Saturday, August 11, 2007

Harmony

Picture this:
You and the uke stand facing each other. Both of you hold a shinken, a proper razor sharp steel sword in front of you, tips barely touching. The uke, raises his sword, steps forward an cuts strongly with the intent of slicing you in two, head to stomach. You step to the right while raising the sword above the head and cutting down to slice through the uke's hands, stopping just short of that. This is migi awase, we use bokken and not live steel, but the feeling should be the same.

The ability to perform smoothly and in sync with the attack, is the core harmony of Aikido.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Iwama 1964

Morihiro Saito in slow motion, Iwama 1964. I wonder who the uke is.
Things that look diferent to me:
  • 6:35 Uke initiates on shomenuchi ikkyo.
  • 5:00 Sankyo ura looks different.
  • 5:45 Very deep entry on shomenuchi nikkyo ura.
  • 4:45 Seated pins on yonkyo (omote and ura).
  • 1:50 A bokkken suburi (shomenuchi-kaitan-shomenuchi).
  • 1:50 The 3rd bokken suburi as we know it today is missing.
  • 1:18 Bits of 31 kata look different
    • 0:49 The 17th movment (strike to the knee) is high.
    • 0:28 The 30th movment includes a hasso element and consequently 31 becomes a right yokomen.
  • 0:24 Haven't seen this nice flowing kata before

Friday, May 18, 2007

A short one

Everything is simple, nothing is easy.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Sankyo

Saito Morihiro applying a sankyo Saito Morihiro applying a sankyo. The uke's hand should be attached to the sternum (breast bone), otherwise the technique is "easily" reversible.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Seiza 正座

Seiza is written with two Chinese characters. The character pronounced sei- means "proper, right, true," and by itself can be pronounced tadashii, meaning "just right" or "proper." The character -za means "sitting posture," and is written with an ideograph depicting people sitting on a raised platform under a roof.

Furyu
 
Blog directory