Thread: Ichi no ken ?
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Old 11-25-2010, 10:01 AM   #24
Cliff Judge
Location: Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Re: Ichi no ken ?

Carten, I am very interested in hearing more about why you won't allow Inaba's Kashima Shinryu to be defined as aikiken.

I am guessing Tissier and Inaba will teach it during Aikido class? Or is it a separate class that is held?

What I am saying is that, if the sword is used to study Aikido, it's aikiken. I trained for an evening with an Aikido group in Tokyo whose main instructor is a high-level exponent of Ono-ha Itto ryu. He would get his deshi up there and do straight Itto ryu kata to demonstrate principals he wanted to work on. He does this with permission of the Soke. In fact, the concept of kiri otoshi that you invoked to distinguish Inaba Sensei's KSR from aikiken, was one of the principals that I worked on that evening! It was related to irimi.

That was aikiken.

Do you feel like you'd lose something if you dropped the distinction between "aikiken" and the Kashima Shinryu that Inaba Sensei taught to Tissier? I could see that, perhaps you revere one set of kata over the other and don't want it brought down to the other's level. I would still call it aikiken, personally.

Oh! I keep forgetting to ask you this, since you sound somewhat familiar with these kata: what's the first kata like? Is it anything like Kashima Shinto Ryu's first kata?
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