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Kit LeBlanc
14th September 2001, 23:19
Does anyone know why Saigo Shiro left training in oshikiuchi or whatever it was?

Was he training in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu when he left with Kano when the latter went to start the Kodokan?

Kit

Yamantaka
15th September 2001, 12:45
Originally posted by Kit LeBlanc
Does anyone know why Saigo Shiro left training in oshikiuchi or whatever it was?
Was he training in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu when he left with Kano when the latter went to start the Kodokan?
Kit

YAMANTAKA : That's the stuff legends are made of and I don't believe anyone knows for sure WHY Saigo Shiro supposedly left
both judo and the supposed "art" of Oshikiuchi (some believe it to be just palace etiquette. Saigo Tonomo was never known to practice any kind of martial art...). One current of opinion says that he just left judo because of some problems due to his hot temper and took up Kyudo practice.
I seem to remember one thing : he was training in Tenshin Shin'yo Ryu, when he left to join Kano's Kodokan. Perhaps his famous "Yama Arashi", instead of an Aikijujutsu technique, was a Tenshin Shin'yo Ryu technique.
Those are matters that need further research.
Best

Kit LeBlanc
15th September 2001, 19:21
Yamantaka,

Thanks. Just curious. Maybe I will cross post at Aikido Journal, I am sure Mr. Pranin has more information on this.

I was aware that he left Kodokan and took up Kyudo, and it seems to always be presented as him being torn between his two teachers, Saigo and Kano.

But....why was he training in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu and not still oshikiuchi....proto-Daito-ryu for lack of a better word, when he met Kano? Did he simply leave on the musha shugyo- like tours of other jujutsu dojo and happened to meet Kano that way? Draeger has him with his master for like three years prior to moving to Tokyo. Supposedly he went to military academy there, but why would he train at a dojo where he didn't think he was learning something?

It seems the practice of going to different dojo usually led to challenges. When the visitor/challenger encountered a teacher or group that was better than he was, he stayed on for instruction.......is that what was going on with Saigo? Did Saigo find a TSR dojo that he felt provided better instruction than what he had previously learned? Or is it something else?

It seems from reading Draeger that Saigo, some eight years junior to Kano, continued some kind of training relationship with proto-Daito-ryu after moving to Tokyo and taking up TSR, since he married the master's daughter AFTER leaving with Kano to help found the Kodokan.

Now it is often bandied about that Saigo helped to establish the Kodokan using his proto-Daito-ryu technique, most notably yama arashi. Some in the Daito-ryu camp seem to take this as evidence that Daito-ryu is thus better than judo and judo won false victories over other jujutsu schools...since it really was Daito-ryu that 'won.'

Was it? Why would a man with that level of abililty willingly place himself as a junior to a man with some five years of jujutsu experience, starting his own dojo and with a teaching method that broke from the traditional methods he had come up in, which taught a very different overall theoretical approach to jujutsu (i.e. no Aiki), AND which had presumably made him effective enough to defeat senior members of other ryu in the challenge matches?

And Yokoyama Sakujiro, a member of yet a different jujutsu tradition?

Did either Saigo or Yokoyama have much of a fighting reputation BEFORE they joined Kodokan?

Either way, I submit the following:

1) Maybe Saigo saw something in what Kano envisioned that IMPROVED his own jujutsu, which had become a blend of his proto-Daito-ryu and Tenjin Shinyo-ryu. Maybe not the techniques per se, but in the training method and teaching methodology.

2) Yokoyama, also a skillful jujutsu man, saw the same thing.

This is the only thing that makes sense to me. In a day and age where no holds barred challenges and fights with ruffians were a regular part of the jujutsu way of life, these men forsook their earlier training, which by all accounts was good, to join a non-established school in which they knew they would only be second bananas.

Knowing jujutsu men, and the atmosphere of jujutsu at the time, the only thing that makes sense to me is that they did so because they saw an improvement in their skills after training in the Kodokan manner. Perhaps they used techniques from their previous training, but it was the Kodokan training method (centered on randori) which allowed them to fully develop their skills for fighting in this manner.

My personal opinion is that the claim that the matches were set up so that Kodokan would win is sour grapes. First, the police department would have no reason to want anyone to have an advantage, they would want to see which style was in fact most effective under pressure. Second, if Yokoyama and Saigo could fight and win against other masters, and people want to claim that their effectiveness came not from the Kodokan but from their earlier "combative" jujutsu training (which I am in agreement with in part...), they would have been equally hampered. They still won. Or got a draw, if I remember correctly in Yokoyama's case.


Kit

Kit LeBlanc
15th September 2001, 19:23
Yamantaka,

Thanks. Just curious. Maybe I will cross post at Aikido Journal, I am sure Mr. Pranin has more information on this.

I was aware that he left Kodokan and took up Kyudo, and it seems to always be presented as him being torn between his two teachers, Saigo and Kano.

But....why was he training in Tenjin Shinyo-ryu and not still oshikiuchi....proto-Daito-ryu for lack of a better word, when he met Kano? Did he simply leave on the musha shugyo- like tours of other jujutsu dojo and happened to meet Kano that way? Draeger has him with his master for like three years prior to moving to Tokyo. Supposedly he went to military academy there, but why would he train at a dojo where he didn't think he was learning something?

It seems the practice of going to different dojo usually led to challenges. When the visitor/challenger encountered a teacher or group that was better than he was, he stayed on for instruction.......is that what was going on with Saigo? Did Saigo find a TSR dojo that he felt provided better instruction than what he had previously learned? Or is it something else?

It seems from reading Draeger that Saigo, some eight years junior to Kano, continued some kind of training relationship with proto-Daito-ryu after moving to Tokyo and taking up TSR, since he married the master's daughter AFTER leaving with Kano to help found the Kodokan.

Now it is often bandied about that Saigo helped to establish the Kodokan using his proto-Daito-ryu technique, most notably yama arashi. Some in the Daito-ryu camp seem to take this as evidence that Daito-ryu is thus better than judo and judo won false victories over other jujutsu schools...since it really was Daito-ryu that 'won.'

Was it? Why would a man with that level of abililty willingly place himself as a junior to a man with some five years of jujutsu experience, starting his own dojo and with a teaching method that broke from the traditional methods he had come up in, which taught a very different overall theoretical approach to jujutsu (i.e. no Aiki), AND which had presumably made him effective enough to defeat senior members of other ryu in the challenge matches?

And Yokoyama Sakujiro, a member of yet a different jujutsu tradition?

Did either Saigo or Yokoyama have much of a fighting reputation BEFORE they joined Kodokan?

Either way, I submit the following:

1) Maybe Saigo saw something in what Kano envisioned that IMPROVED his own jujutsu, which had become a blend of his proto-Daito-ryu and Tenjin Shinyo-ryu. Maybe not the techniques per se, but in the training method and teaching methodology.

2) Yokoyama, also a skillful jujutsu man, saw the same thing.

This is the only thing that makes sense to me. In a day and age where no holds barred challenges and fights with ruffians were a regular part of the jujutsu way of life, these men forsook their earlier training, which by all accounts was good, to join a non-established school in which they knew they would only be second bananas.

Knowing jujutsu men, and the atmosphere of jujutsu at the time, the only thing that makes sense to me is that they did so because they saw an improvement in their skills after training in the Kodokan manner. Perhaps they used techniques from their previous training, but it was the Kodokan training method (centered on randori) which allowed them to fully develop their skills for fighting in this manner.

My personal opinion is that the claim that the matches were set up so that Kodokan would win is sour grapes. First, the police department would have no reason to want anyone to have an advantage, they would want to see which style was in fact most effective under pressure. Second, if Yokoyama and Saigo could fight and win against other masters, and people want to claim that their effectiveness came not from the Kodokan but from their earlier "combative" jujutsu training (which I am in agreement with in part...), they would have been equally hampered. They still won.

My personal opinion is that if a man can dominate another man in an unarmed bout with certain ground rules, in general what "would have happened" if the rules were lifted and atemi and secret squirrel vital point manipulation was allowed, did happen. The same man would dominate, only he would do a lot more damage because now he would be allowed to strike as well.

Kit

MarkF
16th September 2001, 12:00
Kit,
You also have to take it under advisement that Shiro was only fourteen years old when he went to the Kodokan, so, as you say, any "proto"- DR training he had was minimal at best. Yokoyama's draw was the match in which most people thought it was over for the old style "jumping in" and all muscle jujutsu. Saigo Shiro's match may be the better known because he beat a well-known, much older, and much bigger jujutsuan. Interestingly, Yokoyama, in his book of 1905-6, laments these very things happening within the judo dojo (at least he does in the later translation).

I would also agree that the Kodokan's method of teaching, ridding the dojo of the jumping-in for students which Kano detested, and Kano studying and instituting probably the one thing which changed jujutsu forever, Kuzushi, brought many his way. Kano was also an academic, something never really seen before, as most of the more highly educated dismissed jujutsu as something to be avoided, and probably at that time, (1870s - 1880s) or so, it should have been. Kano didn't see it that way, he loved his jujutsu, he simply detested that which was making it of such a "low" position in the caste, as people.

Aiki is so subjective a term anyway, I doubt it was an aiki technique he used. First of all, it was a "big" technique, more inclined toward jujutsu of the day. While it may have been a technique from outside the kodokan of the day, it was apparently special only to him, and on that day. If it were not, it would have been catalogued. While it was in the original gokyo, a description never made it into the final version.

I don't know why, but many throws were utilized to throw others than this one, while seen by spectators as special, it probably wasn't once the syllabus, and the memory of that day[s] (Wayne M.s is a fun story. I've got it bookmarked).

As to why Saigo Shiro left, is also a mystery, but Tomita's son, one of the participants of that particular challenge, wrote the novel Sugata Sanshiro which most claim is a thinly-veiled non-fiction fiction of Saigo S.' life. Shiro left and learned kyujutsu and swimming. Some also say he was a teacher of these activities, but no one really knows, and he left the kodokan finally because of the perceived difficulties in his marriage.

There are a few pages in the universities, and a couple of web pages which discuss it, but I'll have to search for them. They are guesses on the most part anyway, I'm sure you will come up with a viable one, too.

I've no problem with your working thesis. It makes as much sense, probably more from others I've read, but hey, you've got one on for it, I'd like to read what you find.

And I was going to leave this thread alone, as you didn't need my excesses of a true-believer.

Mark