opinion, we need to continue studying Tomiki's primers - they are just too good a method to dispense with.  And we need to continue studying Ohba's Koryu work as a set of hints at directions that we can take our research.  But I think we need to broaden our explorations even beyond that.  Similar to the previous post where I was talking about communication between Graduate students in Medieval and Renaissance colleges - we need to be working with instead of separately from Aikikai and Yoshinkai and the innumerable independent aiki instructors, and the Daito guys, and the Kito guys...

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We need to move out of the Dark Ages of organizations that preach that they have the only true aikido.  We need to get past the Medieval aiki feudalism into a Renaissance of aikido.  We need to join The Conversation of Ideas - and I don't just mean absorbing Aikikai and Yoshinkai and Daito methods into our own, but also demonstrating and offering Tomiki-lineage ideas to the rest of the aiki world.

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More on this thread later - stay tuned...


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More on men suburi

Ok, I'm belaboring the point and I know it, but here's some more video examples of men giri - how to make a vertical downward cut with a sword.  Last time we saw that there are some technical differences between men cuts done by different schools of aikido, kenjutsu, kendo, iaido, and jodo - mostly because they are trying to accomplish different things in their training.  So this time all the samples are from aikido folks.  We would expect to see more commonality.

Now, this next fellow looks like a raving lunatic dancing about and flailing the sword, but this is Shirata sensei - one of Morihei Ueshiba's close buddies and reportedly a pre-war badass.  For purposes of this discussion, ignore all the screaming and dancing about and look how clean and controlled his downward cuts are! (the sword swinging doesn't start until about 3:45)

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Morihiro Saito tachidori

Here is another very nice take on tachidori from Morihiro Saito.  These are much the same as the tachidori and jodori that Tomiki taught.  In fact, it's kind of interesting and surprising how similar these two sets are technically because of the time that passed between Tomiki and Saito (Tomiki was learning this stuff before Saito was born, and Tomiki was 8th dan in aikido before Saito began.)

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We always hear about all the differences between the earliest pre-war aikidoka and the post-war aikidoka, but what Saito is doing in his 13 tachiwaza is largely what Tomiki left us in the tachidori and jodori.

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Now, admittedly, Ohba was apparently largely responsible for the Koryu no kata - including the tachidori and jodori - and that would help explain the similarities because Ohba was studying with Ueshiba much closer to (but still prior to) Saito's time.  But Sankata (which contains the majority of the tachidori and jodori) is widely thought to be Tomiki's development - not Ohba's.

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In any case, Saito's performance here is lovely and interesting.

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Hang on and be dragged to death!

I remember coming up through the ranks trying to learn the next technique and the next kata and the next thing and frequently being frustrated because the targets seemed to be constantly shifting.  Our instructor would go to a clinic and come back and inform us that they'd shown a different or better way to throw kotegaeshi or a different way we were supposed to be doing junana.  The flux made sense, because we are all working toward this vague ideal of aiki - but it was still frustrating - we often wished that the system would just hold still long enough for us to get our next batch of ranks before having to think about something else.

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But it turns out that this phenomenon is not unique to our clubs or lineage.  There are accounts from Morihei Ueshiba's students that O sensei never taught the same thing the same way twice.  They say they were often frustrated because they could not ever nail him down on what they were supposed to be doing.

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Recently I got to be a fly on the wall listening to a group of aikidoka from a different lineage kvetching about their main sensei never giving two students the same rank requirements - and when they did press him for standardized rank requirements he put out a list of material that none of them claimed to know - and then tested them on a different set of stuff.

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Let me tell you - not only is this flux not unique to any one group of clubs - but it does not resolve itself as you get higher rank.  If anything, I am even more aware now of the shifting nature of the ideal.  The only thing that I know for sure is that I don't know anything for sure.

Sometimes  I still wish that takemusu aiki would hold still for just a moment so that I could catch up - but I don't think that is destined  to be.  Flux is the nature of the thing.  You just have to latch on and let it drag you along till you die.  But you know what?  It's a hell of a ride!  I suspect that if aiki ever held still and let me catch it I'd grow bored and go off and do something else with my life.

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The Walk - 10 - koshi kaeshi

Links to previous articles on The Walk - nanameashi, wakiashi,  tenkanashi,  shomen tegatana, soto mawashi, uchi mawashi, uchi-soto gaeshi, uchi mawashi gaeshi, and soto mawashi gaeshi.
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The next motion in this set of exercises is koshi kaeshi - the hip switch.  Of all the motions in the exercise, this is probably the most universally applicable.  Hip switch is absolutely everywhere in aikido and judo.  I don't think it is possible to do any technique or action without using koshi kaeshi to adjust the direction or facing of your hips.

• In virtually all of Tomiki aikido, techniques are performed from shizentai (natural posture) instead of Ueshiba's hanmi (half-facing stance).  From shizentai it is not possible to hip switch more than about 135 degrees and still end up in shizentai.  As you switch farther, you start to get into hanmi.  If you start in hanmi, though, you can hip switch 180 degrees and end up back in hanmi.
• This is not "doing the twist" or "stomping roaches."  The weight does not stay even between the feet and heels twist to face a different direction - this is weak and endangers the knees and is difficult to do with grippy shoes.  The feet move at different times, with the front foot turning, the weight shifting to that foot, then the hip and the other foot switching.  The weight shifts slightly to the new back foot leaving you in a shallow hanmi or back stance.
• The kata form of this hip switch is sort of generic.  When it shows up in specific techniques, like shihonage, it looks different.  It is good to practice the hip switch in different configurations, like Adrian and Eddy do in the first few segments of the above video. And this applies to all of the exercises - it's good to tear this kata apart into individual chunks and practice each chunk in different configurations with different emphases or exaggerations.

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Aikido, doff thy name

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not Jujutsu.

What's Jujutsu? It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Aikido would, were it not Aikido call'd,

Retain that dear perfection which it owes

Without that title. Aikido, doff thy name,

And for that name which is no part of thee

Take all myself.

Every so often, we in our extended martial arts group have an identity crisis.  Are we doing aikido even though it's not quite what Ueshiba did? Or are we doing judo even though it's not quite what Kano did?  Is it Tomiki aikido even though it is not really Shodokan?  Should we call it hamare judo or just plain old Aikibudo?  Is it really just a new form of the ancient Kito school with a couple of drops of Daito flavoring?

• What it is and What it aint
• Tomiki's false modesty
• Chocolate in my peanut butter

Who knows?  Who cares?  What does it matter?

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I personally do think it does matter. Names make a difference. See this thread of articles about how the name, shihonage, affects how you do the technique.  But I still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer for myself about this - what-do-we-call-what-we-do problem.

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Sucked into the eyes

We're advised from day-1 in our classes to look the partner in the eyes - maintain eye contact.  but then someone eventually brings up the famous Ueshiba quote...

Do not stare into the eyes of your opponent: he may mesmerize you. Do not fix your gaze on his sword: he may intimidate you. Do not focus on your opponent at all: he may absorb your energy. 

I, for one, have found immense benefit to my aikido in maintaining eye contact, and I have only been "mesmerized" once or twice in  the last 20 some-odd years - but I suppose in a lifetime of life-or-death encounters, a samurai wouldn't have been able to tell when that 1 fatal time would occur.

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Sean has done a good treatment of this look-don't-look paradox in our practice. I just wanted to add a little anecdote to this discussion.

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I have discovered recently that I am not able to watch really good jodo practitioners doing kata.  I'm not able to see what their arms and legs and weapons are doing because I get sucked into their eyes!  It's really weird - as if there is some sort of really high-energy communication going on between the eyes of uchitachi and shidachi, and if I ever meet their eyes, even as an observer on the side, I am sucked into that data stream and I can't see anything else. There have been several times lately that a sensei would say, "watch this kata," and I would start watching and get sucked into the intensity of their eyes and at the end I'd think, "Damn! I missed the whole thing!"

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I've tried squinting and focusing on hands and feet, but if either participant's hands ever pass near their eyes, as in jodan, I'm sucked in again.

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It's creepy.

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Anyone else experience this?

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Why I like Yoshinori Kono's jo work

A few days ago I forwarded this video to a bunch of my friends with a note saying, "Check this guy out, I really like what he does."  Several of them were unimpressed, and had some good comments, like,

• he is working too far inside ma-ai
• no power behind his strikes
• his ukes don't appear to know what they are doing

...so I thought I'd write some about why I do like his aiki-like jo work.

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First, I will readily admit I'm probably biased because of an old article I read about this fellow - Perceptual warfare in the classical Japanese martial arts.  This perceptual approach to aikido (etc...) feels right to me - I get the same feeling watching Ueshiba's later films of him doing magic.  Osensei was operating within the domain of his ukes' perceptions (inside their OODA loop), and that's what Kono appears to be getting at.

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In all martial arts (that I've seen) there appear to be different factions and cults based on different preferences or attributes.  You can take a dozen students and teach them the same stuff at the same time and you will end up with a dozen different arts in a few years, because each practitioner has individual preferences and filters and attributes that they  use to interpret the art.  Some are stronger, some are faster, some are better at receiving while others are better at attacking, etc...  For example, within the world of Japanese karate-do, you see Shotokan, which sort of epitomizes the cult of power.  They are strong and linear and they make their karate work through strength. Then you have Shotokai, which is the same set of material taught by the same original teachers, but now they more epitomize a cult of timing.  They take a  more soft and flowing approach.  (Sure, these are generalizations, and real karate masters make use of both strength and timing, but the generalization holds I think).

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With respect to jodo/jojutsu/aikijo, you see the same sort of differentiation into styles or cults.  Some folks are all about mechanical precision and power, while others are all about timing and flow.  Nick actually brings these aspects together in an interesting way in his jodo training matrix video...

I suspect this is what we are seeing in Kono's video with respect to power - in his preference to work in the perceptual realm, he is concentrating on speed and timing at the expense of power.  So, he is demonstrating an interesting thing about one facet of the big picture - how to develop the speed and timing necessary to work on uke's perceptions.

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(but as a side note...speed is power... so they tell me...)

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Now with regard to his working inside ma-ai.  That is a problem from my point of view too, but I think it is understandable for a couple of reasons.

• He is obviously working from the background of speed and timing, and in my experience, superfast practitioners love to work inside ma-ai, where they can disorient slower guys with a flurry of motion before the slower guys can react.  I probably enjoy that aspect of Kono's work particularly because it is so opposite of my personal preferences and style.  I avoid inside conditions like the plague unless I can cripple uke with kuzushi or get behind him.  So this seems exotic, like something that could benefit me.
• He is also obviously showing pieces of motion instead of fight-ending waza like we're used to seeing.  As such, I suspect his ma-ai is contracted for the sake of getting some clear video of what he's doing.  The camera has him and uke confined to a smaller space.

And as for his ukes being incompetent.  I don't much to say about that because just about everyone in the world is more competent with weapons than me.  But Morihei Ueshiba made his ukes look pretty dumb too, which suggests that Kono may be on a similar track as Ueshiba.

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

JuDokie from Muskogee

Musashi wrote that we should be experts at 1-2 arts but familiar with all arts.  The old, dead budo masters seem to have had a thing for writing poetry.  Morihei Ueshiba was especially prolific with his doka (budo poems).  I don't do much original poetry, and what I do is horrid, and only for my wife's amusement, but I do have a fondness for re-writing popular songs with budo lyrics.

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This one's dedicated to our Okie-dokas.  I don't know if we actually have Okies in Muskogee doing our flavor of aiki and judo, but after this song was written, I think all Okies started claiming to be from Muskogee.  Shoot, I've even declared myself to be an honorary Okiedoka from Muskogee!

We don't do Hapkido in Muskogee
We don't take no trips on Kuk Sul Won
We don't punch and kick in Oklahoma
We like throwin' down and bein' done!

I'm proud to be JuDokie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can roll and fall
We still do our judo like Okano
And deashi's still the biggest thrill of all

We don't make a party of randori
We like grabbin' hold and pitchin' you
We don't like our techniques long and fancy
Like the hippies down in Austin like to do!

And I'm proud to be JuDokie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can roll and fall
We still do our judo like Kotani
And deashi's still the biggest thrill of all

Plain gi are still in style for manly matwear
Rash guards and corporate sponsors won't be seen
Guruma's still the roughest thing on campus
But sometimes makikomi can be mean.

We still do our judo like old dead guys
In Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.A.


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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com

Kitoryu - dead art or not?

Some years back, Our teacher hosted Tsunako Miyake sensei, and one of the things she said she wanted to teach during that visit was Koshiki no Kata.  "What's that" was most everyone's response.  Of course, there were some of us that knew that Koshiki existed, but nobody really knew what it had to do with anything.  Well, it turns out that Koshiki no kata has more to do with what we do than anyone understood.

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During that visit, Ms. Miyake penned a calligraphy (on her keikogi! which she gifted to one of the dojos!) that interestingly said (approximately), "Daitoryu aikido + Kitoryu (as seen in Koshiki no kata) = Tomiki aikido).

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Koshiki is the main surviving remnant of the Kitoryu school of Aiki-jujutsu - preserved in the Kodokan Judo curriculum.  Kitoryu gave rise to Kodokan judo, and was also influential in the development of aikido.  Morihei Ueshiba studied Kito for some time, and Professor Shishida even suggests that Ueshiba's aikido may have been largely developed as a counter to judo (that is, using the Kito and Daito that Ueshiba knew to bust the Kito and Tenjin that Kano's students knew).

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It is easy to find Daito folks if you're willing to travel, but trying to find someone with a certificate in Kitoryu is so nearly impossible that we'd figured/guessed that it was a dead art (except what is preserved in judo as Koshiki no Kata). 

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But lo and behold - I have managed to locate someone who (I think) has a certificate in Kitoryu!  A few years ago a friend told me that he knew an aging sensei that had studied Kito as a young man and even had a certificate.  I had heard good things about this instructor but had never gotten to work with him or talk to him - but over the past year I've gotten to work with him and talk with him on a couple of occasions, and he seems like the real deal (he does exquisite aikido, as do his students, and he has some pretty obscure historical knowledge that I managed to verify later.) 

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I got to talk to him about Kito a few weeks ago.  He said that he doesn't like to teach Kito/Koshiki because it is so rough and violent that it borders on abusive to the students - and that matches what we knew of Koshiki no kata - Everyone that went to Ms. Miyake's Koshiki clinic talked about being beat up and sore as hell for a while. My Kito source also said that Koshiki was not all of Kito - that there were auxiliary arts and other kata, including horseback techniques - and that checks against what we know of the other Koryu - they were typically very diverse schools.

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Anyway, It looks like I'll be able to pay another visit soon, and perhaps hear some more fascinating history and maybe see some documents.  I would love to work on Koshiki no kata (and whatever else he wants to play) with this man!

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____________________
Patrick Parker
www.mokurendojo.com