What is Muchimi?

By Asai Shotokan Association Intertational

Have you heard of “Mochimi” or “Muchimi”? If you practice or have practiced Okinawan karate 沖縄空手 such as Goju-ryu 剛柔流 you may be familiar with these terms.

In Okinawan karate they are very popular and considered as critically important if one wishes to achieve excellence in karate. As far as I know, these terms have not been used in Shotokan training. As a result, most of the shotokan practitioners have never heard of them, though I believe Shotokan karate has similar ideas as one or two of the concepts stated here. I am not saying that the Shotokan practitioners are totally missing something but I hope you agree that it is beneficial to investigate and see if we can find something we can learn from those concepts or methods.

I must confess that I have never been personally taught these words by any of the senseis I had in the past. Just like most of you, the readers, I had never heard of these terms either in my regular dojo training or special seminars. I learned those terms mostly from the karate books that I have read during my research activities.

What I did was to compare what I read with the techniques I know from Shotokan. What I have discovered was not only interesting but also insightful. So, after reading my article I hope you will find the information to be beneficial in your training.

Before I go any further I must emphasize that there are different variations in these techniques depending on the different Okinawan styles. I also do not claim that I have mastered these techniques nor covered all the meanings of these techniques. If I am incorrect or inaccurate in any way I would be very happy to receive the corrections.

Part 1: What is Muchimi?

Accordingly, there are two kinds of muchimi and they are expressed with two different kanji though the pronunciation is very similar. The first is Mochimi, 餅身 (rice-cake body) and it describes that a practitioner trains so that his/her body will attain the character of mochi or omochi; a popular food in Japan. The rice is pounded into paste and molded into the desired shape.

In Japan it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki. Though it is eaten year round, omochi is a traditional food for the New Year period in Japan. If you have eaten one of these omochi you know the texture of this food. It has a lot of elasticity almost like rubber or a chewing gum in your mouth as you try to chew it.

You can naturally guess how the body needs to be after learning the character of mochi. Thus, the elasticity of the body use is expressed by the word of mochi for its similarity in character. This technique is developed by using both the flexor and extensor muscles.

This article is not for a technical instruction so I will not explain the details of the mechanism.

In short, the essence of the body management comes from the maximum contraction using flexor muscles which generates the full extension of the extensor muscles. It may be too simplistic but you tense your muscles to the maximum and then let go to achieve the maximum extension.

The best analogy may be the mechanism of a spring. When pressed together tightly, the spring will expand very quickly or more accurately it jumps out explosively when the compression is taken off suddenly.

To make it more effective, the extensor muscles are trained to relax thus they can achieve their maximum extension. By mastering this, a practitioner can develop an explosive power in his punches even before the elbow is fully extended.

This effect is most useful in close distance fighting styles, thus the practitioners of Naha-te (Goju-ryu, Uechi-ryu, etc.), short distance fighting method styles, would naturally want to develop this technique.

One point must be noted that this technique, though very powerful, will not be a sharp whip like punch. It is more like a sharp push of a bo (stick) and the speed of the punch is slower than a whip motion technique practiced by the Shuri-te (mainly Shorin-ryu) practitioners. I will explain the mechanism of the whip like technique later in this article.

So, the Mochimi used punch is more like a thrust rather than a snap kind of technique which is better suited to attack a solid target like chest or mid section of an opponent rather than a head which can easily bounce and move resulting in the reduction of the impact.

Therefore, this technique is called as Mochimi (mochi body) signifying the nature of the body mechanism.

By the way, when you watch a Naha-te kata, Sanchin (I will post a sample video at the end of this paragraph), you will see only chudan punches. This demonstrates the muchimi technique of Naha-te is most effective in the chudan area.

Of course, to make a punch more powerful other techniques must be applied at the same time. One of them is tsukami (grabbing) and hikiyose (pulling in) as well as the use of Chinkuchi (Part 3 of this article).

Here is the video of Sanchin performed by the world famous Morio Higaonna, Goju ryu 10th dan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kybxNOlnl20

Another interesting video clip showing Goju-ryu muchimi training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdE2eN7maok

OK, the other kind of muchimi is written as 鞭身 (whip body). It was developed and taught by the Shuri-te (mainly Shorin-ryu) masters. Some Shuri-te practitioners call the technique Mochimi but the core character of the technique is different.

The same pronunciation was used by some of them mainly because the name of Mochimi became very popular by the Naha-te practitioners, thus, the Shuri-te practitioners chose to use the same pronunciation.

By studying the differences in the technique mechanisms I really think they are clearly two different techniques, though they share some common body mechanism such as relaxation and tension.

My personal opinion is that they are different enough that they should have two different names.

Let me describe briefly what the application of Muchimi is. Simply put, it is a technique of a whip action. What you need to do is to relax the arms or the legs then swing from the center of the body, namely the backbone or the pelvis.

In this action your limb will travel like a whip rather than a stick. Naha-te is known to focus on the short distance fighting thus their techniques include many short stances like neko ashi dachi and sanchin dachi, and prefer the short distance techniques such as elbow strikes, knee kicks, mae ashi mae geri (front foot front kick), and even head butting.

It is possible to execute a whip like technique from a short stance without much body shifting, but they tend to use their body more like a stick than a whip.

On the other hand, Shuri-te is a long distance fighting method and they prefer the long stances and the long distance techniques as the readers know. So the

concept of the long distance fighting bodes well with a whip like motion.

However, our arm is rather short and does not have many joints to make it into an effective weapon.

Take a look at the kyusetsubin (the photo below, the 9 chain whip I own). It has nine joints and it has a rather heavy anchor piece at the end to make it a lethal weapon. I use a 7 chain whip because a 9 chain one is too long for me. Compared to those whips our arm has only three joints (shoulder, elbow and wrist). In addition, our anchor piece is our fist and obviously it is not as effective an anchor piece as the one in a whip. So, what do you need to do?

Muchimi will be used with a pulling and a controlled tension movement;

Chinkuchi which will be explained in the Part 3 of this article.

Consider the following example to illustrate the concept. It will be difficult for you to try to make a towel into a whip no matter how fast you swing it when it is completely dry.

But what will happen if you wet it? Yes, it will become much easier to make it into a whip especially if the wet portion is only the whipping end or the half of the towel, the part you are not holding.

The dry towel is the tension of our arm and the key is that the water is fluid and extremely elastic. The water gives the additional weight to the towel but the more important effect is the tension or the body it gives to the towel.

What I want to say here is that the tension you apply to muchimi must be at a minimum.

The excessive tension will slow down the snapping motion which will end up with a poor whip or no whip at all.

The most common whipping techniques that the Shotokan practitioners are familiar with are uraken uchi, a striking technique and mawashi geri, a kicking technique. However, if you understand the mechanism of Muchimi and after mastering it one can deliver much faster techniques including a straight punch, mae geri, yoko geri and all other techniques.

The ultimate technique is one or zero inch punch utilizing the fundamental physiological method to generate the power with minimum body motion which is called 発勁, hakkei (the literal meaning is to generate power or energy) and mastering Muchimi, I believe, can aid the development of hakkei technique.

Here are some reference video clips for your interest:

Tekki Shodan (Naihanchi shodan) by Michiko Onaga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCpkV-zSP-0

Tekki Shodan by Shorin- ryu master Shinzato Katsuhiko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DEVYxsihlE&list=PL6C37B3E35FBAAEC7

Tekki Shodan by Tetsuhiko Asai:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqOeOGdm28

Muchimi

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Andreas Quast

A typical concept of forms of Karate which originated in southern China, it is pronounced “mochimi” in standard Japanese, and “muchimi” in Okinawan pronunciation.

Usually written in Kana (muchimi もちみ), there are three ways of writing the terms using Kanji:

1) 餅身. Here mochi 餅 specifically refers to the Japanese rice cake called Mochi. In this way, this composite word provides an analogy to “rice-cake body”. As regards the dangers of rice-cakes, read this.

2) 糯身. Here mochi 糯 specifically refers to glutinous rice. This is because there is also non-sticky rice, which is called Tō-gumī 唐米 in Okinawan dialect. It means Chinese rice or foreign rice, one that had been imported from Southern China, Indochina and such. It is not a glutinous and therefore cannot be pinched with the chopsticks, but falls down.

3) 黐身. Here mochi 黐 refers to sticky, and particularly to bird-lime, used to catch small birds and insects. It is also used for wood glue. This character is also found in the Cantonese terms Chi-sao 黐手 (sticky hands) and Chi-gerk 黐脚 (sticky legs) as found in Wing Tsun.

In practice, muchimi refers to tactual manoeuvres while adhering to the opponent’s movements in direct contact. It uses the defensive reflexes hardwired in the human body, aligns them to logical concepts of geometry, directions, vectors and such, and adds logical counter measures (attacks) under consideration of anatomy, laws, terrain etc. to become a complex yet automated chain of action.

Reaction from tactual manoeuvres are faster than reactions from information processed through the eyes and ears. That is why muchimi has to be treated as a single category of standing close-quarter combat.

It is closer than the standing close range where the opponents are not directly engaged by contact of their extremeties and in which the eyes have superior importance. For example, you don’t want to be inside the hitting-zone all the time, but want to tactically prepare the opponent by various techniques and particularly by combinations to enter the opponent’s striking zone.

At the same time muchimi is farther than standing grappling, which might include the seizing of the whole body, preparation for throws and the like, where you move the whole body of the opponent, and while also possibly manipulating the opponent‘s limbs towards and over the terminal degree of freedom of the joints, this is not the sole target in this distance. For example, it is one of two good choices to move in closer and wrestle if someone tries to attack your joints.

In this way, the standing close range can be divided into three sub-divisions.

The following photo is unrelated to Mochi rice-cake.