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Thread: Origin of suigetsu

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    Default Origin of suigetsu

    Hello all.

    This is my first post and thread. Please excuse all rookie mistakes. My name is Stan and I'm currently studying Aikido.

    I've got a question about the etymology of "suigetsu" 水月 (as in the target on the human body, i.e. solar plexus). I've read multiple articles on the poem associated with Muso Gonnosuke and suigetsu, but none have quenched my thirst.

    My question is: why is suigetsu - 水月 - water, moon - connected with the solar plexus? Why that specific target? I've looked into Chinese medicine and acupuncture points, Indian medicine and chakras - no luck. Even the term "solar plexus" isn't medically correct. But, I digress.

    I'm looking forward to all input. Especially those currently living in Japan with budo experience.

    Please excuse my ignorance of the Japanese language.

    S. Mauro

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    Quote Originally Posted by stanm View Post
    My question is: why is suigetsu - 水月 - water, moon - connected with the solar plexus?
    There's probably no definitive answer to this, but most likely it's something of a pun. The solar plexus in everyday Japanese is the "mizuochi" (鳩尾 also pronounced "mizoochi"), which is a homonym for an unrelated word (水落) that means a place where water drops. "Suigetsu" is probably a play on the "mizu" part of the term. Martial art jargon very commonly picks up Buddhist and Daoist vocabulary and uses highfalutin terms or phrases (which originally designated philosophical or religious concepts) to describe fairly mundane things. This worked as a kind of code, to obscure what was being talked about (so that only the initiated could understand it).
    Karl Friday
    Dept. of History
    University of Georgia
    Athens, GA 30602

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    A great question, thanks for asking it... and that post by Dr Friday is possibly the most authoritative answer you could have dreamed of. Frustratingly vague and perhaps not the pot of golden clarity that you were hoping for, but given Dr Friday's background, I suspect it is as close to a definition as you are likely to find. There may be other explanations, but are they actually true, or just convenient?
    David Noble
    Shorinji Kempo (1983 - 1988)
    I'll think of a proper sig when I get a minute...

    For now, I'm just waiting for the smack of the Bo against a hard wooden floor....

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    Hello,
    Coming from a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) background I hope to add another angle to this discussion.

    The stomach, known in TCM as the "sea of grain and water", is said to receive the the food and water and is thought of as the origin of post-natal fluids in the body. It resides in the middle burner of the sanjiao system.
    The heart, in this same system, is said to represent 'heaven' in the upper burner.

    Prof. W Bodiford wrote once that the word suigetsu describes a common buddhist image of the moon reflecting on the water.
    http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthre...tsu#post208388
    If the suigetsu is usually indicated as being around the region of CV14 (the mu-point of the heart) then this would make some sense in TCM theory. CV 14 is the gate between the upper and middle burner in the sanjiao system thus the reflection of the moon (heaven) on the water (stomach) has a sort of poetic niceness to it.

    Unfortunately I don't think this is the most reasonable explanation.

    Firstly, the word sui (water) getsu (moon) may be a mistake as, although I have no Japanese language skills, I am lead to believe that the word read as "getsu" can also be read as "tsuki" which sounds the same as the word for "thrust".
    Could it be that there has been some confusion about the description of a strike or kyusho point due to a common buddhist image?
    Could suigetsu in a bujutsu capacity be referring to a technique called a "water thrust"?
    Perhaps it is a description to "thrust at the house of water"?

    This seems more reasonable to me and would simply be the result of a typographical error leading to a misinterpretation.

    As for the point being described as the "solar plexus", this is a common error in my opinion.
    From a medical perspective the solar plexus is actually called the celiac nerve plexus which is situated deep in the body between the stomach and the spine. The reason it is called the solar plexus, I suspect, is due to the fact that it looks like the sun when depicted in diagrams.
    I believe that the attribution suigetsu to the solar plexus is a modern, perhaps even western one, and that the target labeled as suigetsu is intended to be the cardiac sphincter of the stomach, which is a much more superficial target.
    The confusion caused by the terms "solar" vs "moon" or "water" is actually an error based on the assumption that the target was the nerve plexus that is commonly likened to the sun.
    Of course, when the stomach is struck with sufficient force then the celiac/solar plexus may be compressed, but this would need to be very serious force and is not the source of pain from most punches to the stomach area.

    The word mizuochi 鳩尾, that Dr Friday translated as "a place where water drops" confirms for me that the target is indeed the cardiac sphincter, as this is the place where water drops into the stomach.

    Dr Friday: Is the word mizuouchi 鳩尾 used to describe the area on the surface of the body, or is it indeed an medical term for the celiac nerve plexus? In the above I have assumed the former.



    I hope this alternative perspective has offered something of value to the discussion,


    Dale Elsdon
    Last edited by Dale; 12th January 2011 at 07:50.
    Respectfully,
    Dale Elsdon

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    I'm anything but knowledgeable about traditional Sino-Japanese medicine, but my understanding is that while in modern usage, mizouchi refers to the what westerners colloquially call the solar plexus--it the area at the top of the belly, just below the ribs--in traditional usage it indicated an acupuncture point, which is to say a point on the surface of the body that accesses some underlying organ or bodily function.
    Karl Friday
    Dept. of History
    University of Georgia
    Athens, GA 30602

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    Thankyou Dr Friday,
    That is as I expected.
    I am quite confident that the target suigetsu refers to the cardiac sphincter (aka lower esophageal or gastro-esophageal sphincter), or surrounding area known simply as the cardia.
    This is indeed the place where water and food drops into the stomach proper.
    Respectfully,
    Dale Elsdon

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    Forgive my ignorance of the Japanese language, but could it be that the term suigetsu originated from a misspelled sui-tsuki?
    Respectfully,
    Dale Elsdon

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    This is wonderful. Thank you all for your insights. I'm eager for others to share. I shall continue my studies.

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    Default 背水月

    It can also be wrote like this in old jujutsu schools... 背水月
    OLIVIER DESROCHERS

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    Duplicate post. Edit time ran out.

    Suigetsu is not a target. Nor is the sternum or solar plexus "a point too target." In weapons with armor, that would present all sorts of difficulties!

    So...why that point? Was it in fact *a point* at all? Whats the point of moon/water?
    There is a relationship creating a delta in the body; the lowest point being the waist between the hips, the upper point the head, and the left/right points, being the shoulders. When one looks past or through an opponent with soft eyes (non-focused) you will pick up any minute change in this delta as the person attacking you must generate movement within this delta. Something will move there when using weapons. The center of that delta? Is the sternum/ solar plexus. Soft focus aids, peripheral effects; and using the entire eye to pick up rapid movement. The whole rods and cones thing.
    "Staring at a far mountain."
    The marines..."The thousand click stare."


    This brings us to moon/water;
    "The moon does not think to shine, nor does the water think to reflect." Their relationship is fixed and immediate. Any movement generates a commensurate response. In our case, the enemy is the moon and we, are water. Hence the age old metaphor (not even remotely true) that the one who moves first, dies or makes an opening.
    Our response to cut? Is to cut.... anything that is appropriate; wrists, throat, inside of arms, legs, etc.
    Interestingly, "cutting to the heart?" is yet another another well known metaphor in weapons that has not one thing to do with cutting the mentioned target-the heart). And so in kind, the idea of moon/water targeting has nothing to do with the center of the delta, the sternum. Rather, it is a difficult and advanced means to train to enhance "The three degrees of sen" in weapons combatives.
    Tesshu, Munenori, Musashi, and other swordsman wrote of this concept. It is for this reason that Tesshu's moon/ water scroll is on the left of my Kamiza, and his "One thought/ one sword" scroll, on the right.
    Weapons work is incredibly fast- well, to be more clear- it has the *potential* to be so.
    In the hands of an experienced swordsman a cut can take as little as a hundredth of a second. After spear, sword and stick and their commensurate distances and margins, empty hand feels like a gift. Hence the reason for what some think are empty sayings.

    Putting on armor and using classical weapons, freestyle, (ala dog brothers) teaches one the incredible immediacy that is inherent in weapons.
    Last edited by Dan Harden; 5th January 2015 at 01:51.
    Dan
    [url=www.bodyworkseminars.org][COLOR=#B22222][B]Ancient traditions * Modern Combatives[/B][/COLOR][B][/url] [/B][COLOR=#B22222][/COLOR]

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    Dan,
    Would you like the first of those two posts removed? It looks like you were trying to revise after the editing time was up.
    Cady Goldfield

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    Yes please. thank you. And Happy holidays!
    Dan
    [url=www.bodyworkseminars.org][COLOR=#B22222][B]Ancient traditions * Modern Combatives[/B][/COLOR][B][/url] [/B][COLOR=#B22222][/COLOR]

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Harden View Post
    When one looks past or through an opponent with soft eyes (non-focused) you will pick up any minute change in this delta as the person attacking you must generate movement within this delta. Something will move there when using weapons. The center of that delta? Is the sternum/ solar plexus. Soft focus aids, peripheral effects; and using the entire eye to pick up rapid movement. The whole rods and cones thing.
    [I]"Staring at a far mountain."[I]

    It is very interesting to me why in many koryu the emphasis is on looking at the partner's eyes...

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    Well.....you should find many other things interesting as well, like why others teach you can be captured by the eyes? Or, why so many publicly demonstrate and teach *big cuts.* Or, left hand as power? When others teach the use of two hands to use a pivot with left-in/right-out, with both hands then producing power. Language is not always precise; Te- no- uchi does not mean the same thing to everyone. But there's no use wringing our hands over it, is there? ;-)
    Dan
    [url=www.bodyworkseminars.org][COLOR=#B22222][B]Ancient traditions * Modern Combatives[/B][/COLOR][B][/url] [/B][COLOR=#B22222][/COLOR]

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    Here is a video that illustrates the importance of awareness. It can be extremely difficult to filture what is important from what is unimportant. Dan has mentioned some techniques and I imagine he may be familiar with this example. Despite being presented with a lot of movement and a lot of distractions, it IS possible to discern and make decisions based on the important data that your eyes are feeding to your brain. Watch the video first, before reading on, in order to get an accurate assessment of the effectiveness of your own methods. There are several versions of this experiment available as clips online, my apologies if you have seen it before.
    David Noble
    Shorinji Kempo (1983 - 1988)
    I'll think of a proper sig when I get a minute...

    For now, I'm just waiting for the smack of the Bo against a hard wooden floor....

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