Likes Likes:  0
Page 1 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 94

Thread: Free practice in koryu: is it possible?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Verona, Italy
    Posts
    84
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default Free practice in koryu: is it possible?

    Dear fellows,
    since several days I'm wondering about the free sparring practice in koryu. is real possible that in many koryus there was no free practice? Are the kata enough to prepare the warriors to real battles and duels? I'd like the answer is no and I think that a minor amount had to be dedicated to free sparring. I'm not an expert so I'd like to know your opinion


  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Tokyo, Japan
    Posts
    1,329
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Luca,
    I don't think that anyone has stated that it wasn't done...Randori is still used in many koryu (at least Jujutsu schools, Kenjutsu I'm sure wouldn't disregard the practice if it helped) and as far as I know was always practiced...Wrestling (especially after class) is a good way to test some of what is covered in class, and it's a nice way to learn other tricks too.. Other schools use heavy bogu and padded weaponry in the same kind of practice, and it's far from being unused in Koryu..
    May I ask what gave you the impression that it wasn't?
    Ben Sharples.
    智は知恵、仁は思いやり、勇は勇気と説いています。

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Location
    Kaneohe, Hawaii, USA
    Posts
    883
    Likes (received)
    35
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default

    In our dojo, we add kendo kata to our MJER waza, as well as tachi uchi no kurai. I think both of those certainly help our tekki visualization, although neither are, of course, randori.

    Kendoka, on the other hand, have free-sparring, but don't use a sword (before I get jumped on, a shinai simply isn't used the same way as a katana - just consider the very limited target areas).
    Ken Goldstein
    --------------------------------
    Judo Kodansha/MJER Iaido Kodansha/Jodo Oku-iri
    Fencing Master/NRA Instructor

    "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it'll annoy enough people to be worth the effort."

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Tokyo, Japan
    Posts
    1,329
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Ken,
    Interesting point...
    I was training my Battojutsu in the school hall here (High School) and using an Iaito to do so....Several of the kids I train with in the Kendo-bu stopped by and wanted to try with a sword, but one thing I noticed was that no matter what they did at first, none could get the Iaito to "sing" as it was swung..They all stopped the "cut" at the "hit" stage, and failed to actually cut through the air...Very fundamental, but obviously something not taught until later (perhaps?) in Kendo...Interesting to see...
    I would suggest that perhaps that was the reason that the Kendo no waza were kept in the official syllabus, although I personally feel the focus on them is minuscule compared to the shiai practice..(Depending on dojo and teacher obviously)..
    Just an interesting point that you raised..Thanks..
    Ben Sharples.
    智は知恵、仁は思いやり、勇は勇気と説いています。

  5. #5

    Default

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg_P3QCaA7I

    Free-play in Jikishinkage Ryu.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Verona, Italy
    Posts
    84
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    thank you very much for every contribution.

    For Ben... I gave that impression after some stages and meetings all over Europe. I practise Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu and in many occasions it was told to me (but never by my teachers) that in TSKSR the free practice doesn't exist and it's not counted because of the skills you acquire from the enormous amount of time passed practising the kata at different speed.
    Speaking about these elements with other fencers and wondering about the usefulness of free practice in my previous karate experience, I couldn't figure a skilled samurai that faces opponents only with kata background.

    So, thanks for sharing opinions about this and about the video


  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2000
    Location
    Guelph Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    312
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Benkei the Monk View Post
    Dear fellows,
    since several days I'm wondering about the free sparring practice in koryu. is real possible that in many koryus there was no free practice? Are the kata enough to prepare the warriors to real battles and duels? I'd like the answer is no and I think that a minor amount had to be dedicated to free sparring. I'm not an expert so I'd like to know your opinion
    The problem is that the question assumes that the koryu were to prepare warriors for real battles and duels.

    The majority of the koryu were developed after the wars, and dueling was strictly regulated and mostly forbidden. What you are left with is a practice that is used for other things than preparing for actual fighting.

    Of course, one can still ask if the koryu had free sparring and the answer would be kendo. Kendo did not spring full blown out of nowhere, it came from those koryu schools which used a form of free sparring. At the time there was considerable argument between kata and randori of course, as much as there is now.

    As randori was invented, equipment was modified in an attempt to allow more realistic strikes and timing. The shinken gave way to bokuto which gave way to shinai of various types. Padding was developed to protect the best targets and strikes were restricted to those targets, all in the name of developing a system of more realistic swordsmanship.

    Of course you would retain the kata in most cases, and modern kendo retains / contains them as well.

    Today there are many high ranking koryu instructors who practice kendo. Why would you not if such a randori practice is easily available with standardized equipment which has been shown to be safe and reliable.

    Targets limited to where the body is armoured seem to make sense. Any kendoka of high rank can hit you on the bare neck if he can hit you on the wrist.

    Similarly, beginners are taught not to cut right through because this is very hard on equipment and on partners when doing kendo.

    So if randori is not stressed in a particular koryu it may just be that it is assumed that one gets one's randori practice in kendo. Or, of course, that koryu may not believe in randori.

    And of course there are those koryu who retain the old forms of randori and have not adopted kendo to that purpose.

    Which brings us to "just what did the actual fighting forces of the pre-edo era use to train their soldiers". I'd be very interested in any research that tells us what the rank and file training was like but I strongly suspect it was more or less rudimentary point and thrust sort of stuff.

    Kim.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    73
    Likes (received)
    2

    Default

    Owari kan-ryu sojutsu does actually start shiai training before kata training. Here is an interesting article.

    http://www.koryu.com/library/harmstrong1.html
    Steffen Gjerding
    Kakudokan dojo

    Yup, lousy english

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    West Midlands, UK
    Posts
    2,054
    Likes (received)
    2

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Benkei the Monk View Post
    I practise Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu and in many occasions it was told to me (but never by my teachers) that in TSKSR the free practice doesn't exist and it's not counted because of the skills you acquire from the enormous amount of time passed practising the kata at different speed.
    ...or it could simply be that due to the mindset (or waza) of a particular koryu, free-sparring does not fit in with their training?

    TSKSR was/is particularly strict on taryu-jiai, so maybe that also has a bearing on why your school does not include sparring in their curriculum?
    Scott Halls
    Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu Kenjutsu - Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Iai
    兵法二天一流剣術 - 無双直伝英信流居合

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Verona, Italy
    Posts
    84
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Kim Taylor View Post

    1) The problem is that the question assumes that the koryu were to prepare warriors for real battles and duels.


    2) Of course, one can still ask if the koryu had free sparring and the answer would be kendo.

    As randori was invented, equipment was modified in an attempt to allow more realistic strikes and timing. The shinken gave way to bokuto which gave way to shinai of various types. Padding was developed to protect the best targets and strikes were restricted to those targets, all in the name of developing a system of more realistic swordsmanship.
    To kim. The points you stressed are interesting and was already considered in my search. This is what was answered to my questions about these points

    1) (a self explanation) The art of fencing is something developed by humans to thrust and slash with dangerous pieces of metal other humans. Probably is not the poetic or philosofic explanation given during the centuries, but it is one of the basic rule of swordplay. Then other elements were added to create the art of fencing. Then different styles and koryu were developed. So, why do not improve the chance to survive with free sparring experience? Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu was developed in times of war with the perspective of real fights so, it is difficult to imagine something other than a real application of the art. But this is only my opinion and it is not necessary true

    2) Sadly a lot of kendoka who is practising in my county said that kendo is kendo and kenjutsu is kenjutsu. The purpose is very different and the art is very different and the the practice of a sort of free sparring with the mind of jutsu is not the way of kendo. Others looked at kendo as a very competitive discipline and so the sport is the way. Yes, I knew a lot of pratictioners one eyed. I'm sure that in other countries like Japan but also Europe the attitude is different and better, but unfortunatly practising kendo for testing a free sparring with the spirit of kenjutsu is impossible in my area

    For Scott. Your arguments are right. <in TSKSR there a great importance is given to the real meaning and usefulness of the technique. I tried to test how much a kata is useful to real combat asking some friends in my dojo to test their ability in free sparring using fukuro shinai. In other cases I and my friends tested ourselves with practitioners of other martial arts (e.g. historical fencers) in which free sparring is encourage and part of the program. The results were about these:

    1) when a practitioner (A) of the art that was trained only with kata faces an opponent (B) of the same art who was trained in kata but also has a previous experience of free sparring (for example previous experience of kumite in jujutsu or karate) A is inferior to B

    2) when the pratictioner B of the previous example faces a martial artist that is used to free practice (C) B is usually equally or less inferior to C. When A faces C, A has no hope to get out from the match as winner

    The skills are about the same in the different groups so they are easy comparable. The final conlcusion was that the art is well taught by the kata and the repetition of the technique, but free practice is useful to develop the correct mental attitude to apply the technique.

    What do you think about these considerations?


  11. #11
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    MD, USA
    Posts
    233
    Likes (received)
    31

    Default

    I'm just a guy who is interested in this stuff and has read some things and talked to some people, but here are my $.02.

    The obvious thing to me is that it isn't like, if free sparring was necessary for producing a master swordsman, that pre-Edo masters like Choisai, Ittosai, and Kamiizumi wouldn't have integrated some type of free sparring training into their systems. So either they didn't think it was important, or they thought it would actually be detrimental to what they were trying to do.

    As far as the warring states period goes, its probably a little of both. The students of these men were all experienced swordsmen when they came to them, so it isn't like they didn't understand the basics of swinging a sword or other weapon against another man who also wanted to kill you. I think what the earliest surviving koryu are, are what these men thought of as the perfect, pure, distilled principals of combat.

    In my experience, too much focus on controlled competition can cause someone to develop certain habits. I won't call them bad, because they are good habits and skills for the setting in which they are developed. But they can interfere with principal-based study; for example if you are being taught a certain technique as a bridge to a principal which allows for free expression of something at a later phase of training, but you focus on "making it work" in the ring, you may wind up with something that works but doesn't embody the principal at all. Then you will never develop the REAL skill you are supposed to be learning. I think it is likely that the early masters felt that sparring was a more difficult way to learn the distilled, pure principals they were trying to teach.

    I mean it isn't like they couldn't have invented bogu much earlier. So you've got guys who own suits of armor and use their weapons regularly showing up at the dojo in their kimono and practice with a wooden sword. It seems like its stripped down, more basic, in a way that seems pretty Japanese.

    Now when you get into the Edo period obviously men didn't have much battlefield experience. And there is certainly evidence that systems with free sparring became more and more popular and successful as the Edo period progressed. But - and please continue to take my thoughts with many grains of salt - I bet you dueling happened quite a bit. Centralized, vertical autocracies with laws that offer harsh punishments for offenses usually don't enforce those laws with great uniformity, and societies have a tendancy to take care of things that need takin' care of away from the eyes of the law.

    Now one different possibility that I've considered is that there was free-sparring that happened in the older schools but it wasn't something they put down as part of the tradition. I wouldn't expect TSKSR would have had anything like that without record but it may be possible with other schools.

    Your anecdote about sparring with western martial arts practitioners is an example of how free training can be kind of misleading. Yeah you sparred and the people who were used to it did better. Of course - you were sparring. Maybe the outcomes would have been the same if you were seriously trying to kill each other, maybe not. We can't know for sure because we don't do that nowadays.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Verona, Italy
    Posts
    84
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Cliff Judge View Post

    Now one different possibility that I've considered is that there was free-sparring that happened in the older schools but it wasn't something they put down as part of the tradition. I wouldn't expect TSKSR would have had anything like that without record but it may be possible with other schools.

    Your anecdote about sparring with western martial arts practitioners is an example of how free training can be kind of misleading. Yeah you sparred and the people who were used to it did better. Of course - you were sparring. Maybe the outcomes would have been the same if you were seriously trying to kill each other, maybe not. We can't know for sure because we don't do that nowadays.
    Thanks for the contribution. I liked your historical point of view. I'd like to clarify my opinions about the last two points. The absence of records can be related to the focus only at the syllabus. There are anedocts that refer the previous soke and also Master Sugino Yoshio were involved in some contests with other swordmen. I think the free sparring is not necessary in order to develop the pure technique, but only to enter in the proper state of mind and mental attitude to the fight, as stated in our first experience. So you can learn in the proper and correct techniques, the kata and the syllabus of the school is enough. If you have the need to understand the dynamics of real fight also a free practice is necessary. This is the result of my experience and obviously it can be wrong, but I raised my spirit seeing that in other koryu there is a bit o free practice or it is implemented with kendo, in the proper way

    At last in our experiments we considered only the first cut, as the definite cut, so it was very far from the idea of "only"sparring, just to avoid the risk of playing many techniques without sense of reality. It was like the first fight in Chris' video


  13. #13
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    73
    Likes (received)
    2

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Cliff Judge View Post
    The obvious thing to me is that it isn't like, if free sparring was necessary for producing a master swordsman, that pre-Edo masters like Choisai, Ittosai, and Kamiizumi wouldn't have integrated some type of free sparring training into their systems. So either they didn't think it was important, or they thought it would actually be detrimental to what they were trying to do.
    But did the old guys need free sparring sessions in an age where actual fighting happened? Or "friendly" dueling/matches between combatants happened.
    Steffen Gjerding
    Kakudokan dojo

    Yup, lousy english

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Dec 2000
    Location
    Guelph Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    312
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Thought experiment.

    We have a school of swordsmanship that is set up at the same time as the battle of Nagashino to train the peasants how to fight in the wars. Nagashino (1575) was late in the Sengoku Jidai so presumably the training will be more or less standardized by then, no more experiments, we all know how the fights go.

    Said school takes folks with no particular skills and trains them to fight. What do they need to learn? Well Nagashino is well known as the place where Takeda Katsuyori got beaten by Oda Nobunaga so how did that happen? The traditional story is that Takeda used a cavalry charge against 1000 stockade protected gunners with Oda's forces volley firing.

    There were something like 38,000 forces on Oda's side and 15,000 on Takeda's. Wikipedia describes the Takeda charging in the rain (which should have dampened the powder and wicks of the guns) into the barricades but the Oda forces not breaking, ashigaru with spears going after any horseman who made it through the bullets and finally, samurai going toe to toe in individual combat with any scattered, dismounted horsemen.

    Presumably our sword school teaches those samurai scattered around to fight those individual battles with swords?

    Me, I'd count on getting the recruits into the army and drilling them in gun and spear to win the fighting. Sword swinging can be done any which way because by the time that comes around the battle is lost for one side or the other. I'm not wasting time training my soldiers in one on one sword combat when they could be drilling in mass movement.

    Maybe swords were used earlier, before the gun (1543) and spear were popular? The Onin War of 1467-1477 degenerated rapidly into trench warfare in Kyoto. What's good for trenches? Guns of course, but not available. Spears? Great. Naginata and swords and fancy footwork.... not so much.

    Oh hell, while looking for a stat on google I came up with this, written in 2007: http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthre...t=37874&page=3

    Kim.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    73
    Likes (received)
    2

    Default

    I am not sure of Benkei the Monk´s interest here but I did not get the feeling that firing and mass formation fighting was what he was aiming for. It´s rather if kata is enough for a man on man sword fighting scenario is good enough. If that prepares you enough.
    Steffen Gjerding
    Kakudokan dojo

    Yup, lousy english

Page 1 of 7 1 2 3 4 5 ... LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •