Chris Farnham

I am not familiar with the weapons techniques taught by Sugano Sensei but I am familiar with the 5 Kumitachi as taught by Chiba Sensei as well as the classical Iwama stlye. From what I can tell, Chiba sensei's kumitachi are the Iwama kumitachi with minor alterations added to reflect Chiba sensei's weapons. It is possible that Sugano Sensei either made his own adjustments, or taught them as they were taught in Iwama, I don't know. If you want to see the Iwama style search for "Saito sensei kumi tachi".I couldn't find any clips of Sugano Sensei doing the Kumi tachi but there are a number of Sugano Sensei weapons clips on YouTube. It is also possible that Sugano Sensei's ichi no Ken has nothing to do with the five Kumi tachi since Ichi no Ken just means first sword or sword movement 1, (Ichi=1, no=possessive grammatical particle, ken=sword) and could be an exercise of Sugano sensei's design.