Waru Hisa Kenjutsu

[Aozora]

Has anyone heard about this style? I ran into a guy a few years ago who claimed to be studying this in Austin, Tx. I found an old note I'd written recently and was curious if anyone else had heard of it. It is somehow related to Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, but I'm not sure how. This is from my total ignorance and not any sort of slight to any practitioners out there, I've just never heard of it either before or since.

Thanks,

[kabutoki]

hi,
hmm don´t know if i totally miss the point here, but the name sounds very odd in my ears. the first thing that got in my mind is the translation "bad knees kenjutsu", which makes sense to anyone ever trained without kneepads...

i´d be very sorry though if we found an actual exponent of the "art"...

karsten

[Chuck.Gordon]

'Waru Hiza kenjutsu', is, as far as I know, an affectionate term used by a group of folks who get together in Austin to do fukuro-shinai fencing.

My wife (I'll refer her to this thread, BTW), played with them for a few years. She can tell you more.

To my knowledge and from discussion with Emily, they study no particular style ... the waru hiza bit has to to with the fellow running the group and his bad knees.

Chuck

[ulvulv]

Nice with some humour:D

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by Chuck.Gordon
'Waru Hiza kenjutsu', is, as far as I know, an affectionate term used by a group of folks who get together in Austin to do fukuro-shinai fencing.

My wife (I'll refer her to this thread, BTW), played with them for a few years. She can tell you more.
Chuck

Emily here, on Chuck's login.
Not really much to tell. When those guys got started, nearly 20 years ago, there was zip for budo, especially anything vaguely koryu, in Texas. They devoured and scoured every book or video they could find, educated themselves, and made fukuro shinai out of bamboo and leather to whack each other with. They have formal training in either jujutsu or aikido, in fact one of them's a 5th dan and one of my original aikido teachers.

They were good mentors to me, good teachers and friends, for five years. There is absolutely no formal connection between that group and any extant koryu. Greg certainly never claimed one when I knew him, and I doubt he does now.

He does read Skoss fervently! When I have more cash on me I'll send him a copy of Old School too..

This is no sokey-dokey ring and never will be. Just some folks training together and having a good time.

I went on to train in an eclectic style of jujutsu, and train with some *real* koryu bunnies such as Karl Friday and Meik Skoss at Guelph and in Chicago at an Aikikai dojo respectively. That exploration was a real mind opener: "oh, THAT'S what we were trying to do!!"

They gave me a decent if slightly wierd base to work from with the sword despite the lack of "pedigree".

HTH,
mle

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by kabutoki
hi,
hmm don´t know if i totally miss the point here, but the name sounds very odd in my ears. the first thing that got in my mind is the translation "bad knees kenjutsu", which makes sense to anyone ever trained without kneepads...

i´d be very sorry though if we found an actual exponent of the "art"...

karsten

Gruess dich!

Emily here again:
Hee! HOW many pairs of kneepads do I own now? enough to shame the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. ;-)

Yes, the name is a joke.. they even made up a kata about it.. and yes they are actual exponents of an art sort of framed around not aggravating grumpy knees.

It's, um, a modern art.. kinda abstract.. but built around the practical center of Whack the Other Guy Before He Whacks You!

Anyone who knows the profusion of whack jobs and Soke Dokeys in Texas knows that finding genuine "stuff" is almost impossible. It's gotten better in the last 5 years, but these guys decided that learning for themselves was the most practical avenue and did so.

I just hope they are taking advantage of folks like John Ray and other legitimate koryu opportunities down there now.

mle

[kabutoki]

hi there,
finally some german on e-budo.
i´m glad that my idea was right. i think it´s funny and as long as they don´t have any koryu claims and tell everyone that it´s basically fukuroshinai whacking jutsu it´s perfectly ok imho.

thanks for making me feel home...
bis bald
karsten

[Aozora]

First: Thanks to Chuck and Emily for all the info and the emails.

Second: I have a story to tell about this. Back in 1998 or 1999, I met Greg 'Pops' Bayless in New Orleans. I had just started in a regular budo curriculum then. At the time, Pops was with a band called the Asylum Street Spankers out of Austin. A friend of mine introduced us, and it came out that he (Pops) and I shared an interest in swordsmanship. He told me about their sparring activities there and it sounded like a group of guys just having a good time, which I did plenty of myself back in college.

Anyway, we hung out for three or four hours and talked about koryu stuff, which he was very well-versed in as far as I could tell. He mentioned Yagyu Shinkage ryu then, but I cannot remember off hand how he said he was connected to it. It should be noted any connection or lack thereof implied here is due to my faulty memory, so please let this reflect badly on Mr. Bayless. He had an active interest in the written material on YSR, including the Sword and the Mind.

Even though I was very inexperienced, he gave me a list of books to read, which were all very good and somewhat obscure (including the Sword and the Mind, the Diety and the Sword, etc.). He also gave me his only copy of the Sword and the Mind, which was very generous of him. I still owe him a debt and I hope to partially repay it here by saying what a generous, interesting and sincere person he is.

Thanks for your time!