Small Circle Jujutsu

Wally Jay was highly ranked in both Danzan Ryu Jujutsu and Judo before founding his own Small Circle Jujutsu. Below is a video of him demonstrating his art. Enjoy.

Xing Yi Quan Dragon

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at The Tai Chi Notebook, which explains the importance of the Dragon in the study and practice of XingYiQuan. The full post may be read here.

The Dragon is unique amongst Xing Yi animals because it is the only mythical one. Yes, I’m aware that some lineages of Xing Yi include a Phoenix as one of their 12 animals, but I think this is simply a mistranslation of Tai, a kind of flycatcher bird native to China. You sometimes also see it mistranslated as Ostrich, which is even stranger. You occasionally see Tuo translated as “water lizard”, or “water strider”, but it’s clearly a crocodile, another animal that is (or effectively was) native to China.

The question of why Xing Yi, whose animal methods are based on real, observable native animals, should include a Dragon we’ll leave until the end of this post, but for now, let’s look at its characteristics.

Dragon in San Ti Shi

The Dragon is one of the important animals in Xing Yi Quan because, together with Bear Shoulders, Eagle Claw, Chicken Leg, Tiger Embrace and Thunder sound, Dragon Body forms the famous San Ti Shi posture, (different lineages have slight variations on those, but they’re fundamentally the same).

Dragons in Chinese mythology have very flexible spines – they fall and rise through clouds with a long, flexible body that coils and rotates, twists and turns. You often seem them decorating Asian temple roofs, or spiraling around a pillar.

It’s the flexible nature of the spine that is the characteristic we seek to emulate in Xing Yi Quan. In Xing Yi the spine is characterised by a coiling action, a counter-rotation between hips and shoulders, that means the practitioner can easily generate power, or, always has the potential for generating power from all positions.

Ritual Archery in Japan

Below is an excerpt from a Japanese based website about the use of archery in important Japanese Shinto rituals. The full post may be read here.

...

 Bows and Popular Shinto Rituals

 Bows are not just associated with samurai, but are also more broadly seen as a part of Japan’s culture. Bows and arrows make appearances in Japanese myths, and as a result, many Shinto shrines feature rituals related to them.
One of the most well-known is horseback archery, Yabusame. However, stationary archery, Obisha, is also performed as a Shinto ritual in many areas throughout Japan. The Obisha festivals are held either to pray for a good harvest or to divine how crops will grow that year. In the Shinto ritual called Omato shinji held at Kifune-jinja Shrine in January in Togane, Chiba Prefecture, an archer shoots 12 arrows to divine the harvest for the year. Also, in a festival called Musayumisai, held at Samukawa-jinja Shrine on January 8 in Sagami, Kanagwa Prefecture, arrows are shot at a target marked with the word Oni (ogre) in order to tell fortunes for the year.

 　Are both of these styles held as Shinto rituals? If so, I suggest revising to say: Both stationary archery, Obisha, and horseback archery, Yabusame, are held as Shinto rituals in many areas throughout Japan.
　
 Words relating to archery also appear in every day language. The phrase Te no uchi wo akasu (“to show one’s hand”, reveal one’s thinking, plans, or skills) comes from the positioning of the hand on the bow (te no uchi). Since one’s technique in holding the bow influences the accuracy of the shot, precise techniques were a carefully kept secret. Another common phrase, Kakegae ga nai, refers to something irreplaceable or very precious, is said to refer to Yugake, an archer’s leather glove for the right hand used to draw the bowstring. There are other words, such as Yaomote ni tatsu (to stand in the line of fire, that is, to take blame or criticism), Mato wo hazusu (to miss the mark, to be off target), and Zuboshi (to be on target, to hit the bullseye), that were derived from archery.
 　The bows and arrows seen in archery training halls all over Japan have a long tradition associated with them, and the practice of archery has been a significant part of Japanese culture, contributing to everyday language, religious rituals, and even divination.

Dao De Jing, #78: Nothing in the World is Softer than Water

The Dao De Jing is not only one of the world's great classics, it is one of the foundations of Philosophical Daoism. A free online version of the Dao De Jing may be found here. Today we have #78: Nothing in the World is Softer than Water.

Nothing in the world is softer than water,

Yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong.

This is because nothing can alter it.

That the soft overcomes the hard

And the gentle overcomes the aggressive

Is something that everybody knows

But none can do themselves.

Therefore the sages say:

The one who accepts the dirt of the state

Becomes its master.

The one who accepts its calamity

Becomes king of the world.

Truth seems contradictory.

The Taijiquan of Ben Lo

Below is a video of the late Master Ben Lo, Cheng Man Ching's most senior student from Taiwan, performing the 37 form.

Documentary on Japanese Sword Smiths

Below is a documentary on Japanese Sword Smiths.

Shiro Saigo and Yama Arashi

Shiro Saigo was an early follower of Jigoro Kano, soon after he founded the Kodokan. Many competitions were held between the Kodokan and older, established schools of Jujutsu. Saigo's victories was partly responsible for the ensuing popularity of Judo as a result.

He is said to have invented the "unstoppable" Yama Arashi throw. 

Akira Kurosawa based the film Sanshiro Sugata on the life and career of Saigo. 

Below is a short documentary on Saigo.

Kosen Judo

Back in the day, there was a athletic school league in Japan that held Judo competitions. Because the students were all fairly new to Judo, the rules favored grappling over the more difficult throwing techniques. This was known as Kosen Judo and resembles what we recognize as Brazilian JiuJitsu now. Below is a short video clip about the differences between "Regular" Judo and Kosen Judo.

Who Owns a Martial Art?

Is Karate necessarily Okinawan or Japanese? Judo? What about BJJ? 

Kung Fu Tea has an interesting article about how martial arts undergo changes as they have gone out into the world, beyond their native homes and what that means. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.


***In the last week I have found myself delving ever deeper into the literature on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) designations and the traditional martial arts.  When seeking to understand the relationship between politics and these fighting systems, one would be hard pressed to find a better case study.  Still, before going on to tackle some of the more complex aspects of this topic, it might be worth going back and asking a few basic questions about the timing of this trend.***

“Inoue said the Japanese style of judo traditionally focused more on quantity rather than quality, trying to instill a tough mentality. But in Europe, which Inoue describes as “the mainstream of judo today,” judoka train more efficiently.

“A balance between efficiency and inefficiency and a balance between scientific things and unscientific things — you have to look at those, otherwise there’s no progress for our game,” Inoue said. “We’ve switched our mind-set that way.”

“Inoue Determined to Help Japan Keep Pace.” Japan Times, 5/2/2016.

Introduction
Who owns a martial art?
 
On the surface this question would seem to have an obvious answer.  Most of these systems come with a specific name (kendo or taijiquan), and they fall into generally accepted categories, such as Japanese Budo or the Chinese martial arts. The very act of describing these systems in the English language seems to underline an obvious fact.  The martial arts are best understood as the technical and cultural property of the previously mentioned nations.  It is all a matter of common sense.
 
Unfortunately “common sense” has a nasty habit of transforming itself into complex assumptions that no one ever questions.  For students of nationalism, a fairly modern political ideology spread and popularized in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, an assertion like the one above might begin to raise eyebrows.
 
While Chinese citizens during the Qing dynasty were certainly aware of the existence of the state and their responsibilities to it, most contemporary accounts indicate they did not think of themselves as members of a unified, polyglot, “Chinese nation” during the late imperial period.  Instead they were much more likely to organize their identity around lineage groups, regional locations and patronage networks.  Strong feelings of national identification didn’t really grip the populace until the founding of the Republic in the post-1911 period.  And yet many of the traditional martial arts (including systems like taijiquan and wing chun) were already well established through local and regional networks prior to the rise of the “the nation.”
 
The case of “Japanese” Karate makes an even better case study of the complex relationship between the emergence of hand combat systems and national identities.  As many of us already know, this art first came to Japan from Okinawa.  There it went through a process of fundamental transformation, rationalization, and even renaming, before it was determined that it could be a vehicle for the new strain of Japanese nationalism that was then insinuating itself into the martial arts.
 
So does that mean that Karate is originally an Okinawan martial art?  Possibly.  Yet again the story is more complicated than our nationally focused narratives might suggest.  Hand combat was particularly popular in a couple of areas of Okinawa, and it is not clear to historians that all of these practitioners shared a common style.  And various arts from Southern China (including White Crane Boxing) likely played a critical role in popularizing these modes of hand combat in Okinawa.
 
So does that mean that Karate is really a Chinese art?  Probably not.  When we push historical arguments to their logical conclusion we find that knowledge about a practice’s “genetic origin” are often unhelpful in understanding how a community actually understands itself and functions today.
 
While a regionally focused approach to understanding the development of the Asian martial arts shows a lot of potential, the ancient origins of individual techniques have little bearing on their current identity.  This point seems obvious enough.
 
When a modern American undergoes genetic testing and learns that a certain percentage of his DNA originated in Poland, he may be able to claim previously unknown Eastern European ancestry.  Yet he can’t really claim to now possess a “Polish identity.”
 
That is a matter of deep cultural knowledge and life experience.  If you are depending on a blind genetic test to discover some aspect of your genetic heritage, we can safely assume that it plays little role in your actual cultural identity.  Nor would most people make the mistake of conflating these two categories when talking about genealogy.
 
So why do we tend to conflate similar categories when discussing the martial arts?  Why do we routinely assume that some quirk of our wing chun practice shows its deep “Chinese heritage,” particularly when hung gar and taijiquan people do things very differently in similar situations?

Nationalism, Globalization and the Martial Arts
 
I blame nationalism and, more recently, globalization.  Let’s start with nationalism.
 
When a country sought to enter the nation state system during the 19^th and 20^th century their acceptance was not assured.  One joins this club by being accepted by the other members.  As certain students of nationalism have observed, potential nations had to clear a couple of barriers to justify their claims.  First they had to prove that they possessed a unique culture (often in the form of a print language and folklore), a homeland, and a population.  In short one had to demonstrate that your national identity was unique, and not simply a variation of some larger identity.
 
Yet in joining the international system Benedict Anderson keenly observed that one accepted that your “unique nation” was now on equal footing with every other nation.  To be a member of a nation is to realize that every stranger that you encounter is also a member of an equally august body.  So while on one level all nations are unique, on a more fundamental level they are also interchangeable.  

And this realization cleared the way for a certain sort of competition between them.
 
One of the reasons that I am interested in the Asian martial arts is that they grew up in conjunction with this new category of “nation states.”  While we tend to assume that both of these things are impossibly ancient, emerging from the mists of time, in truth they are fairly recent.  Still, the roots of these combat systems in the late imperial period were well enough established that reformers could offer them up as proof of an “ancient and continuous” body of unique cultural traditions which supported the claims of legitimacy of the newly established national identity.
 
Why then do we believe that Karate reveals something essential about the “Japanese character”?  Or that Taijiquan is the key to understanding the Chinese “national experience”?  Because people have been repeating these assertions since about 1920.
 
Nor do I expect that these patterns of belief will change any time soon.  We now have a sound understanding of the actual historical development of these combat systems, and this is a good thing for those wishing to develop an academic discussion of the martial arts.  Yet the accelerating process of globalization has only served to reinforce the fundamental dilemma that popularized these myths in the first place.

Five Familes of Taijiquan

Below is a video of demonstrations of the five family styles of Taijiquan: Chen, Yang, Wu, Hao and Sun.