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Carsten Möllering wrote:
Interesting enough that Yamaguchi himself never really practiced KSR, as far as I know. As Tissier once wrote me, Yamaguchi was just so experienced with the sword that he just assimilated what was brought to the dojo by his students.
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I had never seen Yamaguchi show any swordwork apart from basic shomen-uchi and nihogiri until I saw William Gleason's "Aikido and Japanese Sword" DVD, where there is a fascinating bit of film of him demonstrating some partner practice that looks - in its style, at least - very much like the ura-dachi of KSR.
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I'm not sure about the swordwork of Inaba sensei? I think there may have been interaction with the aikido he practiced with Yamaguchi sensei. Tissier to my knowledge sometimes talks about how this swordwork affected his (Tissier's) aikido.
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As I understand it, Inaba was the original source of the KSR influence on aikido, although I think Noguchi Sensei also studied at the KSR (and was one of Sekiya Sensei's teachers). He spent some time studying with Kunii, the then head of KSR, although the KSR these days tend to claim that Inaba missed the point and didn't really understand what he had learnt from Kunii. It would be interesting to speculate how much of the KSR Yamaguchi picked up from Inaba, and how much he worked out for himself...
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ah and about kesa giri: Endo talks a lot about differentiating kesa giri and yokomen uchi. The suburi Endo does, as far as I feel it is different from the kesa giri Tissier teaches ... ?!
And when practicing sword we do different forms of yokomen uchi.
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That is very interesting - Endo hasn't shown much swordwork in any of the classes of his that I have been in. I would love to see him teaching sword, but as far as I know he has no plans to come to the UK...
I think Endo Sensei is another teacher who absorbs things from others and then over time makes them thoroughly his own. Although he publicly states that Yamaguchi Sensei (as well as O-Sensei, of course) was his main teacher, his aikido certainly doesn't look like a copy.
Alex