*Some will quibble, no doubt, that this post would have been more accurately named "Different Flavors of Tuite," but if I had done that, I would have missed the opportunity for an outrageous pun.
You can find more than a little "tuite" on YouTube these days. It is not my intention to get into a spitting contest with anyone on the subject. I make no bones about who I am and what I think: I am a very junior member of the RyuTe Renmei, and what I think is that A)Taika Oyata is the foremost exponent of tuite-jutsu and kyusho-jutsu that I have seen, met, or heard of; B)that we in the United States are darned lucky to have him; and C) that both his tuite and kyusho are different from what goes under those names in other organizations.
Note that I have not said "better" or "worse". I have simply noted that in my opinion, it is different. For purposes of comparison, here are a few video clips, for the handful of people who might be interested.
First, here is Joel Reeves:
Mr. Reeves, in turn, was apparently a student of Higa Seitoku, seen here:
Higa Seitoku, in turn, was a student of this man, Uehara Seikichi:
Here is Toma Shian, who was, if I'm not mistaken, was another of Uehara Seikichi's students:
And lastly, here is Taika Seiyu Oyata, who was a training partner of Uehara's, but learnt, if I understand my history correctly, his tuite as the result of his kata analysis under the instruction of Uhugushuku no Tanmei, and the two systems--Uehara's and Oyata's--are identifiably different. This sums it up about as well as I have read anywhere. Emphasis is mine:
Only a few short days ago, Tashi Jim Logue, Taika Seiyu Oyata's senior student, passed from this world. It came as something of a surprise. I knew he'd had cancer. I knew he made trips every so often to a cancer-treatment facility (all of which I assumed were to verify that he was still cancer-free). I knew he'd been in the hospital recently. I did not know, and possibly others did not know, that his death from cancer was so imminent.
The whole thing put me in mind of something that I've thought about from time to time: what will happen to Taika Oyata's karate when the inevitable happens and he, too, passes from this world? It is true that Okinawans are the longest-lived people on the planet, on average, and it is true that Taika Oyata's father lived to a very old age, and it is true that Taika Oyata may well live another twenty years. And yet it is also true that he cannot live forever, and eventually, his organization, the RyuTe Renmei, will be headed by someone else. I am sure that that person will be someone of knowledge and integrity. Every person within the RyuTe Renmei with whom I've talked or corresponded has been very dedicated to Taika and his system. They have all been classy people. I have not met any exceptions.
And yet the good folks in the RyuTe Renmei are not the only people Taika has taught. There are a number of people who have studied under Taika and who are no longer with his organization for one reason or another. Do not ask me why. I know none of them and cannot even begin to speculate on why they left or were shown the door. But there are a number of them, some of whom were promoted to fairly high rank before they left. Now, it is true that the art as Taika has taught it has changed somewhat over the years. My own teacher thinks that this is because Taika is still analyzing the art, as he was taught to do by his teachers, still splitting pages within the book, as my teacher might put it, and also because Taika has revealed more of the art as his students have demonstrated themselves capable of understanding and handling it. This should not surprise anyone who has seen a person learn--well, anything, even simple cooking. It is pointless to try to teach a person how to make puff pastry if he has not yet demonstrated the ability to make egg noodles. So it is true that a person who left Taika's organization years ago, despite having attained high rank, would not be teaching exactly the same thing that is being taught in the RyuTe Renmei right now.
And yet, nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances under which they left, and regardless of how long ago they left, each of these people can legitimately claim to have been taught by Taika Oyata and to have been promoted to high rank. And that is nothing to sneeze at! I well remember having first been introduced to what was then called Ryukyu Kempo, back in the eighties (I trained for a while, then dropped out for many years, in case you were wondering. I have not been training continuously since the eighties!). I had been training in Taekwon-do for some little time; my next promotion would have been to black belt. I had trained under two seventh-dans, one sixth-dan, and two third-dans. Not one of those people showed me material as advanced as what my teacher showed me then. Not ONE. Not even close. Nor have I seen the like amongst the local Japanese Goju Ryu crowd (though I have much respect for them and their organization and follow them closely online). In other words, a person might have left Taika's organization fifteen years ago and "missed out" on some of the information he's revealed over the last several years, and he would still, in my opinion, be teaching material vastly better than most people in most "karate" classes around the country are getting.
And that is where I start remembering Yip Man. You may not know about him (I'm sure many do!). He was a very famous kung fu teacher in Hong Kong, a remarkable fellow who'd learned Wing Chun back on mainland China before managing to escape to Hong Kong. Yip Man's kung fu was widely known to be extremely street-effective. He taught a number of people over the years, and last I heard, I believe that there were a minimum of three people claiming to have been his "closed-door" disciple, the only inheritor of the true art of Wing Chun kung fu! And the thing is, each of these people is apparently good enough that you might well believe their claims!
I'm sure there are other cases like this. As a matter of fact, I know there are. Look at the history of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu in Japan. Apparently, that system didn't survive intact past the death of its founder. If I understand correctly, one of the founder's sons went on to teach the Shogun's family, and another stayed behind in the family village, with the one son eventually deciding that the other son had changed some elements of their father's system, and founding his own sub-system, the Owari Yagyu Shinkage Ryu (Don't quote me on this, I may have the details wrong!). And it went downhill from there!
Look at the history of aikido since Ueshiba Morihei's death.
Come to think of it, since there is a sizeable Japanese Goju Ryu crowd 'round here, look at Goju Ryu! How many different sorts of Goju Ryu can you name? Off the top of my head, there is Goju Ryu as taught by the Jundokan, by Morio Higaonna, Seikichi Toguchi, Peter Urban's Goju USA, Lou Angel's Tenshi Goju, "Chinese" Goju, Gogen Yamaguchi's Goju-Kai, and who knows what else!
History and human nature being what they are, then, I find myself wondering how many of Taika's former students will someday be claiming to have been shown the real, true art of karate, of Ryukyu Kempo, to have been Taika's secret disciple. Will any of them have the cheek to claim that that they have it right and the RyuTe Renmei has it wrong? It sounds absurd, but--again, human nature being what it is--I would bet you dollars to donuts that that is exactly what happens.
I'd love to be able to say that I know how to prevent this, but I haven't a clue. And it will be a darn shame when it happens.
Tashi Logue's death also put me in mind of the vital necessity of teaching what you know whilst you have the chance. You never know just how much time you have. Tashi Logue certainly set the example in this case. He worked hard to share his knowledge.
The reality is that each of these systems--I am talking about the older, more classical martial systems--is, at any given time, but one generation away from extinction (the same has often been noted of Christianity, by the way). It is not possible to learn it all from a book or video and there are never enough people practicing them. They are not the same as systems like Taekwon-do or Shotokan or Japanese Goju Ryu or Aikido or Judo or Kendo, which have millions of practitioners throughout the world. I would not be at all surprised to find that there are fewer than five thousand RyuTe students worldwide. The majority of those, of course, are not yet qualified to be teachers. While I do not know, have never tried to make a count, it would not at all surprise me if the depressing reality is that there are really very few members of the Renmei ranked fourth dan or above. Or perhaps there is a high percentage of people ranked at that level, but a high percentage of a small number is still a small number.
This is very sad in a way, yet it is also completely amazing that there is a RyuTe Renmei at all. You can put it down to divine providence or sheer dumb luck as you prefer, but if I understand what I've read and been told correctly, the content Taika Oyata learned from his first two teachers might well have perished with them had he not encountered them. I have certainly not seen anything quite like what my own teacher has shown me anywhere else. That is significant. Over the decades, I have acquired what has to be, I think, as solid a martial-arts library as can be had in English. I have works on aikido, on jujutsu, on judo, on karate, on pressure points, acupuncture, and chin na. I have watched way too many hours of video online. And I am serious, as serious as a heart attack, when I say that what Taika Oyata has revealed, as passed on to me by my own teacher, is different. Not that you can't find similar techniques in those other martial arts. More than once my teacher has said things like, "This is how they do it in aikido. We just do this little (fill in the blank) to (fill in the blank)." There are techniques that look a lot like what we do in RyuTe, but in RyuTe there is always something, something that changes the results of the technique from the "oh-crap-that-hurts" or the "oh-crap-where-did-my-balance-go?" elicited by other systems to the "OHCRAPWHERETHE****DIDTHATCOMEFROM?" that you get with RyuTe. It is just not like anything else, and it was almost lost. As my own teacher has told me repeatedly, Taika's teachers were not, per se, teachers, they were upper-class fighting men, nobles. As far as I can tell from what I've read and been told, Taika Oyata was not simply their premier student, he was their only student, and had he not been there at the right time, huge chunks of the real Okinawan martial traditions would simply have vanished, lost to time. More, the world would not have even known it! The world would have gone right on assuming that what they were being shown in the dojo of modern karate systems was all that there was (as a matter of fact, I have read some fairly amusing stuff fairly obviously premised on the idea that modern karate is all that there is--that is, there are still a pretty fair number of people who simply will not admit to themselves that there is more to the kata or to vital point striking or to karate's grappling than Funakoshi revealed in Karate-Do Kyohan.)
But because Taika Oyata was there, and because he, in turn, has been willing to teach, those centuries-old skills are largely in the hands of middle-class Americans. I sometimes wonder if people fully appreciate what a huge leap he has made in choosing to entrust us with this art. I hope that we do not fail him--and in a larger sense, our neighbors--by failing to pass it on. I think he has certainly done everything humanly possible to make sure that the knowledge is not altogether lost, even if no one else of his capabilities arises for a long time to come. I hope also that everyone realizes that preserving that body of knowledge is going to have to be something of a team effort--have to be, I say, and I am quite sure I am not the first person to have thought along these lines! You see, as far as I know, the weapons knowledge--nunchaku, sai, bo, jo, and so forth--is split up, kind of as though there are, shall we say, "subject matter experts." My own teacher knows the jo very well, and also can teach sai--but although he has nunchaku and tanbo in the weapons racks, he does not know the kata for those weapons and wouldn't venture teaching more than the most basic movements. I am given to understand that this situation is not uncommon--that there are people that know nunchaku pretty well, but not chizikunbo, or vice versa, and so on.
This body of martial knowledge doesn't reside in one man--other than Taika Oyata--but in a body of men, in the RyuTe Renmei and especially in Shin Shu Ho. Part of me wonders if Taika Oyata didn't set it up that way deliberately, so that they would have to stay united.
I won't be in a position to teach much of anything for another couple of years. At that time, I hope to begin teaching on a modest scale, under my own teacher's direction. I particularly hope to spread RyuTe amongst the local homeschooling community. They--homeschoolers and RyuTe--seem natural fits for one another. And I hope that in a modest way, I can thereby contribute to keeping this system alive amongst people who truly need it. And I hope that when the inevitable occurs, I hope that it can be said of me that I played my part in keeping this knowledge available for others.
I suspect anyone interested will know immediately to whom I am referring, and a handful may know what put the subject into my head.
For the one or two people out there wondering, yes, I have a Certain Someone's books, have read them, and I am also studying Taika Oyata's RyuTe under a seventh dan who has been with the system for something like thirty years.
If you're wondering, no, what I have been taught and/or have seen in RyuTe is, I do not hesitate to say, nothing like a Certain Someone's kyusho.
There it is, for what it's worth. People wanting more of what I think about the subject are advised to search Openhand's blog for "kyusho" and "kyusho-jitsu" (or "kyusho-jutsu"--can't remember how he spells it). He says it better than I do anyhow.
I went to one of Taika Seiyu Oyata's seminars over the weekend. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but could not escape the feeling throughout the seminar that I was an utterly uncoordinated idiot, quite unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.
All I was trying to do was learn a new exercise. You wouldn't think it would be that hard. I think I've got it, that is, I think I can execute the movements in the correct order. Haltingly and at a glacial pace, perhaps, but I think I can do it. Perhaps in a week I won't look like Frankenstein's monster whilst I do it.
This seems to be one of the benefits to training in RyuTe. You WILL, via some very considerable challenges to your physical coordination, forge new neural pathways. As some consider that sort of thing one of the means by which you avoid age-related mental deterioration, that is a good thing.
A note: if you, as a practitioner of some other martial art, had happened to be in a roomful of RyuTe yudansha on Friday night, and had you known no better, it is my bet that there is no way on God's green earth you would have identified what they were doing as Okinawan karate. It is increasingly hard for me to read people's commentaries on "karate" without thinking to myself, "But there is no way that you've seen 'karate,' at least 'karate' as it was 150 years ago." I'm very serious. What you are seeing as "karate" and what Taika Oyata is teaching his students are different. The surface appearance may be similar, but the underlying reality is very different indeed.
In this one, I put together some of the video dealing with Naihanchi applications, instead of just performance.
Now, a caveat: I am not going to comment on the appropriateness, effectiveness, or silliness--whatever the case may be--of any set of these applications. Nor am I going to say anything like, "This is similar to what we do in RyuTe." Even if there are surface appearances of similarity between some of the applications in these videos and some of the applications I have seen in RyuTe, there are likely to be minor differences, and those minor differences are often more critical than you might think at first glance. For example--although this doesn't have anything to do per se with Naihanchi--I once kept trying to duplicate a movement I'd seen Taika do on one of his tapes, a movement drawn from Pinan Shodan. I just couldn't reliably get the movement to work on my eldest son, who is noticeably stronger than I am. So I asked my teacher about it and when he saw what I was doing, he immediately said, "Oh, you're missing the nerve strike."
Nerve strike? I didn't see any nerve strike on the tape. Well, turns out it's a subtle-looking, scraping sort of thing that doesn't leap out at you when you see it. You have to be looking for it--but once you know how to do it, the movement works very nicely.
At any rate, I don't want to give anyone the impression that if they get good at some of these applications, they have somehow absorbed some RyuTe into their repertoire.
I would say that the applications shown here are not even close to being exhaustive. I have certainly not seen every possible application of the Naihanchi movements, let alone practiced them. Doing so would be the work of years.
Shoot, this isn't even an exhaustive selection of the bunkai videos on this kata. There were lots more to look at, but I was pretty sure that most people wouldn't even play this many.
Y'know, Choki Motobu was said to know only a handful of kata at most. I seem to recall reading that at least one writer said he knew only Naihanchi. Well, if true, it's no drawback. The reality is that Naihanchi Shodan alone contains enough material that the mastery thereof might well occupy a lifetime.
I know that a lot of you don't believe that, or at least are having a hard time accepting it. I don't blame you. All you see is the 45 seconds or so of movement. You haven't seen different timings, you haven't seen what my instructor called "Naihanchi turnaround," you haven't seen how the stepping motions work, the incredible number of uses to which those "double blocks" can be put, and so forth.
Oh well. I won't lose any sleep over your refusal to believe it. In the meantime, enjoy the clips!
Shoot, let's stop there. There are actually many more clips available on YouTube. If I had linked to them all, you would be here all day...
This was just too entertaining not to quote. I have made a couple of small edits for language. Not that I haven't heard it all before--I've been in the Corps, y'know--but there are some that come here that would just as soon avoid it.
Truthfully, most people that I know have hardly any interest in martial arts at all, so they basically don't listen to me ramble on about it, but once in a while, very rarely, someone will ask me why I insist that RyuTe is different from what they have come to know as "karate."
I always point first to myself (48 years old, about 200 pounds, of which only about 15 is excess, in tolerably decent shape, that is, resting pulse rate usually about 66 bpm, blood pressure good) and then to my instructor (62 years old, probably no more than 160 pounds, weak from the ongoing therapy to completely eliminate a cancer, on oxygen, only about 30 percent lung capacity) and note that, yes, he can make the techniques work on me. No hay problemo. You do not need to be Hoss Cartwright to make this system work.
If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will.
The 83-year-old to whom Openhand refers, if you didn't already know, is Taika Seiyu Oyata.
More than a few times lately--well, shoot, over the years--I've read comments and blogposts about tuite and kyusho from people that are--well, they're just interesting, I'll put it that way. People will tell you to rap someone in the temple with a backfist--a technique involving a striking surface about the size of a fifty-cent piece impacting a target about the size of a fifty-cent piece--whilst simultaneously deriding nerve strikes (I am not making this up. I read a piece by one of the highest-ranking Isshin Ryu masters in North America doing this very thing.) They'll tell you that tuite is too complex, too much of a "fancy technique," to work in combat, under stressful conditions.
God knows I don't claim to be an expert on either kyusho or tuite, but I am pretty sure that anyone telling you such things isn't all that good at either one. Tuite is not very complex, not really, at least what I have been shown. It is simply the practical application of anatomy and body mechanics in a defensive situation. You are drilling the motions, over and over and over, in kata. You do not, under stress, have to rummage through your memory to find appropriate techniques any more than you have to rummage through your memory for appropriate driving maneuvers when you are trying to avoid an accident. Just like striking techniques, tuite kind of "pops out" of you when appropriate, if you are doing the practice. And if you are seeking techniques that do not require that you practice them in order for them to be readily effective for you, I would suggest that you are kind of wasting your time practicing martial arts in the first place.
Tuite is darned effective, once it becomes natural to you. I keep going back to the example of my own instructor, but that's because he's the perfect illustration. Doggone it, the man's a fairly smallish, ill, weak, oxygen patient of sixty-two years age, and he can quickly and easily overpower either me or my son with tuite. It doesn't require muscle. It can slam you to the deck in a heartbeat.
All I'll say about nerve strikes here is that in my limited experience, as you become more familiar with them, the vulnerable areas become easier to find and hit. I have learned painfully from my son that eventually, it becomes darn hard to miss those nerves. Dadgummit, the booger hardly ever misses my nerves...
All of which is to suggest that if you are interested in the subject, you visit this post by Openhand. It's a short education in the subject.
My blogospheric friend, Dr. Pat Parker--cardiac rehab guy, martial artist, notorious Presbyterian, and jalapeno-grower extraordinaire--occasionally posts video clips and or commentary answering the question, "What is karate?" They are always informative and interesting and have inspired me to take a stab at answering the question in my own way.
What is karate? The simplest answer is that, as far as my reading is concerned (I don't pretend to be an expert, or to have actually been to Okinawa, or to speak the language, etc., etc., etc.), it is the unarmed portion of the warrior-class martial arts of the Ryukyu archipelago, though it is not really easy to totally separate it from the weapons arts of that area, and in my not-so-expert opinion, they really should be considered together.
On a technical level, karate is a multifaceted art, comprised of a blend of indigenous Okinawan technique influenced by the continuous importation and reimportation of Chinese martial arts. Okinawan ti and tegumi seem to have influenced it, and it soaked up what the famous Chinese families of Kuninda brought to Okinawa, and what visiting Chinese emissaries and merchants brought--Monk Fist and Tiger Fist and White Crane, and probably others. As far as I can tell--and God knows this isn't authoritative, it is just my opinion--some of its footwork and certain other elements may have been influenced by the sword handling of the Japanese.
It makes brilliant use of the mechanics of human perception, that is--by the closest analogy I can make--like stage magic, it takes advantage of the way people naturally perceive and react to movement, so that often, the person on the receiving end of a technique never really sees it coming. Nerve techniques are everywhere, in the strikes, locks, and throws. All of this was "cooked," if you will, into a state of extreme efficiency by the pressures of dealing with the Okinawan political situation in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Obviously, this body of knowledge is better preserved in some modern karate organizations than others. Some, including some of the largest and most famous, seemed, until recently, to have been completely unaware that their formal exercises, or kata, contained much in the way of joint locks, for example, let alone nerve techniques. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I am convinced that this body of knowledge is best preserved in RyuTe.
But that is not all there is to karate. Karate, certainly as it has been taught to me in RyuTe, and generally throughout Okinawa, to judge from what I have heard and read, is also characterized by a profound respect for the value of human life--not only the defender's life, not only the lives of those being defended, but also the attacker's life. It is true that karate has its share of potentially lethal and disabling techniques, but killing and crippling opponents is not its goal. Its goal is to protect life. Ultimately, it is an expression of mercy--mercy shown to your own family, in the act of going home alive and unharmed, that you may continue to contribut to their well-being and development; mercy toward the defenseless, whom you may end up protecting, that they may do likewise; and mercy to attackers, that they might live to see the error of their ways and to embrace a new way of living.
The goal in karate is to protect human life wherever possible. It is mercy in conflict, mercy in the arena, mercy in the melee.
I just finished reading several threads on a traditional fighting arts forum, each of which at least tangentially concerned Taika Seiyu Oyata. There were several interesting things therein, not the least of which was that not one of the participants was actually a member of the RyuTe Renmei. Another was the respect everyone writing had for Taika. To my mind, this is extraordinary. Think of Wing Chun; last I heard, there were a minimum of three people each claiming to be Yip Man's "closed-door disciple." I recall seeing video of one particularly spectacular incident wherein a student from one faction attended a seminar taught by the leader of another faction, and actually jumped him!
Not so with Taika. Nobody, not from any system, as far as I know, doubts that he is the "real deal." At least, I haven't seen any such speculations publicly made. Taika's former students (some of them quite high ranking), as far as I know, say nothing negative about their former teacher. That, too, seems unusual in the martial arts world. It speaks highly of Taika and his system.
There were some other interesting thoughts being voiced. There seemed to be some speculation as to the history of tuite, both as taught in RyuTe and in Shian Toma's Seidokan, with some apparently leaning toward believing that both Taika and Shian Toma had been at least influenced by Seikichi Uehara, and Uehara, in turn, having possibly been influenced by Hakko Ryu jujutsu, which, in its own turn, was derived largely from Daito Ryu Aikijutsu, with the apparent upshot, in some people's minds, being that Taika's tuite was something of a descendant of Daito Ryu and apparently obviously right out of Uehara's Motobu Udun Ti, and therefore just like Shian Toma's tuite!
One person seemed to have doubts as to the immediate effectiveness of tuite techniques--he stated that he and his students "just" trained to stop people in their tracks, and I gather that he didn't think tuite would be an effective vehicle for such things.
Others seemed to be concerned with such things as whether Taika derived his tuite from the kata or whether he read it into the kata.
Well, I wasn't there during all the history that was being speculated on and can't speak from first-hand knowledge. Whether or not Seikichi Uehara ever studied Hakko Ryu, I don't know. I have read that he denied it more than once, and in the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, I would think that people would be good enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have read in several places that Taika was part of a "research group" that included Uehara and certain others, but for me to speculate as to who influenced whom would be going quite beyond anything I am ever likely to find out.
For what it's worth, here's a sample of the tuite taught in Shian Toma's organization:
and here's some demonstrated by Taika himself:
Same stuff? You be the judge. Doesn't seem quite the same to me. Points of similarity, yes. Identical, no.
At any rate, that whole thread got me to thinking about some of the things that I have heard and read about Taika and his arts, and I thought I'd air my thinking publicly for a few minutes. I am in no way speaking as an authority or an expert, so bear that in mind.
I think one of the first things that you have to know about Taika is that he is extremely intelligent. I have never read anything by anyone or heard anything from anyone that would indicate otherwise. Everyone who's met the man seems to come away convinced that he is exceptionally bright. One person wrote that when he first came to train under Taika, he was making his living as, if I recall correctly, a diesel mechanic. He had been trained as a kaiten pilot. My own instructor told me a story of where he'd been sitting in, a guest, apparently, at a Japanese language class. The teacher, a native speaker, was apparently treated to a rare display as Taika explained the background and meanings of a number of kanji--background and explanation that apparently are ordinarily the province of scholars. I have heard that Taika manufactured his own uniforms at one point. He is clearly a man of intelligence, drive, and determination.
And for sixty-plus years, he has channeled that intelligence, drive and determination into the Okinawan martial arts. Some of what he knows seems to have been derived from a combination of what his teachers showed him, deep thinking, practice, and experimentation. If it seems to some that some of what he teaches is to be found nowhere else, at least not in quite the same form, I can only suggest that not every system has a man of Taika Oyata's caliber at its head. He seems to be unique, a last link to a body of knowledge that came distressingly close to passing out of the world.
His first instructors, I have been told time and again, did not so much teach him kata as they taught him how to interpret kata, and about the weaknesses of the human body. From somewhat oblique remarks made here and there and from time to time, I have also begun to think that they taught him some psychology, not the therapeutic kind of psychology, but means of misdirection, distraction, and taking advantage of the way the human body receives and processes information. I remember one writer saying that when he sparred Taika, he seemed almost invisible, that he couldn't tell when Taika was gaining ground on him, and that his blows seemed to come from out of nowhere. I mentioned this story to my own instructor, and he showed me some of what the writer was talking about, but I do not believe I have seen it all yet. On another occasion, my instructor told me that Taika once said--to him or to someone else, I don't know--that "jitsu" (jutsu), though now generally translated more or less as "technique" or "method," once also carried the connotation or meaning of "tricks," like magic "tricks," or sleight-of-hand. Make of that what you will. I do know that Taika explicitly rules out any supernatural elements to what he teaches. No special "ki" or "chi" abilities necessary.
Taika learned his empty-hand kata from Shigeru Nakamura, as anyone can find out by surfing the 'net for a little while. But sometimes I wonder if what we here in the United States think of as "learning kata" really reflects what Taika has been all about. Looking at my videotapes, and looking at what I am being taught now, it is clear that they are a little bit different. Is Taika changing the kata? I don't think so. There are a few little things that convince me of this, all of which would require paragraphs of explanation that would bore anyone not interested in the subject to tears, so I'll skip those and just cut to the chase.
If you are interested in karate, you may, at some point, have read Gichin Funakoshi's autobiography (if you are not familiar with the subject, Funakoshi is the man most generally credited with bringing karate to the attention of the Japanese public). Do you remember the part where he said he deliberately simplified the kata so as to make them easier to teach and learn? You have to keep in mind that Funakoshi was trying to teach rather large numbers of people, quite the opposite of the practice in the old days, where practice groups were (I'm told; again, I was not there) quite small and intimate. In my opinion, it would simply not have been possible to teach the details of the kata--at least, not the way I am being taught them--to that many people at one time. I am about half-convinced that what look like "changes" in the way Taika has taught the same kata over the years are not so much changes as they are reflections of the fact that the pool of knowledge possessed by his senior students keeps growing so that they are ready to absorb and pass on new levels of learning.
Have you ever taught someone a kata? Or, if not, can you image learning one? What comes first? The simple sequence of movements, right? Then details of posture, of balance, of hand and foot placement, of proper stepping, of application, are taught later, at appropriate times in the student's development.
One of the first things my instructor told me was that I would be beginning to understand any given movement of a kata when I had at least one interpretation of that movement as tuite, one as a strike, and one as a block. Given an approach like that, can you see how going through the kata deliberately looking for the strikes would affect your understanding and performance of it? How doing it just looking for the blocks and deflections would affect it? Just looking for the tuite? Then looking for how the strikes and blocks worked together, then how they were sometimes the same thing? Would any of those interpretations and performances of kata necessarily be incorrect? No. They would just reflect differences in what the student was learning or working on at that time. Sometimes you might be looking for how to shift your weight. Sometimes you might be emphasizing footwork. You could go on for years. Is that drawing technique from the kata? Or reading technique into the kata? Wouldn't it look more like a spiral, as the drawing and the reading fed, in turn, one upon the other?
About the effectiveness of tuite: I do not, of course, claim to be an expert. But I have practiced enough, and been on the receiving end of enough tuite to have no doubt as to its effectiveness. As far as I can tell, all of those techniques, executed correctly, are fight-stoppers.
I recall that after one test, my instructor was reviewing the test with us, and when we got to one particular self-defense technique, he'd had me repeat the defense a couple of times, not so much because what I did was ineffective (though part of my success was due to size and strength), but because he hadn't taught what I did to me, and wondered if I'd picked it up years ago whilst in the Marine Corps Reserve. The answer was no, I'd simply done it wrong, but nevertheless, he said, "Well, consider this," and showed us a variation of what I'd done. We got to try it out on the senior student in the class. I was, as is not unusual in that class, gobsmacked. Once the techique was "set," there was no recovering for the poor attacker. He was going to go down, awkwardly and off-balance, with absolutely no chance in the nether regions to break his fall or slow his momentum in any way. Applied full power, it was apparent to me that the results would--at least!--involve a wrenched elbow and shoulder, and a high-velocity slam of the rib cage into the ground, probably with the head whipping around and bouncing, too.
All in less than a second. Whenever I hear or read about someone thinking that tuite takes too long, or doesn't have real fight-stopping capability, I can't help but wonder what they've been looking at. It doesn't seem like the tuite I'm being taught.
Just my opinions and thoughts, worth about what you paid for them!
As a “rule”, the closer you are to an opponent, the safer you are (Simple experimentation will prove this out). By being closer, your more difficult to “hit”(hard), and the inclination is(or becomes) to grab you (when/if you do). This instinct (to “grab”) is one we (in RyuTe) exploit at every opportunity given to us...
Every so often, I'll read something about "pressure points," vis-a-vis martial arts, that makes me go, "Hmmmmm." I did that just tonight.
God knows I don't claim to be an expert. I refer anybody asking for expert blogospheric advice on things regarding RyuTe(the system of martial arts I practice) to Openhand, as he has been in the system far longer than I have, and I have absolutely no intention of appearing to have a level of expertise that I do not. On the other hand, RyuTe is noted for its use of "pressure point," or nerve point techniques, as well as tuite, and the way the two work together, so it's not like I don't have some opinions on the subject.
I'll be brief: my opinion is that you are wise not to make the mistake of thinking that the object of a pressure point technique is to result in pain compliance, that is, for the technique to work because it hurts the recipient so much. Many times it does hurt like the dickens, but that's hardly all there is to it. As Openhand notes here:
More than once, we've been in class (I guess you can call a group of three to five people a "class") and found that exerting pressure on certain points produced little, or even no pain, but...
we
still
couldn't
resist.
A brief story my instructor told me may be illustrative. I don't claim to be quoting anybody here; this is as close as my middle-aged memory can make it.
We were working on a defense against a push, a defense which can be found in the opening movements of Naihanchi Shodan(again: those wishing for more detailed explanations can find much of value in Openhand's writings), and my instructor reminisced that fairly early on in his involvement with RyuTe, he and a number of other people were working that very technique in Taika Oyata's presence. My instructor was having trouble getting the technique to work on his partner, and at length his partner told him not to worry about it, that he could hardly feel anything in his wrist and forearms anyway, he had had the bones in those places broken so many times and suffered so much tissue damage. At about that time, Taika walks up, hears what's going on, and proceeds to lay my instructor's partner out with that very technique, the one that my instructor's partner had mistakenly thought required pain to be effective.
"Pain no important," said Taika, and had them keep on practicing. I assure you, my instructor has no trouble with the technique now.
As I said, I don't claim to be an expert, but my limited experience would suggest that if you have the impression that you need to produce pain with your "pressure point" techniques in order for them to be effective, you might want to think about expanding your thinking a little bit. My limited experience is that if the nerve technique is done correctly, it will work, whether or not any pain is produced.
Don't worry, my feelings won't be hurt if you don't agree.
In some respects, I am remarkably fortunate. In the whole of Oklahoma, as far as I know, there are only a handful of RyuTe practitioners. There is one fellow way out in the Western part of the state whom I've not yet met, and I have no idea how many students he has. Probably not many. Looks to be a pretty rural area. And there is my own teacher, whose health issues make it quite impossible for him to take on more than the handful of students he has. He's said that if an association member from elsewhere in the country were to move into the area, he'd take him as a student, but otherwise...
I am lucky, very lucky, to be able to study RyuTe here. And I'm sure that there are people in Oklahoma who would love to be in my shoes, people who've heard of Taika Oyata and RyuTe and who would love to be able to study.
Well, I can't help those people. Not really. I am not a teacher. But I do have a suggestion: consider traveling down to Oklahoma City occasionally and studying Seidokan karate. Seidokan has some things in common with RyuTe. They are not identical; don't get that impression. But though Seidokan's tuite is different from RyuTe's, they at least have tuite; they have some very practical kata applications. There is even some lineage in common: Seidokan's founder, Sian Toma, received much instruction from Uehara Seikichi, headmaster of Motobu Ryu, and someone with whom Taika Oyata participated in a research group, if I'm not mistaken.
There's a gentlemen--a yondan, or fourth-degree black belt--teaching Seidokan in Oklahoma City by the name of Adolph Pearson III. He is assisted by his wife, Jackelyn Pearson. If you're in Oklahoma and interested in tuite, and frustrated that you can't find a RyuTe instructor, consider giving Mr. and Mrs. Pearson a call. Follow the link to find contact information. If you want to know what Seidokan tuite looks like--if you're unfamiliar with the subject, bear in mind that what you are about to see is karate, not aikido or jujutsu--here's a sample: UPDATE: If I understand the situation correctly, a seventh-dan RyuTe practitioner has, in fact, moved to Edmond recently. If you are interested in pursuing studies with him, you can probably obtain contact information from via theRyuTe website
I don't know who put this up, or when it was taped. If I had to make my guess, I'd say it was taped at a seminar sometime in the early 1980s.
There are some interesting applications here, especially from the Naihanchi katas, and also some very interesting tanbo applications that I've never seen on video before. If you're interested in old Okinawan kobujutsu or tuite, you might find this fifteen minutes well spent.
I found this in the comments section on an old post that came up when I was searching for something else. Make of it what you will.
‘Grand Master --- ----- of ------- ----- Karate’ isn’t just a name I pulled out of my hat, he at least was (perhaps still is) a martial artist practicing in Tulsa, OK (he had a website a few years ago, but it no longer exists and I haven’t been able to find it on the wayback machine). My encounter with him was in the fall of 1994 when I went to Tulsa to attend a seminar/demonstration put on by Taika Seiyu Oyata of Ryu-Te.
Taika Oyata was demonstrating some of his knockout techniques for which he is famous, when a member of the audience interrupted the demonstration. He had a long mullet with glasses, and was wearing a tank top with a dixie flag that said “------- ------ Karate”. He introduced himself as ---- -----, a karate practitioner in Tulsa.
To keep it short, he said that he didn’t believe that Oyata’s knockout techniques were real, and he brought one of his students for Oyata to demonstrate on to prove the technique’s authenticity. To Oyata’s credit he kept his cool, but instead said that ----- himself could come down and he would demonstrate the technique on him.
So when ---- ----- was ready, Oyata hit him on the neck with his fingers, and ----- summarily dropped like a sack of potatoes. Oyata then revived him, helped him up, and demonstrated it again. And again. In all he demonstrated his knockout technique on Mr. ----- 5 or 6 times, from different openings and positions. When he was done, Mr. ----- slowly got up, thanked Taika Oyata for the demonstration, and returned to his seat, remaining silent for the rest of the seminar.
I didn't link, obviously, and I left the man's name out, because I didn't want anybody who might be crawling the web for mentions of this guy's name to get his thong in a wad over the story, as seems to have happened in the other post's comments. I just thought it was interesting.
My own instructor knew of this guy and this story; the way he tells it, the man went on to teach "kyusho-jitsu" at his own school (before it closed, long ago), on the strength of having been to one or two of Taika Oyata's seminars--which illustrates something of importance: if you are going to study martial arts, it's worth taking the time to figure out exactly what's being taught, who the teacher learned from, and whether or not the system itself is solid. You might be surprised to find out the true lineage of some of the teachers in your area. In mine, I am quite convinced that at least a couple of them either have created their own systems from what they were able to learn on video, or have just made stuff up out of thin air. But by golly, they have paying students...
You know, I've not yet been knocked out by a nerve strike. There's no doubt in my mind, though, that they work. I've been on the receiving end of enough nerve techniques that either left an entire limb buzzing as though I'd stuck my finger in an electric socket or felt like a red-hot icepick was being shoved through my anatomy. That sort of thing does have a way of convincing a person...
You may have picked up on the fact that I practice a martial art called "RyuTe." It is classical Okinawan karate, which is somewhat different from the modern forms of karate.
At any rate, it occurred to me the other day that there are several videos on YouTube featuring either Taika Seiyu Oyata, the system's founder, or his students. Here they are, in no particular order. Some show Taika quite some time ago. Some show certain of his students. Together, they might give you the flavor of what it is I'm trying to learn.
This is going to be a somewhat shorter book review than is usual for me ("Thankfully!" cry my handful of readers). What Can I say? Kiyoshi Arakaki's The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques is a short book.
Short, I say, but well worth the reading. It first attracted my attention when I flipped through it at a local bookstore. I saw in it what has to be the most interesting discussion of the Okinawan methods of delivering a punch I've ever seen in print. Only one other source has ever explained the mechanics of the punch to me in a similar way. That happens to be my RyuTe teacher, so Mr. Arakaki had my attention right away. This is not to say that What Mr. Arakaki has to say is identical to what I've been taught, but it is much more similar to what I've been taught in RyuTe than it is to the punching taught in any other system of karate I've seen.
I later bought the book used via the internet (money is an issue in the Man of the West household) and found myself well-rewarded.
Mr. Arakaki is a native of Okinawa. He studied Matsubayashi Ryu, a sub-style of Shorin Ryu, under the famous Shoshin Nagamine (and it is interesting to note that Mr. Arakaki's description of the Okinawan punching method is decidedly different from Mr. Nagamine's, as described inhis book. An example of information being deliberately hidden?) and then Kyokushinkai, which, if you don't already know, has most of its roots in Goju Ryu, so he's able to approach the subject of Okinawan karate from both of its major perspectives (for those who don't know, at the risk of oversimplification, Okinawan karate is divided by most into two major branches, Shuri-te and Naha-te, and a considerable number of styles within each of those branches).
A person picking up this book looking for information on vital point striking or grappling--what I would usually be looking for in a book on Okinawan karate "secrets"--might be disappointed. It contains nothing of that sort. Instead, this is a book about power, how to generate it, and how not to dissipate it. There are other topics covered, but I don't hesitate to say that this is far and away the major concern of the book.
I don't recall having read any book that has gone into quite as detailed an explanation, at least from a largely Western perspective, of how to generate real karate power. Mr. Arakaki explains his conceptions of both of the major methods of delivering an Okinawan punch, going into particular detail as to why the punch of Shuri-te is delivered as a whip-like strike rather than the noticeably more linear acceleration taught in most modern Japanese and Korean systems (thinkShotokanandTaekwon-do), and gives an exercise to help you develop that whip-like power (the exercise does help, by the way). In the following, where Mr. Arakaki explains the whip-like strike in contrast to the "waist rotation method" of modern karate, for tsuki, think "punch":
...instead of simply moving a solid object (the fist) from point A to point B, you consciously increase the speed of the fist as you punch. On television and in movies you have seen a cowboy crack a whip, making a sound that helps him move cattle into an enclosure. Some cowboys even use these skills in rodeo competition. It is so natural for them that they can produce the crack without thinking. ...The tsuki of Shuri-te is like this whip. Think of your entire body--waist, arm, wrist, and fingers--as a whip delivering a tsuki that exceeds the speed of sound.
...In Shuri-te, the energy point is the center of the body. This body center, the waist, is like the wrist of a cowboy cracking his whip. From this point you produce energy and transfer the energy to your opponent. Using the waist rotation method, you treat your body like a hard object. However, if you think of the body as a rigid object, you lose fluidity and cannot transfer all your body's energy to your target. If you use waist rotation as the key to producing power, the result will be more like using a length of 2 x 4 rather than a whip. The weight and mass of the 2 x 4 would be powerful but would lack the speed and explosion of energy delivered by the whip.
...This whipping motion...is completely different from the tsuki of modern karate, where a tight fist travels from the waist to a target in as straight a line as possible.
...The tsuki of Shuri-te will always quiver because the whipping motion of the body creates energy and transfers energy completely. If a whip does not quiver, it is not a whip, it is a stick. If your body is like a stick, you destroy the speed of the tsuki...There should be no moment when you see a punch stop in the tsuki of Shuri-te. Contrast this with modern karate, which uses the action-reaction method of pulling back the left hand to the waist so as to send energy into the right hand punch, much like a set of mechanical pistons.
I'd give you more of this section, but it's one of those things where if you're going to experiment, I think you'd better go out and buy the book. I would certainly agree that the punching method he describes, as well as RyuTe's, which I would describe in very similar terms (I didn't include all of Mr. Arakaki's material on the subject here, if you're wondering) is "completely different from the tsuki of modern karate."
Mr. Arakaki's discussion of how to form the Okinawan fist is fascinating--this section alone, in my opinion, is more than worth the price of the book--and I couldn't help but note some similarities to how Dave Lowry described the relaxed grip of the skilled swordsman (I've mentioned before that it seems very likely that Okinawan karate was influenced by Japanese swordsmanship) in Bokken: Art of the Japanese Sword. And of course, in RyuTe we certainly make use of the bokken as part of our training.
Just as interesting was his very lengthy discussion of how to manipulate your center of gravity, your "imaginary center of gravity," and those of your opponent in order to maximize power, and, perhaps most interesting of all, his positive identification of this sort of--shall we say--gravitational power as ki, which is so often, and so unnecessarily, described in mystical terms. Mr. Arakaki writes:
Try this with a friend. Face each other with hands at your sides. Bring your arms slightly forward, asking your partner to grab your wrists tightly. Without changing your arm level, lock your elbows close in to your body. Then just walk toward him. Amazing! You can lift up his body. Some people say this is due to ki (life-energy or vital force). If you move forward from this position and lift your arms a little, you can make your friend fly ten feet! This is called the aiki-age. People explain this as making the opponent fly because there is ki (vital energy). This is absolutely incorrect! As you can see from diagram 1, this is a situation where your arms control his actual center of gravity (CG) because you adjust his CG higher than his true CG and your CG, and, "Voila!" he loses his balance.
And in another place:
You can now understand that the so-called Universal Ki is gravity, and gravity is the key for the martial artist. Traditional Okinawan karate uses this principle for executing tsuki. Okinawan karate recognizes this balanced CG point and the gravitational energy that is created by putting your body weight downward to create tsuki which penetrate through the target.
And in another place:
The principle of the aiki-age is the same as in a fist that is using Newton's second law of motion. All Japanese martial arts are based on this principle.
And in yet another place, where he discusses the concept of ki in a more general way, he writes:
In today's martial arts world, everyone thinks ki can force an opponent down with no physical contact, or enable one to sense an opponent's thoughts. Ki is perceived as being a mystical power. Japanese martial arts view ki as a practical, even a philosophical concept, but not a mystical one. The Japanese language has many different words for different forms of ki. Kaki is the ki for the energy of combustion. Iyoki is the ki for the energy of vaporization. Aiki is the ki for the combined energies between you and your opponent. In old China, ki (or chi in Chinese) meant energy in general. Now ki is thought of in a more imprecise way. In today's martial arts world, we often use ki as a sales pitch, and little more. There has been no scientific observation, no attempt to analyze and understand this mysterious force. However, Japanese culture always took a more pragmatic view of this energy. After all, the concept of bu in budo includes systematic thinking. Traditional karate and Japanese swordsmanship never stressed the mysterious aspects of ki when they discussed it.
Moving on from discussions of ki, I was strongly interested in Mr. Arakaki's discussion of the Naihanchi Shodan (he calls it Naifanchi) kata (here is an expert performance of that kata, should you be interested),
which he flatly declares is Shuri-te's foundational kata, designed to teach the student how to use gravity power (among other things, some of which I've learned with some pain).
While learning Naifanchi, keep in mind that it is the zenith of the martial arts. Its meaning has been passed on only by oral tradition. It took thirty years for me to understand completely its technical concept.
I was also interested in some of the other exercises he recommends. One, wherein the student stands in a more or less natural stance and imagines holding a heavy ball between his hands, struck me immediately and forcefully as being identical to the famous tai chi ruler exercise, an exercise--chi kung--taught in the Chinese martial arts to develop ki. Mostly, they are exercises in learning to control your balance and mass--very similar, in some respects, to some that my own teacher has taught me.
Mr. Arakaki also discussed ki in some other ways, not all of which I would agree with, illustrating beautifully that ki is a word that can be translated in so many ways as to make it effectively meaningless.
As far as a downside to the book is concerned, I did find it curious in a book that dwells so heavily on the development of punching power that Mr. Arakaki did not discuss the use of the makiwara. No matter how you are throwing your punch, it seems to me, the makiwara is a useful feedback device if you want to develop real punching power. A hanging bag, while useful, just isn't the same. Perhaps Mr. Arakaki feels that the makiwara has been adequately covered elsewhere. (I should mention, for those with an interest in RyuTe, that my opinion is by no means universal. Taika Oyata has said that one should certainly be familiar with the makiwara, but at least one person has told me that he has also said that it is like lipstick on a woman--something used to impress other people. My own teacher has not used one for years, and he can certainly hit hard. Perhaps, in the end, it is just best for me to say that I find it useful.)
It also seemed to me that there may have been some language issues. Mr. Arakaki originally wrote the book in Japanese for the Japanese market, and I can't help but think that some parts of the book could be written a little more clearly--or at least, more clearly in the English translation. I do think that actually trying some of the exercises Mr. Arakaki suggests will clarify some of what he means.
Some of the terms Mr. Arakaki uses, such as "Imaginary Center of Gravity," seem to be unique to him, that is, I don't recall anyone else using them. It may be that that is the inevitable result of attempting to express what is usually couched in esoteric terms in clearer, more modern, more objective, more definitive terms, but it contributes to a strong impression left by Mr. Arakaki that he thinks he's one of only a handful of people to understand these concepts. While admitting readily that much of what he discusses never penetrated the confines of any of my old Taekwon-do classes (and I studied with people up to eighth-degree black belt, gang), my experience with RyuTe, and my reading, lead me to say that at least one association explains the mechanics of the punch very similarly to Mr. Arakaki. Likewise, I have read treatments of "gravity power" elsewhere, such as in Jonathan Maberry's Ultimate Jujutsu.
But these are relatively minor quibbles. Overall, the book is a gem, edifying and clarifying, and it is one of perhaps half a dozen books that I would say are essential reading for anyone pursuing excellence--or at least improvement--in karate. In my opinion, of course, you would do better to just go ahead and study RyuTe. But unfortunately, it's just not possible to find instruction in it everywhere, so if you're interested in taking your Taekwon-do or Shotokan or American Combat Karate a little deeper, this might be a good book for you.
