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rsamurai2
20th September 2001, 15:40
I cannot remember which forum i saw this. Someone posted an article about the Japanese judo team was mugged by some French thugs. Does anybody know anything about this and if so do you have documentation?

PRehse
20th September 2001, 17:02
You may be thinking about the legendary reason Kenji Tomki was asked to develope the Kodokan Goshin Jutsu. According to lore a visiting Japanese Judo team got into a fight with some French toughs. I never heard the term mugging - I think they were looking for trouble and got it.

Documentation??? Do you mean French police records or a letter specifically saying

Dear Kenji

Because we got are asses kicked could you teach us self defence.

signed Bruised and Battered.

rsamurai2
20th September 2001, 18:10
YEA, THATS THE LETTER!

no i mean like a newspaper article or somethng that would give credit if that actually happened.

PRehse
20th September 2001, 18:28
Originally posted by rsamurai2
YEA, THATS THE LETTER!

no i mean like a newspaper article or somethng that would give credit if that actually happened.


Yeah I wish. I just heard that by word of mouth with esentially the same story by Judoka and non-Judoka, Japanese and non-Japanese. If its an urban legend its pretty entrenched.

It occured in many of our lifetimes so maybe someone somewhere has what we are looking for.

tommysella
21st September 2001, 05:38
PRehse wrote:

You may be thinking about the legendary reason Kenji Tomki was asked to develope the Kodokan Goshin Jutsu.
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I belive it is wrong to say that Kenji Tomiki was asked to develop Kodokan Goshin-jutsu. There was a committee of 23 or 25 people that was involved in creating Kodokan Goshin-jutsu. On a lot of home pages it almost seams like he was the only one responsible for this list of techniques. Not that I don't belive that he contributed a lot to it...

Regards,
Tommy

MarkF
21st September 2001, 11:09
There is no doubt that Tomiki participated, and he may have been responsible for the basics of some of them.

That story is probably true. Not that it is true that some thugs beat the crap out of some well-trained judo people, hell, in the history if most other almost gendai, or almost koryu, most have a story that master so and so was challenge by two-hundred judoka and he beat every one of them.

Try here (http://daito-ryu.org) , and search for the Interviews conducted by, I think, Stanley Pranin (I do know he edited them, and it may be from his book). Takeda Tokimune actually says that, while with many judoka, one challenged his father by applying a choke, but his little ol' Pop was able to defeat him, and all other who seemingly, as told by Tokimune-Sensei, Sokaku beat up a bunch of them.

The latter Takeda says his Dad and J. Kano were good friends, too.
*****

What is known about the beginnings of goshin jutsu was that it was pretty much hurried into production. Some were under fire for not teaching more up to date self-defense, and the kime no kata just didn't do it for them, so they took a few techniques from Kime, along with defense against a stick, knife, and gun, put it altogether and wham; Kodokan Goshin Jutsu.

I don't think, other than in kata competition, or in other performances, it was meant to be ended with those few techniques but a work in progress. While I first learned kyusho for self-defense, goshin jutsu was the first kata I learned. After seeing it on tape, the gun take aways are a joke, but the other techniques hold up.

Mark

tommysella
21st September 2001, 13:27
Mark wrote:
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What is known about the beginnings of goshin jutsu was that it was pretty much hurried into production. Some were under fire for not teaching more up to date self-defense, and the kime no kata just didn't do it for them, so they took a few techniques from Kime, along with defense against a stick, knife, and gun, put it altogether and wham; Kodokan Goshin Jutsu.

I don't think, other than in kata competition, or in other performances, it was meant to be ended with those few techniques but a work in progress. While I first learned kyusho for self-defense, goshin jutsu was the first kata I learned. After seeing it on tape, the gun take aways are a joke, but the other techniques hold up.
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I belive Kotani writes in the book "Kata of Kodokan Judo" that they spent 3 years on creating Kodokan Goshin-jutsu. For me that seams like a rather long time for doing it and not a "hurried in to production"-thing...

I belive one should look at Kodokan Goshin-jutsu as the basic way. When one have learnt it one can start to apply variations. In the in IJF 4th Meetings and Seminars in Rome, Sengoku-sensei and Sato-sensei from Kodokan showed some various methods.

As I have heard (and read) the techniques was choosen so that they can be applyed (spelling?) tho more then one attack. For example, if you look at Hidari-eri-dori, this technique could also be used against a strangulation from the front with both hands. The principle is the same.

One could also combine techniques from Kodokan Goshin-jutsu with the ones in Kime no Kata. For example: The block used in Suri-age (the Tachiai section from Kime no kata) can be combined with the ending of Furi-age (the atemi and O-soto-gari).

Thinking this way, Kodokan Goshin-jutsu starts to get more interesting...

Regards,

Tommy

Jack B
21st September 2001, 20:46
I always looked at the gun techniques as opportunistic and theoretical, ie, they work if they work and they represent theoretical angles of attack and disarm with the assumption that you may have to get shot and keep going, and the additional bonus that if done right and fast enough and catching uke distracted that you turn the gun against uke's trigger finger and discharge into the attacker.

How do you recommend doing gun takeaways?

Jack Bieler

MarkF
22nd September 2001, 11:07
I said: "After seeing it on tape, the gun take aways are a joke."

It was a joke on that tape. It wasn't practical, the ma-ai was nearly impossible for a guy my size 5'3" against someone around 6'3" and nearly three meters away (I'm better at estimation in feet, but it simply wasn't, in any way, plausible, and the verbal utterances in Japanese, made it seem as if he (the attacker) was saying "stick 'em up."

Three years is a very short time to put a reasonably good kata together, especially when there was a publishing date to meet, but I never said the forms were not usable.

The late Tim Burton, a police detective from the UK, had said that it was more of a system, not kata, and with this I agree.

But the performance of it as strictly laid out as kata just had no bunkai in the gun takeaways unless the assumption is one will be shot in the process. The other moves in goshin jutsu are much closer to kime no kata, in reality.

Kime no kata is still of more use than is goshinjutsu, and probably more practical. I've seen judoka develope defenses completely foreign to goshin jutsu involving gun take aways, but it was always taken as if the gun was at the gut on either side, but in the kata, there just isn't that kind of practicality.

IOW, knowing some defense is better than not knowing it, but it is still a work in progress, and it was developed because of a call for a more modern approach to self-defense.

Even in nage waza, new variations and new throws are being tried all the time. Some variations are so sleight as if done at full speed, it is difficult to see whether a shoulder throw is kata seoi or seoi otoshi. Both can be done from being on both knees, but the principle is very distinct in slow motion.

Anyway, my point wasn't to make it a joke, my poor choice of words, but that it still needs a lot of work if it is to be the kata of self-defense.

Mark

PS: I hope I cleared up my clearly innapropriate description of it "as a joke." This was not my intent.

PRehse
22nd September 2001, 16:26
It was a commitee but in Japan it always is. Tomiki was by far the most influential of the lot, some whould say the driving force, but it is a mistake to assume that he took what he knew form Aikido and developed the Goshin Jutsu. Some Aikido people like to assume that because in a warped and twisted way it suggests that Aikido is more effective then Judo. This of course is a serious mistake just as the converse is. There is also a bit of an effort to minimize Tomiki within the Kodokan - the Waseda boys were considered a little bit as rebels. Tomiki was interested and very well versed in the historical and technical roots of jujutsu - which as we all know both Aikido and Judo are derived.

Tomiki and the rest of the committee searched techniques from the Koryu which could impart lessons in self defence that were not being met within the Kodokan curriculum. This is very much Tomiki who, especially in this regard, was heavily influenced by Kano. If you look at the Shodokan (Tomiki) Kata there are many techniques which are specifically derived from historical ryu. The fact that a similar technique might be found in Ueshhiba's Aikido is besides the point. For example just read the captions to the various technique animations found at
http://homepage2.nifty.com/shodokan/history/kyogi/kihon/kihon_e.html

It is incorrect to assume that any of Tomiki's kata, the Goshin Jutsu and I suspect the Kime no kata are designed as specific responses to specific threats. Kata teach principles.

MarkF
23rd September 2001, 09:25
It is incorrect to assume that any of Tomiki's kata, the Goshin Jutsu and I suspect the Kime no kata are designed as specific responses to specific threats. Kata teach principles

Hi, Peter,
I don't disagree with the principles of kata, I simply don't agree that this particular kata, in part (not entirely, I spoke of only one aspect and how it is performed) because it is a system. Only the years in which the principles claimed can this system become principle, thus I go with another manner and the "drop-dead" principle that my tommy-gun contains a much different and easier principle to understand.

I also don't necessarily agree that kata is altogether necessary, but since I cannot teach a technique without using pieces of kata, It still has a place.

Mark