A matter of respect.....or lack thereof

I was just trying to paint a picture, sorry Ap.

 

I hear ya Chadderz. I just hate to see a solid point get mired down in the inevitable escalation of tensions that follow.

 

To answer your question...

I stated pretty clearly(I thought) in the OP why I started that thread:

Punching correctly in the Takamatsuden

This makes it clear that I was talking about the arts commonly known as ninjutsu(of course we all know that ninjutsu isn't really about punching though) so those with knowledge and experience in these arts were clealry the target audience. Obviously that would not be troll baiting though I always assume that the usual suspects will feel free to try to interrupt and take the conversation away from the OP will adding attacks about these arts as is their want. It doesn't bother me and if it bothers you to the point of starting a new thread, it does say something about your attitude and confidence in your art. Like was mentioned by previous posters, we don't own this forum and as more outsiders have become vocal in participating in threads not necessarily aimed at them, one has to take this into account when they post, read, and respond.


Reading recent posts in another thread, I thought this would be an interesting topic for discussion in it's own right. Not being able to punch properly(read effectively, speedily, and powerfully) has long been seen as an issue within the Bujinkan, and many people doubt the effectiveness of the various strikes found in the Takamatsuden as a result. So how do you punch correctly in the Takamatsuden?

So here I was pointing to the effectiveness of our punching being an issue that many cope with and the fact that it had been discussed in another thread tangentially. Since this is an issue that many have a lot of angst about, I started the thread you mentioned to discuss it. I raised the question of how one could learn to punch properly in our arts. This wasn't out of a need to ask, but out of feeling conversational. It is a pretty basic process. Learn correct mechanics, ingrain and entrain them into your movement and mentality, practice hitting things effectively, learn how to hit moving targets effectively while not getting hit in return. Repeat and retrain as you get feedback. That is how all effective strikers learned regardless of art.


In general, punching is punching. What makes a good punch from any standpoint is that it lands, lands in the right place, doesn't do damage to the puncher, hurts the person being punched, is hard to block, and sets up the next attack.

Here is where my feelings apply to other arts. It really doesn't matter what art your train in or even if you don't do any marital arts, if your strikes meet these criteria, you are punching properly.

The Takamatsuden are mostly known for oitsuki, or more commonly the "lunge punch," though oitsuki is not either a lunge nor just a punch. There are several attacks in the movement, from the lead first hand attack/control, the second punch, and the attacking the opponent's base with your feet. However, as most people haven't been taught the intricacies of this attack, it looks like a very useless training tool and not much else.

Voila. Since so many people misunderstand oitsuki, I was explaining what it actually is and how to do it. Notice I didn't write anything about off balancing yourself as you strike or leaving your arm hanging in the air after you had completed it.

Naturally, there are many other strikes in our arts, including chops, elbows, and odd angled things that strike with different surfaces and are a bit more rare. So from your understanding, how does one punch properly in the Takamatsuden?

Once again I point out that this strike isn't the end all be all for striking in our arts(even if those who don't understand them see it as such) and that there are more exotic and lesser known strikes as well.

A lot of people don't like what they see portrayed as ninjutsu, for whatever reason. I started posting on MAP because I read somethings that were preposterous and were very much at odds with what I had been exposed to here in Japan. Partly it was for my own entertainment as well. I know how to strike properly, as does my teacher. I have struck and ko'ed people in competition as well as knocked people down on the mean streets for realz. I have also studied other arts and sparred and done randori, all while enjoying tandoori chicken from my man cave in my nana's basement. I know the effectiveness of even thumb jabs to the sternum, but many people outside the arts will see this as fantasy. You shouldn't worry as much about trying to disabuse them of their illusions as you should about making sure your strikes can do that for you. People will believe what they will, your anger and umbrage will not change that. If you write the truth, someone will recognise that and respond. Yet these arts are based on deception, and a lot of what people are responding negatively to is emotion, value, and the almighty dollar(as you yourself mentioned).

It is often difficult to discuss technical issues about these arts because most don't have the education(meaning familiarity with the actual real techniques) to do so whether they be members of the xkans or outsiders. As such, it isn't really worth the effort so those who know something often stop posting eventually. Others, who have been exposed for their lack of understanding/ability/familiarity also end up posting due to embarrassment. These days I mostly only respond to PMs but that is about it because there isn't much more else to say.

Having been exposed to the real effective techniques and principles in these arts, it is only right to try to share one's experience with others in the hopes that others can also benefit from this knowledge. However, that isn't my job or responsibility as I am not a teacher. If people don't like what I write or agree that is fine. I don't have the time or energy to bait or feed trolls, let alone the interest in dealing with them.

I'd take a lot of the responses to this thread to heart if I was you. There are xkan specific forums that you can discuss these topics on if you don't like MAP, you aren't obligated to post here or respond to things you don't like. But in life you often are, and that is part of learning ninjutsu as well, so you might as well not give up. Tell the truth, enjoy posting, and if it isn't worth it to you, find a way to find value in posting. Otherwise, find ways to use your time that you find more beneficial. Best regards, RP.

 

Not everyone likes to bring up the lowest point of their life all the time you heartless *******.

 

For the record, I wasn't referring to the Forum as "my house" as I am aware that it is a public forum. I was referring to the martial art that I study. I guess that was lost in translation. My fault for not being clear enough.

 

The same logic applies though. The art you study exists in the public domain. It's open to scrutiny and criticism, just as anything else is that exists in a shared space. If you really want to train in this art and not be subject to anyone else's observation or critique, then the key to that sits in your behaviour. You can't possibly get the rest of the world to agree to leave your art in peace. You need to make the decision to 1) not let it bother you, 2) not spend time in that shared space, or 3) counter-argue.

Personally, I think that civil debate is really useful. And even debate that gets out of hand can be quite useful, if you're prepared to sift through the debris afterward.

It's not about you. Not really.

 

Please do. It will give me an excuse to go watch all those Yamashita and Riner ippons again.

 

To jump in there and add to why the punching correctly thread is worth while in essence. The tsuki we use teaches a form of body mechanic (if done correctly) that runs through all the Takamatsuden arts. If you can't do that correctly, you have nothing to built your progress on. So it is not just a tsuki, it is foundational body mechanics. And then all the MMA guys come in and say "oh that's not realistic" - no oftentimes it is not. But that does not matter. The road in traditional arts is different (not better or worse) than in modern ones. You spend a lot of time on certain things to improve other things. For us, this is (or should be) tsuki, keri, uke.

And that very interesting starting point (for those truly interested in Takamatsuden arts) is muddled, nay fouled I say (OK pun intended) by the whole realistic or not issue. That does not matter with this issue; but there are people who try to derange any Takamatsuden thread with arguments like "not realistic"; "lineage unproven"; "look on youtube at all the crap" - there is a lot wrong with a lot of BJK practitioners, we already know that. So keep quiet and let us discuss the intricacies of our arts without the same (redundant) argument every time. And that, I think, is what the OP is trying to say...

 

So essentially your looking for a safe space?

 

I get that going around in circles with the same old arguments is tiresome. I find it tiresome too.

However, I don't think "trolling" is the right term for it. These aren't trolls, they are people with strongly held, genuine beliefs who are critical of something. They are not doing it out of some twisted sense of gaining infamy on the internet.

 

I hope you understand that nowadays that's very close to impossible, unless you start applying heavy censorship and banning anyone who questions your art. Freedom of speech can bother a lot of people and ruin many houses.

BTW: You're free to discuss whatever the hell you wanna discuss about Bujinkan. Even if someone else posts a message you disapprove of, you're free to ignore it and keep discussing what you really want to discuss.

You live in a very informed era where you can't just make claims and get away with it without answering questions. You can't separate the discussion of punching correctly in the takamatsuden from the discussion of punching correctly. Or, by any chance, you think that whoever created this tsuki didn't want it to be effective?

If i was a white belt just starting in the art, i would love to be able to find a discussion forum where someone pointed out the holes that the practitioners try to ignore. If you want a forum 100% pro-Takamatsuden, you have other options out there.

Now, if you ask "how do you punch correctly in the Takamatsuden"

The only possible answer is that you don't punch correctly. You punch, but not correctly.

And you might think this argument is not pertinent to discussion, but it actually is because it raises a lot of questions. It raises questions about authenticity, because i've never seen any human punching like that, and it's just not a natural or rational move in any way and it raises questions about the interpretation of what's written and drawn in the densho. Like i stated before, there's a very good chance that what you're doing right now is simply a very bad interpretation of the written techniques. Or maybe whoever wrote down those techniques wasn't very good at giving technical directions. Believe me, this is a very possible scenario.

Now, if by "how do you punch correctly in the Takamatsuden" you simply wanna know how people are instructed to punch, then there isn't really much to talk about since you can find thousands and thousands of videos of many Shidoshi and Shihan showing you the punch. Look at how Hatsumi does it. Look at how Nagato does it.

 

I didn't think the Buj had white belts?

I've seen Hatsumi come out with some fairly tasty hooks and hammerfists.

 

oh snap. did someone say "yamashita" and "osoto gari"?

https://youtu.be/UOwlqKkEXCo?t=11

 

Bujinkan has white, green and black belts. Some people also use a few more belts for kids, like yellow and orange, but that's optional.

I don't know what you mean by "fairly tasty hooks and hammerfists". I've seen him hit unmovable targets in many different ways. But i think what the OP wants to know about is the traditional tsuki, which is a very strange and questionable technique that most people don't really know why it is used in the first place.

One of the most impressive things i've seen Hatsumi do was simply to break a Bokken with a very quick punch, like it was nothing. Hatsumi seems to have had some legit Martial Arts training before adopting the whole Ninja image. I've heard about him being a 4th dan in Judo and also training boxing, karate, aikido and kendo. Like anything Bujinkan-related, i take it with a grain of salt though.

 

Oh, right. I don't think I've ever seen someone wearing a white belt in Buj videos. Only green and black.

Sure, I've never seen him spar or fight, but the guy knows how to punch.

The thing is, Please Reality seems pretty confident that the tsuki is not just a punch, and why it is used. Do you disagree about his compound grab high/low level attack interpretation?

Are you saying that what he learned from Takamatsu wasn't "legit"? Do you think he's just coasting from the sports he did as a young man and inventing all the ninja stuff?

 

We can also have a discussion about Osoto-gari in the Ninjutsu forum, since it's not exclusive to Judo.

 

Of course. Don't you know it goes green belt, black belt, 15th dan. It's a ninja misdirection campaign

 

You know, along while ago, on this very forum. I was a student of the Bujinkan like yourself. I also spoke in a very similar way as yourself regarding the arts and its perceived practicality.

Many of my comments were along the same vein as yours, with a few being worse.

In the end, my words managed to make there way to my instructor. I caused myself much humiliation, due to my words spoken on this forum. The walls have ears, as the saying goes.

Just a fair warning friend, if your still training in this art, things get back to your teacher.

I will admit this. I miss training in the BBT. Sure I questioned the lack of resistance/pressure/sparring but I actually enjoyed the hell out of myself.

 

To be honest, i don't know to what post of his you're referring to because i haven't had the chance to read all the posts from this thread.

What i can tell you is that i'm not a big fan of complicated concepts within combat arts unless they're proven to be truly effective. To me a tsuki is just a punch because that's what i was thought in many years of training. I don't think you're supposed to theorize too much about something that has a very simple purpose: To hurt the opponent. Do you see boxers arguing whether or not a hook is just a punch? Or saying that a left hand is much more than what it looks like? I mean, c'mon...how complicated can it be to hit someone? Why should anyone try to justify the bad mechanics of a punch? It's like serving you something really nasty to eat and then tell you that you need to develope the right sense of taste in order to appreciate it.

Believe me, i used to come up with all sorts of theories to justify Bujinkan techniques. Now i see how pathetic it was for me to put so much effort into it. Everything looks bad, everything is ineffective, but there i was, trying to pretend there was a lot more to it than meets the eye. I really wanted to believe this stuff worked. I can see myself 8 years ago in a lot of these posters. I just grew out of it.

I don't think there is any evidence that Takamatsu was ever a Soke of a legit style. The best thing we can say in his defense is that he did train with people related to the Yoshin Ryu and Kukishin lines, and he supposedly received Menkyo Kaiden. That's the absolute best we can say about him.

But where did the Takagi Yoshin Ryu Jutaijutsu come from? What about Kukishinden Ryu Happô Hikenjutsu? As far as i know, there's no record of these exact schools existing prior to Takamatsu. It was common for a Menkyo Kaiden to create his own line of a style, but i think Takamatsu went a little further and created a bunch of new lines based on the teachings he received in Kukishin Ryu and Yoshin Ryu. It basically looks like he created a bunch of new systems just so he could give Sokeship to several people. Hatsumi received the Jutaijutsu and Happô Hikenjutsu lines, while other students of his received other lines also with the kukishin and Yoshin Ryu name.

It's also interesting to note that the Takamatsuden lines have very peculiar names that are very difficult to find in other styles, like Jutaijutsu, Kosshijutsu, Koppojutsu. All very uncommon in Japanese Ryu-Ha.

Regarding the Ninjutsu Ryu-Ha, it seems they only came to public in the late 50's, which is very strange, since by that time Takamatsu had been the Soke of Togakure for almost 50 years(supposedly). I mean, you're the Soke of something for 50 years, nobody knows about it, then all of the sudden you just pass the art to a guy you have known for a couple of years? Very shady.

Gyokushin Ryu Ninjutsu and Kumogakure Ryu Ninjutsu might not even be a Takamatsu creation. There's a chance these are all Hatsumi's. Correct me if i'm wrong, but while Takamatsu was alive these schools were never mentioned. I might be wrong, but...

I also recall Tanemura mentioning in a magazine a couple instances where Takamatsu had the intention of creating new lines of certain systems, like Kukishin Ryu Ninpô. This being true just comes to show that Takamatsu did enjoy to come up with new stuff. Which it makes sense, considering all we know about his arts and all the lack of evidence.

In my humble opinion what happened was simply this: Takamatsu trained a few very rich styles and most likely had access to the densho of several other death Ryu-ha. It's not that difficult to find makimono of Ryu-ha that no longer exist. As someone interested in story and martial arts, it's very likely that he collected a lot of material. Since he wasn't really the Soke of anything he probably simply decided to compile certain information he had to Ryu-Ha format so he could pass it down as authentic schools.

Why would he do that? Money, fame, recognition, legacy, attention. And he got all of that. Not with the Kukishin stuff, but with the Ninja stuff. So if this was his objective, it actually worked, because as soon as he started with the whole Ninja madness he became a lot more popular than he ever was.

It's possible that certain Ninja stuff from Bujinkan is actually legit. But i highly doubt it really comes from a Togakure Ryu school with 900 years of history.

As far as practical legitimacy...well...you have old Ryu-Ha that look absolutely ridiculous. They haven't been updated for centuries. They have lost its original purpose. The Takamatsuden, in its original form, looks like a very obsolete form of fighting. In its current Bujinkan form it looks like a nonsensical form of fighting. Most of what you see nowadays it's all Hatsumi's "modern" interpretation of what he learned from Takamatsu. It's his Aikido. But for the BJK crowd it is "the next level". It's something almost spiritual that you can only understand after decades of training...so you can see where this is going...

 

I agree that Takamatsu most likely "tweaked" Kukishin ryu, and that Togakure as we know it might be a few centuries old, or a few decades. I remember the article in Amatsu Tatara Magazine where Tanemura sensei mentioned "Kukishin ryu Ninpo" as per Takamatsu sensei. I guess it's a little shady, but I see him as a budo genius, and have no doubts about the legitimacy and effectiveness of Kukishin ryu and Takagi Yoshin ryu.

As for Gyokushin ryu and Kumogakure ryu, I could go either way. I've just seen little things here and there, and see the ninja stuff as "toppings" with Tagaki, Kukishin and Shinden Fudo being the meat and potatoes (Gyokko and Koto being appetizers and dessert lol).

As for the overall effectiveness of the Takamatsuden arts, it's the most effective, versatile and painful training I've done, although it could also be that I've been blessed with two extremely gifted teachers. And while it might look dated and obsolete, you could say that about almost any martial art, depending on the situation and circumstances.

The bottom lines is that it works best with cross-training, just like Muay Thai, BJJ, Judo, Boxing, Wrestling, Kempo, Karate or Tae Kwon Do.