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Old 04-16-2013, 09:29 AM   #17
Cliff Judge
Location: Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 1,276
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Re: Bokken, Jo, Sword?

Quote:
Phi Truong wrote: View Post
methink, Janet was referred to the fact that sword isn't a primary focus of the art as compare to Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū or Kashima Shinryū or Jigen-ryu and so on. aikido might express the principles using the sword or might borrow principles from the sword, but face it, if you go and demo it to the aforementioned ryuha, and tell them that this is real sword stuffs, you are going to get a pretty good laugh by those ryuha.
Honestly....any of those groups will find that the others do things strangely, and there is likely to be - perhaps not laughter but at least bemusement - when they see a different set of principals on display than that which they have invested years into training.

There is a lot of swordwork in Aikido, some of it is very good, most of it is just as worthy of demonstration - in general - as any koryu sword art if the practitioners train hard.

The reason why Aikido swordwork is not real and why Aikido is not truly a "sword art" is that it was not developed by true professional swordsmen for the purpose of teaching people to win swordfights. This is not a bad thing. if you are concerned with training people to survive a real sword fight you are going to throw things like aiki out the window in a heartbeat if it is not efficient. You certainly wouldn't want to focus your art on something that most of your students aren't going to understand or put into practice for over a decade.
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