Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby origami_itto on Wed Jan 16, 2019 7:23 am

vagabond wrote:who wrote "life giving sword"? that dude was a button for sure



Aha!

That sound clip comes from Shogun Assassin, the bastard mash up edit of the first two episodes of the Lone Wolf and Cub TV Movies, based on the amazing Lone Wolf and Cub manga, a meticulously researched and realized tale set during Edo period Japan.

It's actually very highly regarded for, despite the superhuman abilities of the hero Ogami Itto, accurately portraying the toilsome daily life of peasants and samurai during the brutal dying days of the Tokogawa regime.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby vagabond on Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:43 am

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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Wed Jan 16, 2019 2:56 pm

GrahamB wrote:btw Japan and Britain were best buddies at the time of the Boxer Rebellion (we both loved exploiting China), which explains why Jiujitsu was a Victorian fascination, and all those old clips of Victorian gentlemen doing Jiujitsu:

Image

British and Japanese forces engage Boxers in battle.


Great picture! Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Finny on Thu Jan 17, 2019 2:30 am

Trick wrote:
GrahamB wrote:The point I'm making is that all of them would have been suppressed by the Tokugawa regime.


Which schools of the sword(and other weapons) was practiced by the Tokugawa regime ? They themselves practiced some, didn’t they ? If they did have those schools survived to any of today’s Koryu schools ?


There were two official sword schools of the Tokugawa shogun - Ono-Ha Itto Ryu which, together with Nakanishi-Ha Itto ryu, Hokushin Itto Ryu and a couple of others, heavily influenced the development of kendo. Nakanishi-Ha Itto ryu were using kendo style bogu in the early 1700s.

The other was (Yagyu) Shinkage Ryu. The founder of Shinkage ryu, Kamiizumi Hidetsuna, developed the fukuro shinai close to a century before the Edo period:

Image

The notion that koryu systems were/are all stilted, overly formal and ritualised.. is misguided, in my view.

Both the Ono-Ha Itto Ryu and Yagyu Shinkage ryu are still extant.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:12 am

Finny wrote:
Trick wrote:
GrahamB wrote:The point I'm making is that all of them would have been suppressed by the Tokugawa regime.


Which schools of the sword(and other weapons) was practiced by the Tokugawa regime ? They themselves practiced some, didn’t they ? If they did have those schools survived to any of today’s Koryu schools ?


There were two official sword schools of the Tokugawa shogun - Ono-Ha Itto Ryu which, together with Nakanishi-Ha Itto ryu, Hokushin Itto Ryu and a couple of others, heavily influenced the development of kendo. Nakanishi-Ha Itto ryu were using kendo style bogu in the early 1700s.

The other was (Yagyu) Shinkage Ryu. The founder of Shinkage ryu, Kamiizumi Hidetsuna, developed the fukuro shinai close to a century before the Edo period:

Image

The notion that koryu systems were/are all stilted, overly formal and ritualised.. is misguided, in my view.

Both the Ono-Ha Itto Ryu and Yagyu Shinkage ryu are still extant.
thanks for this info,
Trick

 

Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:45 am

from the wiki on Sumo
Professional sumo (ōzumō) roots trace back to the Edo period in Japan as a form of sporting entertainment. The original wrestlers were probably samurai, often rōnin, who needed to find an alternative form of income.
although no info if the contests/performance where ‘stilted’ or had ‘aliveness’ to it as today’s Sumo contests
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby GrahamB on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:58 am

Trick wrote:from the wiki on Sumo
Professional sumo (ōzumō) roots trace back to the Edo period in Japan as a form of sporting entertainment. The original wrestlers were probably samurai, often rōnin, who needed to find an alternative form of income.
although no info if the contests/performance where ‘stilted’ or had ‘aliveness’ to it as today’s Sumo contests


Learning about Sumo from the podcast was quite a revelation for me. I hadn't realised that it was old, like really old. It goes back before recorded history in Japan.

Each shrine (and there would have been thousands at one point) had its own style of Sumo. So it wasn't one art with a rule set - there were thousands of rule sets, different uniforms, etc. For example in one style winning might be decided by lifting up an opponent from the ground rather than throwing them out of a ring. It was a folk wrestling style inseparable from Shinto.

What we know today as professional sumo was the court sumo style of the edo period. A form of entertainment. Again the Tokugawa suppressed it all down to one regulated style. Sure, it contains genuine competitive resistance training, but it was all heavily regulated compared to what existed before. The origins can still be seen in the rituals before the match, which use similar hand movements you find in a lot of Shamanism/Shinto, but again these are massively simplified.

A handful of old, old sumo styles still survive in Japan, but it's gone the way of Morris dancing in England - something people do once a year at a festival, rather than something people actively practice all the time and get very good at. It's very hard to find info about it (nobody is that interested these days), even on YouTube you can only find it if you search in Japanese.

I've found a couple of clips:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR-mf5WCfKc



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NkEsWMkiTs

Our sumo podcast episode:

https://www.spreaker.com/user/9404101/sumo
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:05 am

Don’t know how much regulated by an oppressive regime the sportive combat side of Sumo has been. If I look at Mongolian wrestling it seemingly do not differ significantly from Sumo ? Even Scandinavian Gilma have quite an resemblance with Sumo, and there I don’t see trace of regulations from an tyrannical regime.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby GrahamB on Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:52 am

Trick wrote:Don’t know how much regulated by an oppressive regime the sportive combat side of Sumo has been. If I look at Mongolian wrestling it seemingly do not differ significantly from Sumo ? Even Scandinavian Gilma have quite an resemblance with Sumo, and there I don’t see trace of regulations from an tyrannical regime.


I don't know if you're trying to deliberately just pick a fight, or if you've just misunderstood what I wrote.

Modern professional Sumo as we know it today was created by the Tokugawa out of their court sumo.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby GrahamB on Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:38 am

Ian,

I asked Damon and got this back:

"Well, that’s a whole other podcast episode, but the argument is essentially like the life of Confucius himself vs when his influence actually bit in society. Confucianism influenced the Japanese elite long before the Ashikaga came along. It’s the usual thing - argument about elites vs argument about society as a whole. - I think we covered it already.

There is also the issue of being Confucian in behaviour vs promoting Confucian philosophy. The Tokugawa were generically confucian :)

We didn’t say that the Tokugawa intervened in martial arts practice - we said that the culture they created did. For instance, the fact that there were no wars promoted Jiu Jitsu like practices.

Also in this context “martial arts practice” is referring to the small minority of martial arts practiced by the samurai class, not the large majority practiced by the population.

The Tokugawa had heavy control over the provinces - if they didn’t why did their leadership spend so much time in Edo instead of looking after their own interests?

The other “arts” they tried to suppress were the non-samurai martial arts"

best,
G
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:23 am

GrahamB wrote:Ian,

I asked Damon and got this back:

"Well, that’s a whole other podcast episode, but the argument is essentially like the life of Confucius himself vs when his influence actually bit in society. Confucianism influenced the Japanese elite long before the Ashikaga came along. It’s the usual thing - argument about elites vs argument about society as a whole. - I think we covered it already.

There is also the issue of being Confucian in behaviour vs promoting Confucian philosophy. The Tokugawa were generically confucian :)

We didn’t say that the Tokugawa intervened in martial arts practice - we said that the culture they created did. For instance, the fact that there were no wars promoted Jiu Jitsu like practices.

Also in this context “martial arts practice” is referring to the small minority of martial arts practiced by the samurai class, not the large majority practiced by the population.

The Tokugawa had heavy control over the provinces - if they didn’t why did their leadership spend so much time in Edo instead of looking after their own interests?

The other “arts” they tried to suppress were the non-samurai martial arts"

best,
G



I think none of that contradicts what I said. Your initial quote made some very specific generalizations which I addressed. The above nuanced take seems correct to me. I guess the only place for discussion would be with where the power lay in the Bakuhan system and when. The han did overthrow the bakufu, after all. I did bring up sankin kotai and even attainder, so...

Anyway, I look forward to the Sumo podcast. I think there will be some things to learn in that one. Best to Damon (and to you).
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:28 am

GrahamB wrote:
Trick wrote:Don’t know how much regulated by an oppressive regime the sportive combat side of Sumo has been. If I look at Mongolian wrestling it seemingly do not differ significantly from Sumo ? Even Scandinavian Gilma have quite an resemblance with Sumo, and there I don’t see trace of regulations from an tyrannical regime.


I don't know if you're trying to deliberately just pick a fight, or if you've just misunderstood what I wrote.

Modern professional Sumo as we know it today was created by the Tokugawa out of their court sumo.

No not actually picking a fight. misunderstanding could very well so be, but noting deliberately. I thought you meant Sumos wrestling side had been “suppressed” into the sumo wrestling we see today, when you actually mean that the religious/superstitious ways of sumo have been suppressed, do i correctly understand it now? But if you mean the wrestling side of it have been suppressed, it does not sound logic since as I pointed out other nations folk-wrestling that share similarities with Sumo there where probably other factors than suppression in play in their developments. Take for example Glima wrestling, it might originally have contained strikes, kicks, Head butting, biting, hair pulling and so on, you know, all that berserker stuff, of course it had to change somewhat………The regulation/change of the religious/spiritual/superstitious rituals might not have been because of an suppressive intention. When Eurosport was broadcasting sumo events from japan they edited away most of the ritual stuff to show only the wrestling bouts. Maybe that was what where going on back in the Edo area too, people mostly wanted to see the wrestling part ? so some editing were done. Costumers demand kind of. 8-)
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:47 am

Just want to highlight that you first wrote suppressed
Tokugawa suppressed it all down to one regulated style
and then change it to created
Modern professional Sumo as we know it today was created by the Tokugawa out of their court sumo.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby GrahamB on Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:24 am

Like I said, there are two different sumos:

Shrine sumo was suppressed.

Professional sumo was created.

Although at this point I’m edging towards just replying “yes you are completely right” because this is getting very time consuming.
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Re: Japanese martial arts from battlefield to MMA

Postby Trick on Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:29 am

But but wait, just one more thing…………………or, no maybe not :)
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