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Ellis Amdur · 03-02-2008, 01:13 PM

Small comment: I took many classes with Yamaguchi Seigo. He REQUIRED a particular type of ukemi, and would get very angry and/or would subsequently ignore you if you didn't do this way. In essence, he used the uke as a living bokken - he was doing suburi with people. One of my closest friends and aikido teachers - Kuwamori Yasunori was "half" a judo man, and "half" an aikido man, in a really wonderful way. His dojo was under Yamaguchi's aegis, and thus, he would frequently go to his classes. One day he was practicing with Kono Yoshinori (who at that time was only an aikidoka, not having branched out into his own creative expressions). We used to call Kono "Gollum," for reasons related both to character and the way he moved. Anyway, Kuwamori was someone who only wanted to fall when he was legitimately thrown, and he was not falling for Kono, who was gesturing properly, but that was all. On the other hand, Kuwamori was quite happily slamming Kono repeatedly to the mat, and Kono couldn't do anything about it, except get to his feet, and start talking - telling what Kuwamori had done wrong when he slammed him to the mat.
Yamaguchi sensei simply lost it, yelling that Kuwamori was doing everything wrong - uke and tori both. Kuwamori was so furious at being embarassed publicly, he almost changed affiliations to another shihan, a huge thing. (And Mr. Kono was very lucky that Yasunori had a flaming temper that cooled rapidly into laughter at himself).
There is no doubt that Yamaguchi, within a specific skill area, was brilliant. He was a technical genius, and highly intellectual. But the full effect of his technique relied on a particular type of ukemi. This style of ukemi does develop an incredible sensitivity to what the other person is doing, because you learn to move to make the technique work. However, he did not, to my knowledge, teach in a way that one then "transferred" this sensitivity to a) dealing with resistance b) sensing what an attacker in freestyle was doing and neutralizing him (go no sen). I found it a pseudo sen-no-sen - in other words, although he apparently anticipated intent and what "there first," in fact, the uke was "there first" in order to make it happen.
Best

03-02-2008, 01:13 PM	#13
Ellis Amdur Location: Seattle Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 934 Offline	Yamguchi Seigo's ukemi Small comment: I took many classes with Yamaguchi Seigo. He REQUIRED a particular type of ukemi, and would get very angry and/or would subsequently ignore you if you didn't do this way. In essence, he used the uke as a living bokken - he was doing suburi with people. One of my closest friends and aikido teachers - Kuwamori Yasunori was "half" a judo man, and "half" an aikido man, in a really wonderful way. His dojo was under Yamaguchi's aegis, and thus, he would frequently go to his classes. One day he was practicing with Kono Yoshinori (who at that time was only an aikidoka, not having branched out into his own creative expressions). We used to call Kono "Gollum," for reasons related both to character and the way he moved. Anyway, Kuwamori was someone who only wanted to fall when he was legitimately thrown, and he was not falling for Kono, who was gesturing properly, but that was all. On the other hand, Kuwamori was quite happily slamming Kono repeatedly to the mat, and Kono couldn't do anything about it, except get to his feet, and start talking - telling what Kuwamori had done wrong when he slammed him to the mat. Yamaguchi sensei simply lost it, yelling that Kuwamori was doing everything wrong - uke and tori both. Kuwamori was so furious at being embarassed publicly, he almost changed affiliations to another shihan, a huge thing. (And Mr. Kono was very lucky that Yasunori had a flaming temper that cooled rapidly into laughter at himself). There is no doubt that Yamaguchi, within a specific skill area, was brilliant. He was a technical genius, and highly intellectual. But the full effect of his technique relied on a particular type of ukemi. This style of ukemi does develop an incredible sensitivity to what the other person is doing, because you learn to move to make the technique work. However, he did not, to my knowledge, teach in a way that one then "transferred" this sensitivity to a) dealing with resistance b) sensing what an attacker in freestyle was doing and neutralizing him (go no sen). I found it a pseudo sen-no-sen - in other words, although he apparently anticipated intent and what "there first," in fact, the uke was "there first" in order to make it happen. Best Last edited by Ellis Amdur : 03-02-2008 at 01:19 PM.
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