2011 March 9th Uchida Ryu Tanjojutsu at the Obu Taikukan, Obu City, Aichi

[Mekugi]

Excellent article on it at Wikipedia, done by my SMR brother Fred:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uchida_Ryu_Tanjojutsu




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[Tripitaka of AA]

Some questions for you if I may, Russ;

Is there any particular order that the pairs are lined up in?
Are the senior students paired with a junior student, or are they roughly comparable skill/grade levels?
Who takes the role of attacker, the junior or the senior in each pair?
Is this arrangement typical, or just the way your group chooses to do it? Is it a formal etiquette of all Koryu?

On a personal level, what kind of lives do the members of the group have? Office jobs? Sports Teachers? Secret Agents?
I see young and old of both sexes, is that something new, or would that have been the case in older times (19th C, for example)?
Are you freakishly tall, Russ, or is it the camera angle giving that impression?


I am a curious and often irritating person who seems to enjoy asking stupid questions. Please forgive my ignorance, but asking questions is my best chance to fix that. :)

[Mekugi]

Okay!
No problem!

There was no real order in the line in this case. However, usually the elder/senior students would be farthest away from the door, nearest to the kamiza. Not this time, too much hassle and there was no kamiza.

Here we went back and forth with senior and junior at the sword out of practicality because we are all students...however tradition holds that the elder would be the "uke", called a Uchidachi 打太刀 (striking sword) and the younger student would be the "tori", called Shidachi or Shijo 受太刀/杖 (receiving sword/jo). In the case of equals it goes either way. In my case, my elder was the swordsman for the jo and the tanjo; later on (not shown on youtube) I was his Uchidachi for Isshin ryu kusarigama.

So what we have here is a flexible environment with juniors and seniors...we are all pretty much the same level until menkyo and menkyo kaiden. Some have different opinions on that which is fine, but under those high ranks we are pretty much students. If I were teamed with a shihan, unless it was a special situation, more than likely I would be the Shidachi.

We're varied in jobs. Most work as businessmen in various fields - water purification, Mitsubishi Denso, architects and engineers; two of us are teachers. One of the girls is a hospice worker for the infirmed, others are housewives and we even have a very famous artist from Extreme Jump magazine at the dojo, she is pretty busy and could not make it.

Young and old would be typical; women however were not as common because it usually was not a profession they would have. That's not to say they didn't train, it was not something that was too common and wasn't a job for them so it didn't take precident. Samurai brides did carry a sword in their breast collar called a "kaiken", so it's not unreasonable to think women were unable to scrap back in the day and probably had training. Just not as a job. If I recall there are many examples of women being excellent bowmen, among other things...some even proficient with firearms. So, it's a mixed bag of the sexes leaning heavily towards the male side. The 19th century really saw a rise in military education in the school system and there were far more women involved in budo back then (perhaps even more so than in today's age). Judo is a great example of this and it's clearly outlined in the Goshinho kata, also female students were known to take Naginata-do and Kyudo in primary school and beyond. So while it was not unheard of prior to the Meiji era, it was far more common afterwards.

I'm 6'2" (190cm) so I think that combined with the general "shortness" of the other members makes me look taller than I really am. :)

[Webmaster]

Great video Russ! It's also nice to see that life goes on considering that Japan is still dealing with a major disaster. :bow:

[Mekugi]

And getting a shake up as we speak. There have been large earthquakes happening outside of Tokyo today and yesterday....things are starting to spook again.