Beschreibung Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu

[tutor!]

Soeben gelesen: http://www.tenyokai.com/booklet.php

Eine mittellange Beschreibung der Geschichte, der Grundlagen und des Curriculums von Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu. Wirklich sehr interessant und aufschlussreich zu lesen!

[HBt.]

Dankeschön.

& hier noch der Videokanal https://www.youtube.com/user/LeeMasters/videos dazu.

[Cichorei Kano]

From the ... Yagi Torajirô lineage of Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû jûjutsu ...

This nuance is not without importance ... with regard to several things including how they "forget" the other branches when drawing their lineage ...

The book Classical jûjutsu by S. Mol provides an objective look at the school and its different branches. The distinction is important, especially for the many jûdô "amateur historians", and may help prevent "unhelpful conclusions", especially if they start back-extrapolating possibly making all sorts of incorrect links with jûdô and Kanô.

The Yagi Torajirô lineage which today refers to itself today as the Tenyôkai (although the two are not identical, and the branch used to be larger than just the Tenyôkai) by far is the most well-known today likely because it is located in Tôkyô not so far from the Kôdôkan (20 minute walk) and over the years has been visited by many foreigners. They were pretty well linked with the Kôdôkan, have an International division, and thus information available in English. This branch also has a dôjô in Castle Hill Sydney (http://www.makotokan.com.au/tenjin.html.) Conversely, I never saw any other foreigners in our branch in Ôsaka. Nevertheless, until the early 1980s our branch was very well established, not in the least because the branch's founder co-taught with Kanô in the same dôjô ofthe Gakushûin and Kanô likely continued to study under him ... (Kanô is also listed in the densho as his student, although he other way later is listed as a Kôdôkan student of Kanô) unless you really believe that Kanô after barely 4 years of training would have been an accomplished master ...


The third branch (the Miyamoto Hanzô lineage of Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû jûjutsu) traditionally keeps a low profile. You can see them at work here::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOrQ9HafegE

Enjoy !

Best regards,

A member of the Inoue Keitarô-lineage of Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû jûjutsu

[HBt.]

Ach ist das schön, Judo ist so vielfältig .

[Yannick.Schultze]

Hallo HBt.,

vielen Dank für die gezeigten Videos.

Bei den beiden Videos handelt es sich um Hontai Yōshin-ryū 本體楊心流. Jedoch nicht zu verwechseln mit den Yōshin-ryū der Akiyama-Linie (wie z.B. Tenjin shin‘yō 天神真楊流) oder der Nakamura-Linie, auch Miura Yōshin-ryū (wie z.B. Totsuka-ha Yōshin-Koryū 戸塚派揚心古流). Das Hontai Yōshin-ryū hat sich laut Fujiwara aus dem Takenouchi-ryū 竹内流 entwickelt und dessen Ursprung vermutet man bei den Wakō 倭寇 (japanische Seeräuber).

Zusätzlich zu erwähnen wäre, dass sowohl das Hontai Yōshin-ryū wie auch das Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū Mitglieder im „Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai“ sind...

Jedoch beim Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū nur die:
- Yagi Torajirō Linie
- Miyamoto Hanzō Linie

Die von CK erwähnte „Inoue Keitarō-Linie“ findet sich scheinbar nicht im „Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai“.

Gruss
Yannick

[HBt.]

^ vielen Dank Yannick, CK

Gruß,
Helge

(kein Mitglied einer eingetragenen Schule)

[Deshi]

Ich bin neugierig: Wie steht es um freie Sparring-/Randori-methoden im Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu? Wie sehen die aus?
Man findet keine Videos davon (auch nicht von anderen Koryu Schulen). Sind sie dem Judo Randori ähnlich?
Werden sie überhaupt noch praktiziert? Und haben sie sich im Laufe der Zeit verändert (z.B. vor der Kobusho
Gründung, währenddessen und in der Zeit danach)?
Man findet zwar ein paar indirekte Hinweise in Berichten über Kano's eigenes Training, aber insgesamt ist
die Informationslage da sehr dünn.

[HBt.]

@Deshi
Ich hoffe, Du bist damit einverstanden das ich Deine Fragen etwas übersichtlicher aufzähle:

1)
Wie steht es um freie Sparring-/Randori-methoden im Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu?

2.a)
Wie sehen die aus?

2.b)
Sind sie dem Judo Randori ähnlich?

3)
Werden sie überhaupt noch praktiziert?

4)
Und haben sie sich im Laufe der Zeit verändert (...)?

Hast Du eine bestimmte Vorstellung mit der Du die Praktiken (einer Koryu oder Gendai Budo) vergleichen möchtest? Möglicherweise ist der Kodokan hilfsbereit, frage doch einmal Herrn Murata (?).


Gruß,
HBt.

[Cichorei Kano]

Zusätzlich zu erwähnen wäre, dass sowohl das Hontai Yōshin-ryū wie auch das Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū Mitglieder im „Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai“ sind...

Jedoch beim Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū nur die:
- Yagi Torajirō Linie
- Miyamoto Hanzō Linie

Die von CK erwähnte „Inoue Keitarō-Linie“ findet sich scheinbar nicht im „Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai“.

Gruss
Yannick

Yes, that is because the Inoue Keitarō-lineage is officially extinct because my late teacher (Tobari Kazu-shihan) who died half of the 1980s (I don't have the exact date) never appointed a successor. The Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai was only created shortly before (December 1979) and member schools have changed over the past 40 years and the list has been vastly expanded. As far as I recall, we were a member from the start. I have been told that apparently some old members of our school informally gather once per year in kyôto at the Butokuden apparently as a side-meeting of DNBK initiatives, but unfortunately I have no further details. It does happen sometimes when a school has no official successor that former students still "off-record" continue training, amongst each other in non-official dôjô. It also happens that after X-amount of time that a school emerges in this way sometimes with only part of the curriculum being taught. Something like that happened with Kitô-ryû of which the last official teacher died in the late 1980s after which the school was consider officially extinct. Yet there was a study group that continued in Okayama, and another student who eventually restarted a small part of the school. They don't teach anything else than Koshiki-no-kata and Kappô, and hence a tiny bit of the jûjutsu part of Kitô-ryû, a school which originally also contained several weapons disciplines.

Also note that the is not the only organization in Japan that joins classical martial arts. There is, for example, also the Nihon Kobudō Shinkokai, which is older (created in 1935) and precedes the Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai. Some martial arts are member of one, some of both, and some of neither.

[Cichorei Kano]

@Deshi
Ich hoffe, Du bist damit einverstanden das ich Deine Fragen etwas übersichtlicher aufzähle:

1)
Wie steht es um freie Sparring-/Randori-methoden im Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu?

2.a)
Wie sehen die aus?

2.b)
Sind sie dem Judo Randori ähnlich?

3)
Werden sie überhaupt noch praktiziert?

4)
Und haben sie sich im Laufe der Zeit verändert (...)?

Hast Du eine bestimmte Vorstellung mit der Du die Praktiken (einer Koryu oder Gendai Budo) vergleichen möchtest? Möglicherweise ist der Kodokan hilfsbereit, frage doch einmal Herrn Murata (?).


Gruß,
HBt.

It is difficult for one person at the same time to obtain such a deep knowledge of many koryû because they are still relatively closed, and usually they only have very few dojô, sometimes only one, which means you would have to move for each school to different cities in Japan for long periods of time to learn each of them. What exists of them in term of documentation usually does not address all of these questions because if something is named "A" in one koryû school it does not necessarily mean the same as that what is called "A" in another koryû school. Another problem is that the contents of these schools sometimes has evolved sometimes because of schisms or merges with other schools, or because the curriculum becomes partly lost over time (meaning "limited"), so that often no people are alive anymore who still saw the full original curriculum. As I wrote in another post, what is practised in what remains of Kitô-ryû today is limited to koshiki-no-kata and kappô. It is highly doubtful that Kanô learnt anything more from Kitô-ryû than that. He certainly did not learn any of the other martial arts in kitô-ryû such as kenjutsu and bôjutsu, to name just two. Clearly, it is doubtful that a jûjutsu school that contains nothing anymore but the 21 techniques of koshiki-no-kata would have any of its members survive if they ever end up in a street fight. Have you even seen the average jûdôka well-versed in randori only enter an MMA contest ? It is often dreadful because all they know is IJF sports jûdô and zero about the martial art jûdô. As with Kôdôkan jûdô where the sportification has forced kata to become odd demonstrative exercises on which a supposed ideal of aestheticism is imposed by suggesting that a kata is good when you as accurately as possible meet prescribed conventions no matter how nonsensical, koryû have been subjected to a similar problem, where instead of fighting preparation, the focus has become holding public enbu (demonstrations) to satisify some kind of aesthetic entertainment no matter how unrealistic in terms of self-defense.

The extensive possibilities to safely and effectively do randori in Kôdôkan jûdô was likely a major attraction of Kôdôkan jûdô over koryû. In Kitô-ryû the original curriculum likely already started disappearing with the Meiji period in the days of Kanô, and there likely there were only very few schools or teachers who still knew the full curriculum by the 1920s. Kanô's Kitô-ryû is only a very small part of the 17th century Kitô-ryû.

The questions you ask were also some of my questions I used to have and so when I went to study with him II presented them to the leading Kitô-ryû specialist in Japan, who as a child had still personally witnessed the last formally qualified teachers of Kitô-ryû. It's a little bit difficult to explain without using Japanese characters, but it boils down to the kanji of randori also having a different pronunciation, and in that alternative form should be understood as a type of exercise in between what we know today as kata and randori. So, what it meant is that the kata were often practiced with uke using force to resist tori. If this is hard to understand, consider Kôdôkan jûdô's gô-no-kata. I have said before that this exercise is more important than people realize, one of the reason being that they don't understand the meaning and historic contents. If you know that an exercise such as gô-no-kata was done also for fitness and powertraining, then you can understand that kata was not at all the kind of often fake exercise where you have to satisfy a couple of people in suits and neckties sitting behind a table, whose knowledge is limited to applying as clowns what they have been told namely that if you do this or that that such is then supposedly a mistake. In the real world mistakes in kata were when you ended up losing a hand or worse and ended up death. For the rest they were tiring exercises that approached reality as close as possible. In other words, the sharp distinction between kata and randori as exists today, did not exist then. The major reason in which kata still was different from randori, is that in randori both attacks and defenses are entirely improvised, and in kata they are not. While I cannot go as far as to say that kata used to resemble more as today's randori than as today's kata, such statement is also not entirely wrong either. Kata as done today is largely a historic reinventiion in Japan, whereas in the West in general was never a component when jûdô was introduced, and only came in the picture as a part people had to suddenly do as part of their blackbelt exam, or that was occasionally demonstrated by visiting Japanese masters. However, kata as an integral component of Kanô's multifold pedagogical purpose of jûdô has never existed here. Sure, old Western films look different too, but that is partly so because overall the pure technical knowledge of jûdôka today is much higher than 50-60 years ago, which interferes when making a comparison only of the exercise. It's like, ... it is difficult to compare two interpretations of a piece of music, when the technical skills of playing the instrument are very different between two people.

If you understand this, then you also can understand that randori in few koryû was not comparable to the amount of freedom you have in jûdô. It is true that because of inherent danger of many techniques you simply could not perform randori in most koryû with the same free improvised movement. Among the few exceptions are those schools were they practiced with protection. Practicing with protection, like in kendô, was crucial in the addition of randori (or keiko) as a practice form to kendô. Kendô obviously is not a koryû, but some koryû, also developed their own protection. In some koryû with weapons were randori with wooden weapons exist, the level of expertise you need to have before being able to safely and effectively do so, is much higher than in jûdô, where really you can already start randori as a white belt not too long after you master a minimum in ukemi skills.

You evidently see randori in koryû a lot less in enbu than kata, precisely because it is improvisation hence it is more difficult to demonstrate and has a higher risk for injury and for things going wrong. It's for the same reason that demonstrations in jûdô at least today are more associated with kata than they are with randori. In conclusion it is not possible, or at least very challenging trying to give a clear general view of precisely what randori representend in koryû because there does not exist a general unified idea of it. It depends.

Specifically for Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû, while I started training in the school much earlier (>30 years ago) than the current international leadership (started 1996), unfortunately I was unable to continue practice of due to a variety of factors: being out of Japan for years, studying for my PhD and conducting medical research, and of course, the death of my teacher and collapse of the lineage a few years later. For that reason I technically never made it as far in rank and practice experience as the current international leadership, and had to supplement my practical knowledge later with academic-historic knowledge. However, I can tell you this, based on my Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû lineage (not speaking about the current Yagi Torajirô-lineage or Tenyôkai) randori contrary to Kôdôkan jûdô or Kitô-ryû was not a type of exercise really. It simply was the collective name of the throws. So you could say that it was something like the gokyô of Kôdôkan, and did not mean free fighting. So, in our branch or TS+YR, randori was simply a list of 18 techniques, if I recall well, and of which the first 11 were throws that started with seoi-nage, then kuchiki-daoshi, then koshi-nage, etc, etc, and the list ended with the chokes sode-guruma-jime and tsukkomi-jime. So, really, the way it was different from the rest, is that the rest were kata, i.e. a prescribed attack and defense, whereas randori was simply a list of loose techniques. "Randori" was way advanced, and were the last techniques just before the secret orally transmitted techniques that consisted of itsutsu-no-kata (or at least named that way in Kôdôkan, obviously not in TSYR) and the kappô techniques. The last part is thus not so different from Kôdôkan were itsutsu and kappô today have remained the final teachings.

So, to come back to the question, randori in Kitô-ryû, Tenjin shin'yô-ryû, and Kôdôkan was all three times something entirely different !

It is true that in historic writings of Kôdôkan a few anecdotes exist referring to Kanô and randori, for example, in the sense of at a certain point in time one of Kanô's teachers supposedly no longer being able to ... "throw him in randori". We do not know exactly what this means even though most people will interpret this in our current understanding of randori. That it likely not what it means though.

Most of these statements about Kanô are obscure, not clearly identified, referenced or dated or what their origin is. In fact, Kanô is one of the very few if not the only 'master' of some name in Japanese martial arts who seems to have risen to a certain fame without virtually any documented fight, something that makes part of the history of Kôdôkan suspect. Virtually all koryû schools were created because of a member of one shool being defeated then studying or training himself and finally famously defeating the master of another school in this way establishing fame. In Kôdôkan, remarkably no such thing exists, and instead references are made to students of Kôdôkan in a number of famous contests defeating another school, in this way contributing to the fame of Kôdôkan. While this and similar stories are enthousiastically shared in many popular writings about Kôdôkan jûdô's history, what it mostly shows is that the Kôdôkan in fact cheated, since about all of its students who participated i those contents in fact held high jûjutsu qualifications prior to entering the Kôdôkan, questioning whether their victories really were due to Kôdôkan jûdô or to their prior knowledge in jûjutsu. Yamashita, Nagaoka, Yokoyama, Saigô, you name it, all had koryû skills (the only famous jûdôka who really started off directly as a jûdôka was Mifune, but this is much later since Mifune was born only in 1883 when the Kôdôkan was already in existece, so he was not involved at all in any of this). For these contests to have been honest, Kanô should have only allowed students who had zero experience in jûjutsu and only had Kôdôkan jûdô as their martial arts background. Of course he didn't ...

[Lileu]

Vielen Dank für diesen Einblick in die Praktiken der Koryu.

[HBt.]

Herzlichen Dank CK,

mit Deinen Postings bereicherst Du dieses Forum.


Gruß,
HBt.

(BTW.
Ich bin allerdings davon überzeugt, dass Deshi auch von ganz alleine auf diese Schlussfolgerungen gekommen wäre oder sie sogar schon längst gezogen hat(te).)

[Deshi]

Thank you very much for your elaborate reply CK!

I am aware kata are not what they used/supposed to be* , still I am somewhat surprised as it seems there aren't any more alive
training methods than "very dynamic kata with a resisting uke" in the Koryu (that we know of). Using and handling the unexpected
are essential fighting skills. I'd be even more surprised if the Koryu Jujutsu practitioners weren't aware of that, especially with
an alive grappling art like Sumo around.
The lack of information on the matter (especially with regards to Tenshin Shin'yo Ryu and Kito Ryu) is frustrating.

*On topic bonus for all interested, an old school Kime no Kata excerpt:

[Fritz]

@Deshi: Hiermit möchte ich Dich darauf hinweisen, daß wir ein deutschsprachiges Forum sind und deshalb Beiträge in deutscher Sprache zu verfassen sind. Natürlich gibt es da auch Ausnahmen,
diese betreffen Zitate aus fremdsprachigen Quellen und - jetzt kommt es - Beiträge von Cichorei Kano - er hatte nämlich explizit um diese Ausnahme gebeten,
da er nach eigenem Bekunden zwar sehr gut Deutsch lesen kann, aber es für ihn zeitlich nicht machbar ist, seine inhaltlich in der Regel sehr anspruchsvollen Texte so ins Deutsche zu übertragen,
daß die sprachliche Form dem inhaltlichen Anspruch gerecht wird.

[HBt.]

Entschuldige Deshi,
aber ich teile Deine Meinungen nicht immer 100%ig.

Unter anderem fragte ich deshalb:

Hast Du eine bestimmte Vorstellung mit der Du die Praktiken (einer Koryu oder Gendai Budo) vergleichen möchtest?

Was erwartest Du eigentlich, besser formuliert ...
"was genau wünscht Du Dir?", "einfach nur mehr Input?".

Der von Dir verlinkte Videoschnipsel verdeutlicht es irgendwie nicht. Ungewöhnliches, Außergewöhnliches kann ich dort nicht erkennen.

Übe doch einmal die Kime no kata fleißig
.

[Deshi]

@Deshi: Hiermit möchte ich Dich darauf hinweisen, daß wir ein deutschsprachiges Forum sind und deshalb Beiträge in deutscher Sprache zu verfassen sind. ...

Tut mir leid, das war in erster Linie als Antwort an CK gedacht, ich wollte ihm da etwas entgegenkommen.

[Yannick.Schultze]

Hallo,

vielleicht auch von interesse, es handelt sich zwar um ein Karate-Buch (Shōtōkan)... aber wir finden hier auch Einflüsse des Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū sowie des Shindō Yōshin-ryū.

Wittwer, Henning: Shōtōkan - überlieferte Texte ~ historische Untersuchungen. Band II, Niesky 2012.

Die Infos finden wir auf 213f.

Shindō Yōshin-ryū wurde 1864 u.a. aus zwei Jūjutsu-Stilen gegründet, Tenjin shin‘yō-ryū und Totsuka-ha Yōshin-ryū sowie aus zwei Schwert-Stilen: Jikishinkage-ryū und Hokushin Ittō-ryū.

Gruss
Yannick

[Deshi]

Entschuldige Deshi,
aber ich teile Deine Meinungen nicht immer 100%ig.

Unter anderem fragte ich deshalb:

Hast Du eine bestimmte Vorstellung mit der Du die Praktiken (einer Koryu oder Gendai Budo) vergleichen möchtest?

Was erwartest Du eigentlich, besser formuliert ...
"was genau wünscht Du Dir?", "einfach nur mehr Input?".

Der von Dir verlinkte Videoschnipsel verdeutlicht es irgendwie nicht. Ungewöhnliches, Außergewöhnliches kann ich dort nicht erkennen.

Übe doch einmal die Kime no kata fleißig
.

Ich teile Deine Meinungen auch nicht immer HBt.

Worauf meine Frage ursprünglich abzielte: Ich wollte wissen, ob es im Tenjin-Shinyo-Ryu eine lebendige Trainingsform gab oder gibt.
Lebendig heißt dabei: Zufälliges, freies Bewegen, Attackieren und Verteidigen der Beteiligten bei gegenseitigem Versuch, die Technik des anderen nicht zuzulassen. Freies Sparring gegen Widerstand. Halt eben wie Randori im Judo, Sparring im Boxen, "Rollen" im BJJ und wie auch immer es in anderen Kampfkünsten genannt wird. Gegebenenfalls hätte ich mir eine detailliertere Beschreibung der zugelassenen Techniken gewünscht und ob diese
Trainingsform unverändert seit Beginn der Ryu praktiziert wird oder ob es dabei Änderungen gab.

Das Video habe ich nur verlinkt, weil es irgendwie zum von CK angeschnittenen Thema Kata früher und heute passt. Was mir an dem verlinkten Beispiel gefällt ist, dass es ohne förmlichen Schnickschnack auskommt und vor allem - nach meinem Empfinden - die Essenz der Kata, nämlich "Kime" - Entschlossenheit zeigt. Mir gefällt das besser als viele, viele andere moderne Demos, die ich gesehen habe.

[tutor!]

Das Video habe ich nur verlinkt, weil es irgendwie zum von CK angeschnittenen Thema Kata früher und heute passt. Was mir an dem verlinkten Beispiel gefällt ist, dass es ohne förmlichen Schnickschnack auskommt und vor allem - nach meinem Empfinden - die Essenz der Kata, nämlich "Kime" - Entschlossenheit zeigt. Mir gefällt das besser als viele, viele andere moderne Demos, die ich gesehen habe.

Aber vergleiche bitte nicht Äpfel mit Birnen. Das verlinkte Video ist keine Demonstration gewesen - genauso, wie ein gutes Kata-Training heutzutage auch nicht nach Demonstration aussieht.

[Cichorei Kano]

Thank you very much for your elaborate reply CK!

I am aware kata are not what they used/supposed to be* , still I am somewhat surprised as it seems there aren't any more alive
training methods than "very dynamic kata with a resisting uke" in the Koryu (that we know of). Using and handling the unexpected
are essential fighting skills. I'd be even more surprised if the Koryu Jujutsu practitioners weren't aware of that, especially with
an alive grappling art like Sumo around.
The lack of information on the matter (especially with regards to Tenshin Shin'yo Ryu and Kito Ryu) is frustrating.

*On topic bonus for all interested, an old school Kime no Kata excerpt:

Yes, Fritz is correct. I understand and read German without any problems, but I cannot write it flawlessly and it takes me an uncommon amount of time. So, please, just reply and post your answers and questions in German. If I can respond briefly or the response is not too complicated I always try to do in German.

Permit me to add a correction in the sense that I am not convinced you understood my response correctly in all of its nuances. I did not say, or at least did not mean to say that more dynamic forms than kata with resistance did not exist in "koryû". What I was trying to explain is that even for those who specialize in the history of budô like myself it is impossible to know how all training forms exactly were carried out in each different koryû school or in 2 or 3 dozen of koryû. It is practically almost impossible to gain that amount of intrinsic knowledge of so many different koryû. Many techniques are similar, and from the moment you start practicing more than 2 or 3 koryû you start mixing up techniques unless each koryû is about an entirely different system. Obviously one is not going to mix up a koryû of swimming in armor with one of tying up people, but one will mix up techniques when practicing 3 unarmed koryû. So, while attempting to help you and provide information, please be mindful of my limitations of knowledge too.

I also tried to explain that the majority of koryû schools were weapons-based making a real free fight very dangerous even when using wooden replica swords, unless the use of protective materials became more common. I also wanted to emphasize that in those koryû where substantial free fight existed, it usually was reserved only for the most advanced students, contrary to Kôdôkan where randori is an integral part of beginner's jûdô. So, even if you are an exception who managed to study 2 or 3 koryû in depth it is almost impossible for a Westerner or for most Japanese to hold the most advanced rankings in all of those koryû so that one can speak with great expertise over the most advanced curriculum of all those different koryû. I can speak and tell you about what I can read in terms of notes and papers of 9 different koryû, but please, do not expect me or anyone else to possess intrinsic technical mastership of 9 different koryû so that we could all precisely tell you about their curriculum from our own practical experience in all of them instead of what we have learnt from reading and viewing parts of them during enbu.

I also tried to explain that I was reluctant to provide in detail statements of koryû in general, and that a person who trains and holds advanced ranks in a specific koryû will be more qualified to discuss HIS specific koryû's techniques and training forms than I. The 3 schools I discussed are somewhat of an exception to this, hence why I discussed them. The reasons that I discussed them is that Kitô-ryû really is an extinct school (even though over time two or Japanese research groups have kept actively study and practice the approach of Noda-ha style and an unofficial offspring towards Kôdôkan's Koshiki-no-kata and over time also have taken up the representation of the school inside one or both major Japanese koryû organizations named earlier in this thread , and even though I have uncovered large parts of the rest of the curriculum), that we all well know Kôdôkan so we can discuss that with expertise, and that in Tenjin Shin'yô-ryû I can provide an insight in what I remembered while never reaching the same advanced rank in this school that the current international leadership holds hence why I do not possess the same technical skill of the school though I still maintain a decent level of theoretical and historic knowledge of the school and its technical contents..

There are a few videos on youtube, but not many, such as some excerpts featuring Katori shintô-ryû's Otake Risuke which show some pretty realistic fighting using weapons. What becomes immediately clear is that these are people with extremely advanced skills. I don't know any koryû films that show beginners doing free fight (I am not saying that they do not exist, I am saying that I do not know ay of them); that was my point and one of the more or less general differences between most koryû and Kôdôkan jûdô.

So, nothing I said precluded or challenged that perhaps tomorrow someone well-versed in a koryû that II have never practiced comes on this forum and may well explain that in his school some very dynamic randori type of exercise much closer to Kôdôkan jûdô exists. Koryû are not like Kôdôkan jûdô or karate with hundreds of books existing about a specific school that details the entire curriculum. When we accumulate knowledge of many several schools it usually is limited to academic study, just like with Kanô. This is very different from having actually practiced and having gone through all of the learning stages of dozens of schools, something that is nearly impossible to achieve. I know that there are a few master's in Japan who through inheritance have become the Xth head of this ryû, and the Yth sôke of that ryû, well rest assured that even them on occasions can't exactly remember techniques and mix them up with one of the other schools. So, the problem that is posed here is not one to be underestimated.