Why is it Ushiro Tekubitori?

Hi, I'm new to Aikido. I've been trying to get all the terms down because Sensei said if you know the terms you can probably figure out the technique.

Last night we did a few techniques like this:

Ushiro Tekubitori Shihonage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYITyRxvmoo

Also Ushiro Tekubitori into Kotegaeshi and Ikkyo.

My question is why is it Ushiro Tekubitori instead of Ushiro Ryotetori? I know little to no Japanese so if this is obvious I'm sorry.

There were no computer movements when I started so I got books. Every Sunday Shihan Henry Smith (6th dan) or Nizam Taleb (6th dan) also would take any question at 12:00 pm and let me try for at long as I needed to understand a thought. Now that Youtube.com or Facebook.com are free it may be easier to look at several teachers doing the same "Ushiro tekubitori..." movements then work with a friend. (There always are both kyu or dan every day at most aikidos). I did ask your question when I as just a 5th kyu with my son on a Tuesday morning. Since we did not yet know how to fall well the Shihan thru the 3rd kyus. I get the answer but I felt bad. The friend had to get hit or throw rather than me. "The sword teaches everything."

There are some choices of Japanese terms that I suspect were chosen for more European derived benefit - there is little chance in the midst of a test that a non-Japanese speaker will confuse ryotedori and ushiro tekubidori.

I was told once by a bilingual shihan that the two main types of tsuki with a jo were not always choku- and kaeshi- but that the two names sounded very similar - like chokutsuki and chokootsuki (not spelled properly, trying for the phonetics). I was never able to verify the truth of this.

Which is correct? If you grabbed a thesaurus and looked up "grab" in English, you would find at least 50 options. The Japanese language is, I believe, no less rich in variety.

There are many people here who are excellent translators, I'll defer to their expertise.

In terms of your own growth, the whole point is that you start to understand what you are being told. I don't know of any traditional school that will ask for an "armbar" instead of ikkyo for example.

Phil Johnston wrote: Hi, I'm new to Aikido. I've been trying to get all the terms down because Sensei said if you know the terms you can probably figure out the technique. Last night we did a few techniques like this: Ushiro Tekubitori Shihonage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYITyRxvmoo Also Ushiro Tekubitori into Kotegaeshi and Ikkyo. My question is why is it Ushiro Tekubitori instead of Ushiro Ryotetori? I know little to no Japanese so if this is obvious I'm sorry.

Hello,

I think it depends on the instructor and who the instructor himself learned from. The Japanese names are more descriptions than specific definitions -- and I have trained in a sufficient number of places around the world to see that the same waza has a variety of names. To give this some context, an old friend of mine once told me that Morihei Ueshiba himself once asked him what a particular waza was called. When my friend told him the answer, O Sensei replied, "Good name, good name."

I have learned to call the grab that Yamada Sensei is demonstrating Ushiro Ryote (= behind; both hands) and this is what I teach my (Japanese) students. Kote denotes that part of the arm from around halfway to the elbow to the place where the fingers begin -- and I sometimes do the waza like kote-gaeshi like this, sliding the hand gently down the arm from the elbow to the wrist, whereas tekubi stands more specifically for the wrist. So we never use the term ushiro-tekubi, because my own teachers did not use it.

There is a similar variety with a waza using the elbow. There are at least three possible names: juji-nage [cross throw], juji-garami [cross twine], and ude garami [elbow twine]. I have also heard the term tenbin-nage. (Tenbin is the Japanese term for a balance or a pair of scales, and a tenbin-bou is a pole like a yoke for carrying two buckets.) One examiner in my old dojo here once asked for tenbin-nage during a grading test and the students had no clue what he wanted. The examiner trained in Nagoya and we never used the term here in Hiroshima. This was all in Japanese, by the way.

So I would disagree with your Sensei. My Japanese students find the names of waza equally difficult and they have the advantage of being native speakers.

Best wishes,

Phil Johnston wrote: Hi, I'm new to Aikido. I've been trying to get all the terms down because Sensei said if you know the terms you can probably figure out the technique. Last night we did a few techniques like this: Ushiro Tekubitori Shihonage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYITyRxvmoo Also Ushiro Tekubitori into Kotegaeshi and Ikkyo. My question is why is it Ushiro Tekubitori instead of Ushiro Ryotetori? I know little to no Japanese so if this is obvious I'm sorry.

In one of the styles of aikido I train, we use:
Ushiro Waza: Ryotemochi

Peter A Goldsbury wrote: Hello, I think it depends on the instructor and who the instructor himself learned from. The Japanese names are more descriptions than specific definitions -- and I have trained in a sufficient number of places around the world to see that the same waza has a variety of names. To give this some context, an old friend of mine once told me that Morihei Ueshiba himself once asked him what a particular waza was called. When my friend told him the answer, O Sensei replied, "Good name, good name." I have learned to call the grab that Yamada Sensei is demonstrating Ushiro Ryote (= behind; both hands) and this is what I teach my (Japanese) students. Kote denotes that part of the arm from around halfway to the elbow to the place where the fingers begin -- and I sometimes do the waza like kote-gaeshi like this, sliding the hand gently down the arm from the elbow to the wrist, whereas tekubi stands more specifically for the wrist. So we never use the term ushiro-tekubi, because my own teachers did not use it. There is a similar variety with a waza using the elbow. There are at least three possible names: juji-nage [cross throw], juji-garami [cross twine], and ude garami [elbow twine]. I have also heard the term tenbin-nage. (Tenbin is the Japanese term for a balance or a pair of scales, and a tenbin-bou is a pole like a yoke for carrying two buckets.) One examiner in my old dojo here once asked for tenbin-nage during a grading test and the students had no clue what he wanted. The examiner trained in Nagoya and we never used the term here in Hiroshima. This was all in Japanese, by the way. So I would disagree with your Sensei. My Japanese students find the names of waza equally difficult and they have the advantage of being native speakers. Best wishes,

Very interesting.

I seem to remember using ushiro ryotekubidori, just for a new wrinkle.

What gets referred to as jujinage/jujigarami/tembinage here, I also have heard called kokyunage, udekimenage (I used that name the most), and a variation on gedan ate. We used jujigarami which meant something very different from tembinage, and strictly speaking I think, udekimenage and tembinage had slightly different "use the arm to cut" versus "use the arm as a fulcrum."

Our nomenclature seems very disparate, and very much tied to individual dojo. And, as a North American student not every readily available teacher, not even every available Shihan has spent any time in Japan or even in a Japanese language class.

It leads to other bits of confusion, like the teachers who say kokyunage is the most prevalent technique in Aikido and the teachers who say Aikido is 75-99% of Aikido are often referring to the identical gross motor movements.

I remember watching a guy grading to 6th Kyu in Japan. He was told to do katate-dori ikkyo and katate-dori-shihonage etc. and he had no clue. I knew he could do the waza, but he had just not bothered to learn the names. He was Japanese. He failed. I always thought it kinda funny.

I think some schools use different names on purpose, just to solidify their difference. I have tried many styles. Yoshinkan's ikajo. Iwama talk of omote and ura (mostly). Aikikai talks of irimi and tenkan (mostly). Nikyo is kote-mawashi in Tomiki Aikido and gyaku kote-gasehi in Takeda Ryu. And so on. It's cool to be different ... but it can be rather confusing.