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Post by Timo Nieminen on Mar 5, 2015 22:07:19 GMT
It is a requirement for a sensei to name his sensei ("name" is a bit of an understatement - to give all credit too is more like it, but I can't think of the word for it in english), and to state the school name. A statement like below removes all doubt and is the hallmark of a genuine sensei or teacher of a JMA. I am X. I trained under Sensei Y for Z number of years in the martial art "insert school name here" ryu (link to lineage or insert lineage). I received my sensei's blessing to start my own dojo on such-and-such a date. Then list any pertinent gradings, such as any ranks in that art or a related art (pertinent being optimum here - poor form to list judo belts if running an iai school, say).Given that some of the worst teachers have the most grandiose lineage statements, very prominently displayed as part of their chest-beating advertising, such statements don't remove all doubt. Although possibly excessive claims in such lineage statements should be a red flag saying "this looks dodgy: check carefully", plenty of people just accept them at face value. I can only think of negative reasons why a "teacher" would not be willing to make such a declaration. Perhaps they don't want to look like the people who make misleading/dishonest claims of that type? Of the larger and more formal school where I trained, they don't make a big deal of the big boss's lineage (Wikipedia has more on it than the school's info/advertising material). This could be to avoid the occasionally ugly politics within the larger style. They do make a big deal of his extensive teaching activities. His early training was probably outside the style (as it was for most of that generation, since they started training before the style existed). For young styles, lineage within the style doesn't go back very far. Where I have trained most of the time (including now), they don't make a big deal of lineage. Where our instructors have come from outside the style, I know some of what styles they have trained in (but not their instructors in those styles). I don't know the lineage of the head instructor. The school's credentials were always the friendly camaraderie in training, and the low non-profit fees (and the skill and teaching ability of the instructors). But neither claimed any purity of style or ancient pedigree. Lineage claims are useful for claimed koryu, as a starting point for verification. Don't take the claim on faith - verify!
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Mar 5, 2015 22:12:52 GMT
What bugs me about this particular video is not so much the compliance, certain degree of compliance is necessary on early stages. Compliant drills are like buffet seafood. If somebody gets food poisoning, no surprise to see it was from too-old seafood (or a few other classic sources). Bad techniques in martial arts? No surprise to see it in compliant drills (or a few other classic sources, like recently made-up kata). Doesn't mean that all buffet oysters and prawns, Vietnamese spring rolls, etc. are bad. Ditto for compliant drills. But it can be useful to remember what such things can incubate.
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Post by jam on Mar 6, 2015 7:45:19 GMT
It is a requirement for a sensei to name his sensei ("name" is a bit of an understatement - to give all credit too is more like it, but I can't think of the word for it in english), and to state the school name. A statement like below removes all doubt and is the hallmark of a genuine sensei or teacher of a JMA. I am X. I trained under Sensei Y for Z number of years in the martial art "insert school name here" ryu (link to lineage or insert lineage). I received my sensei's blessing to start my own dojo on such-and-such a date. Then list any pertinent gradings, such as any ranks in that art or a related art (pertinent being optimum here - poor form to list judo belts if running an iai school, say).Given that some of the worst teachers have the most grandiose lineage statements, very prominently displayed as part of their chest-beating advertising, such statements don't remove all doubt. Although possibly excessive claims in such lineage statements should be a red flag saying "this looks dodgy: check carefully", plenty of people just accept them at face value. I can only think of negative reasons why a "teacher" would not be willing to make such a declaration. Perhaps they don't want to look like the people who make misleading/dishonest claims of that type? Of the larger and more formal school where I trained, they don't make a big deal of the big boss's lineage (Wikipedia has more on it than the school's info/advertising material). This could be to avoid the occasionally ugly politics within the larger style. They do make a big deal of his extensive teaching activities. His early training was probably outside the style (as it was for most of that generation, since they started training before the style existed). For young styles, lineage within the style doesn't go back very far. Where I have trained most of the time (including now), they don't make a big deal of lineage. Where our instructors have come from outside the style, I know some of what styles they have trained in (but not their instructors in those styles). I don't know the lineage of the head instructor. The school's credentials were always the friendly camaraderie in training, and the low non-profit fees (and the skill and teaching ability of the instructors). But neither claimed any purity of style or ancient pedigree. Lineage claims are useful for claimed koryu, as a starting point for verification. Don't take the claim on faith - verify! I don't see anything misleading in making a bald statement containing a teacher's name and a school or style, and whether said teacher granted permission for their student to teach. It is exactly statements such as these that can be checked. I believe that it is when such a statement is not made that the claims have to be taken more on faith, and the student then has to use his own judgement. Novice and beginner martial artists are in the worst possible place to be able to exercise any kind of judgement, often just defaulting to their perceived notion of what makes a good teacher or system.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Mar 6, 2015 9:24:41 GMT
I don't see anything misleading in making a bald statement containing a teacher's name and a school or style, and whether said teacher granted permission for their student to teach. If the teacher is a fraud, the school/style a sham, then whether or not the teacher granted permission, whether claimed ranks were actually awarded, etc., are meaningless. Some teachers/schools/styles like that have reasonably legitimate-looking webpages. How far back should the beginner go to check the claims? A quick check will lead the prospective student to an attractive professional website which looks like a "proper" MA school/style site. From www, I can find: "During the past 25 years, Sensei XXXX has earned black belts and teaching credentials in numerous other Japanese arts including: Kempojutsu, Toide, Aikido, Aikijujutsu, Jujutsu, Iajutsu/Kenjutsu (the samarai sword) and Combat Ki. He currently holds a 7th degree black belt in Juko Ryu Jujutsu and a 5th degree black belt in Dai Yoshin Ryu Aikijujutsu. He is recognized in Japan as a "Shihan" or Master Level Instructor with more than 40 years of combined martial arts training." It's probably all literally true, for a rather loose meaning of "earned". Caveat emptor. It is exactly statements such as these that can be checked. I believe that it is when such a statement is not made that the claims have to be taken more on faith, and the student then has to use his own judgement. It is exactly statements like these that need to be checked. Sometimes, they can be checked. Sometimes, checking might require sending letters (snail mail) to other countries - not all ryu have websites. Things like "He began private lessons with <teacher> XXXX in <city> in 1960" can be rather difficult to check, especially when the teacher is dead. Yes, claims like these are good, because they provide a starting point for checking. If they're not checked, just taken on faith, what is their value? Novice and beginner martial artists are in the worst possible place to be able to exercise any kind of judgement, often just defaulting to their perceived notion of what makes a good teacher or system. Unfortunately, they're also the most likely to take fraudulent lineage claims at face value.
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Post by jam on Mar 6, 2015 9:59:39 GMT
All the statements that you list are nonsense statements that immediately raise red flags. I'm talking about the standard statement.
My name is Sensei John Smith. I have trained in (say) Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Iaijutsu for 16 years under Sensei Jo Smythe. I asked for permission to start my own dojo and this was granted on 12/12/05. I currrently hold the rank of 4th Dan in the related arts of ZNKR iaido and 2nd dan in ZNKR Kendo.
No need to mention secret samurai clans, ninjas or black belt's "hall of fame", or any other arts studied en route to pertinent qualification.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Mar 6, 2015 10:42:10 GMT
Beginners don't see those red flags. The more dans in more arts, the better.
Given a statement like yours, do you expect the beginner to contact Jo Smythe and ask if the claim is correct?
As I said, lineage claims can be useful, but only if actually checked. They're important for koryu. They're not a panacea; they do very little to protect beginners. They're exploited by people who exploit beginners. If they worked (all the time), that wouldn't happen.
(The second statement I quoted is probably legitimate. It's just hard to check.)
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Post by jam on Mar 6, 2015 11:12:26 GMT
Whether they check out the claim is up to them. If I was going to invest many thousands of hours of my life in something I would check it out, yes. I would be grateful to at least have something that I can check out. The prescribed format allows for that.
It seems we might be in some sort of violent agreement here, as can happen on the internet, so I am more than happy to make this my last post on this matter in this thread, and I feel that the last word does belongs to you.
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Post by Rob C on Mar 9, 2015 0:09:00 GMT
This is something. I'm not big on lineage and titles, I have seen people in martial arts which have legit claims of being x or y and still are bad teachers and bs. I think that something as branched out as JSA gets really hard to quality control everything.
It is important to check where it comes from, but it's not everything. Sometimes auto-education and informal education are better than official education which is badly implemented.
On another point is that I don't think beginners are too lazy to check if something is legit or not, I just think they simply don't know where to look and their only way to see if something is legit is by common sense and examination and not everyone has the same capacity to detect when something is off, this is largely done through experience (which by definition beginners don't have). So on one hand to my perception something needs to change in the world of JSA, but it is really hard to change a whole system. (note this is only my opinion, not claiming to be absolutely right).
I would go more towards the steps that MMA/HEMA have taken to certain extent: if it's viable and works then it is legit (and in the case of HEMA it also has to have certain historical backing), stuff is proven by results not so much by claims/pedigree. To my point of view that would be the correct way of doing things.
But all this are far fetched statements and it will not change because I say so or because someone else says so individually. In the end the beginners are unfortunately at a loss here :/ .
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Post by AlvaroWang on Mar 9, 2015 4:56:21 GMT
I saw this video (below), that claims to be a bujinkan demo covering odachi, tsurugi ken, and katana. The dude looks like he's using a jian. Now I suspect some bullshido is at play but I'm not sure. Would it have been something you'd see in Japans feudal periods (a jian), would the "ninja" train for its use? This seems out of place. The opposite happened already. Inside the chinese weaponry there is a dao named Wo Dao or literally "Japanese Saber." It seems that it was even used as a regular weapon in some armies. According to wikipedia, the famous chinese Miao Dao is nothing more than a Wo Dao.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Mar 9, 2015 6:29:58 GMT
During the Ming, over 100,000 Japanese swords were imported into China, not even looking at any smuggling, just the official trade. There are some to be seen in Alex Huangfu's "Iron and Steel Swords of China", basically katana blades mounted Chinese-style. A minority of dao, but they were there. The wodao is one of the weapons in Muye Dobo Tongji, the Korean manual largely based on late Ming manuals. markussesko.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/japanese-sword-trade-with-ming-china/
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Post by elonaki on Apr 8, 2015 4:52:51 GMT
I don't care for this example. His grips are dainty and his techniques rely on a stone-like opponent. Anyone who has even been in a fist fight, or better yet, a proper sparring match, knows that it is not likely to be able to pull off these 3-move combos on an opponent. Especially not one who is pumped with adrenaline due to seeing your giant, sharpened piece of steel.
That is one thing many martial arts tend to disregard. The amount of adrenaline an enemy would have seeing your weapon. Not to mention that cutting a constantly moving person makes it very hard to land one good cut. I am pretty sure that this is why many ancient swordsman used to prefer using many small cuts as opposed to one big cut.
In fact, the more capable an opponent is, the less I feel modern practice has real use. I feel that experience in actually fighting with sharpened blades cannot truly be replicated. But practice in a dojo beats no practice at all.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 11:47:17 GMT
I'm not a huge fan of this example either, but it has more to do with execution than methodology.
Just because you a sequence of three attacks does not necessarily mean in application you perform them in sequential order, 1 - 2 - 3, they could be strung together to show possible follow up attacks, various branching off points, or any number of things. The opponent's action aside from the initial movement / attack might not be relevant to what they are doing.
Application and training are two very different things. If I'm training lunging thrusts by having my partner drop their fencing glove along the wall, I'm building a skillset, I'm not practicing how to pin somebody's hand to the wall or some other silly thing. Trying to squeeze some kind of practical application in the Phil Elmore "Street Sword" sense is most likely a fool's errand in a lot of these cases.
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Post by Cosmoline on Apr 8, 2015 16:45:40 GMT
Compliant drills should still generally involve the partner making martially sound cuts. So you should not have him cutting into thin air toward a spot to your side unless you're demonstrating some particular point about a wild swing. He should be cutting right at your forehead and face or some other legitimate target and he should be in measure. Obviously he needs to be able to pull his punches or you need to be wearing a mask. What bothers me are the videos where students cut to nothing and stand there until the teacher moves (often in false time) and completes the cunning plan.
One trick you can use is to count the actions. If the student cuts then stays still as the teacher performs one, two, three actions including foot movements, be skeptical. Unless the weapon is genuinely neutralized or countered in the first beat in *true time*, the teacher would be stepping to his death against a non-compliant person. In the western systems this is usually done by blade-on-blade contact as the very first step. Either with each side cutting to kill or one side parrying a cut. Once you have the contact, fulen tells you what to do next. And since each person has performed one action in true time--a swing in time of the hand(s)--they're still 1 = 1 and the fencing equation balances. If he pushes one way, you wind a certain direction. if he is weak, you wind the other. But again actions are equal. You don't have him cutting, stopping in mid air and the teacher then stepping around his blade and kicking him in the head or something silly.
Or in I.33, a sequence might be:
I approach at half shield You approach at half shield I go to prima You step into measure behind the protection of "crutch" (a kind of proto hanging guard) I match your crutch You flow into a thrust from crutch I rotate my blade while you thrust and threaten your head with the short edge, displacing or catching your blade in the movement You see my blade come up and switch from thrust to tread-through I feel your tread-through and shove your blade off with my crossguard, hoping to follow that with a shield strike and a zwerch.
But as each move proceeds space and time compresses and the window for a counter gets smaller. To get more time you need more space, which requires time of the hands and the feet. So one or the other of you will likely run out of space/time and fall into the proverbial black hole.
An example from longsword:
We approach in vom tag You take vor and cut an oberhau I also cut an oberhau You switch mid-cut to a zwerch and increase your side-step Because you're stepping bigger, my time of the hand is faster and *IF* I'm paying attention I can switch from an oberhau (which will lead to my death) to a hard parry of that notorious "helicopter blade." You can then do the opposite zwerch But again because you have time of hand and foot (or even feet), I can counter with my own smaller movement and get you sooner while adopting an extended ochs to protect me from your afterblow. Or instead of the opposite zwerch, you might notice that my hard party came pretty close to your crossguard, and instead bash my blade down with a thrust to clear the path BEFORE doing your second zwerch. This removes a beat from my side of the equation, giving you the extra beat you need to safely execute your move. Or if my parry came on the weak of your blade, you can just let the tip drop a notch which has the effect of getting off and around my blade ever so slightly, putting you in position to do a direct thrust to my chest. Nice cunning move that one. But again if I feel your pressure leave I have follow-ups to counter that.
And on and on it goes. To get back to the video, if you look at the very start, you see the teacher draw after the student has started his cut but inexplicably stopped in mid-action. Then the teacher seems to reach out and cut along the inside of the student's arm. Now there are messer moves that involve using body parts to neutralize a swing, but you have to be exceptionally careful doing it and you must be able to immediately neutralize that swing or God help you as the sources say. Just sticking a hand out in front of the blade doesn't neutralize it. In the video, a non-compliant student could have easily removed his hand while stepping into the void created by drawing the sword using nachreisen. Or cut across the wrist and right up under the chin while grabbing the teacher's elbow as he's trying to get his own sword into action. If trying to draw your blade IN MEASURE is Plan A, you need a Plan B! Or a buckler or something.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2015 0:40:16 GMT
There's more than a couple extremely telegraphed "haymakers" going on there for sure, but the center line attacks get the point across that the instructor is clearing the line by stepping to one side. It could of course be done better, but we don't know what the level of the class is or the individual working with the teacher. Maybe they had a bad lunch, who knows? XD
I agree, the attacks should be valid. If he's deliberately cutting to the side, that's got to stop. That's just like me throwing myself just because a guy brushed my sleeve (seen it, never went back). If I'm feeding him an attack, that's a chance for me to work on my technique rather than just phone in some lame vaguely centerline thing while I wait for my turn. I definitely see more than a little bit of that in this video so I do hear you there.
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Post by Cosmoline on Apr 9, 2015 2:57:49 GMT
Good points!
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