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Thread: Koryu - 400 years of hobbiests with no combative experience? Not really.

  1. #31
    Mekugi Guest

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    Maybe here?
    http://www.kusu.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~judo/history-e.htm

    Originally posted by Aaron T
    I do not recall, he was a University student that was doing a year at the University of Washington. He was a player on his University's team and he said that school was one of about 6 doing Kosen. The name of his university slips me, it was a little while back. He has since gone back to Japan to resume his MD studies.

    Nice guy and fun to work with.

    Aaron Fields

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    Default thoughts from a newbie

    1. Combative experience/trauma of any sort informing a kata reconstruction: assumes that if someone stands up and says "I did it" that there is some way to verify it. Records...pictures...what? Seems like a moot point...kata not provable?

    2. Anyone with any sort of hand to hand experience, in a life or death situation in this discussion, please stand up.

    Okay....I will. I think that the comments that touch on the value of personal experience informing a chosen MA are the most interesting. There are no more real samurai to samurai to the death sword fights...but there is plenty of violence happening every day with very nasty sharp things! I suggest that all you sword collectors lock them up every night. Facing down your own sword at 2 in the morning with nothing with your bare hands....sucks. However, ever afterwards you have an incredible understanding of timing, spatial distance, line, arc, etc.

  3. #33
    Mekugi Guest

    Default Re: thoughts from a newbie

    What's this prove?

    Originally posted by Harlan
    2. Anyone with any sort of hand to hand experience, in a life or death situation in this discussion, please stand up.

  4. #34
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    For whatever my two cents are worth--and that kinda depends on the day.

    You can parse this question all you want.

    Drag in that the current crop of koryu guys (most of them) have never been in "real" combat.

    Talk all you want to about technique "drift." A supposed occurence between the guys that "really" used the techniques and the guys that are currently teaching.

    Bottom line is that the koryu are the nearest thing we have to what and how the folks that "really" used the arts trained.

    Are they perfect? Probably not.

    Have many koryu lost some things over the years? Probably so.

    Are the guys that train in them the equal of the folks training in say 1720-maybe, maybe not.

    Then again no-one I know is strapping on the daisho to meet a guy at sunrise for a death match.

    Its arguable that what is lacking is not the technique or training but the mindset that actual life and death combat is just around the corner.

    I also think the initial question is flawed for two reasons.

    1-Since the day of the sword is over, the person saying the koryu are "no longer valid"--outmoded training, sterile training etc.
    If thats the argument then they have already lost--combat effectiveness pretty much goes to the shotgun.
    Its ALL less then effective when compared to firearms.

    2- If you are interested in the fighting tactics and weapons of feudal Japan--well then you have a pretty good window in the koryu and their respective methods.


    Chris Thomas

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    Is the other situation shiai, actual conflict, or testing?
    Testing. Of course you can always introduce limited shiai/jiyuwaza in the dojo, but testing and demos tend to happen on a semi-regular basis, and present great opportunities for spiritual forging (in my opinion).

    The way I see it, as an instructor, conducting a test for rank is technically unnecessary (though mandated by our organization), since you already know what the level of your students is - unless you have a huge commercial dojo and don't know the names of most your students - no offense intended.

    Also, demos rarely, if ever, bring you new students, so choreographing a brilliant demo - while entertaining to the audience, is also a bit of a waste of potential student development (unless you are doing a really important demo of course).

    Thus, I see testing and demos as an excellent opportunity to place the student under pressure while giving them a better excuse to train the general curriculum on their own. What good is knowing techniques if your spirit fails under stress? Stress training in fact prevents injuries in the dojo, since the student's focus is enhanced and their friggin brain is bypassed.

    Earl, happy to have you on board! If I may say so, VERY insightful observation on ashisabaki! This is something I've been researching for a few years now, and has greatly enhanced my own movement. You might also think about how your shoulder movement corresponds to your hip movement. I've really changed the way I generate power and movement in the Japanese arts I study in the last few years. Very interesting stuff.

    Anyway, sorry if this is pulling the thread OT...

    I tend to agree with the shiai vs. kata points being made here. I do have an idealistic view of learning by correct instruction in kata, but on the other hand, I am starting to believe that it is necessary for at least the teacher to have significant shiai or combative experience in order to properly guide the students towards real ability.

    Regards,
    Nathan Scott
    Nichigetsukai

    "Put strength into your practice, and avoid conceit. It is easy enough to understand a strategy and guard against it after the matter has already been settled, but the reason an opponent becomes defeated is because they didn't learn of it ahead of time. This is the nature of secret matters. That which is kept hidden is what we call the Flower."

    - Zeami Motokiyo, 1418 (Fūshikaden)

  6. #36
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    Default I, on the other hand, definitely, am a hobbiest

    I certainly wasn't thinking deeply at the time I posted this new thread - simply commenting on something I've noticed in discussions regarding koryu. Now, to give it a little thought:

    1) The oldest ryu were basic training. Or - like a fencing school, teaching methods of one-to-one fighting. As Dave Lowry wrote in another thread, they were also, from the beginning, political entities.
    2) As time passed, the politics continued in importance, but the reasons to train in a ryu changed, as battles were no longer in the immediate future.
    3) These ryu still survive today, and given this anomaly, people mull over what it must mean to practice a remnant of a passed age, what utility they might have, etc.

    SO: If I were drafted or volunteered for the military, I'd go through training that would make me, in theory, combat ready. (But if I signed up for an absolutely realistic camp for middle class wannabes that replicates, exactly, boot camp, I'd be a hobbiest - and ridiculous in addition. Perhaps a fine line, that is sometimes crossed by some students of koryu - otherwise known as koryu wankers). Anyway, as a graduate of boot camp, I would know about combat in the abstract, and only know the reality were I unfortunate enough to have to go through it. This last statement should be obvious, but in the armchair, it can be lost. Combat means horror - disemboweled, dismembered, shattered corpses, who may be your best friend, may be a woman or child scythed either deliberately or inadvertently. Combat also arouses such basic instinctual emotions that rape and murder can easily be an outcome, either because one has license - (for example, the Russian army raped over a million German females - I use that word, because they raped small children and old women and all in between indiscriminately) - or one's civilized values are overwhelmed by the hatred and fear that naturally arise in one - (like the good American kids at My Lai). Although one may, within warfare reveal a splendid heroism and humanity, war, itself, is vile.

    Koryu, then, as I have written elsewhere, is not only a training for combat, but was an attempt by survivors to put some moral parameters around the natural (mostly) male desire to train in combat.

    So I (among others, but I speak for myself) train in koryu. As far as I'm concerned, it is my hobby. Why do I use that word? Because it is not basic training, and I do not fight with a sword, and I've been fortunate in my life to never be on a battlefield or in a situation where I had to kill anyone. A hobby is something that enhances your life, but is not required to maintain your life, nor is it your profession. Yes, what I have learned has helped me, at times, to function on the edge, with very dangerous people, in dangerous situations. But really, this is not different, for me, than my work-out at the gym, or gardening. Each enhances my character, psychology and body in ways that, incidentally, happen to help me in the work I do, but essentially are worthwhile in and of themselves. I'm no more or less a bushi than I am an exercise physiologist or a gardener.

    It must be said, however, that I am a member of several ryu, and just as Lowry writes, there are demands on my loyalty that make participation far different from other hobbies in my life. But just like I could stop playing music, I could stop training koryu - and yes, it would be sort of like a divorce, meaning it's a far more complex issue than other individual hobbies, but I'd still argue that it if it is not my profession or social caste, it is an avocation only.

    No matter how good I might get in my art(s), I know absolutely nothing about a forced march in armour in monsoon season, surviving on meager rations, wearing the same clothes of a month or more, rotting fungoid flesh chafing on my clothes, skin infections, and sprained aching limbs and THEN, trying to use my kenjutsu or sojutsu to survive - only to march another month somewhere else to so the same!

    But, because the koryu arts I train are supposedly a training systems for the battlefield, (which still might have value, in some respects, today) , then I want to learn as much as possible about how to do it well. Just as, when playing classic music, if someone shows me a better method of fingering to play a trill or a run, then I want to know it - simply to be better at what I do. And don't tell me that koryu is like classic music because there is no room for improvisation. When classic music was alive, not classic (koryu), there were always improvisational passages.

    And if, in koryu, I've trained long enough and studied hard enough, I will, naturally, question the techniques I've been taught, and because I really value this hobby, my critical examination will lead ME, if no one else, to test what's been handed down. Just like, today, I was shown a way to do full-arm extension squats that keeps me from swaying my back. My core strength will improve, I'll be healthier, but someday I'll still die, and all my training did was make my time on earth more enjoyable. A hobby.

    The insight that someone who has had the misfortune to fight on a battlefield, or as a law enforcement officer, be one-on-one in anything from a gunfight to a DT tussle to the impeccable coordination and split-second decision making required by a team of firefighters plunging into a burning building, or in my case, the requirement to remain calm, peaceful yet ready for any level of threat when confronted by a psychopathic intimidator child -abuser who sees me as the one who is keeping him from access to his kid - all of this:
    a - informs one - possibly - on what the kata is getting at
    b - enables one to taste, just a little - of what is required to execute what the kata teaches.
    c- it could also lead one to have the confidence to make some utterly faulty assumptions seeing parallels between one's experience and the kata that don't really exist (hence the requirement for complete transmission before innovation - or at least, while under the supervision of one with complete transmission).

    So, in its way, might shiai, or other competition - as long as the form one trains in doesn't teach one to act in a way that is, to use Draeger's phrase, "combatively inane." Which, I would add, is only relevant if your hobby is focused on understanding how one functioned with these weapons in medieval combat.

    As I said before, all of this is "possibly." Many people go to a martial arts school and treat it like a religion - even to the degree of abandoning what they know to adopt the basic assumptions - psychological and technical of the school.

    Which loops back to what Aaron Fields wrote:
    He asked me "how I could train for all these years and never get to really do it?" Though the number of reasons for my choice in occupation is numerous, I responded to this person by saying; " I do get to do it...I do it 5 days a week here in the dojo, and this is where I enjoy it."

    And that, in essence, is where it comes down to me. One of my students and I were talking, only a year or so, into his practice, and I asked him why he wanted to do Araki-ryu. With some irritation, he looked at me and said, "Cause I like it."

    Me too. Nothing more.

    Ellis Amdur

    www.ellisamdur.com

  7. #37
    Mekugi Guest

    Default Re: I, on the other hand, definitely, am a hobbiest

    Originally posted by Ellis Amdur
    [B Perhaps a fine line, that is sometimes crossed by some students of koryu - otherwise known as koryu wankers.[/B]


    YEhhaaassssss...KORYU WANKERS. GENIUS.
    BTW that was a kick arse post there. Kudos!

    Always,

    -Russ

  8. #38
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    In terms of the influence of gendai on koryu, I have question. Could it be a case of a gendai practioner doing a bit of koryu on the side, versus a koryu practioner doing koryu with a bit of gendai on the side? For exemple doing judo 3 or 4 times a week and Araki-ryu twice. Versus doing Araki-ryu 3 times a week and judo twice a week.

    Mr.Amdur, regarding forced marches, you could always try finding an adventure race that would finish the day before a judo or kendo tournament.
    "See what cost a victory. The blood of our enemies is still the blood of men.
    True glory lays in sparring it."
    Louis XV to the Dauphin after the battle of Fontenoy(11 mai 1745).

  9. #39
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    I tend to agree with Ellis' last post, but perhaps see the subject of hobbiest vs. professional a bit differently.

    First off, it might be worth qualifying what the context of the ryu-ha is/was historically. Not all koryu, to my knowledge, were developed for battlefield application - or, have since been adapted for civil applications. Arts that are not still focused specifically on the battlefield context would tend to be more relevant for modern exponents. Many koryu changed the focus of their art during the Edo period and again during/after the Meiji period to be more in keeping with the needs of the times. Same principles, but different focus of application. I reckon this point is worth considering.

    Secondly, we may or may not all agree that the "weapons" we are all training - regardless of the art or whether it is koryu or gendai - is our minds, spirits and bodies. If this is the case, then modern military, LEO, and security/personal protection specialists are being given the opportunity to learn extremely valuable tactics, pro-active measures, body/mind/spirit control and judgement. The flaw to me is not so much in the focus or historical context of the given arts being taught, but in the inability of students to correctly understand and adapt what they are learning. Sometimes this is the students fault, and sometimes the instructor is not adequately competent or experienced. But in my opinion, the potential is there. Myself and many others I know have benefitted greatly from the various aspects of "obsolete" fighting systems when involved in protection/military duties.

    I have a feeling Ellis would tend to agree with what I'm saying though, so maybe it is more a matter of what you think is being taught and learned by modern exponents of martial arts. I would agree that most modern exponents do not train deeply enough or seriously enough to get much real practical benefit from the training. Especially in regards to koryu arts.

    At the risk of sounding (more) hoaky, I'd also propose that all martial arts provide the opportunity for the serious proponent to use these arts as a tool to improve various aspects of their lives (regardless of whether the art is called "budo" or not). These improvements present themselves through a variety of teachings and circumstances typical to training in traditional martial arts to the student who is interested in absorbing and applying them. For myself, I've relied on budo as my vehicle for self-improvement so much that discontinuing training would adversely affect my quest for development.

    Sure, there may be other ways to encourage development, but I've chosen budo, and as such, for both personal and professional reasons I wouldn't view the study of any of these arts as a hobby (for myself).

    On the other hand, I do think we all need to be careful about feeding more into our training than is really there. It is easy to get caught up in fantasy and role-playing, especially in the earlier stages of training. In this regard, I think it is important for those prone to such misconceptions to re-read Ellis' post to maintain perspective.

    Just thought I'd offer an (slightly) alternate point of view for consideration,
    Nathan Scott
    Nichigetsukai

    "Put strength into your practice, and avoid conceit. It is easy enough to understand a strategy and guard against it after the matter has already been settled, but the reason an opponent becomes defeated is because they didn't learn of it ahead of time. This is the nature of secret matters. That which is kept hidden is what we call the Flower."

    - Zeami Motokiyo, 1418 (Fūshikaden)

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    Default Not that you asked but...

    It is easy to get caught up in fantasy and role-playing, especially in the earlier stages of training.
    Personally any picture of me in hakama with a sword quickly dissipates any notion of role-playing. Haven't got used to it. I am more likely to underestimate myself than fantasize about any ability.

    Well, I suppose it depends on what aspect of martial arts one chooses to focus on. It is all there, in a way I think. Self-defense was one reason for me beginning MA, another was developing body mechanics (whatever that means). Still another reason was connecting to a different culture and outlook. Philosophy, developing spirit wasn't really something I did MA for until I saw aikido. Funny, because I am the pondering, academic sort. The focus, especially when I met people like Jesse Glover, shifted a bit, became more intense and I remembered the other things. I was more aware of self-defense, culture, spirit. I don't have the fastest or hardest punch, much discipline, much knowledge of culture or spirit, but these are still parts of it for me. It's more organic than I thought.

    When I first read about koryu about four years ago I was hardly in the place to look for a teacher, but I thought, "now this is interesting. I will have to be patient.." These things you people are able to talk about, becoming part of a stream, budo spirit, self-improvement, incorporating any sort of martial/philosophical attitude into daily life (life-giving sword, strategy, "art of peace/art of war" etc)...I look at myself and remember patience. Four years has gone by quickly.

    Now I enjoy a new reason, a deeper connection to a culture and perhaps looking at a stream if not dipping toes into it. But the most central reason is that I wouldn't like NOT doing MA. I am patient with the rest, focusing on one thing or another as I can along the way. The main problem with my training is having to leave good teachers behind to pursue a profession; still, I have found good teachers in the oddest of places. TY
    J. Nicolaysen
    -------
    "I value the opinion much more of a grand master then I do some English professor, anyways." Well really, who wouldn't?

    We're all of us just bozos on the budo bus and there's no point in looking to us for answers regarding all the deep and important issues.--M. Skoss.

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