Is it practical

[SAVAGE]

I would agree that learning to defend against it is a good idea! But how many of you have your sword when you are walking down the street...yes there are incidences of swords...but compared to the incidences of knife attacks...it is very one sided!

 

[MJS]

If movements can be applied with a similar weapon or if the movements can be translated to empty hand movements, then I'd have to say that there would be merit in training with the weapon.

Mike

 

[Andrew Green]

to train with archaic weapons like the Kusarigama, or the Ono, or Naginata, or is training with these weapons soley a way to preserve the past.

What do you guys think?

Who cares? Hook me up

Most hobbies aren't practical, that's why they are hobbies.

Martial Artists as a whole seem to have far to much concern for practicallity in a hobby which really, if we are honest about it, is not that practical. The vast majority of use will never have to defend ourselves in a real fight.

 

[Don Roley]

Hmmmm.....

I have a shovel that I keep in the yard. I usually am not more than a few steps from it when I am in it. (Not paranoia, Japanese houses are just small and the yards more so.)

It is an aluminum one with a semi-triangle head and a handle at the end.

It is not a hanbo, rokushakubo, yari, naginata or katana and yet when I have fooled around with it, the way to use it as a weapon takes something from each of these weapons.

Stick the sharp end in someone? Yari. Going to smack someone from there with the edge? Pull back as you would doing rokushakubo furi, or naginata and go into Hasso/tenchijin. From there, you basically use the striking techniques of a katana or a naginata. And the entire time you are at the ma-ai of a hanbo.

Of course, I have to point out that the majority of people teaching weapons outside of Japan probably do not have even a decent basic knowledge of it. This statement is based on my observations in Someya Dojo of person after person who had been teaching sword for years having to be taught by him how to swing the damn thing.

 

[Dale Seago]

Tell that to the 800,000 minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates in Rwanda in 1994, many of whom were hacked up with machetes.

-ben

Yes indeedy. And here in the States:

Machetes cutting a wider swath of fear in U.S. communities

http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=MACHETES-03-02-06&cat=AN

By LISA HOFFMAN mailto:[email protected]
Scripps Howard News Service
March 02, 2006

- They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country.

Witness these recent incidents:

In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put up no fight when the bad guy demanded the cash box.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, a 22-year-old gang member pleaded guilty in January to the machete slaying of an 82-year-old man in a drug-addled attack.

And in Greenville, N.J., during a Jan. 20 argument over a borrowed drill, a suspect known as "Shy" slashed an apartment resident so severely with a machete that the victim's shinbone broke.

Although machete-related crimes are occurring from Florida to Washington state and Maine to California, they have only recently begun to reach the radar screens of law-enforcement and government officials nationwide. No official count of the incidence of such crimes exists.

While they are more common in places with sizable Latin American and Caribbean immigrant populations, machete offenses also are cropping up elsewhere.

In February alone, crimes involving machetes were reported in San Jose, Calif.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Republic, Wash.; Tampa, Fla.; and Mount Pleasant, Mich. While some of the suspects and victims in those cases had Hispanic or "Island" surnames, others did not.

Abetting the spread is the wide availability and low cost of the tool. A machete with a 21-inch-long blade can be bought at most home-improvement stores for $10, sometimes less.

One jurisdiction that is wrestling with machete problem is Fairfax County, Va., a sprawling suburb of Washington. Police there have tallied more than 110 machete cases in recent years. Most were linked to gangs, particularly the notorious and fast-expanding Latino gang Mara Salvatrucha, whose members have been identified in more than two-dozen states.

Also known as MS-13, the gang has adopted machetes as the weapon of choice, at least partly because of the fear the blades engender with their implied threat of gruesome wounds or even death.

"In the last 10 years, we've seen an increasing number of horrific attacks with machetes," Fairfax County Police Maj. Frank Wernlein told a state legislative committee last month.

One of the worst was the 2005 assault on a 24-year-old man who was jumped by several MS-13 members when leaving a movie theater. An attacker, who was since convicted, sliced off three of the victim's fingers.

"They're vicious attacks that cause a great deal of fear," said Virginia House of Delegates member Vivian Watts, one of the few legislators in the country to push for new laws to combat machete-related crime.

Watts, who is sponsoring a bill to make it unlawful to brandish a machete with the intent to intimidate, said the machete menace quickly took root in her area, and she warned that the same could happen in other parts of the country.

"In a very short period of time, the use of machetes has become a very serious problem," she said this week.

That was the case as well in the Boston area, where a rise in gang violence involving machetes occurred in the past several years. The surrounding towns of Revere, Everett, Lynn and Chelsea have banned machetes, and there is now a bill before the Massachusetts Senate that would prohibit the carrying, sale and manufacture of the tool-turned-weapon.

Law-enforcement experts say that localities with large numbers of immigrants from Latin and Caribbean countries - where machetes are ubiquitous and commonly imbued with symbolism - are likely to witness more machete-related offenses.

Bill Johnson, a former prosecutor in Miami in the late 1980s, said that was the case in that city after a mass influx of Haitians occurred when he was there. "My observation was that it was a cultural thing," said Johnson, now executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

Alex del Carmen, a criminology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, agreed. Long a part of daily life in Latin America, where they are considered the tool - and weapon - of the poor, machetes became the symbol of the power of the peasantry after their use in revolts against Spanish rule and in the 1959 communist revolution in Cuba.

Del Carmen said that romantic history might also add to the allure of the weapon and its spread. But he said it is the machete's inherent menace that is its greatest draw.

"It's very intimidating, particularly in places where you haven't seen them very much before," del Carmen said.

(Contact Lisa Hoffman at HoffmanL(at)shns.com)

Sent that around to my dojo list yesterday. For some strange reason, last night's class was all muto-dori training versus attacks with a wakizashi. Everything ended up being henka or variations on two kata from Shinden Fudo ryu, Gekkan and Unjaku.

 

[bencole]

I would agree that learning to defend against it is a good idea! But how many of you have your sword when you are walking down the street...yes there are incidences of swords...but compared to the incidences of knife attacks...it is very one sided!

You need to know how to use a weapon in order to defend against it, in my opinion. If you have held a sword in your hand, or a hanbo, or a kusarigama, you know the distance you would need to hit the other guy. You know what type of skeletal and muscular movements would be necessary to get the weapon to the target with any force. And so on.

So when you come face to face with someone carrying a machete, or baseball bat, or chain, you know what is possible and what is not. You know where the threat is coming from and are not merely intimidated because "they have a weapon."

-ben

 

[Tengu6]

Of course, I have to point out that the majority of people teaching weapons outside of Japan probably do not have even a decent basic knowledge of it. This statement is based on my observations in Someya Dojo of person after person who had been teaching sword for years having to be taught by him how to swing the damn thing.

I wish I still knew as much as I did before I met Luke Molitor. I was great with a sword back then.

Markk Bush

 

[Shogun]

What I like about the more exotic weapons is the increased coordination. training with a chain defintely helps you percieve your own body movement much better. honestly, I've punched myself (literally) so many times.


apart from that, people who are actually capable of hurting you typically use weapons, and when they do, it usually is something like a bike chain, a rock, or a piece or rebar.

-Kyle

 

[Cryozombie]

I wish I still knew as much as I did before I met Luke Molitor. I was great with a sword back then.

Markk Bush

Weren't we all?

 

[Flying Crane]

Watts, who is sponsoring a bill to make it unlawful to brandish a machete with the intent to intimidate
[/font]

Amazing that they need to pass a law specifically against this. Seems to me this would already fall under other assault laws.

 

[Dale Seago]

Amazing that they need to pass a law specifically against this. Seems to me this would already fall under other assault laws.

Of course it does. But this way the sponsors can present themselves as Doing Something To Make A Difference.

 

[rutherford]

Found out last weekend that my old training group is doing an in-depth study of sword vs naginata. I am so jealous, because I already know I can't make this week's session. I'm going to have to move my schedule a bit and hook up with them outside of the regular class to pick up some crunchy bits.

 

[Fallen Ninja]

I think a important concept to consider is not only does it maintain a legacy but also can transfer to weapons not similar to itself. For example, sword technique can be tranlated and seen while using a gun.
The great thing about our art is that everything thing is the same. You learn a basic concept and you can apply that to kicks, punches, grabs, weapons, etc. If you see Soke's video "What is Martial Arts" you will see him to Fu of the San Shin with a gun. Talk about a Bushiken! Its really easy for people just to say... "well carrying those things are not plossible or legal now in our time so we won't use them. We have to remember that there were weapons that weren't legal to cary back then but the Ninja took concepts of weapons and transfered them to other common day tools. Use the same movement with your common day shoe lace, coat hanger, cigarette, fire extinguesher (sp?) etc.

:ninja: