This is not for hurting people

For a long time all sorts of karate and taekwondo schools in America and elsewhere (not to mention more syncretistic or utterly made-up styles) have advertised themselves as for "self-defense only" and not for beating people up. This is a good thing insofar as beating people up is a bad and should not be encouraged, but there's a big problem. Karate and taekwondo and most other martial arts (that term is a big hint) are for beating people up. Yes, they are. The martial arts are techniques of war--designed to injure and kill. And even things like karate that may not descend from battlefield techniques are fighting skills nonetheless, designed to hurt people that don't want to be hurt (whether they want to hurt you is a side issue). So when you're neighborhood karate school tells you that their techniques are "only for self defense", they mean something like this: "We'll teach you how to hurt someone, and then tell you that's not a nice thing to do."

And then along comes aikido, which says "our techniques are not for hurting people," and what does everyone think? They think this is the same kind of thing as karate: a technical curriculum that inflicts real damage, and a philosophical teaching that says not to do this (unless you really need to). Add to this that the founder had a reputation as a more-or-less invincible fighter, and that aikido is known to derive from traditional fighting techniques. So most practitioners wind up with the idea that aikido techniques are nice when you want them to be, and very much not nice if that's what you want.

The problem is that's not true. Most of the available evidence really does seem to suggest that the founder really did design a curriculum that was less violent than its technical precursors. Nor does it seem as though that's just the outward form of techniques that are secretly for killing. And this is borne out by the techniques. Aikido is mostly a way of taking somebody who's put themselves out of balance, and more or less getting out of the way. Or it could be. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to want to practice a sort of Ueshiba-style Aiki-jujutsu.

Yesterday's practice also had me thinking about kata. Aikido has sort of a weird relationship with kata: the founder reportedly barely used any in his teaching--every technique a dynamic expression of aiki, and never the same twice--but most of the second generation seemed to settle on and mostly standardize kata for teaching. A lot of people outside Japan don't seem to recognize what they're doing as kata at all, since they think that's only those long sequences that they do in karate or chinese styles. And, in any case, the history of aikido is too short for us to really find a successful pedagogy.

But, so, kata: I think most people's understanding of kata in aikido is something like this: Each kata is a fixed attack and a fixed throw, and then we further break the throw into omote and ura versions. So if we're doing shomen uchi ikkyo, uke will attack shomen, and then nage will do ikkyo, and... there's the kata. done. But there's a lot of confusion over what uke does while nage is doing ikkyo. There are three categories of behavior that I've seen: After nage connects to uke's arm,

1. uke just kind of goes limp and gets pulled through the rest of the throw.
   
2. uke decides they don't want to be thrown (or that a "realistic attacker" wouldn't want to) and goes rigid or starts trying to pull away.
3. uke continues to push toward nage, maintaining the connection.
   

Now, I like choice (3) best, both as uke and as nage, because it makes the practice go smoothly, and, I think, teaches nage what sort of attacking energy "fits" with the technique. (2) often gets presented as the most realistic because it's not compliant, but that's weird, too: who grabs somebody's arm with the sole objective of not getting thrown? That's a pretty passive-aggressive way to start a fight. And (1) is clearly not so good--nage gets the experience of seeing somebody go clattering to the ground, but not much else. The problem is that most techniques (other than kokyu-ho and kokyu-nage) are more complicated than just an attack and response; uke also responds to nage's technique. So when we tell people "this kata is shomen uchi ikkyo", everybody comes up with a different idea of what to do.

So, how can we use kata better?

A few other thoughts:

• The traditional style of kata makes uchidachi the teaching rule and shidachi the learning role. the uchidachi side is set up so that uchidachi's strikes are the natural response. There's also a lot of back-and-forth (I was just watching videos of Katori Shinto-ryu kenjutsu, and their katas are fifteen or twenty strikes long).
• The founder (maybe following Daito-Ryu) inverted the usual kata relationship: in aikido, the teacher takes nage and the student uke.
  

It strikes me that many of our kata in aikido can be broken into several steps. My teacher often talks about how each technique involves sabaki (body movement), kuzushi (balance-taking), and then the throw or pin. And if we think of it like this, both nage and uke have standardized actions at each step. I noticed this particularly yesterday when we were practicing a kind of yokomen uchi kokyu-nage where nage pulls uke's balance forward and then throws with a sudden push back--sort of like sumi otoshi, but not quite. I'm going to try to break this down as a multi-step kata, with nage giving actions for uke to respond to.

1. Nage presents yokomen as a target.
   Uke strikes yokomen
2. Nage steps in with atemi/block [sabaki]
   Uke continues the attack
3. Nage shifts back slightly and pulls uke's balance forward [kuzushi]
   Uke maintains the connection and extends toward nage's center
4. Nage suddenly pushes back and outward on uke's arm [nage]
   Uke falls. (Backward fall, forward roll, or breakfall, depending on the speed)
   

That's a description of the kata, for sure, but are the separate steps really separate? I think so--look at what happens if uke doesn't respond in each step.

1. There's no attack and no technique. This, too, is aikido (of a particularly easy or subtly sort).
   
2. If uke is stopped by the atemi or thinks better of his attack, there's no reason to continue. Nage is undefeated, and hopefully (depending on your preferences in atemi) uke is unhurt.
   
3. If uke doesn't maintain a strong push toward nage, he's just going to fall. The technique is the more standard sort of yokomen uchi kokyu-nage. Only a connection directly toward nage's center demands any response at all.
   
4. Of course, if uke doesn't take a good fall he's going to take a bad one. So this response is also pretty important for the completion of the kata.
   

Notice also that uke is learning something at every step:

1. How to see an opening. I notice that when my teacher is demonstrating, sometimes he has to physically grab uke and guide them into the correct attack; sometimes he just has to tell them which one to do; and sometimes his uke can figure it out from his positioning.
   Also, how to attack properly. A weak or poorly-aimed strike doesn't need a response.
2. How to reorient after the attack. If uke doesn't turn to face nage, there's no need to pull him off balance, because there's no attack any more.
3. How to feel a connection and move forward with it. If the connection is lost, maybe nage didn't do a good job with kuzushi, but in any case it doesn't matter since the engagement is over.
4. How to fall.
   

I'm far from learning actual counters or henka-waza, but even at my level this sort of breakdown seems quite useful. I'm going to try to think about other kata in the same way.

Practicing without falls

I'm still suffering from a sprained neck (a big forward ukemi that sort of got away from me) and so last night I tried to practice without taking any falls. It was a very interesting style of practice for a few reasons, and I think has some lessons that are worth applying even once I'm falling again. As goofy as it is, it actually makes sense to break this into uke and nage parts.

Uke: The first thing I noticed was that if I did want to fall, I had to make sure I wasn't going to fall--but I didn't want to start tensing up and resisting and otherwise interfering with everyone else's practice. Usually I'm pretty unconcerned about falls, so I try not to anticipate the technique and just get thrown. Last night I wanted to be sure I could catch myself on my partner if he didn't stop in time, so I found myself following along much more consciously. So, for example, iriminage: after being pulled forward and off balance, very consciously push toward nage, try to stand up, wait for it... ok, he's got my balance, GRAB ON! Actually, all of my partners were good and pulled their throws after taking my balance, but it was quite interesting to follow along and see whether I needed their help. Sometimes I felt that I still had my own balance and could resist successfully.

Usually as uke I concentrate on providing a strong connection to nage--a sort of "always attacking" energy that generally makes the technique go smoothly and is I think pretty important for kata practice, especially in the kyu grades. But this means that there are often times when I give away my balance, or at least let it be taken quite easily. I'm sure this is a matter of making poor attacks, but perhaps not unrealistically: the spirit of attacking is to effect the opponent, which means a connection (and there's certainly anecdotal evidence floating around that real attacks are easier to deal with than some practice ones, because attackers aren't expecting to be thrown). But one thing Endo sensei talks about is generating a connection from *nage*'s side, and really taking uke's balance. And last night it was interesting to see when that was happening, and when it wasn't, when I could have disengaged and when I couldn't.

Nage: I only sat out one week, and I came and watched anyway, so I didn't feel out of touch rejoining the class. But one of my partners surprised me with much stronger technique than I had seen from him even the previous class. We talked about it afterward, and he suggested that maybe it was because he wasn't concentrating so much on the throw as on the balance-taking. That's pretty plausible, and it was something I had sort of noticed as well. I had been trying to throw softly myself--it's too weird to be flinging people around and then refusing to fall--and it's interesting to think about the technique ending before uke falls. After all, the last bit is usually what we think of. Another time, I might try to have my partners not fall at all, as an experiment to see whether I feel like I've taken their balance or are just muscling them down.