Ogawa-ryu Aikijujutsu / Ogawa Manabo

[Shama_Grier]

It's been a while since I've posted here and I'm still doing personal research on the various forms of budo out there.

I ended up browsing youtube and found this here .

I've never heard of this form before and looked on google and couldn't find a thing.

[Ron Tisdale]

I couldn't really say...one thing that stood out in this video (Ogawa ryu Aikijujutsu Chuden) is that the ma ai seems awfully short to be drawing a katana and then performing todome. Perhaps with a wakizashi or a tanto...but otherwise...

Best,
Ron

[Jose Garrido]

Never heard of them, but you never know. A little history would help. However we all know that one of the latest martial arts key words is Aikijujutsu.

Jose Garrido

[someguy]

I saw a fifteen minute video on youtube from this school from the looks I would think there technique comes from the Saigo-Ha ( I could have misspelled it) like dave Harvey but I'm just guessing. There techinque looked very good to me anyway. That is my 2 cents



James Fitzgerald

[Shama_Grier]

Never heard of them, but you never know. A little history would help. However we all know that one of the latest martial arts key words is Aikijujutsu.

Jose Garrido

That's too bad that people are taking a good legit, koryu lineage and trying to turn it for a profit.

Thankfully I have the guys here to help guide me if and when I decide to take up any arts.

I did look through one of the another videos and noticed that they had a diagram of various nerves and what not. Perhaps it's a more "scientific" splinter version of a ryu-ha of aikijujutsu?

[Neil Yamamoto]

Looks like a cross of aikikai aikido, some yoshinkan, some stolen moves from daito ryu, and generic jujutsu. But it appears to be done better than average.

Authentic tradtional arts would not be wearing keikogi with tasuki.

[yoj]

As a rejected Hakko ryu type, I would say there is an influence there from there, more than a passing semblance, but hey... I'm inakamono......

[Eric Joyce]

I saw these guys on YouTube about a month ago. They look really good. I tried to do a translation of their webpage with an online tool called Babblefish. It helped a bit, but I still don't have a solid understanding where their art came from and so forth. I like what I see in terms of technique.

[concepnin]

I didn't know that aikido practiced shurikenjutsu. ( Mind you, I am new to martial arts)

[lucky1899]

I visited the website http://www.bugei.com.br/bugei/history.asp to try to get some answers for the forum. The website mentions two generations (I don't recognize any of the names)--Yorike Mizuguchi andManabo Ogawa. Ogawa was taught by Mizuguchi; I couldn't locate Mizuguchi's teacher on the site. Ogawa modified the techniques taught to him and created Ogawa Ryu. Regionally, it appears the art formulated in Hokkaido.

Hope someone else can pick up where I left off.

Regards,

Andrew De Luna
Renshinkan Daito Ryu

[miguel angel ib]

Budo magazine has a write-yp on them this month as well. I've necer heard of them before either. Nice techniques though.
miguel ibarra

[wmuromoto]

I could be wrong, but I'm with Neil. Yes, it's done better than the usual slap-dash conglomeration of fake koryu, but some things about the info provided and the techniques displayed raised red flags.

As Neil said, traditional budoka don't need to use a tasuki with modern keikogi because there's nothing that needs to be tied up, like big sleeves of a montsuki. I figured, oh well, maybe they're doing it because they saw their sensei do it in Japan and they don't have montsuki..but then, some other stuff bothered me. The shurikenjutsu was kind of lame. The iainuki, zanshin, and demo of sword techniques seemed to have bad ma-ai, overly elaborate methods , bad tenouchi (if it's WAS koryu; if it's more modern...then whatever floats your sail).

I was willing to take it all with a grain of salt because I've seen worse, and maybe they were some odd offshoot of some odd offshoot. Their jujutsu stuff did look pretty fast, very much like Daito-ryu, mixed with some kurottee punches, but as a mix, it seemed well done.

But then I saw their pages about chanoyu. I get possessive about chanoyu because it's one of the hardest disciplines I ever studied. Drove me half-crazy. Doing jujutsu is like a vacation compared to full-time tea practice for an extended length of time. Don't you be doing some boojiggie with my chanoyu and passing it off as legit.

The kensui waste water bowl in the pics is in a totally wrong position relative to the person. One picture has the student doing something with the tea whisk while holding the bowl, with the kensui in the right side. To someone not schooled in tea, it looks pretty cool. To someone who's done it, it's pretty darn weird. It doesn't make sense, technically speaking, esp. her position relative to the wall and the water ladle handle. I'd say exactly why, but it would take up too much bandwidth. Suffice it to say, I know of no legit Sen school of tea that would end up in that position. Also, a female student is shown in white uwagi and hakama; that's never worn in tea. More proper in seppuku ritual, perhaps. Stuff like that got my attention.

There's a lot of discussion about Sen No Rikyu and the Urasenke system and the "current" (actually, the previous) headmaster, Daisosho Sen Soshitsu (now Genshitsu). But no info on how the group is connected to Urasenke, if any. There IS an Urasenke branch in Brazil. But no info about their location, the group's relationship, the teacher's status and teaching rank. If the person has a teaching rank, he'd also have a chamei, a tea name, proudly up somewhere on the web page because it's a big deal. The name is one indication of his lineage due to the kanji. I didn't find any chamei. These things are not supposed to be secret. They are supposed to be up front and clearly described to show one's relationship to Urasenke.

So I went back to the martial arts stuff and looked at it with very critical eyes.

Maybe they did learn something legit. If so, it's obfuscated by some hokey stuff. Well done hokey stuff, but hokey stuff nonetheless. Yeah, they've been shown in a budo magazine. And if they're in a magazine, they gotta be legit, right? Hummmmm.

I COULD be wrong. They COULD be legit in terms of their budo and I'm just a knee-jerk whiny doofus (move over, Neil), and I'm just badmouthing their form irresponsibly. Maybe. Dunno, though. Their web site raises more questions for me than answers. Well, whatever. If they enjoy what they're doing, then caveat emptor, or something like that. Just don't ask me about their chanoyu or I'll go nuts again.

Wayne Muromoto
...Totally off the subject, but I went around Oahu the other day and found the pier where the little guy on "Fantasy Island" used to yell, "De plane, boss, de plane!" And I got to see the building used for the hole-in-the-wall restaurant in "Fifty First Dates." That kind'a was cooler to me than those guys' web pages.

[No1'sShowMonkey]

Being a young'in, one that hates television at that, you-tube is where I get 99% of my video media. I have been watching the Ogawa ryu stuff as fast as it comes out. Though some of the bits are hokey, the actual techniques are well done, crisp and efficient. More than anything, it is done with fire, passion and conviction. This pleases me.

I did some research on the topic of their lineage to try and figure out "hey, who are these guys?!" and it was a difficult process, to be sure. I specifically did not post anything here because I figured that most anyone from these forums would view it all a sham and would immediately break out the "its not daito-ryu so it is not aikijujutsu" yadda yadda yadda.
Anyhow...

What I was able to find via their website and other aligning searches was that they seem to be an offshoot of Kaze Ryu, formerly Kaze Arashi ryu, formerly Yama Arashi ryu. The Ogawa family became Japanese foreign nationals (at least I am assuming this would be how their particular flavor of Kaze ryu spread) in either Spain or Brazil and trained several exponents who now continue the traditions.

The videos themselves paint a complex and somewhat enigmatic portrait of the school. Their focus seems unclear, bits of kano jujutsu mixed with iai and kenjutsu and some aikijujutsu-esque motions tossed in. I would contend that the core of their teachings (as far as the videos are concerned) center on nuki todome kaishi, torite seiteigata and the chuden no keiko / "aikijujutsu ogawa ryu" pair of unarmed videos. It is from these three sets of videos that one can find the strongest themes that are present in the majority of the others. Weapons retention, weapons retrieval and applied skills in an unarmed environment. From the former weapons based motions one can see the genesis of the other skills. Personally, I view the emphasis of weapons retention / retrieval techniques to be a technical, if not academic, trait which aikijujutsu and koryu jujutsu schools have.

I studied these videos a fair amount and it is from these three, I would contend, that one can identify the core teachings presented in the other films. You can see their overall thematic footwork, repeated use of several pins, strategies of kuzushi and complementary locking to achieve it, bits of vital striking.

Other than analysis of the major parts of their recorded and posted videos, I am at a loss. I am sorely undereducated in histories and lineages of the Japanese koryu martial traditions. As such, other than connecting the dots to Yama Arashi ryu and finding the salient themes in the videos themselves, I am at a loss.

- Chris McGaw

[Mark Raugas]

There is no classical Yama Arashi Ryu which is still extant -- and Kaze Arashi Ryu is an invention of Henri Vilaire.

FWIW, the "aikijujutsu" and "koppojutsu" in those videos looks nothing much like KAR; they look much more like Daito-ryu or Hakko-ryu to me. For example, KAR doesn't do the tegatana finish from shomen. They usually punch downwards at the side of the ribs. Also, in KAR, it was a big deal never never to do yubi waza, but they seem to make extensive use of those kind of techniques in those video clips. Also, KAR doesn't (or at least as of a year ago, didn't -- who knows what's been added since then) have the elaborate double arm Daito-ryu pins.

If you see his iai in some of the suwari kata, he assumes hidari jodan no kamae from TSKSR. I'm wondering if this is another, possibly effective, possibly ineffective, hodge podge art made up from eclectic training + earnest video watching.

Funny to me though how people, if they are indeed inventing an art for themselves and trying to market it, unwittingly pick an art which is misrepresenting itself to backstop their "cover story".

[No1'sShowMonkey]

Thank you kindly for the clarifications.

The style certainly has a cobbled together look about it, though it is a pleasing ugliness of a beloved mutt.

I have yet to school myself thuroughly on the various schools and their practices.


- Chris McGaw