What are some martial arts that you have heard of (or preferably, come across personally) that are relatively unknown to the vast majority of the martial arts community?
It can come down to the fields in which one travels, being a koryu guy dominantly, there are any number of schools that are very well known in the area that, if I were to list them, would just be meaningless to many, such as Shindo Muso Ryu, Morishige Ryu, Yagyu Shingan Ryu, Kashima Shinto Ryu, Tamiya Ryu, Hoki Ryu, Hozoin Ryu Takada-ha, and many, many more... but even within koryu, there are very rare arts themselves, such as Unkou Ryu (a small kenjutsu school that, today, has it's entire membership comprising the head of the school and his son), Chikubujima Ryu (a bojutsu school which has a total of less than 10 practitioners, including a friend of mine), Higo Shinkage Ryu (a branch of Shinkage Ryu that stems from Kamizumi Ise-no-Kami Nobutsuna's nephew and student, completely independent of the more famous Yagyu Shinkage Ryu), Shinto Hatakage Ryu Iai (a very small branch of Tosa Iai taught in one dojo in Japan, with one branch in Michigan), or arts that have been subsumed into other arts, such as Fukuhara-ha Masaki Ryu Kusarigamajutsu, which is today a part of Suio Ryu, and so on, and so on, and so on.
We could then look at, instead of individual schools, particular subdivisions of martial skill-sets (not something I'd class as particular martial arts, more categorisations, or classifications of certain types), which gives us (in Japanese arts) approaches such as Hojutsu (feudal gunnery), Hojojutsu (arresting cord methods for tying up prisoners), Chigirikijutsu (a particular composite weapon consisting of a short staff, typically around 4 foot, with a weighted chain attached... today, only two schools teach this weapon, being Kiraku Ryu and Araki Ryu), O-naginata (a large version of a naginata, a short curved blade on a long haft, not too dissimilar to a Western halberd, found in Tenshinsho Den Katori Shinto Ryu, and Chokugen Ryu, where it is the primary weapon), or Kagitsuki Naginata (a specialist naginata with cross-bars, taught today in Toda-ha Buko Ryu and Shingyoto Ryu), Ko-naginata (a small version of a naginata, taught only in Shingetsu Muso Yanagi Ryu), and so on... Tessenjutsu (a short, closed fan, found as an auxiliary weapon in a number of classical jujutsu schools), and far, far more.
Or, to leave Japan, we could look at Jogo de Pau, a Portugeuse short staff fighting methods... or Zulu stick fighting, maintained as a tribal ritual centred around maturity festivals...there are any number of variants of Indonesian arts, as well as variants on Filipino systems... there are many groups studying old European manuals, such as Fiore de Liberi, Lichtenhaur, Talhoffer, and so on, in a field known as HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), where the aim is to re-interpret and re-discover the classical skills of medieval Europe through the writings of some of the more famous extant texts today...
As with any of this, of course, "obscure" will be subjective to the person answering... none of these are obscure to me, but might easily be for others.
When I was in Japan, I saw something called
taido.
I've often argued that it's martiaal
performance art, but here ypu go.
Ha, yeah, I'd agree with that assessment. It was created in 1965 by an Okinawan karate practitioner (Seiken Shukumine), with the aim of being more of a "social club", rather than focused on combative methodologies, hence it being more about challenging your body to do more "impressive" actions, lending itself to a more "showy" approach. In fact, they market themselves as being ideal for parkour practitioners who want to add some martial methods to their resume, as well as people interested in "tricking" and the like (hence the XMA similarities).
I’ll mention two. My primary art (Nihon Goshin Aikido) is obscure compared to many others. At its height, there were probably fewer than 80 schools. Not tiny, but pretty obscure compared to Ueshiba’s Aikido, for instance.
Ha, "fewer than 80 schools"? I can name a dozen arts with fewer than 80 students... in a number of them, fewer than 8!
And for a more obscure art, I had a chance to attend a seminar in Yanagi-Ryu Aiki Bugei. If the origins I heard are accurate, it was once a family style. I think the Soke (actually the appropriate title for an inherited style, I think) never had more than a few students at a time.
Yanagi Ryu is an interesting case study... it claims a rather ancient history, like it's related art of Daito Ryu, but likely is simply a form of off-shoot of that school. Yoshida Kotaro was a student/contemporary of Sokaku Takeda, studying Daito Ryu with him (as well as claiming a family line of a very similar art, but more likely trained in Shingetsu Muso Yanagi Ryu, itself an off-shoot of Takagi Ryu jujutsu), who taught his son Yoshida Kenji in the early half of the 20th Century, who moved to the US not long before WWII. He then, in turn, taught Don Angier, who restructured and re-named the art "Shidare Yanagi Ryu Aiki Budo". In turn, one of the main students of Don Angier was James Williams, founder of Nami Ryu (another modern Western take on this art). Today, the art is headed by Angier's adoptive grandson, Jeremy Breazeale. The only name change I am aware of is the addition of "Yoshida-ha" to the beginning (basically "Yoshida branch"), making it now known as "Yoshida-ha Shidare Yanagi Ryu".
If I'm not mistaken, it's relatively common in koryu as well. Ueshiba also practiced it extensively for both his spiritual and martial training (getting possessed by "gods"). Some of this knowledge has been passed down, although the exercise here is pared-down (scroll down for the English version):
Chinkon, expliqué par SAITO H. Sensei - Aikido Blog (.net)
No, not really... in fact, quite the opposite. I'm familiar with a number of "exorcism" rituals in classical (koryu) arts to remove a spirit from possessing someone... most commonly a kitsune (fox spirit). I am unfamiliar with any koryu that actively seeks "possession" in any form.
The idea of spirit possession is valid only if seen as it being generated from within, not by some outside source, IMO. Others may have a more religious or supernatural viewpoint. The spirit of monkey or tiger fighting, say, is based on our internal concept of monkeys or tigers.
The first thing to realise, in this context, is that the idea of "possession" in a Japanese religious context, is quite different to a Western religious one... secondly, the concept of "animalistic impressionism" fighting systems have little to nothing to do with any form of "spirit possession"... instead, it's a matter of observation of particular animals behaviours, then transposing that across to a human experience and body structure.
That said, there are numerous more "spiritual" practices, some of which have been subsumed into some martial traditions, along the lines of the "games" described in the article Elder linked... but I feel they were on the minimal side, and more related to religious rituals themselves. But it must be said that any form of "possession" has to come from external sources... invited or not. Otherwise, what exactly are you being "possessed" by?
If we have no experience with such animals, there is no source or concept for this spirit to exist and enter our consciousness. Having a concept of them, we can, if we choose, allow it to "enter" our active consciousness and influence our fighting style. We have many concepts, emotions and spirits within us. It's just a matter of allowing them to become activated (hopefully in a controlled fashion) and channeling them into action. We are, then, self-possessed.
An interesting concept... this starts to play into the idea of any number of possession concepts... both from a Western religious standpoint, and an Eastern one. And can be a confronting one, depending on your faith. In a way, if I'm reading this correctly, you're saying that anything you get "possessed" by has to be something you already have inside... which, from a religious perspective, denies the idea of possession. After all, if you're "possessed" by a divine spirit (in a Western sense), to have that come from inside, in a way, denies the divinity of that possession... which, naturally, adds to the conflict with certain beliefs. In an Eastern sense, particularly if dealing with a Japanese perspective, all aspects fo the world are naturally imbued with a form of spirit, as that's a central concept of Shinto. Of course, possession there is more about coming closer to the natural world than anything else, with the aforementioned "kitsune" possession being the variation/exception.
Maybe a bit of context would help. Chinkon kishin was a shamanistic practice of spirit possession, which was revived by Deguchi Onisaburo of the Oomoto sect. Ueshiba became a follower of Deguchi and regularly practiced the trance techniques learned from him.
The original method involves a medium (i.e. the guy who's going to be possessed), a helper and a koto player (seems like the music helps). The medium first calms the spirit (chinkon) then the divinity enters his body (kishin).
The practice was abandoned by the Oomoto sect because it was reported to be dangerous (unfortunately I don't have any details about incidents involving chinkon kishin) but Ueshiba continued to practice it. The method described above was shared by the son of Ueshiba's closest student, and seems to be derived from the original chinkon kishin, although I ignore the extent of H. Saito's knowledge of that practice.
With the note, of course, that the Omoto-kyo was a religious organisation... while it influenced Ueshiba to a great degree, and Aikido to a lesser one, it is not in any way related to martial teachings of traditions.
im not suprised, i think demonic possession, probably counts as dangerous or at best ill advised
Well, that's a very Judeo-Christian (Western) view of possession....
