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Old 03-01-2007, 04:33 AM   #769
Gernot Hassenpflug
Dojo: Aunkai, Tokyo
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 319
Japan
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Re: Baseline skillset

Er, it seems we're still on pretty tame and amicable terms by these standards of the past eh? Very interesting extract, especially the part about more brute strength and less technique. I wonder if that is a poor translation, since if they were training Qi presumably whatever they used would be something else than brute strength. If the results of Qi and Sword training led to the same sensitivity in terms of wielding a sword and responding to the other party, it probably makes zero difference in practice where one starts. But I suspect that the Sword style also presupposed that all their techniques were to be done with jin/qi from the start, and the problem is merely that the beginners aren't very good at it. That seems to be a fairly usual thing in Japan, say in even in Abe sensei's aikido, and similarly is written in Kuroda Tetsuzan's books about his sword and jujutsu training. The "qi" faction equivalent doesn't really exist here it seems, but instead lives on as non-martial practices, such as the breathing or misogi groups that Tohei and Abe sent to to learn what they were missing in some way or other.
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