Monday, June 19, 2023

On J(y)oshin-ryu and Ikeda

 



By the way.. and as an aside.. J(y)oshin-ryu is Ikeda's own creation.. according to my kobudo teacher Itokazu Seisho (Current chief instructor Matayoshi Honbu dojo Naha) who I showed recordings of it, reckons its pretty much all Japanese (ie not much Okinawa at all).. and remarked that much of it reminded him of what he had seen of Japanese naginata technique..


the guys you see are, like most Jyoshinmon in US, are Florida based ex-pat Cuban stock.. and tournament fiends... J(y)oshin ryu isnt officially taught outside Japan... or if it is, its only very recently so..  


 
cheers
love harry

 

great, thanks victor.. thanks fro thinking of me.. spot on, and right on cue, as I was only thinking last night while I was re-teaching shushi no kun that it was time to revisit Choun.. and, voila, here it is.


While I was taught this kata in this dojo (very hot!) by Itokazu -the currrent chief instructor - there were one or two tweaks for me direct from Matayoshi sensei himself whom I never met.. from beyond the grave..
Yes, Youtube is wonderful aint it?..
 
cheers
love harry

 

>Yes the Joen clip was just posted last night and I saw it first thing this morning.

Efficient aren't I ..... You and Kim, both.. that guys a fiend too when it comes to finding stuff all over

 

>From my perspective it's interesting how Shimabuku Tatuso changed things, and incorporated pieces of it in his Shi Shi No Kon No Dai.

 

I really dont know much about Isshin-type Kobudo, apart from seeing the Tokumine Tatsuo did... and I have no explanation as to where and what about any of it.. apart from the usual rumour (After 25 years in US on and off I still spell rumour  etc English-wise!) ..and speculation as to where what came from with Tatsuo.

 

The thing is with Nakazato's Tokumine is that we have nothing to chek it against.. as Zenryo was never taught it by Kyan and JNs version is the one that is replicated also in Seibukan, as Zenryo freely accepted JN as the go-to kobudo guy from the Kyan lineage. Seibukan dont exactly sing from the rooftops about this, but noticeably only very very very rarely do they wheel out their version of Tokumine, which is as one might expect a more Seibukan-ish version of this with slightly more stilted movement 

  

 >Fascinating how much has been posted. When might I see you there <G>

 

 Without getting too long winded you may well have done before now had it not been for the fact when I bought my video camera  about 8-9 years ago I was in UK and kinda took the wrong advice so it is PAL format hi-8 tape..whereas I should have gone digital back then.. so aallllll my good stuff is stuck in that form.. including some really good stuff actually (not done by me!).. but to get to he point now I am in US I simply dont have access to the equipment to transfer my PAL tapes to digital and/or NTSC.. UIts a real nuisance.

 

 But I am starting to look at digital cameras again and so who knows, the whole thing may be not too far away..

  

But thing is the Shorinji kata you have soem pretty good versions available online already.. but I like to think my kata is passable and it would be nice to explain my way through Seisan as i understand it.. from what JN taught me..

..

What I do notice it is difficult to find much decent Matayoshi kobudo, which I also have received some good instrcution from the honbu on and so maybe that will tip the balance. Most people (ie western students) simply do not use the hip as it is taught and tend to be beholden to the rigid stances of their own schools, which mask the hip motion there should be . and that also is the main problem with the (originally released on) tapes by that fella Nishiuchi, too.

 

See? I ramble too much about this stuff!

 

See ya Victor.. thanks for being on the ball enough to distribute Nakazato sensei.. albeit from I imagine at least 35 years ago! (he's 87 this year)

 

cheers

love harry    

 

 

 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBgN3WAPmrM


 

Fear Victor.. you say

 

"A really strange  versoin of ‘Dry Bones"


 

Yes this is from BBC's The Singing Detective by late British playwright Dennis Potter.. who did a whole slew of strange stuff just like this duirng his career, and most of his major works involved using old music in cut aways.

He suffered himself from the skin disease depicted in this clip..   

 

An early example is his style was the BBC's original "Pennies from Heaven" starring Bob Hoskins as a 30s travelling sheet-music salesman who dreams of escaping into the world of his songs, but eventually is wrongly hanged for murder.. Hollywood bought it and put Steve Martin in the lead role but while quirky it sadly lacked the pathos of the full 6 (?) hour-long episodes of the original BBC production.. which was fabulous.

 

Oh.. by the way.. kudos for the Charlie Drake a few weeks back !! (ie..My Boomerang wont come back).. Strange little man he was.. a staple on British TV in the 60s starred in an awful couple of films too.. worse than any bungling Don Knotts "Reluctant Astronaut" by far! .. but same kind of thing.. mistaken identity, you know... always a good cheap gag..

 

love harry

 

 

Dear Victor, Among your latest clips was this one:

            Shorinji-ryu kata of Nakazato Joen

            The 3rd link at:

            http://shao.sakura.ne.jp/kata.htm

-------------------------------------------------

I realize this is not necessarily relevant to the point you were making, but this link is old footage, and while all the other kata on this site are practiced as shown, this is not the version currently studied in Shorin-ji ryu..

According to Nakazato sensei, in the absence of any known version taught by Kyan Sensei, this version was adopted, one which supposedly had a "shuri-te" lineage. Joen sensei tells me it was brought in by a man called Ishii. Some time after it's exact lineage came into question, and subsequently a different version was adopted, one with a more readily traceable lineage. Nakazato describes this as "from the Matsumura lineage"

If you are interested, I can fish a link out for you.

 

cheers

love harry 

 

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