Thread: Why no tsuba?
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Old 02-24-2012, 07:18 AM   #208
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: Why no tsuba?

Quote:
Graham Christian wrote: View Post
As I said, it's a no brainer to me that somewhere along the line they learned or tauhgt bokken also that being in the martial arts world and Japanese somewhere along the line they would have a sword and know quite a lot about it's use. I bet Yamada's got a samurai sword in his house.
Regards.G.
This is astonishing, from a first year student...okay, but from an Aikido teacher in 2012? Amazing.

Graham
You don't get a Katana (and by the way, other than children no one calls the various forms of Japanese swords Samurai swords anymore) and then magically know something about it's use. The shear hubris of that is beyond the pale. Nor does being a Japanese Shihan in some art or other qualify you to use one. There are plenty of children who pick them up as well as people like this who all think they know how to use one to.
It was interesting to see yet again the type of sword work in that video as it reminded me of the Shihan meeting in Japan where one of them said in front of Doshu "We have to stop doing these types of displays. There are real swordsmen in the audience and they are laughing at us." And two other Shihan thanked the guy who said it for taking the risk.
It was bad enough back then to embarrass yourself in a public demo, worse now to an international audience.
One Koryu Menkyo I know once muttered "It's too bad we arent living in an age where you actually had to use them. Then they'd all be dead and we wouldn't have to worry about them passing along that nonsense to other people."

Chris, doesn't this take you back to the Iai and Aikido list era when so many were getting their first (non shihan filtered information) education?

Last edited by DH : 02-24-2012 at 07:24 AM.