Thanks for feedback and some quite interesting question. Without further ado I am going to answer all of them
Cool, thanks.
The main purpose of the video ( and the future ones as well) is to show the correct sequence of the various tameshigiri cuts. What I want to do is to create several videos covering, hmm let's just say "popular" tameshigiri giri cut patters in a friendly format. Of course one can find lot tameshigri on youtube both on English and Japanese channels however scrolling through lot of videos just to find the technique you are looking for is quite time consuming ( although quite beneficial). The video of course is too short to call it "a teaching" and I am not going to cover other subjects as the blade maintenance etc. However I think safety is crucial here - especially during tameshigiri so in the future videos probably I will add some information about it.
Okay, let me get a bit more particular... who is the (intended) audience for the video series?
Yes, Toyama Ryu simplified many techniques to provide a fast way of learning how to cut and handle the sword for imperial army officers Only after the war - Toyama Ryu became more "samurai like". The best example are Toyama Ryu eight katas. First version - Gunto Soho - consits of almost soldier like way of walking, all of the forms end with forward cut and the techniques teach how to deal with the enemy equipped with a bayonet. The second version Batto - Jutsu - changes the last cuts from shomen giri (forward cut) to kesa giri (from shoulder to hip cut). That version also reduces number of steps. And finally there is the Battodo version that was developed after the war. Due to the fact that many dojo's were quite small - the number of steps during kata were further reduced and overwall all kata were shortened. It is great that you know the history of the style. Without knowing the history it is much harder to understand the reason behind many techniques.
Okay... aside from the fact that I wouldn't describe Toyama Ryu as "samurai-like" in any way, none of that is really anything to do with what I was saying... interesting, sure, but not really what was being discussed.
Due to fact that I am practicing two different styles I tend to switch from one to another. I have found this way of cutting the best of tameshigiri (at least for now). One the one hand I am trying to be aware of shortcomings of certain techniques however on the other hand I tend to use what is effective in a situation at hand. I hope that in the future I will able to learn way of cutting that will be usefull in both situation (tameshigiri, combat). As you may know it is going to be quite hard to use those techniques in combat enviroment so maybe "tameshigiri" cuts work as well
Yeah... my point is that learning cutting methods purely for tameshigiri seems a little... lacking, to my mind. And having differing techniques for tameshigiri and combat seems less than optimal.
Well, long story short....I have been practicing Toyama Ryu for 13 years and finally realized that in order to move forward I need to learn about other styles as well.
Okay, for this part I might break it up a bit...
Why would you need to learn about "other styles" to "move forward"? Can you elaborate on that?
I left my club and enrolled to both Shinkendo and Katori Shinto Ryu schools.
So... to take this bit by bit... you left your Toyama Ryu school after 13 years... at what rank? And what authority did you get with regards to teaching? Is what you're presenting Toyama Ryu, or your own ideas and sequences? If so, under what authority are you showing it?
With regards to your (new?) other schools... what are you thinking you'll get from Shinkendo, being largely just a variant of Toyama Ryu itself?
And, more to my heart, who are you studying Shinto Ryu with? What group? How long have you been studying it? Oh, and for the record, we tend not to think of "enrolling in a Shinto Ryu dojo", but of joining the ryu and committing to it's study... it's semantics to some, but it's an important distinction to us... as it shows very different attitudes to the school (ryu) itself.
Fortunetly I have friends who practice other styles so it was easier for me to find alternatives. Maybe this is not exactly Musha Shugyo
but I am no longer attached to one style and try to learn as much as possible from different sources. As for Shinkendo - it is much different from Toyama Ryu - at least from the Toyama Ryu I have been taught.
Hmm... if the idea is to not be "attached" to one style, instead to utilise a range to come up with your own take, have you discussed this with your Shinto Ryu teacher?
One more thing. Great part of tameshigiri is that the practice itself not only strengthen your technique but also mental side. Very often you have to cut in front of many people so managing your stress and other factors is a great training as well
Yeah, agreed... of course, the same can be said of pretty much any (proper) training methodology...
I know very little about japanese swordsmanship, so i'm not commenting on the rest of it, but both Chris' statement and your response to it here stuck out to me.
From what I understand tameshigiri is a way to test the effectiveness of your slashes. If that's the case, having a separate technique that's useful in tameshigiri but not combat would be silly, unless it's developing a different skill. It reminds me of people learning "to a test", where you ace the test, but then don't have any practical knowledge for afterwards. Here, you're acing 'tameshigiri', but can't use that for 'combat', which is what tameshigiri is theoretically supposed to be testing.
The ideas behind tameshigiri are somewhat more complex than that, but I certainly see where you get the idea... a more accurate analogy might be the person practicing at a shooting range, with all the time in the world, all the opportunity to steady themselves and ensure their aim, control their breathing, and squeeze a Rond with a fair amount of accuracy and consistency, yet, under the effects of adrenaline, with a moving target, and moving themselves, find themselves firing randomly, or even freezing, unable to act...but, for interest's sake, let's look at what tameshigiri actually is.
Back in the day, the origins of tameshigiri were centred around the testing of blades. As well as the more gentile targets, it was fairly common to use condemned criminals (or, in cases, parts of them...) as the targets... many old blades have inscriptions on their nakago (tang) saying things along the lines of "One lucky day in August, 3 bodies cut". For the record, when fixed targets, such as tatami mats were used, the old (common) term was suemono-giri. The persons doing the cutting were essentially professional test-cutters, who were known for the consistency of their sword work and cutting mechanics, ensuring that the weapons wouldn't be damaged, and that the blades would be tested accurately.
As Japan moved through the Edo period (early 17th Century to mid/late 19th Century), the practice came to have a number of somewhat negative connotations... the samurai were trying to show themselves as morally superior, as well as spiritually more refined, which meant that the use of corpses for testing their swords was seen as less than exemplary. Nonetheless, a number of low-ranked samurai managed to excel with this skill, being the professional sword testers mentioned earlier (otameshi-geisha, or sue mono-shi)... but higher ranked (and more nobler) samurai would disdain such occupations (they were not above employing the testers to demonstrate just how awesome their new sword was, of course... ha!). From the mid-18th Century, though, mainly due to the lack of positive to cutting corpses, these otameshi-geisha would use substitutes more and more... leading the way to the modern usage of things like tatami omote, goza, and so on.
With more consistency of the targets now, the emphasis started to change... swordsmen would begin to use the practice of sue mono-giri (cutting fixed targets) as a new form of tameshigiri (test cutting), specifically moving now to test the skill of the swordsman rather than the sword itself. It wouldn't take over completely until essentially the Toyama groups began a revival of the training practice to ensure that correct cutting mechanics were being learnt by their graduates... meaning that this is really a 20th Century understanding of the practice.
To be blunt, most classical schools simply didn't bother with the practice of tameshigiri, mainly because they didn't need it. They knew that their mechanics worked, they knew that the swords cut effectively, and they knew that the more important thing for a warrior is to be able to move in combat, and just let the sword do it's job. It's really like expecting a modern soldier to go to a shooting range to ensure that their bullets work... so long as you know the item does it's job, there's no need to test it in that manner...
I’m seeing a parallel with some karate/TKD practitioners who perform impressive breaks of stacks of boards/pavers using a downwards chop that would have almost no application in a fight.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with that... they're learning body mechanics, focus, commitment to an action, precision, and so on... all of which have application... the exact movement might need to be adapted, but the core is still there. The issue is when the basic mechanics need to be adjusted in order to affect the target effectively... which is what appears to be happening in the video, to a degree, and is implied by the OP's comments.
Thanks for the comment!
The cut itself is quite effective. There is virtually no resistance from the mat - it is like cutting through the air.
I've said this a number of times before, and probably will a number of times again, but... swords cut. It's what they do. It's not all that remarkable that a very sharp piece of metal manages to easily slice through a very soft target... provided it's all lined up properly, cutting really isn't that hard. I can get someone cutting successfully in about half an hour, if it comes to it... so it's more that the sword is effective at cutting a mat, than "the cut" being the effective aspect.
The technique is working,
Well........ the sword is. The technique is simply one way of letting the sword do what it does.
so personally I would not compare it to the situation when let's say karate kick or punch has no power of effect at all.
I don't think anyone had... Tony was talking more about a particular strike being done in a way that was certainly powerful and had a real tangible effect (breaking tiles, or bricks, or boards, or whatever), but was not a strike (angle, position, etc) that had a practical fighting use.
You could use those cuts during the fight however opponent is not a mat
and generally reacts to what you are doing. Probably I would shorten the cutting motion to make the cut less obvious. However the cutting motion itself is crucial here. Without it, one cannot cut the mat and this the situation when technique fails completely.
Yeah... learning to use a sword combatively is less about these aspects... and is more about understanding the reality of the combative context itself. It's that understanding/application that Toyama Ryu (and the practice of tameshigiri as an end of itself) is lacking, to my mind.
What I wanted to say is that I am not performing cuts only good for tameshigiri however in order to apply them to combat situation some changes need to be made. It is little bit like doing kata and then trying to use those moves during training bout - adjustments need to made according to the situation
Hmm... there are some aspects to the mechanics that would benefit from adjustment in a combative context, but that's not the core of the difference... in a real sense, doing the kata is more realistic with regard to applicable skills and combative training...
