Butokusai in Kyoto on April 29 - Advice

[bbelt1215]

My apologies if this is the wrong place for this post.

Several members of my dojo will be journeying to Kyoto for the annual Butokusai held there. I will be tagging along to observe things. I started iaido about 2 months ago and just learned Seitei Ipponme. I have never been to an embu or anything of the sort, and was wondering what kinds of things I should look for or pay extra attention to. If you have any advice to help me learn as much as possible from this experience it would be greatly appreciated.

Have a good one!

[Ken-Hawaii]

Wow, Daniel - what an opportunity! Although you have only started learning Ipponmae, it is by far the most important waza you will learn, & is the basis for almost everything else in iaido. I'm still learning all of its secrets after more than 25 years of training. What to watch? My suggestion is to pick one of the senior iaidoka & watch him/her to see as much of the performance as possible. You should easily be able to pick up on how his attention becomes focused before each waza, how all movements are synchronized & smoothly performed, how the blade is drawn, the trajectory of the sword in nukitsuke/furikaburi/kirioroshi, & how noto is performed. Then try to visualize yourself doing the same things.

Go & enjoy!

Ken

[bbelt1215]

Ken,

Thank you for your response and your advice. I will do my best to follow it!

As far as Ipponmae is concerned, I was surprised to discover that my ryuha seems to do it a bit differently than most in that it is done entirely on the floor, standing only after noto. I can't seem to find any video of it done that way either...

In any case, I'm excited to have finally learned my first kata!

[Rennis]

Daniel,

Out of curiosity is your first kata performed like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKLRr2cuaLo

Best regards,
Rennis

[bbelt1215]

Rennis,

Thanks for the link! That is quite close to what we do. The way I was taught there is a bit of a forward slide on the left knee and a successive step coinciding with kirioroshi. Also, instead of coming to both knees during noto we come to tatehiza.

So, the kata in the video is from Hoki-ryu? I looked up the word toho too, which I think in this case might refer to the ZNIR set of five standard kata, although my teacher definitely called it seitei. But I read that toho can also just be used as an alternate word for kenjutsu or kenpo.

I suppose I'll get all these terms down eventually!

[Rennis]

The teacher is a Hoki-ryu instructor who is in the ZNIR but what he is demonstrating is ZNIR's toho/seitei and not Hoki-ryu. Hoki-ryu has no horizontal draws for one.

Best,
Rennis

[bbelt1215]

I see. I guess I learned another variation then. The other 4 also look like kata I've seen performed by others at my dojo.

Still, I was under the impression that by definition, seitei kata are almost identical regardless of the style that performs them. But I hate to assume. I think we all know what happens when we assume things!

[Ken-Hawaii]

By definition, Seitei Iai kata are done identically, no matter who your sensei may be or his/her background. This is the only way that iaidoka training in various ryuha can be judged for rank.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Nippon_Kendo_Renmei_Iaido.

Ken

[Rennis]

Without nothing anything about the OP's dojo it is hard to say, but it is possible that he is a member a different organization than the ZNKR, hence the video I posted earlier, because what he described sounded like the ZNIR ipponme. His later description makes me think that it is not ZNIR either, possibly one of their splinter groups, or he learned some other technique first (again, hard to say without knowing the dojo). In any case these "standards" would be different from the Kendo Renmei crowd. While the definition of all these different groups is that everyone does the standardized techniques "identically", the reality is that there is a pretty wide range in "identical".

[bbelt1215]

Rennis,

The formal name of the style is Kanshin-ryu Iaijutsu, but there is also kenjutsu and toho as well. We have a website, but it's old and hasn't been really updated in quite some time. Here is the URL: http://www.mable.ne.jp/~kansinryu/
Sorry I don't know how to link directly.

In any case, by going there again myself I think the question of what set of kata it is might be answered.
We are part of the Kobudo Kyokai and the Dai Nippon Butokukai. I don't know if that helps at all...

Either way, I plan to ask my sensei about it this Saturday for my own knowledge (sadly, keiko is only once a week).

Thanks to both of you for your continued responses!