Recent changes to ryuha just scares me, because these are changes being made in an age where people just don't fight to the death any more in Japan with swords, but I'm sure they must know what they are doing, and hope that what they are actually trying to do is to 'get back' to the methods that worked long ago, rather than re-invent the guruma.[/;quote]
I get where you're coming from here, and agree. This is why the choice of Soke is so important, as it's their job to ensure the continuation of the Ryu itself, not to alter it for no reason. So if any changes are made, they aren't made lightly.
To show what I mean by that, I mentioned a few examples of changes in Koryu earlier; here, I'm going to give a little more detail, to explain how those changes came about.
Hontai Yoshin Ryu, a sister school (different branch) of our Takagi Yoshin Ryu, has begun integrating Toyama Ryu Iai into their syllabus, as mentioned. The reason for this was actually to aid in the preservation of the existing curriculum. The previous Soke, Innoue Munetoshi Soke, with a few of his senior students, noted that with a lack of sword skills in the students (due to them not being samurai, or training in other, weapon-related arts) the performance of their Muto Dori kata was lacking in a number of ways. With the sword attacks not being skillful, the Jujutsuka's responces were losing their skills as well. The evasions weren't clean, the weapon control wasn't tight, and so on.
Innoue Soke had trained in a range of weapon arts himself, including Iai (Seitei, I believe, as well as Toyama Ryu), and one of the senior Shihan was also training in Toyama Ryu at the time. Using the Toyama Ryu kata they put together a syllabus for the Hontai Yoshin Ryu students to improve their sword-handling skills, with the practical upshot being that the students gained a far greater appreciation for why the Muto Dori techniques are performed the way they are, and their skill improved while preserving that important section of the HYR curriculum. It may be noted, though, that the Hontai Yoshin Ryu do not consider the Toyama Ryu material part of the Koryu transmission of it's teachings, although they do approach, teach and train them (as well as test them for rank and licence) in the same manner.
The Toda-ha Buko Ryu, over it's history, had lost a number of sections of it's curriculum leading up to the current generation, such as it's Kusarigama Jutsu, and Nagamaki Jutsu. They did, however, retain very detailed notes on exactly what the "lost" kata contained.
After attaining the rank of Shihan in the Ryu, Ellis Amdur requested permission from Niita Soke to try to reconstruct these lost sections. She agreed, and Ellis set to work with some of his students figuring out the kata, and when ready, presented them in front of the Soke. Ellis' efforts had been substantial, working out the mechanics, ensuring that the techniques "worked" for real, and so on, however when Niita Soke saw the kata being demonstrated, she was not happy with them (in a very Japanese way of thanking Ellis for his effort...). The problem was that Ellis had looked too much at how he would personally express the kata, and that lead to a large amount of his Araki Ryu methods coming through in the "feel" of the demo.
Ellis, a little dismayed at that, went away and redid the kata, ensuring that the kata remained completely true to Toda-ha Buko Ryu this time. Mechanically, the kata didn't really change, but when the Soke saw the second demonstration, she was immensely pleased with them, and declared that at the next Embu they would be demonstrated and performed by the senior Shihan of the Ryu (interesting note: Toda-ha Buko Ryu only has Western Shihan, no Japanese ones).
In both cases, the interests of the Ryu, and it's preservation, are the impetus for any change. Anything else just doesn't suit the title of Koryu.
I entirely disagree that ANY kata is more like a real fight than sparring, although I have always been aware of the limitations of sparring in an art such as ours.
For me, a kata is an attempt to replicate a real fight/encounter, all the way to the adrenaline that is generated, and moving through that. It is also concerned with instilling the ways of moving that are part of the system itself, whereas sparring is more about exploring your own personal way of moving. The lessons of kata come from real encounters, the lessons of sparring come from the experience of sparring, which is removed from a real encounter in a number of ways.
I am not 'only' concerned with 'modern' self defence (whatever modern is), but I am 'primarily' concerned with self defence (and defence of others when running is not an option), because if it doesn't WORK then you have no business practicing it, whether it is something from 600 years ago or last Tuesday.
And that type of approach is great. But what it leads you towards is more of a personal exploration of your own movement in different situations, which is taking you away from Koryu-style training where you are attempting to embrace and inhabit the methodology and thought patterns of the Ryu itself. As for what I meant by "modern self defence", that simply refers to self defence in the modern, Western world. That implies a different form of attack than that found in older times and other countries, different weapons that may be encountered, different environments that may prove dangerous, and vastly different senses of legality and the repercussions.
If you are primarily concerned with self defence, then the Koryu aren't for you. Which is fine, they really aren't for many people. I may point out that the topic of the thread is "The purpose of the Ryu", not "the reasons for training in the Ryu". That's a big part of the equation, really.
A massive bloke sitting astride you trying to punch your head into the ground is pretty much closer to how a real fight will play out, than some dude in hakama moonwalking towards you with a big wobbly stick, roaring, thrusting and freezing.
In a modern context, yeah. But there may be some misunderstanding of the "moonwalking" there. In my experience, the walking towards an opponent is cautious, mainly due to the fact that both are there to kill/injure each other, so caution may be wise. The Uke/Uchidachi is looking for their right opening to launch their attack, and the walk in reflects that. It's little different to two sportsmen (boxers, MMA competitors, and so on) "feeling each other out" at the beginning of the first round. It's an expression of the awareness on both sides.
For the last few weeks I've been trying to get my students to understand the role of the attacker in our training. We're going through Koto Ryu, and we've been getting to the end of the Shoden no Gata, where the majority of the attacks are double stepping lunge punches. But of course, no-one pays attention to that side of things, as it's not "their turn". So I've been trying to stimulate their understanding of what is going on there, by highlighting the approach that Uke is taking, their strategy, tactics, and techniques. The strategy is simply to injure Tori. The tactic is to not stop until that has happened, basically a continuous barrage assault. The technique is then a stepping Fudo Ken to the head. As a result, if Tori doesn't do what they need to do at the right time, with the right timing etc, Uke will just keep coming with more and more punches until one lands, or they are stopped.
When watching a demonstration like the ones you can find on You-Tube, it often helps to think of what Uke is really trying to achieve in the kata, as that can help explain certain aspects, like the slower walk in found in some systems and demos.
Perhaps there are clips out there that are more to my taste, but I always seem to come across this kind of thing, and I am talking about many many different ryuha:
and this is one of the better examples.
Ah, Yagyu Shingan Ryu, nice find.
One other point about Embu, they really aren't all the same, and not all of them really showcase what the Ryu is like as a training entity all that accurately. Some Embu are smaller, local affairs, with the junior students sent out to get their feet wet, so what you see there won't be necessarily anywhere near as polished as you may like (incidentally, a few weeks ago, there was a demonstration out here of Nittai Dai Sports University, a University in Tokyo know for it's martial arts and cultural arts programs, and they put on a demonstration of a number of disparate arts, including Judo, Kendo, Shotokan Karate-do, Shorinji Kenpo, Sumo, Kyudo, Naginatado, and Aikido, as well as traditional drumming [Taiko] and dance. A number of the demo's were incredibly well done, such as the Karate, Sumo, Shorinji Kenpo and Judo ones. Others were very interesting to me, but fell a little flat with the crowd, such as Kyudo, and a couple were rather lacking, frankly. They were the kata demonstration of Naginatado and the Aikido demo. And that was no fault of the performers, it was just that the Judo demonstrators appeared to have very thorough grounding in Judo before going to the University, and the girls who demo'd Aikido and Naginata kata seemed to have only a year or so training behind them, and were very new to the respective arts). Other Embu will have the senior members involved, but they may all be in their 80's or nearabouts, which can severely limit how intense a demonstration can be, or what can be shown.
Add to that the fact that the Embu are supposed to showcase the kata in a pure form in most cases, and the variances that may be present in a training session may not be there in the Embu performance.... then again, it may be! It really depends on the Ryu-ha itself.
At the end of the day, our predecessors did not practice any of these arts as some kind of fantasy-borne, academic, larping hobby. They would have been largely concerned with staying alive and geared their training towards that end.
Fantasy-borne and larping, absolutely not. Academic, though? Possibly, to be frank. Remember that the training forms of Koryu are not necessarily designed with combative effectiveness in mind, if something more important can be transmitted through the kata, which is most often the case. After all, we all realise that a true combative encounter won't possibly happen the way a kata is presented (in fact, I can only think of a handful of examples of Ryu that teach exact methods that have a basis in tried and tested violence), so the thing is to look at what the training is supposed to actually teach, and from there, gain an understanding of who was supposed to benefit, how, and why. Staying alive is certainly a big part of it, but that doesn't necessarily translate to personal survival in all cases.
And as for kata being plenty scary. More scary than having no idea what the other guy is going to do next, but fully aware that he has knocked out his last ten opponents?
In a number of cases, yes. When training in a Koryu Kenjutsu system, for example, ideally the feel should get to the point where you feel enough pressure that you forget the kata itself... and then have a heavy lump of oak (or hickory, Ken....) aggressively and powerfully swung down at your head at speed! If you don't move, pain and stiches ensue. I can think of a number of kata in a number of systems where if both members aren't completely concentrated, broken bones happen pretty much instantly. And if that lump of oak is aiming at your head, and hits.....
Kata is about having paper when you know rock is coming, scissors when you know paper is coming, and rock when you know scissors are coming.
Not quite, I'd say. It's more that kata training is about how to handle when the opponent has a rock, or scissors, or even paper. It's about recognising those forms of attack, and responding in a tested and established (proven) way.
A real fight is about making sure you provide the correct response when you don't know whether they are going to show rock, paper or scissors, to feint rock and then switch to scissors, or show scissors and then get their buddy to throw a rock at you from behind, and if you get it wrong, you get hurt or killed.
But the question there becomes how do you know what responces are best against such attacks? Kata should teach you to recognise those attacking methods of the opponent, as well as provide the options and actions to respond properly and powerfully. And remember that kata training doesn't have to be nominated all the time.... when you have a range of kata against the same, or similar attacks, or even a variety of attacks, part of the training can allow for Uke to come in with any of those methods, and Tori needs to respond properly without knowing which form the attack will come in with. It's really not about deciding what you're going to do before it happens. That's a big part of the Mushin concept there, no pre-determination or judgement.
It doesn't matter how good your paper [kata] is, if you use it against scissors. It might be the best paper ever, but if use inappropriately, or not tested properly, it will just be pretty paper for lay philosophers to coo over.
And the answer to that may well be that if you use your "paper" responce kata against a "scissors" attack method, you didn't understand the kata properly in the first place.
Does that make good MMA training a waste of time? No, it's about context. Koryu were developed within a certain context, and the goal is to keep that creation going, genreally with as little change as possible.
