Itoman's Triangle Flying ? Revisited

Sunday, October 12, 2014
 

Time does seem to fly, it has been several decades when one day the brown belt, Young Lee, after class took a run up a wall and delivered a kick.

Something he saw in a movie and wanted to learn. Of course he practiced it, and other students did too. 

Several months later attending a summer camp, during a break in the training he took off on the wet grass, ran up a nearby tree and kicked. Then another of my brown belts, Andrew Ware, did the same. After several successful kicks others at the camp, so inclined, started trying to do the same. Trying and falling, sliding on the wet grass, discovering it wasn’t  so easy.

 

No, this has not been a part of class, though I often have drills to slake the energy of teenage students (such as a version of Naifanchi incorporating jumping crescent kicks. But this was individual initiative. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgMcJjfXBgw&t=1s

Then reading Itoman Seijin (Morinobu’s) book Toudi-jutsu no Kenkyu I found that there was a similar kicking technique in Toudi.  “Triangle Flying - This technique involves jumping or leaping to three points. That is, you use the footing from a wall, tree stump or the ground to deliver a kick, move to an advantageous position, or move to safe distance using three points. “

 

So we didn’t come up with something new, just re-invented the wheel so to speak. The texture that Itoman describes as Toudi is very rich in perhaps lost techniques such as this. Much more environmental focused than today’s dojo Karate, or so I conjecture.

 

10-29-2024

 

I believe this shows some of the changes made to form Karate-do.

 

The training became standardized for everyone to be practiced in a dojo. 

 

In the past training often took place in the forest in secret places. The training would address environmental issues not found in a standardized dojo. Such as rocks, trees standing or fallen and other such environmental conditions. Paralleling the use of Toudi (Te) in as required on the job where one must remain aware of one's surroundings, as well as to use them if required for one's advantage.

I would suspect there were vast differences from what Toudi (Te) training was like to what Karat-do became.