# Taihenjutsu-ukemi, rolling with the sword



## DuskB4Dawn (Oct 22, 2011)

Hi everyone. its been a whille since I posted here.
 Ive still been training with sensei Parker at Jyuku Tatsu Ninjutsu Dojo in Melbourne weekly and have been as interested if not more interested in ninjutsu as when I first started a year ago.

So I have been known to be abit eccentric when it comes to ninjutsu. and whille I do take my ninjutsu training very seriously I have a reputation amongst my fellow students to be over interested in fantasy ninja.

this has not seemed to dull my interest in ninjutsu and I have been looking to further my knowledge of Tai Sabaki movements. and evasive monouvers within ninjutsu such as rolling and Tumbling. I have even started taking classes in Gymnastics and Parkour to supplement my ninjutsu training.

Now your averadge person would be perfectly content to learn to do rolling proficiently. I have often wondered if you could do these rolls with weapons or would it work while wearing armour or equipment. hay I told you I was alittle accentric. And I don't want to bother my Sensei with endless questions

Thus I have come here to ask the ninjutsu community about this and if anyone else has done anything like this and trainind to do rolls with weoponry?

I have actually found that Togakure Ryu cover this in the formal curriculum I think its called Taihenjutsu-ukemi. what I want to know is how is this at all possible if you are wearing a saya? also alot of other longer weoponry like yari this would not be possible. perhaps jo or bokken you can do ukemi? how would one go about learning rolling with a sword?

And another thing that I notice with rolling is that if you are carring alot of equipment that rolling is much harder if not impossible. you cant have bags or equipment attacheched to the body and be able to roll. and I imagine that rolling in armour would be even harder. thus things like rolling and tumbling movements are unnecessary. why would they bother to teach things like rolls and back handspring escapes if it wasn't necessary?


----------



## gregtca (Oct 23, 2011)

http://bujinkansantamonica.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html


here is an interresting blog , but you should  ask you teacher , and then think seriously about rolling/ breakfalling in real combat and see if its a great idea , 

Gregtca


----------



## Chris Parker (Oct 23, 2011)

DuskB4Dawn said:


> Hi everyone. its been a whille since I posted here.
> Ive still been training with sensei Parker at Jyuku Tatsu Ninjutsu Dojo in Melbourne weekly and have been as interested if not more interested in ninjutsu as when I first started a year ago.
> 
> So I have been known to be abit eccentric when it comes to ninjutsu. and whille I do take my ninjutsu training very seriously I have a reputation amongst my fellow students to be over interested in fantasy ninja.
> ...



Ha, while not you may not have wanted to bother me with questions (never a bother, by the way), posting on a forum I frequent is guaranteed to get my attention. Still, here we go!

Yes, absolutely you can roll in armour and with weapons... it's just a little harder, that's all! Yagyu Shingan Ryu, for instance, is known for it's rather acrobatic ukemi, including being performed in armour. In terms of rolling in armour, there are certain things to keep in mind, such as maintaining control of the shikoro as you roll. When it comes to rolling with weapons, that I'm going to be taking you through in December, as well as some of the more interesting ukemi methods during November. But once more, parkour and gymnastics are not the same as what we do, in a number of ways.



DuskB4Dawn said:


> Thus I have come here to ask the ninjutsu community about this and if anyone else has done anything like this and trainind to do rolls with weoponry?



Rolling in armour might be less common, but rolling with weaponry is not uncommon.



DuskB4Dawn said:


> I have actually found that Togakure Ryu cover this in the formal curriculum I think its called Taihenjutsu-ukemi. what I want to know is how is this at all possible if you are wearing a saya? also alot of other longer weoponry like yari this would not be possible. perhaps jo or bokken you can do ukemi? how would one go about learning rolling with a sword?



Rolling with a saya comes down to controlling it, rolling with a yari is not really common, but can be done if you have to (typically, though, for that to occur, you would be far too close to use the spear in the first place, so you would have had to have made some pretty big errors). Learning it is the same as anything else, you come to class when it is presented and practice.

Oh, and to differentiate properly, Togakure Ryu doesn't really teach with that terminology. For that Ryu, "Ukemi" refers to fighting methods, implying receiving an attack. Taihenjutsu refers to "body changing art", and is the term used there. Specific Ryu use terminology in their own way, with the term "taihenjutsu ukemi" being more a generic terminology used in things like the Ten Chi Jin Ryaku no Maki, and Hatsumi's early book entitled "Togakure Ryu Ninpo Taijutsu", which isn't really Togakure Ryu, but pretty well an alternate version of the TCJ. In Gyokko Ryu, Taihenjutsu is the name given to a range of evasive basics against sword attacks, for example.



DuskB4Dawn said:


> And another thing that I notice with rolling is that if you are carring alot of equipment that rolling is much harder if not impossible. you cant have bags or equipment attacheched to the body and be able to roll. and I imagine that rolling in armour would be even harder. thus things like rolling and tumbling movements are unnecessary. why would they bother to teach things like rolls and back handspring escapes if it wasn't necessary?


 
Tell you what, here's a fun clip of Yagyu Shingan Ryu, including some of their ukemi, and some yoroi ukemi at the end.






Go to 6:40 for the armoured ukemi.



gregtca said:


> http://bujinkansantamonica.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html
> 
> 
> here is an interresting blog , but you should  ask you teacher , and then think seriously about rolling/ breakfalling in real combat and see if its a great idea ,
> ...



An interesting article, there, Greg. I don't agree 100% with it, nor with the contextual usage of Hatsumi Sensei's quote either, honestly, but good food for thought.


----------



## DuskB4Dawn (Oct 24, 2011)

thankyou Gregtc. that was a good blog. I bookmarked it for later.

thankyou sensei this video was great. its defiantly very acrobatic and amazing to watch. at one stage the guy flips over the others back and nearly flies in the air!
but I do like the counters to the throws of this video very much. It wasn't really what I was thinking I was thinking more like dodging an attack but this is even better and far more useful.
and on the end they do some counters with armor. although it looks a bit slower and looks harder. but yes definitely possible.

so in Togakure Ryu ukemi would be used more to describe like in the video ways to escape a throws or joint locks in taijutsu and Taihenjutsu is more about avoiding and dodging movement like rolling to escape a sword attack?
I think I can understand this better now. thanks


----------



## Chris Parker (Oct 24, 2011)

No, the Ukemi term in Togakure Ryu refers to a series of six kata (Kaeshi Dori, Ken Nagare, Itto Dori, Itto Giri, Yoko Geri, and Ichi no Kamae), using Shuko against sword attacks. You just went through them, actually. Togakure is a little unusual in that, though.


----------



## Sanke (Oct 24, 2011)

Interesting posts as ever, Sensei, the Shingan Ryu video was very impressive! I've not seen much of their armoured kata before, so that was a real treat. The iai and other weaponry work was also quite interesting, quite different to what I've been exposed to so far. The reiho also stood out in particular, it was downright vicious!
As for the Togakure ryu stuff, I'm very much looking forward to rolling with weapons, though I think I'd do well to get rolling *without* weapons down pat first.


----------



## Indagator (Oct 26, 2011)

We roll with weapons. Bokken and rokushakubo are simple enough to roll with, and the basic manriki kata in our dojo includes rolling with the manriki.
Due to our outdoor training we often roll in mud, on bark, on concrete, on gravel, pretty much on anything really. I find that harder surfaces such as paved concrete help me work out things I am doing wrong when I roll.
Once I recall rolling simulating holding a child. That was interesting...

Nice vid, Mr Parker.


----------



## DuskB4Dawn (Nov 1, 2011)

rolling while simulating holding a child? hmmm never know when you might need to do a roll with a baby on board lol.
and I have found that when rolling on concrete does help with not rolling on the spine. I do this at parkour a lot but the way they roll is different and if i do a ninjutsu roll I could hurt myself because it is to slow and to low to the ground.
 my parkour instructor has said if you pause at all during the roll when you do one from after a big jump the force of the impact will not transfer to forward momentum but travel back and damaged your body. so I've had to learn to types of rolls.


----------



## Chris Parker (Nov 1, 2011)

Hmm, you shouldn't be hurting yourself (or stopping!) with ours, either... As far as our rolls being too slow and too low to the ground, I'll disagree there. Low to the ground is a learning stage, as is slow. Eventually you'll be able to do them from a range of heights, and pretty fast as well. But remember, our rolls aren't to absorb the impact of jumping off a building, they're to receive the attacks. And when being thrown, the attacker will probably aim you at the ground pretty fast, so low is a good thing (it's kinda the natural level for a roll....). That's what the parkour instructor is talking about, and it's the same with us, if you try to stop (pause) while being thrown, you're going to be hurt... but in a way fairly different to the hurt of a parkour roll.


----------



## Indagator (Nov 1, 2011)

DuskB4Dawn said:


> rolling while simulating holding a child? hmmm never know when you might need to do a roll with a baby on board lol.
> .



Well, yeah lol. Some of us have families. I've sometimes been around families so big that it reminds me of that story about Cho Buren lol. So yeah, could prove useful on that surface level. 
Honestly though I think the point of that training may have also been the fact that holding an object is one thing, but holding a small child or baby changes things - it is a being that feels pain and must be protected too, whereas an inanimate object will not. Therefore it is a different attitude and... could I say _feeling_? that goes into it wheny ou do so.
Of course the surfactory lessons of simply being able to safely roll while holding a child could be useful at some point in the future, one cannot deny that, but I'd hazard that the principles that we were being guided to internalise here were perhaps more along the lines of that which I have touched on here.

That's my .02 on it anyway lol.


----------

