Thread: Why no tsuba?
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Old 02-23-2012, 04:18 PM   #195
Chris Li
 
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Re: Why no tsuba?

Quote:
Graham Christian wrote: View Post
Tohei aint lot's of people. Therefor your emphasis irrelevent. Who's that fella who said Tohei was the best he had ever met in Aikido and learned bokken and jo from him? Takeguchi Sensei if that's the right spelling. I wonder where Seagal learned his? I wonder if there are any shihan who don't teach or haven't learned bokken?

G.
Lots of them - some of them even state it right out:

Quote:
I did go to one of the all-shihan meetings recently. Nidai Doshu asked if anyone had any more questions, and I said, "We should stop doing tachi-dori and jo-dori in public demos. There are lots of real swordsmen in the audience, people who've really trained with swords, and they know that we can't really do such techniques. We are making fools of ourselves." There was dead silence in the room. Finally Doshu changed the subject. Later, Saito-sensei came up to me. I thought he'd be angry, but he slapped me on the back and said, "Yoku itte kureta.'("Thanks for saying what needed to be said"). Well, maybe it needed to be said but nothing's changed, has it?

---Yoshio Kuroiwa
Fred mentioned Yamada - he's stated flat out that he never really studied the sword. In fact, he used to discourage people who tried.

Anyway, my comment wasn't about whether Tohei was any good or not, or what people "think" they learned from him - it was about whether or not he had any experience with the sword.

Best,

Chris