Hitorikata in traditional jujutsu?

[J. A. Crippen]

Do any traditional jujutsu ryu train one-person kata? I mean one-person kata in the fashion that one sees in your typical karate ryu, or that is found in ZNIR. Obviously there's quite a bit of two-person kata, but how about kata that are practiced alone? Armed or unarmed?

On a side note, has anyone heard of or done multiple person kata, where the number of people involved is three or more? That would seem like useful training, but it would depend on the sensei having a minimum of two students, of course.

[J. A. Crippen]

No, I wasn't including self-training, ie doing one role in a multiperson kata. I do this regularly myself, but I wouldn't think of doing one half of a multiperson kata as an official part of the curriculum. It's just not taught that way, although it's a very important and useful practice. Kind of like warmup exercises before training; not official, but a good idea anyway.

Truthfully, Shoshin Ryu, which is gendai budo, does both two-person kata taken from traditional jujutsu ryu as well as some 'hitorikata' taken from karate. The various bunkai (applications) used for the traditional karate kata tend to be much more like something you'd see in a jujutsu ryu, that has strong atemiwaza though, not like what you'd expect from a karate style. (And none of that extreme tension you see in many karate ryu either.) I was curious if such practice of both multiple and single kata were present in koryu jujutsu as well. Nobody seemed to make much of my question though. ^_^

[Daniel Lee]

You might find more matter dealing with multiple attackers in the kuden/gokui initiated word of mouth/written instruction rather than actually in any individual jujutsu kata. Self training in this is good stuff too. I guess iai is a whole different animal, but could it be true unarmed individual (tandoku) kata against several attackers are more the game of okinawan and chinese styles?

Daniel Lee