2015-05-24: Time to Shine

One of my favourite things to do is to be the best at something.
To be the best at something you just have to measure yourself against your peers on an applicable set of criteria.
Over the years I have gotten quite creative in defining the criteria for measuring The Best and defining exactly who my Peers are.

I like this kata, makiotoshi (spiralling entrapment of the other weapon) with a straight weapon at high speed, when it works it is great. When it doesn't you try harder next time.

The past few days seminar has been an Instructors Seminar. Lots of Super Senior Types teaching Insanely Good Guys how to be a teacher. Obviously neither group are my peers.
Baptiste is French, so he can't be my peer. Ewa is a Lady, so she can't be my peer.
Therefore by a process of elimination I was the best person there. Excellent.

One of our sensei from home in Nagoya, he has an 8 on his shoulder and can't be my peer for these purposes.

Today we focussed on the kata. Jukendo has many kata; gun vs gun, bayonet vs bayonet, bayonet vs gun and so on. A book was being studied which has even more kata which have apparently been lost over the years including unarmed against a gun kata.

Sure he has no number on his shoulder but that, oddly enough, does not qualify him to be my peer either.

The interesting thing about the kata is that each technique is shown winning and losing. For example in the first kata of gun vs gun the attacker runs in and stabs the other guy as soon as he moves.
4 kata later the same thing happens but the guy that died the first time uses a counter technique to win.

Sign Review: Train Station Smoking Room

Those damn kids with Hip and their Hop

Rating: 9/10 (I hate it when the kiddy smokers are all running around screaming)

In the kata of bayonet vs gun half the time the bayonet wins and half the time the gun does.
I like this as it feels like a rounded set of kata to me, you learn the important principles of attacking and countering, rather than just one side always winning for the same reason.
Unfortunately the person that dies is always the same side and for some reason Ewa and Terada sensei both agree I should be the guy that dies normally.
It was no different here with the senior chaps (no doubt egged on by Baptiste) deciding I ought to die.
I guess when you are the best (by my definition) people get jealous and want to see you suffer.

Ewa's favourite zanshin (preparedness after a strike). Sensei explained that if she thrusts too hard and fast and gets me in the throat she should most definitely say sorry to me. And next time I will move quicker.

Interestingly jukendo has kata of sword versus gun. And again half the time the sword wins. I am not aware of any other mixed weapon kata involving a sword that allows the sword to win occasionally.
These jukendo guys are nice to the poor sword guys.

Over the arm to the heart

We practiced the kata until the lunchbreak when the senior sensei announced something which sounded to me along the lines of "These Gaijin, Present them to me that I may judge them"
And so we did the kata in front of all the senior instructors and teachers to be.
There was no stress involved in this at all.
Maru all the way.

Under the arm to the heart. Ewa always knows the way to my heart.

I am lead to believe that jukendo is looked down on by a lot of other martial arts because it is Too Violent and Aggressive. Certainly if you are an idiot (like me) and don't tie your armour correctly you can get hurt but that requires a special skill (being an idiot and looking competent) which I find many people lack.

And sometimes I say stupid shit and a poke to the throat is required (or a glass of water if I have been drinking too much)

Many people can be an idiot and many people can be competent, the art of combining the two seems to elude most however. This is probably why I am also told jukendo has fewer injuries than most other full contact martial arts.

What the kata should actually look like

I think he might be about to say Sorry

If this looking down on jukendo is true all I can say is it doesn't seem to affect the jukendoka. As one person commented to me "It's not like <another martial art> where everyone is pretending to be a warrior, these guys are military, they are warriors and don't need no steenkin pretense (they do need badges though)"

New kata involves striking to the wrist. I get the feeling it was "Hey the wrist is a target, why don't we have a kata for that?" "Oh we don't? bugger, here's one in an old book, let's do that" "Cool, let's go"

You only get one Sorry a day though.

All in all jukendo and, to a lesser degree, tankendo feel immensely practical focussed to me.
We were thinking of taking up Kyudo at one point but then saw just how much bowing and so on is involved and the bit we considered important (hitting the target) was kind of not that relevant.

If you do it like this it really smarts for the other guy

Obviously with Naginata etc we do a lot of the etiquette stuff and I certainly don't have a problem with it, but it isn't my favourite part.

Watch I'll show you

In Jukendo there are important things; 40% of power is the strike, 60% is removing the bayonet from the dead dude, this is important!
Then there are slightly less important aspects; the angle of the gun when you are walking around is discussed occasionally but if you aren't getting the 40/60 ratio correct they seem to hold off on correcting "How to hold a gun when you aren't fighting" for the time being.

I have no need of these words of apology, he's still standing isn't he?

In light of this aspect of Jukendo it probably shouldn't be a surprise that a martial art with a seriously long history (started with the Prussians at least) has decided they need a new kata, it was announced, demonstrated and then everyone was told they could pretty much take it or leave as they liked. It could be a language skills thing (I still have none) but no one looked surprised at what would be quite weird for anything I have experienced before.

I like the slight look of dismay, "I hope he isn't going to demonstrate that bit on me"

A few people seemed vaguely interested in the new kata, a few wandered off to do something else.

Baptiste likes being the underdog in a fight, he's French, He's used to it.

We find this refreshing and a nice change of pace. So I think we will stick with this as a new Activity with Hats.

The smiley people? Don't be fooled!