"Kushike" Kumite

[Koshiki]

In my style we do a style of sparring that we call "Kushike" Kumite. I've never heard the term outside of our school, and google searches have turned up nothing. Basically, it's completely free sparring, no rules, no safety gear. It's performed quite slowly at first, striving for fluidity and continuity of movement. As students progress in skill and comfort, the speed of the sparring increases, but it is different from much sport sparring in one key aspect. You strive not to win, or to actually successfully strike or submit your opponent, but to allow them opportunities to counter you.

Now, in cases where the skill levels of practitioners are prohibitively different, obviously this might take the form of actively creating opportunities, but this is not the true intent. The intent is rather to strive for perfection in your technique, tactics, balance, fluidity, timing, etc, and especially continuous fluid motion, while at the same time keeping the pace relaxed enough for your partner (note, not opponent) to do the same. The ideal would be two practitioners sparring full speed with every technique perfecty utilized, but every technique also perfectly defended.

Obviously, that never happens, and even amongst the most restrained practitioners, things usually speed up to the point where strikes are landing, locks are jamming, and you have to separate for a minute to get the pace back to your ideal range.

I'm sure many schools have something like this, what I'm really interested is the term "kushike". Google translate tells me it means, "full use of the house," which I suppose might be a metaphorical approximation of "no holds barred," or something, given the uninhibited nature of the game. There's also a real chance that the pronunciation has been butchered. I mean, we pronounce "Pinan/Pyong Ahn" as "Pion," and "Naihanchi" as "Naiji," so "Kushike" might very well be pronounced, well, I have no idea.

Anyway, any of you guys know anything about the term?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Never heard the term. We do a form of what you described, but I've never heard a name for it.

 

[Koshiki]

Never heard the term. We do a form of what you described, but I've never heard a name for it.

Yeah, many schools do the same thing, most of the non-sport schools I'm familiar with.

I have found the term "Koshiki," which seems to pertain to a Judo kata, "Koshiki no Kata," depicting grappling in full armour, and also the World Koshiki Karatedo Federation (WKKF), which as far as I can tell is an alternative ruleset to standard Sport karate dating to the 80's, using body safety gear instead of gloves, and allowing multiple successive strikes to score, as opposed to the first only. Or something.

Apparently Koshiki means something like "Ancient Rite."

In that sense, I suppose it could have been somebody's attempt to distinguish cooperative flow training from emerging sport fighting, while giving the weight of centuries of tradition to the former? Ah well, it's probably yet another little bit of butchered, mangled history I'll never track down!