*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:
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.
It wasn't that many years ago that you could very easily find people in the martial arts world completely dismissing the practice of kata. A lot of people thought it was stupid.
I never thought kata was stupid, not even when I had no real clue what I was doing with it. You see, I took it for granted that the people who created and preserved the kata weren't idiots. I had enough common sense, just barely, to realize that there had to be a purpose to those things we called "chambers." Had to be. Only an idiot would take such a position without a darn good reason, so I figured there had to be a reason. I just didn't know what it was.
The other day, over at Okinawan Fighting Art: Isshin Ryu, Mr. James published, making reference in the process to something that Shotokan's Rob Redmond wrote, Elmar Schmeisser's rules for interpreting kata. There are, of course, other sets of rules for interpreting kata. There are the rules that Toguchi Seikichi said that Miyagi Chojun gave him (readthis), which the authors of The Way of Kata expound in even more detail. Then there is the approach that Javier Martinez takes in Okinawan Karate, The Secret Art of Tuite. (This seems to be out of print. Amusingly, someone has priced the only used copy that Amazon lists at almost a thousand simoleons. It was an interesting book, but I guarantee you, it ain't worth that much. You could buy the whole set of Taika Seiyu Oyata's tapes for half that, and you could buy everything that Yang Jwing-Ming has written about chin na for less than a couple hundred, I'm sure.
On the other hand, I do own a copy that's in pretty good shape. I'll let it go for a comparative pittance--say, five hundred bucks. Anybody up for that?) Bruce Clayton seems to take another approach in Shotokan's Secret. The RyuTe Renmei, under Taika Seiyu Oyata's guidance and leadership, uses yet another approach. It will surprise no one that I am most impressed with RyuTe's approach. It consistently produces an effect known in the blogosphere as either headdesk or facepalm, that is, when you, if you come to RyuTe from a different system, as I did, and you see some of the RyuTe applications for all those movements you've wondered about for years, they are so intuitively obvious that you immediately want to slap yourself silly for not having seen it before.
But you know what's weird? It seems to me that all of the interpretive approaches I mentioned above (and I'm sure that I've left some out) yield at least some usable techniques. This is in spite of the fact that sometimes those methods seem dramatically different from one another. One method I've read insists that the movements of the kata be followed in order; that method produces at least some usable techniques. Another method considers the movements as though they are linked in modules. Here is what you do if the opponent grabs your wrist. Then, if he does this, you do that. And if that, then this. That method also produces at least some usable techniques. They all produce at least some usable techniques.
It seems to me that no matter what approach you take to interpreting the kata, if you do the creators and preservers of the kata this one favor, that of assuming that they weren't complete fools and really look hard for useful techniques, the kata will do you the favor of yielding up at least some of its secrets to you.
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.
Some time back, I put together a list of books on karate--or on subjects I think are closely related to karate, or contribute to a proper understanding of karate. Here it is, for those interested. I'll tell you right up front that my recommendation of a book in no way means that I agree with every jot or tittle contained within it, and that with some, I have serious reservations. Nevertheless, something in that book is worthwhile.
First up: Masatoshi Nakayama's Dynamic Karate. In my opinion, this is the definitive work on how to do modern Shotokan, surpassing even Funakoshi's Karate-Do Kyohan. Despite the criticisms some make of the changes Gichin Funakoshi and some of his students made to Okinawan karate to produce Shotokan--which is probably the quintessential modern Japanese version of karate--such as that the method of forming the fist and generating power have been altered, many of the applications of the old forms discarded, etc., etc., etc., the reality is that enough of the basic material is left within Shotokan that with the old bunkai added back in (something that is happening more and more as this knowledge becomes more widely known and accepted), Shotokan can be a fiercely combative art. Shoot, even without some of the old bunkai, Shotokan is nothing to sneeze at. Those people have learned how to hit hard, even if their method of punching differs from Kiyoshi Arakaki's, and some of the modern bunkai are downright vicious.
This book breaks the movements of Shotokan down in detail. I think a person who, out in the sticks without a karate instructor, had this book, could at least get going on the basics and maybe not go too far wrong. That's saying something. Something important.
Bunkai, for the uninitiated, are applications drawn from the kata, which are the prearranged sets of movements you see karate practitioners doing.
Next: Patrick McCarthy's The Bible of Karate: Bubishi. The Bubishi is an old document that a number of Okinawa's old masters treasured. It has been copied and recopied and there are parts of it that are confusing and hard to deal with. Mr. McCarthy's translation and commentary, especially as regards history, are invaluable.
A caveat: It is clear from certain of Mr. McCarthy's words that his worldview is somewhat incompatible with biblical Christianity's. However, that does not impact the material in this book, nor its usefulness. It is just something to be aware of in your evaluation of some of the things he says.
Next: Yang Jwing-Ming's Analysis of Shaolin Chin-Na and also his Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na. Chin Na is the corpus of close-quarter seizing and grappling techniques common to kung fu styles, and is very similar in some ways to the tuite practiced in Okinawan karate--practiced in Okinawan karate, that is, if you have an instructor familiar with it, which is not too common. Both books cover the subject well, with the former, much shorter book dwelling more on how the techniques work, while the second attempts an exhaustive catalog of the major techniques. The striking of vital points--or cavity press, kyusho-jutsu in Okinawan karate--is also covered to some extent.
Next: Javier Martinez's Okinawan Karate: the Secret Art of Tuite. An introduction to the close-quarter grappling and seizing techniques common to Okinawan karate. An eye-opener.
Next: Kiyoshi Arakaki's The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Technique. A book almost entirely about how to generate and use power in karate technique. Invaluable especially for its discussion of how to form the fist.
Next: Shoshin Nagamine's The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do, principally as a reference on the sequence of moves in many of the major kata. I will say that it is hard to "get" how those movements are performed solely from still pictures in a book. However, anyone reading this post has access to a major asset: YouTube. You can find almost anything on YouTube these days, including expert kata performances, and this certainly helps. I would caution you to look at more than one performance of any given kata you may be interested in, though, as some of the videos are clearly posted by proud parents, and others are posted by people with real skill. At any rate, you can learn the movement sequences of a number of kata from this book, and combined with the examples available via YouTube, you might have a fighting chance, so to speak.
I know that the Goju Ryu guys, Isshin Ryu guys, and Uechi Ryu guys might object that Nagamine's book leaves out their kata, some of which are quite famous and influential. Nolo contendere. That is true. The karate I practice seems to me more from the Shuri-te/Tomari-te stream than from the Naha-te stream, though I do practice (badly) the Uechi Ryu version of Sanchin, largely as an exercise. If I read an outstanding book that clearly delineates some of the Naha-te kata, I'll add it to the list.
None of the books mentioned, in my opinion, do a great job of how to deal with the makiwara. I'll do another post on that sometime. Even got it named: I'm going to call it The Forge of Karate.
Next: Zhao Da Yuan's Practical Chin Na: A Detailed Analysis of the Art of Seizing and Locking. If I had to limit myself to one book on chin na or tuite, this would be it. I'm told that years ago, Taika Seiyu Oyata wrote one for his students, but I have never seen a copy. Until I can obtain a copy of that highly-desired book, this will have to do. Very clear and logical explanations of the range of motion of each joint of the body, and how to lock them up.
