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Old 12-30-2013, 05:21 PM   #29
Hilary
Dojo: Torrey Pines Aiki Kai
Location: San Diego
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 107
United_States
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Re: YouTube: 1984 NY Aikikai 20th anniv demo Chiba-sensei

While Perlman may have never dropped his bow, I suspect nobody ever tried to hit is out of his hand with a bokken (really poor analogy). I am relatively sure he has played the wrong note on more than one occasion or even spaced out while playing and screwed up the tempo etc. How you recover from the mistake is what counts because you are going to make them, pretty sure O Sensei made few.

Many of the videos out there have high level guys taking a really long time to make some fancy throw. To me it often looks like oops that one is going to suck move on, keep uke moving and do what comes next. The invincibility of the shihans is always questionable because on any given day some guy with fast hands gets lucky and lands the punch that knocks him out; top assume anything else is a supreme act of hubris.

That having been said, I have witnessed Chiba being a bit of an {fill in your preferred description here} myself. And the story in one of the "similar threads" links talking about Chiba breaking the arm of a knife fighter he was working out with is appalling. The guys seems unnecessarily rough on his ukes and has a personal style of muscling things a bit much from my taste. But is seems to have worked for him, at least he is not throwing uke with his mind.
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