Jukendo Kata: Mokuju vs Tanken #1 銃剣道 形 （木銃と短剣）

Things get fun! Some poor bugger has lost his rifle and is holding just the bayonet when a bad man with a rifle and bayonet (but no bullets) comes running at him.

I am not sure how the Uchi/Shi nomenclature will work as this time each side gets 3 kata where they win. So I will call then "tan" and "ju"

• Starting from 9 steps apart.
• Ju takes a fairly straight geidan
• Tan covers with a twist of the forearm so the blade is now pointing over the right shoulder of the gun barrel and the base of the tanken is to the left of the gun barrel. Still very vertical (you can see the purpose of this kamae in number 4 kata of this set.) 
• 3 steps in each
• Tan is feeling pressured and starts to think about attacking
• Ju strikes during that chance (Deyōtosuru tokoro)
• Ju does hiki nuki zanshin (big step out followed by a lowering of body weight and a covering of Tan's wrist)
• Return to chudan
• Drop weapon point down releasing pressure on opponent, At this Tan's back hand goes down as well.
• 5 steps back
• Return to Chudan, Tan's back hand comes up to hold the (imaginary) bayonet scabbard

Important Points:

• Timing of the strike. Ju walks in One, Two, Threeeeee, Strike. Ju is in striking position only long enough for the pressure on Tan to cause the beginning of a reaction.
• Equally importantly Ju has to apply that pressure, if the steps are One, Two, Thr, Strike it is a completely different technique
• Eye contact is a good way to create this tension.
• Dropping the tanken down prior to walking backwards is hard. You should have a pouch for an egg created by your tsuba and thumb / forefinger crease. As you go down it is more of a roll of the arm than a twist of the wrist.
• If Tan has no Hanmi, my lord does it stand out. Body should be as close to perpendicular as possible. But make sure you are still facing the opponent with a vertical head.

What we did wrong (I am actually quite happy with these two examples, I think we done pretty good):

• Overall speed is too fast. Almost everything could be slower by maybe 50%
• Ewa could take a stronger kamae with mokuju
• My Tan kamae might be high.
• Ewa bounces up at the bottom of taking geidan
• I rock back before walking forwards and vice versa a lot
• Ewa has a tiny amount of lean after the strike
• I still haven't got the walking backwards smoothly thing working yet.
• As I walk in with the mokuju my kamae gets higher, shouldn't
• Neither of us really build that pressure to force Tan to react