People who have big grades in the buj should be better than that They should be better people and capable martial artists - that in my view is the very clear direction set by the head of the style I'm sorry to hear that your experience was otherwise
Good for you, send that letter... Name and shame! It's true you cannot blame an organization, for that shameful act. You CAN however blame whoever this letter is addressed to if they do not take action ( flicked or demoted to white belt) Make sur your clear on the events, dates, people present etc. and have it translated! Keep a copy for your records, Good luck
I know everyone is past this already but I had to stop and question. (My post is assuming that you meant to say misogynist, but if you were using some other word it is obviously irrelevant.) What on earth about the OP was misogynistic? Or indeed about the view that many instructors are terrible? I didn't see anyone saying anything about women, so count me confused.
Easy to see how it may seem that way but... I have to disagree. Those who get it can demonstrate on you that understanding in a way that makes you see and know the difference between them and those who cannot do what they can do. The contrast is stark and scary.
I seem to have misplaced the book, so I am quoting Guy Bowens's excellent paraphrase (from an article on Hontai Yoshin-ryu). The bolded bits and line breaks are mine. This (or, I should say, the absence of this in so many people's training) is the essence of the problem. We have people like Niinpo coming on the forum talking about how getting the technique right is stupid because you need to capture the 'essence', that the correct kata and waza should be skipped and henka should be practiced before you have it down, and so on. Even that would only affect them and their students, by itself; but I've noticed those types tend to shout down the people who emphasise training hard, with care, taking out their own inability on those who don't proclaim themselves authorities, but merely try hard (and thus get further). You cannot jump straight past Gyo, thinking the sloppiness that results is a mark of your 'natural', 'unrestrained' movement, taking it as a mark that you have found 'the way'.
It's a problem with many martial arts, if you take an ancient way of hand to hand combat derived from war and turn it into a system that anyone can learn and are encouraged to learn from the glamorisation the film industry has created then that art will inevitably end up watered down and the mind set of the students who want to learn it will differ vastly, from the once a week hobbiest to the die hard lifestyle type. Speaking as a Thai boxing coach, the way it seems to work better is when the art is evolved into a sport, I realise it can't always be done in some arts but the way I see it thai boxing for example could very easily have ended up a martial art with forms, belts and points contact , as it was turned into a sport the actual ethos of the art is kept very much alive with constants fighting with the intent of disabling, overpowering and defeating an opponent, as it was designed to be in the first place, albeit regulated. This isn't an answer but it made me think when I read the O.P
Oh, don't worry about that. Pretty sure eKuden, seminar circuit, ninja fitness, home study courses, and other gyo-hopping activities pay a lot more than £200...
Funny that people think that learning the traditional way is arrogant.:dunno: Considering that those who have gotten the art all learned directly from the master, undertaking a long apprenticeship, it is a bit arrogant and myopic to assume that one could do the same in any other fashion. Without being able to point to examples of anyone who has, it is something in the realm of the mystical. I love the excuse about why someone can't come to Japan to learn, especially since it was exactly that action that led to people outside of Japan knowing about ninjutsu in the first place. There will always be excuses, but that is exactly why the Takamatsuden aren't for everyone. Nobody ever said coming to Japan is some magic elixir that automatically guarantees that you will understand the art and become a trained killer, quite the contrary. It is just getting your foot in the door. Without dedication and the ability to steal the art through your own observation, experience, and hard work(not to mention luck), you are just slightly better off than those who never come. Without the ability to see what is going on and if you are always relying on your teaching "teaching" you, you will never be able to get it. A big part of this concept requires the deshi to cultivate the eyes to see(見る目を養う), an important aspect that many ignore. Without this skill, no number of years in Japan will help. Exactly! Yes, since I've totally ignored all the evidence while sticking my head in the sand and singing, "My Shidoshi!"
Turning a martial art into a martial sport is definitely one way to maintain a certain amount of "realism" and "practicality" to a point. Arts that don't have weapons as part of their curriculum are usually better equipped to be altered in this way(although some Filipino stick fighting I've seen is a good compromise) as weapons arts tend to become overprotected LARPing with fake arms, or overly restricted affairs. It all depends on the goals of those propagating the art. It is impossible to turn a small traditional art into an international one without changing it drastically, no matter how you decide to deal with maintaing integrity and quality control. Judo and the Takamatsuden are great examples of different approaches. However, as the arts that make up the Takamatsuden were never taught on the scale that we see today(all but Kukishin and Takagi Yoshin were small), perhaps growing the art isn't necessarily the right answer. Thus, when we see masses of people who think they are learning the art and a concentrated few that truly are(in the traditional sense), maybe that is just inevitable.
Yes I agree, it would be very hard to chamge some arts into a sport art, it's a shame really because to succeed at the sport art requires the dedication, trips to it's homeland, lifestyle etc , it sorts the realists from the pretenders if one is to succeed, and by suceed I mean reach a goal of high standing, for example many people can obtain a black belt without any real problem, but to obtain a recognised championship belt is another thing (obviously I'm aware of all the fake and plastic belts given away too)
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALrHEFGd-g"]Kukishin Ryu Drills - Basic Uke work - YouTube[/ame] Getting back to basics, I think more people would get it if they really learned the basics as they are, without trying to change them. This video is supposed to cover basic Kukishinden ryu uke work, but it doesn't. The basics of Kukishinden uke work are moving offline on certain angles, sinking with each progressive attack, getting closer to the opponent as you evade each prospective attack. These things in combination are known as kuki sabaki, and are the most important concept that one learns in this school, as it is found in everything. What this video is actually showing is, what if? This is common to all of the arts, as you learn how to counter the techniques of that art, and then you learn counters to the counters. This is only commonsense, as warriors wouldn't assume that their opponent was a rank beginner, nor would they assume that their first move would always work, so they created contingencies. So the assumption isn't that your jodan uke is perfect and kills the guy punching at you outright. You don't make the assumption of doing jodan uke and leaving your arm out, because that wouldn't make sense either. However, there could be the case where you don't get the angle of the strike correctly and hit his arm up and away(unbalancing him in the process and making a followup attack with either arm harder to do right away), or you hit him but it doesn't have that much of an effect. In either case, he can ride the momentum of your strike and use that to capture your arm. From a training perspective, once you have reached a certain level of competence in punching and also doing jodan uke, you should practice doing jodan uke and/or wrapping your hand around to the inside again to catch their arm as a response to their jodan uke off of your original punch. You should also be able to follow the punch into a throw without having to pull your hand back or learning how to follow in to check the arm to the inside or outside, but of course footwork is important to doing this correctly. Distance is a factor, Kukishinden starts off learning from grabbing distance(look at Seion for example), then practices strikes in patterns, and also grabs and strikes. Do not start changing things like having them make their first attack a reverse punch in order to practice the going inside their jodan uke as shown in the video, if you want to change the attacks from the original choreography(and you should once you reach a certain level), make sure you understand why and how it will change the technical application.
