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Thread: Katori Ryu Question

  1. #16
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    Kuroda's sword art is called Komagawa Kaishen ryu, I believe. I took one of his seminars in Vegas last year at the Aiki Expo, where he demonstrated his jujutsu, batto and kenjutsu. The jujutsu was some of the strangest stuff I've ever felt. Kuroda's iai, however, was absolutely the most awesome iai I've ever seen. Hands down. His speed and precision was so remarkable, it's hard to describe adequately. I ran my impressions by Toby Threadgill and Ellis Amdur while I was there, and they both had there own unique adjectives to describe his skill with a sword.

    I still remember he would perform an iai kata, which was so fast you couldn't tell what he did with his feet and hands. Then he would smile and say softly, "Let me slow it down this time. Watch my feet." Then he'd do it again. Still too fast to believe. "Did you see?" he asked.

    "Uh, no."

    Kuroda smiles and moves on to the next kata.

    Regards,
    Arman Partamian

  2. #17
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    The discourse that has been here on electrified-budo with regards to tsksr, boils down to ownership and copyright.

    According to this,
    Even If two pairs of swordsmen are doing the first kenjutsu-kata of tenshin shoden katori shinto ryu, and there are no difference in technical proficiency, only those with an affiliation with otake sensei, are doing tsksr.

    The others are doing...close range tennis without a ball?

    It would be interesting to hear something new about this so called "controversy". There are not many who could add something new to this issue, Otake sensei or Sugino sensei Jr perhaps. I havent seen them on E-budo though. Is this only a internet-controversy?
    Roar Ulvestad

  3. #18
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    Originally posted by George Kohler
    Komagawa Kaishin-ryu Kenjutsu
    Tamiya-ryu Iaijutsu
    Shishin Takuma-ryu Jujutsu
    Tsubaki Kotengu-ryu Bojutsu
    Doh! I see it on the web page now. Thanks!
    Charles Mahan

    Iaido - Breaking down bad habits,
    and building new ones.

  4. #19
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    I think the more apt analogy would be one person studying at Harvard, and the other person doing a correspondence course of the same material. Even if the latter is personally tutored by someone who completely mastered the applicable courses of study as a professor at Harvard, he would not be able to say he studied AT HARVARD unless he actually did. Having the exact same skills is irrelevant. Setting up another full-service brick-and-mortar university and teaching the same things as Harvard does not make the new university Harvard. You would have to register it under a different name, which Sugino sensei probably could have done, but chose not to.

    This is not even considering the inevitable divergence, whether from the original school or the off-shoot.

    An off-shoot's koryu budo can be valid and legitimate and really work and really carry on the transmission, but it isn't the original school. Convention has it that you need Menkyo Kaiden in a koryu to establish your own branch. Otherwise, success is the only alternative. If your "new" school of pure TSKSR catches on, you can become a legitimate tradition, as long as you register yourself as a new ryuha. The new koryu branch is still not "TSKSR", but perhaps you could call it "Sugino-ha TSKSR". That kind of thing has been done in other koryu, even after the eponym of the ha died and so could not have given permission.

    Hope I have not just rehashed everything else that has been said. And this is very serious to those involved; people have been arguing about this long before Al Gore voted for funding to develop the Internet.
    Jack Bieler

    "The best things can't be told; the second best are misunderstood; the third best are what we talk about." - after Heinrich Zimmer

  5. #20
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    Originally posted by Arman
    Kuroda's sword art is called Komagawa Kaishen ryu, I believe.
    According to the website the iaijutsu is Tamiya-ryu and the kenjutsu is Komagawa Kaishin-ryu. The website implies that Kuroda is the current soke of both, although it doesn't say so directly. According to Skoss, the current soke for Tamiya-ryu is Tsumaki Seirin. I haven't heard of Komagawa Kaishin-ryu Kenjutsu which is certainly not to say that it doesn't exist.
    Neil Gendzwill
    Saskatoon Kendo Club

  6. #21
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    It would seem that Skoss and the James Williams are at odds then:

    http://www.dojoofthefourwinds.com/tetsuzan.html

    Kuroda Tetsuzan, sensei of the Shinbukan Kuroda Dojo, is the Soke of several ancient Samurai military disciplines. Kuroda sensei inherited this knowledge through his family line, and is the headmaster of the Kuroda family martial legacy. The arts that he has inherited include:

    - Komagawa-Kaishin ryu kenjitsu
    - Shishin-Takuma ryu jujitsu
    - Tamiya ryu-iaijitsu
    - Tsubaki-Kotengu ryu bojitsu
    - Seigyoku-Ogurirryi Sakkatsujitsu
    Charles Mahan

    Iaido - Breaking down bad habits,
    and building new ones.

  7. #22
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    The Tamiya ryu that Kuroda Sensei teaches is not the "Famous" Tamiya Ryu of Tamiya Heibei, but a style founded by Tamiya Gon-emon, who had studied Tamiya Heibei's style, but came up with his own, very unique take on iaijutsu.

    John Bullard
    Texas Shinbukan Keikokai
    John Bullard
    Shinbukan Texas Keikokai

  8. #23
    Ben Bartlett Guest

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    Originally posted by Jack B

    Hope I have not just rehashed everything else that has been said. And this is very serious to those involved; people have been arguing about this long before Al Gore voted for funding to develop the Internet.
    Wow! Someone actually got the Al Gore thing right for a change!

    Oh, and good analogy, too.

  9. #24
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    So are you now saying that the late Sugino sensei didn't teach Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu? (As in, -He taught the techniques alright but he wasn't licenced and/or blessed by the soke to do so and therefore it wasn't TSKSR...).
    Now I'm confused...
    It sure didn't seem to have been any controversy back when he was one of the most known koryu practitioners in Japan (and the world through Mr. Kurosawa at that). Didn't he teach TSKSR back then either?
    Jakob Blomquist

  10. #25
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    Aikilove


    For the limited amount of info I know, the question is not if Sugino had permission to teach from the previous headmaster.

    The real question seems to be if Sugino's STUDENTS had/have permission to teach TSKSR.


    Chris Thomas

  11. #26
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    So you guys do agree then that Sugino sensei was training and teaching TSKSR?

    Just nitpicking but still...
    Jakob Blomquist

  12. #27
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    Originally posted by John Bullard
    The Tamiya ryu that Kuroda Sensei teaches is not the "Famous" Tamiya Ryu of Tamiya Heibei, but a style founded by Tamiya Gon-emon, who had studied Tamiya Heibei's style, but came up with his own, very unique take on iaijutsu.

    John Bullard
    Texas Shinbukan Keikokai
    John, welcome. I enjoyed checking out your site. I hope you'll post at e-budo more often!
    We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular. Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula.

  13. #28
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    Post Sugino Yoshio

    The word in the dojo during the period of time I happily studied under Sugino Yoshio was that he was senior to Mr. Otake and had been recognized and authorized to establish his own school by his direct TSKSR lineage-based teacher, Sheena Sensei (sorry I am here in Europe right now and donīt have access to his full name or more details). With politics being what they are, and I am sure the issue goes much deeper (donīt shoot the messenger), but admidst the foreign students who trained there during the time I attended Sugino dojo (late 1980īs), it was said that Phil Relnick was responsible for inciting the animosity.

    I met many wonderful (and well known) Japanese sword/aki teachers, who dropped by the Kawasaki dojo to visit and pay their respects to sensei. He was also warmly greeted by all during the many yearly demonstrations he performed at several shirines (Meiji, Yasukuni, Iseiyama Kotai Jingu, etc..) I suppose that whether he was or was not OFFICIALLY recognized/authorized to teach what he had been teaching for more than fifty years, didnīt matter to those dignitaries; nor did any of us ever consider it either. I know that Mr. Sugino was a highly regarded university judo teacher (Meiji, Keio or Waseda??), wrote the first book on TSKSR more than fifty years ago, was teacher to the actor, Mifune Toshiro, and correographer for many of his Kurosawa-based chanbara films, a close friend and personal student of Ueshiba Morihei (and also taught Aki at his Kawasaki honbu) and enjoyed some kind of formal relationship with the Izasa family/Katori Shrine, as he went there every year to visit them(who, so I was told, are not martial artists).

    As someone who thoroughly enjoyed learning swordsmanship under that wonderful man, I could care less whether he was OFFICIALLY recognized/authorized or was just a ronin.....to me (and many other fine people who supported him) he was sensei.

    Now that I have shared what I know, a cursory surf around this forum will also let you read what others have written about my teacher, Mr. Sugino, and this issue.

    Respectfully,

    Patrick McCarthy

  14. #29
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    Default Not shooting the messenger, but shooting down the unpleasant nonsense

    Mr. McCarthy -

    I've held you in respect for a number of years, based on all your excellent research. One statement in your last post, however, does not bespeak well of you. You stated, "With politics being what they are, and I am sure the issue goes much deeper (donīt shoot the messenger), but admidst the foreign students who trained there during the time I attended Sugino dojo (late 1980īs), it was said that Phil Relnick was responsible for inciting the animosity."

    Cards on the table - I've been a guest at the Narita dojo several times, and counted myself a friend of several of the senior practitioners - and chief among them is P. Relnick. Otake sensei and Izasa sensei both were very kind to me, far beyond what would be necessary to fulfill some social obligation that they might have felt. At the same time, I was also a guest and demonstrator at many festivities at the Sugino dojo, and received a personal invitation from Sugino sensei to join his dojo to train in TSKSR in 1977. I admired Sugino sensei and Otake sensei both, nonetheless seeing them as quite different in their strengths and weaknesses, as both martial arts practitioners and human beings.

    One of the pathetic aspects of training in Japan, particularly in koryu, is that foreigners are generally at the periphery of the dojo. Often, it is because their language abilities and skills at parsing cultural nuance are so abysmal, that they patch together in fantasy what they don't understand. In other dojos, we foreigners are merely the pets of the dojo - brawny curiosities who will go so far and no further. I am not making any assumptions about the Sugino dojo in particular, but your description of the foreign members, if accurate, describes a rather typical grouping - a faction of foreigners within the dojo, ignorant, elitist and rife with gossip. I say this because laying the political troubles between two factions of TSKSR at the feet of an individual who was, at that time, merely a middling rank member of the Narita dojo, and imagining that he could, like Iago, create animosity where none existed before, is the typical stupidity of individuals who are, as I describe above, trivial hangers-on.

    I am going to stick to one thing here only - and make no comment whatsoever on the rights and wrongs of what should have remained a factional dispute within TSKSR. This subject has come up among senior Japanese shihan of various ryu, when I have been present - people far elder and senior to Phil Relnick or any other foreign practitioner. These venerable Japanese were expressing opinions about the respective skills and politics of Mssrs. Sugino and Otake, and making comments, one way or the other, about what was considered to be a well-known rift within the ryu.

    That this was a matter of discourse among individuals outside the ryu should be a matter of embarassment to that ryu - and the responsibility lies with those senior Japanese - both in making the matter public and in their inability to behave in a way that fostered strength within the ryu rather than public factionalism.

    All of this predated Phil Relnick by decades, starting at the latest, the day Otake-sensei was appointed shihan of the ryu by the soke. One should note that there was another elder instructor, Noda sensei, far senior to Otake, who maintained his own dojo, yet maintained excellent relations with both Otake and Izasa sensei.

    Phil Relnick's opinions regarding the Sugino dojo are his to say, were he to choose. I certainly won't speculate on what they are. I well appreciate your defending Sugino sensei, a rather marvelous man and martial artist - but your gratuitous allusion to Phil, given that no one had spoken his name, other than to note his senior status and official authority among non-Japanese in what has to be considered the main-line of the ryu (given that it is under the current soke's authority), was truly out of line.

    With respect

    Ellis Amdur

  15. #30
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    Post Sugino Yoshio

    Mr. Amdur

    Poor choice of words on my behalf....did not mean to indicate that Phil (know him, have enjoyed his company in Japan on several occasions, and respect him as a serious budoka) started anything between Sugino & Otake (and am well aware of that long and complex political issue) only that local dojo gossip (amidst the foreign presence in the Kawasaki dojo) held him accountable for unnecessarily perpetuating this animosity (an issue I was told dates back to a European student of Sugino & Mochizuki's who visited Otakeīs dojo, trained, had a photo taken with him which later appeared in a martial arts magazine with a caption indicating that he [Otake] was his master). Additionally, I made mention of this point as his name [Phil] was mentioned in a different light elsewhere on this thread.

    Kind regards

    Patrick McCarthy

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