PDA

View Full Version : Book-Ryukyu Hiden Karate-Do



Hank Irwin
31st October 2002, 17:35
One of my brother students recently sent me the book Ryukyu Hiden Karate-Do by Takaya Yabiku, volume 2. I was not impressed myself with this book. Any of you guys or gals have this. If so, what is your thinking? I am by no means trying to discredit Mr. Yabiku, I have studied with Chuck Chandler who is supposedly YabikuSan's Ichiban Deshi. I have seen this kata change at least 2 times in the past 2 years. I have actually trained in this kata at a seminar Chucksan did 2 years ago. When I saw him and YabikuSan doing this kata on video it was different. At that point it was just Kukan no kata, now there are Sho and Dai forms? I don't know, seems kinda iffy to me. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. For some reason I just smell "profit" around it. I dropped out of his Assoc. 2 years ago because of discrepancies within the Assoc. and a doubt of it's validity. :p

Paihequan
9th November 2002, 05:51
Hank: Be careful as someone on this board might call you an "Agenda Troll" for this post:p

Hank Irwin
9th November 2002, 23:25
I just call them like I see them. They have enough to worry about I guess. The book could have been more informative from my standpoint. I am sure Kojo-ryu is a formidable system, I'm just not sure if what is out there right now is authentic or not. I think all the family except one have past, and from what I understood he didn't train anymore. In this day and age though, nothing surprises me anymore.

Paihequan
9th November 2002, 23:43
Hank: Hey thanks for your very civil reply. A rarity on these boards nowadays LOL.

Anyway, I cannot really offer comment on the book having not seen the second volume. If it is anything like the first edition, then I be a little cautious what I read into it I guess.

From what I understand Irimaji Seiji and I guess to a greater or lesser extent, Yabiku, have added other kata to what they teach building upon the original base. Again I cannot really comment as I am not familar with the history of the forms they have introduced.

Once again, thanks for the civil response.

Take care

11th November 2002, 02:31
Originally posted by Hank Irwin
One of my brother students recently sent me the book Ryukyu Hiden Karate-Do by Takaya Yabiku, volume 2. I was not impressed myself with this book. Any of you guys or gals have this. If so, what is your thinking?

I haven't seen it. What was the book about..........I mean specifically.........was it kata, history, application?
Personally speaking, about 90% of the martial arts books out now don't impress me. One person finds a good topic and then there are 20 other books just like it on the same subject. I think you could change the Titles and a few names on the inside and they would all be about the same.




Originally posted by Paihequan
Hank: Be careful as someone on this board might call you an "Agenda Troll" for this post:p

Ron,
That someone you're referring to is obviously me.
Out of the 250 plus posts by Hank I have not seen him post anything that could be considered an "Agenda".



-- Contrarian "Troll" Warning Sign Number One: The most important indicator of a poster's Contrarian Troll status is his constant use of subtle and not-so-subtle insults, a technique intended to make people angry....................

-- Contrarian "Troll" Warning Sign Number Five: Attempts to condescend. Pursued by Troll Bashers (see Natural Predators below), the Contrarian will seek refuge in condescending remarks that repeatedly scorn his or her critics............

Hank Irwin
11th November 2002, 04:02
The full name of the book, Kukan: Ryukyu Hiden Karate-Do, The Pathway to Okinawa's Secret Karate. It opens up with Pub's preface, acknowlegements. It also states Seiji Irimaji was the first non-family member to receive a Kyoshi license in Kojo-ryu. Next is pages attributed to "Okinawa's Golden Saying"? Some photos, lineage is quite impressive, roots from 36 Families, training from Iwah, first accounts are style founder, Uekata Kojo(Kosai)1700's.Says he may well be first to bring bujutsu and kobujutsu to Okinawa, was called, Kumiaijutsu. Gives histories of Kojo decendants. History of Yabiku, pictures of him in stances, postures, weapons postures(a few), hand and foot postures, 12 postures of Koshin-ryu,(follows Chi./Jap. zodiac), kata; Kukan. Lineage chart, credits to Joyce Stech(publisher)also student, Chuck Chandler who is chairman for Koshin-ryu Kyokai in US, photos of Joyces students. I found it lacking in what a book abount Okinawa's Secret fighting systems should be like. It was more like a message that Koshin-ryu is here and here are the people who do it. Lot's of wasted paper of un-necessary stuff. Some stuff was good or at least gets you wondering more about Kojo-ryu. Myself, I've actually got better things to do. Everything I have seen so far of Kojo-ryu has been lame. :eek: I must make a correction: I stated in a post about learning Kukan from Chuck, was not, was TenKan, the rest is true about it changing. Sorry folks. Good books lately; John Sells Sensei's last book is extremelly good, Nagamine Sensei's short stories book is very good also, a book my Sensei gave me last weekend which I highly recommend to EVERYONE is KoDo; Ancient Ways by Kensho Furuya Sensei, it is exceptional. Something valuable for the deshi and the Sensei, is worth the $17 bucks.

11th November 2002, 07:17
Originally posted by Hank Irwin
The full name of the book, Kukan: Ryukyu Hiden Karate-Do, The Pathway to Okinawa's Secret Karate. It opens up with Pub's preface, acknowlegements. It also states Seiji Irimaji was the first non-family member to receive a Kyoshi license in Kojo-ryu. Next is pages attributed to "Okinawa's Golden Saying"? Some photos, lineage is quite impressive, roots from 36 Families, training from Iwah, first accounts are style founder, Uekata Kojo(Kosai)1700's.Says he may well be first to bring bujutsu and kobujutsu to Okinawa, was called, Kumiaijutsu. Gives histories of Kojo decendants. History of Yabiku, pictures of him in stances, postures, weapons postures(a few), hand and foot postures, 12 postures of Koshin-ryu,(follows Chi./Jap. zodiac), kata; Kukan. Lineage chart, credits to Joyce Stech(publisher)also student, Chuck Chandler who is chairman for Koshin-ryu Kyokai in US, photos of Joyces students. I found it lacking in what a book abount Okinawa's Secret fighting systems should be like. It was more like a message that Koshin-ryu is here and here are the people who do it.

Sounds like a bigger version of Mark Bishop's section on Kojo Ryu from his book.

Out of the books on martial arts that I have, the ones by Trevor Leggit have been the most interesting for me. He was in Japan a looooooong time ago, before WWII if I am not mistaken. He gives a lot of good insight about training.

Hank Irwin
12th November 2002, 00:57
RobertSan, where can I look at some of his material? I have never heard of him. Was Mr. Leggit a Karate-Ka/Martial artist? Anything pre-WW2 is savory to say the least. Oh what I would give for a small glimpse to the past! What wonderment,no? Romantic notions do it no justice. :cool:

12th November 2002, 06:32
Here is an obituary on him that gives some detail:

TREVOR PRYCE LEGGETT
1914-2000

It is with the greatest sadness we announce the death of Trevor Leggett. He died in the early hours of Wednesday 2nd August in his eighty-fifth year. TP as he was affectionately known was one of the great figures of the Budokwai.

He joined the club in 1932 at the age of eighteen and studied under Yukio Tani who was very famous around the beginning of the century for taking on all comers in public matches. Tani once said of himself that he was a third rate judoman but had unrivalled experience in beating boxers and wrestlers. Tani was a very strict teacher of the old samurai school and TP was brought up in that tradition.

In 1938 TP went to Japan to continue his training in judo and there he gained his 4th and fifth dans. At that time only one other foreigner – O’Neill – had got that high. The war in Europe started a year later and TP seeing the way things were going got himself attached to the British Embassy and when Japan entered the war in 1941 he was interned along with the other embassy staff. Eventually he left Japan as part of an exchange with London based Japanese embassy staff. He served in India from 1943 to 1945 at the British SE Asia Military HQ using his knowledge of Japanese.

After the war he returned to London and began teaching at the Budokwai. During the 1950s he was responsible for lifting the standard of judo at the club. He himself was a fanatical trainer. He never rested during training and encouraged his students to do the same. We were instructed to get double figures in practice which meant ten or more randori a night. The sessions were not particularly organized so this meant training with somebody till you felt you had had enough then immediately looking around for someone else to train with. A randori with somebody might be five to ten minutes or longer so ten plus randori was quite a lot of work. Leggett was a great believer in clean technique and he was far and away the best teacher I have ever come across. He not only drew on his own experience of judo but made many translations from Japanese texts on judo.

In particular he was famous for his Sunday class. This was always two hours long every Sunday afternoon. Participation was by invitation only and you had to be at least brown belt. These Sunday sessions were always packed and invitations to the class were greatly prized. Virtually all the key figures of British judo graduated from this class. The class itself was a mixture of grinding hard work, contest and instruction on every aspect of judo. For example usually once a year we had a Katsu (resuscitation) class. This was only for black belts. The class was always announced with the dreaded words – ‘All black belts down stairs to the lower dojo! Once in the lower dojo we were shown how to bring unconscious people round again and then we had to pair up, strangle our partner out and then revive him and he in turn did the same to you. TP also had the knack of knowing what and who you dreaded most in judo and he would make sure you confronted that and them in your training.

TP once said that he tried to make the Sunday class as hard if not harder than the sessions in Japan since he wanted to prepare those who intended to go to Japan. This in fact was the case. I rarely came across a harder session in Japan and when I was in the British Army PT School at Aldershot and went through some particularly tough courses I never found them worse than those Sundays.

During the 1950s some sixteen British judomen (and a few women) followed TP’s example and went to train in Japan for about two to three years on average. Competition judo was not particularly developed then and so Japan was the natural place to go to further ones training. By about the mid-sixties this became less necessary as international competitions rapidly developed in Europe and elsewhere. The flow to Japan faded away.

TP abruptly pulled out of Judo in the early sixties. He decided he had produced enough competitors and teachers. He turned his attention to writing mostly about judo, Budo, eastern philosophy (Adhyamata Yoga) and Zen Buddhism. In all he wrote over thirty books. His last one came out this year in March and when he died he was working on his next one despite the fact that he was virtually blind.

He was fluent in Japanese – he headed the BBC’s Japanese Service for twenty four years - and was also a Sanskrit scholar. He was a multi-faceted man with many interests including classical music. In his youth, he told me, he was almost good enough to be a classical concert pianist. He was a great inspiration to most of us at the Budokwai. His message was do not be just a good judoka but be good at everything. It was always fatal to say to him…I am no good at (X) since he would abruptly say, ‘ Get good at it then’.

It is no exaggeration to say that one of the great figures of world judo has passed away.

Syd Hoare


http://www.kanosociety.org/trevor_leggett.htm

Some of his books:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dbooks%26field-author%3DLeggett%2C%20Trevor/ref%3Dpd%5Fsimart%5Fdetail/104-1784310-2107142

http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/search.cgi?searchtype=author&keywords=Trevor%20Leggett

Hank Irwin
12th November 2002, 14:29
arigato RobertSan, Ligget Sensei was a remarkable man to say the least. The reading material alone is immense. Can't believe I have never heard of him until now, but then again, I never was really interested in judo. But in his day judo was budo, not like what is apparent now. I have a BookStar close by, I'm sure I can probably find some, if not a lot of his material. Thanks again!