The Lone Ninja

[ElfTengu]

Well I thought 'Kamui' was great, and is what all modern ninja movies should be like.

I haven't even bothered to watch Ninja Assassin yet, and that horrific offering starring Scott Adkins offends me so much I cringe whenever my gaze falls upon its spine in my DVD collection.

p.s. Tony Jaa claims ninjutsu as one of the main arts he studies, alongside Thai arts obviously, and a lot of that big fight scene in Warrior King will be familiar to taijutsu adepts, but does anyone know whom he studies his 'ninjutsu' with?

 

[DuskB4Dawn]

kumui is a awesome movie. one of my favourite. didn't know tony jaa trained in ninjutsu. are you sure about that. it may be some other Thai martial art.

 

[ElfTengu]

didn't know tony jaa trained in ninjutsu. are you sure about that. it may be some other Thai martial art.

He stated it in a UK magazine interview, either 'Combat' or 'Martial Arts Illustrated' fairly recently.

I have registed a question regarding this on his fansite's forum, but no response yet. I doubt if we'll ever find out, but if you look at the big fight sequence in Warrior King, there is a lot there that looks like a choreographed version of taijutsu.

 

[Bruno@MT]

He stated it in a UK magazine interview, either 'Combat' or 'Martial Arts Illustrated' fairly recently.

I have registed a question regarding this on his fansite's forum, but no response yet. I doubt if we'll ever find out, but if you look at the big fight sequence in Warrior King, there is a lot there that looks like a choreographed version of taijutsu.

I was pleasantly surprised.
A lot of that actually did look like taijutsu. So nice to see choregraphed fighting without the boring high kicks.

 

[DuskB4Dawn]

i loved the michael jackson background music lol
yes it looks very ninjutsu. alot of kappo jutsu bone breaking and some preasure strikes and less punching and kicks. it could be the traditional thai martial art that mwai thai originally came from . it is more brutal than mwai thai and has alot of those bone breaking moves. i forgot what its called.

on the subject of ong bak have you seen the movie chocolate? it is my favourite out of all the ong baks

 

[Tanaka]

By the looks of that video. Someone needs to be hiring new henchmen

 

[Chris Parker]

Hmm. At about 3:46 there's a few actions that are similar to some techniques found within Taijutsu (as well as numerous other systems), but it was really nothing like what I would describe as Taijutsu. The body movement was not Taijutsu, the use of the spine is not the same, the footwork is not the same, the angling is not the same, and so on. So other than a kinda-Oni Kudaki looking thing (a little more similar to some Aikido movement in the way it was done, but without the flow there as well), and maybe two or three more things, there was nothing like Taijutsu I saw. And that part was only really very superficially similar.

Oh, and DuskB4Dawn, not really sure what you're seeing there. The "bone- breaking" aspects in this clip are simply hyper-extentions, and are not what is found in Koppojutsu, really. It looked nothing like Ninjutsu when you get down to it.

 

[Indagator]

i loved the michael jackson background music lol
yes it looks very ninjutsu. alot of kappo jutsu bone breaking and some preasure strikes and less punching and kicks. it could be the traditional thai martial art that mwai thai originally came from . it is more brutal than mwai thai and has alot of those bone breaking moves. i forgot what its called.

Are you referring to Muay Boran? I believe that much of the fight choreography in Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong are closer to Muay Boran than Muay Thai, although I could be mistaken.

 

[DuskB4Dawn]

oh yeah. Muay Boran. thats what its called.
sorry for my terrible spelling. i actully spelled muay thai, mwai thai
for someone who is half thai i should be ashamed.

thanks mr parker. i actually thought hypertension was kappojutsu but that would be joint breaking actually. when you watch it in the full movie the sound affects are really overdone. it can be misleading.

 

[Chris Parker]

Koppojutsu was badly translated back in the day as "bone breaking", but that really isn't what it means at all. The characters used to write the term are literally "Bone" (kotsu), and "Method" (Ho), when combined they make the word "Koppo", and implies a number of things, such as attacking the solid structures of the body, using your bones to attack the opponent, attacking the structure of their movement, and many other things.

The technical characteristics change from Ryu to Ryu, with the most well known being that found in the Koto Ryu, although the Togakure Ryu has had it's Taijutsu refered to as a form of Koppojutsu as well, and has as part of it's characteristics a prevalence of striking over grappling, strikes being applied at 90 degrees to the target, and more. But the "over extension" of a joint just isn't Koppojutsu.

 

[DuskB4Dawn]

the hoppo jutsu i just one methods in ninjutsu.
the other is preasure point and grappling right.
but hoppo jutsu has more strikes
it would be like breaking wood with your fist?
in a 90 degree angle.
doesn't koga ryu ninjutsu use these technique alot?

 

[Chris Parker]

Hmm, not really. Koppojutsu is more realistically one classification of a skill set within the Ninjutsu-related traditions. There is a fair amount of cross-over between skills from different Ryu, and different Ryu using the same terminology could mean completely different things (for instance, there is a group in Japan who teach what they call Koppojutsu, and it's based mainly on knife fighting, and there is a form of Japanese ProWrestling known as Koppo as well). In very vague, broad terms, Koppojutsu is often used to refer to striking against the bone structure, Kosshijutsu is often used to mean striking or attacking the weaker, softer parts of the body (organs etc), often with the tips of the fingers and thumbs, Dakentaijutsu as a broad term to mean striking actions, Jutaijutsu to refer to grappling skills, Taihenjutsu to refer to rolling and falling skills, and so on. However, each of these terms can be used differently depending on the Ryu in question, for example Gyokko Ryu uses the term Taihenjutsu in it's description of it's fundamental sword evasion skills, which does include some rolling, but that's not the emphasis.

It's really not like "breaking wood with your fist", that's just breaking wood with your fists. The only thing it's like, really, is Koppojutsu, and the way to understand that is to experience it. Oh, and if you can find an authentic form of Koga Ryu Ninjutsu, you're doing better than people who have been searching for decades, but feel free to ask them.

 

[ElfTengu]

Hmm. At about 3:46 there's a few actions that are similar to some techniques found within Taijutsu (as well as numerous other systems), but it was really nothing like what I would describe as Taijutsu. The body movement was not Taijutsu, the use of the spine is not the same, the footwork is not the same, the angling is not the same, and so on. So other than a kinda-Oni Kudaki looking thing (a little more similar to some Aikido movement in the way it was done, but without the flow there as well), and maybe two or three more things, there was nothing like Taijutsu I saw. And that part was only really very superficially similar.

Oh, and DuskB4Dawn, not really sure what you're seeing there. The "bone- breaking" aspects in this clip are simply hyper-extentions, and are not what is found in Koppojutsu, really. It looked nothing like Ninjutsu when you get down to it.

To reword things for the ever-pedantic (but still highly esteemed by myself) Mr Parker, I guess that a better way of putting it is that if someone looked at a random selection of X-kan taijutsu, but was not trained in it themselves, and was looking for 'new moves' to be choreographed into a movie scene (and Mr Jaa's movies have been a breath of fresh air in the genre), then this scene is a likely result. Of course it would be superficial, and of course all the points about posture etc are difficult to argue against, but on the other hand I could pedantically find you literally hundreds of clips from a youtube search on Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu that are even further removed from this excerpt from a movie, and this is without even looking to Robert Bussey!

I don't think/feel that Aikido was the source for this material as the overt movements of aiki styles would not have escaped the choreography, whereas the subleties of taijutsu could be very easily overlooked, concentrating instead on the gist of the outcome of applying certain 'techniques'.

Having said this, I saw nothing much taijutsu-esque in Onk Bak 2 (The Beginning) so I could be wrong, or they might have felt that they got all they needed from our system for Warrior King.

They obviously never saw this theatrical outpouring from our best:

 

[Indagator]

Ah, now I know why I'd never heard of Warrior King - I looked it up and found that it is the same film as Tom Yum Goong and The Protector, just released under different titles for different countries.

Lol.

Good film. Hasn't Tony Jaa gone and become some kind of cloistered Buddhist monk or something now, though?

 

[Chris Parker]

Pedantic? Yeah, can't really argue with that....

My point is more that the technical aspects (grappling rather than striking) don't really make it Taijutsu, as the way they are done is the very similar, if not the same, as many other grappling systems. The Oni-Kudaki type maneouvre, for instance, was closer to Aikido's methods than Taijutsu's, mainly in the angle of the elbow of the reciever (Taijutsu goes for a 90 degree angle, or slightly greater, with the forearm being used as a "lever" on the shoulder, whereas the Aikido variant is more taking the wrist straight back over the shoulder, and is closer to the way it's performed in the clip). I agree that Aikido isn't the source, just pointing out that the technical aspects are not necessarily (or definitively) Taijutsu. In fact, I would say that it is just a creative theatrical expression or demonstration of standard joint locking techniques found in pretty much all grappling systems, taken to a graphic extreme for entertainment points. Nothing I saw would lead me to believe that Taijutsu had anything to do with this clip, or Tony Jaa's training background.

Oh, and are we absolutely sure he didn't just say he studies "Thai-jutsu", and was misquoted? (Okay, bad line, but I'm disappointed that no-one did it first.... really, you gyus are slipping....)

 

[ElfTengu]

Oh, and are we absolutely sure he didn't just say he studies "Thai-jutsu", and was misquoted? (Okay, bad line, but I'm disappointed that no-one did it first.... really, you gyus are slipping....)

I'm not sure if it was Scott Morris or Steve Jennum fighting, but I'm sure a UFC commentator was saying that taijutsu was a mixture of Thai Boxing and Jiu Jitsu, and I remember shuddering as I imagined a gazillion viewers retaining said statement as fact.

And no, it was ninjutsu, but as we know, in this day and age it can mean anything, and not necessarily anything to do with what we do.

 

[Chris Parker]

Ha, I remember that.... I think it was Steve Jennum, when he made his first appearance as an alternate, I don't think the commentators expected him to be called in, so kinda grasped at straws. Not a good moment for the public perception of the art, really, but a fairly revealing one.

Sho Kosugi also claimed to have trained in a number of "schools of Ninjutsu" back in the day, Bob posted a video of an interview with him talking about the historical side of things. Again, not a good moment for the public awareness and education....

 

[ElfTengu]

Ha, I remember that.... I think it was Steve Jennum, when he made his first appearance as an alternate, I don't think the commentators expected him to be called in, so kinda grasped at straws. Not a good moment for the public perception of the art, really, but a fairly revealing one.

At least Jennum won that one. The next time I saw him fight was against Marco Ruas in a Vale Tudo fight on a video entitled 'Brutal Combat'.

Outclassed does not even come close to describing it. And no amount of eye gouging or even wearing shuko would have been a leveller on that occasion.

Sho Kosugi also claimed to have trained in a number of "schools of Ninjutsu" back in the day, Bob posted a video of an interview with him talking about the historical side of things. Again, not a good moment for the public awareness and education....

Yes, I remember photo sequences with gigantic hooked hand claws but clearly karate (Shorin Ryu?) posturing.

But we all had those three classic posters on our bedroom wall, the confusing one where shuko were called tekagi, and the two sword flying sidekick which was obviously taken with him balanced on a chair, which I replicated perfectly using the same props. Those posters even appeared in a movie called Dreamscape, is anyone old enough to remember that?

 

[DuskB4Dawn]

the taijutsu moves could of come from anywhere.

I thought koppojutsu look like this but koppojutsu must focus more on stikes and Kosshijutsu would be different fist to strike soft vital target. these are part of Dakentaijutsu and Jutaijutsu would be the grapling side. in the movie I can see alot more Jutaijutsu than Dakentaijutsu.
I guess you could say taijutsu could look like any kind of unarmed martial art since taijutsu is such a lose term for any style of fighting.
my point is it doesn't need to be a japanese martial art to be considered taijutsu.

 

[Steve]

Where do you guys find this movie? I understand that most of you are overseas, but Is it available in the USA?