Karate Do Shotokai, Budo & Traditional Martial Arts

[vicco]

I do not understand this webpage about egami's toate (see last section about the time after 1963). I do not know the term "toate". What is this movement like if you do it physically?

[Gibukai]

Hello,

it means H. Kudo is of the opinion that S. Egami was able to perform "toate" from 1963 on for around 3 years. "Toate" signifies "hitting" (-ate) over a certain "distance" (to-). Hoping not to break any copyrights here, I enclose a photo of H. Aoki doing his version of toate, which is, however, not equal to S. Egami's toate.

By the way, was H. Kudo not teaching in Australia?

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[Gibukai]

picture did not work, so please use this link:

http://www.shintaido.com/pic/aoki-nage.jpeg

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[Miguel]

[Gibukai]

Hello,

after I found myself on the receiving end of a kind of a toate executed by a certain Japanese master of the JKA line, I would not say that it is a "mystical" subject. It is rather a technique.

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[vicco]

Hi Henning! Were you in a Kumite making an oi-tsuki or the like and were blocked or redirected without physical contact?

[Sanrin]

No offense to anyone, truly. But I have been around a long time and seen many things. I have read Hennings' writings with great respect for what he says as well as his knowledge. I would tend to believe him even though I have never met the man and for all I know could be a very intelegent 12 year old sitting behind a computer somewhere and never trained a day in his life

But if you are saying that you can be thrown or hurt or moved or anything for that matter, from a distance with "no" contact between you and your partner, then I am truly skeptical. I believe there are things on this earth that are unexplainable, but usually over time some logical explanation, based on scientific principles, comes about.
What is the science or physics behind such a thing?
This would really be a handy tool in the hands of police or military
I sometimes have to wonder why such, what I see as amazing feats, are rarely heard about out of small circles. You would think the whole world would be in awe of such power. It's magical, god like, sci fi movie stuff and no one knows about it except the few? Hard to believe, sorry.

Tommy

[Gibukai]

Hello,

I am aware of the fact that this subject is more than controversial. So before I continue, this time a little bit more in depth, believe me (1) there are only few persons more sceptical than me, (2) I am not on drugs, (3) I did some karate training in the past (rough type), and (4) I do not like the “flower power” approach of certain groups like Shintaido. Further I do not belong to the group of the mentioned teacher, so this is no advertisement, for which I receive any payment or something like that. The easiest way to verify and to make your own opinion about what he is able to do or not able to do, would be to join a seminar by this teacher. I only joined two of his weekend seminars 8 years ago.

The teacher I am speaking of is O. Aoki (not H. Aoki of Shintaido), who was born in 1948 and is presently head of JKA Spain and of what he calls “Aoki Bio-Energy”. He is trying his best to explain his concepts as scientifically as possible, however, I felt he did this mainly to avoid the image of a sect leader or new age magician or something like that.

I participated in “Bio-Energy” courses in Germany, not karate courses because I have been told he is not allowed to teach JKA karate in Germany because of technically discrepancies with the JKA head of Germany.

Firstly he taught basic kiko (Japanese ch’i-kung) exercises, some solo and some with a partner. While explaining some points I saw the first “strange” things he did with some of his closer students. I tried to explain them for myself as hyper-sensibility of his students and even considered the possibility of a good show.

Subsequently the second part of the training started, which he called “exchange of ki”. Here the teacher practised with each and every person attending the seminar. It should be seen as experimenting, a game, but not kumite. He stood in the center of a small gym holding his right hand in front of his forehead and the students were instructed to approach him and to cross their own right wrists with the one of the teacher. Senior students approached him very fast while beginners did it slowly. Now, it is not interesting what I saw happen with all the persons before me, I will only write what happened with me.

As I have been told I approached him to cross wrists. When we crossed the wrists he pushed me very gentle backwards to the wall. He repeated this four or five times and I thought, o.k., he is pushing me back, nice.... I did not felt anything extraordinary and after my first seminar with him I was rather irresolute if I should participate a second time or not. However, I am a very inquisitive person and needed to know some answers. Therefore I joined a second time.

The training procedure was quite the same. And at the end of practise we started the “crossing hands” exercise. Two or three times he pushed me back and during this proceeding I started to thing : “Why is he pushing me back? Man, I should push him back!” And with the serious intention to reverse that scenario, I ran into his direction. Then out of the sudden – distance two to three meters between me and him – the teacher dropped his hand, pointed with his right index and middle fingers in my direction, I heard the sound of his exhalation, “huffffffff!”, and both of my feet lost contact to the floor (not really high) while I have been forced strongly to the wall, ending on my bottom.

I have added and exaggerated nothing to the above occurrences, yet I once again encourage everyone to decide for himself by attending one of his seminars. I am not claiming that myself is able to perform this technique and I would like to point out, that I do not think that the above was a mythical trick or something like that.

I had also the possibility to ask him some questions, which he answered very open and friendly. Therefore I understood that the toate of S. Egami is another matter.

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[Miguel]

[Sanrin]

Thank you for the replies. I do find it interesting but the jury is still out on this one. I have witnessed many things in my life and swore that the way it was performed there couldn't possibly be a trick to it, only to later find how ingenious the 'trick" was.
There are also Japanese schools that teach such uses of the bodies energy (Zendo I believe?) and never mention the word ki. But if asked say ki is nothing more than balance and harmony of the body's energy and can't be manifested to actually "do" anything outside the body. I was reading somewhere (see if I can find it) about the Chinese and Chi and Qi. The true teachers of this are said to laugh at the other Chinese performing feats using Chi or Qi, again agreeing with the explanation of ki, nothing more than an energy balance for health. Two sides to the same coin, I'm only tryin to find out who is right

[vicco]

Thank you Henning, for your courage to report this strange phenomenon.

I'm rather a rationalist but there are more things between earth and sky still unexplained.

[Miguel]

[Gibukai]

Hello,

some new informations: I think now, that O. Aoki is a student of K. Nishino, a kind of a "Ki-Superstar" in Japan, at least he was one some years ago.

http://www.nishinojuku.com/english/e_top.html

If you look for the term "Taiki" on his homepage, you will find the kind of training, I discribed above. However, as I wrote already, toate is different to this method.

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[Gibukai]

Hello,

here a statement by H. Aoki after a demonstration done by him and his fellows in 1984. As I wrote already, H. Aoki's toate is not similar to the one of S. Egami. His words are confirming this:

"...I am not really sure if what I did was toate or not. People have
talked about it since ancient times, but very few have been able to do it.
We don't know which martial artists have had this ability. And even those
who have been able to have said nothing. There are three types of toate,
and of those I demonstrated the most elementary one. The highest kind is
nothing like that..."

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[soyo juku deshi australia]

To be quite honest, it's with a very large degree of trepidation that I write this post.

The act and nature of this 'phenomenon' is ssoooooooooo misunderstood, rabbited on about and, just plain and simply misunderstood as to be akin to 'dis-information'...

"To find movement in the dead time, and dead time in the movement,..." THINK about this....

There is a gap between intention & action. True intention- i.e., "I really mean to punch a hole through the opponent" - is rare. But it is entirely necessary to begin study of this aspect, ( yes, ASPECT) of Karate-Do.

The 'gap' occurs at the 'coalescence' of the intention into 'physical' action. As Aoki Sensei says, "his energy is very weak here", my teachers said the opponent becomes "empty"...same thing....

Now, as we get/ become better trained the 'gap' in the process becomes smaller. That is there is less hesitation, less 'emptiness', less 'weakness' and ( we have ) more 'shoten'. And likewise, as you become better and more adept, the ability to perceive smaller and smaller 'gaps' is retained. This 'sensitivity' is PART( the meta-physical, or beyond the physical part ) of irimi,...just a part. Another part, is the actual ( physical ) ability to enter this 'gap'. 'Entry' can mean physical presence close to an opponent, your body or your hand, and sometimes 'kiai' will do the same- it can actually disrupt the 'coalescence'...

Roushi Funakoshi said, 'the perfect punch has the right amount/combination' of timing, rhythm and distance( paraphrase ) Hitting (physically) someone at this time, in this 'space' of emptiness is devastating, very effective....The kind of 'entering'( irimi ) needed here requires that all these factors be present ( in the right amount... )

On the other hand, moving ( into, around or even back and away from the opponent ) 'sensen no sen' at the instant ( or actually before- Cf, Shintaido 'sensitivity' training ) can have some very interesting effects.

Note: For all those who speak about physics, this next bit is physics,....'meta-physics'....

On a physiological level, the 'proprioception' of the 'body in space' is messed with if the target you are trying to hit moves at the time the distance and necessary speed to hit it are locked in and your body tries to execute this act....the result is ( often ) 'bodily' confusion, and quite often, the feeling of having the 'energy' sucked out of your attack. You may slump down , or sink. There is also the 'phenomena' that you may be able to be 'led' into a throw far more easily- the 'tori' feels almost nothing, and the 'uke', 'compliant' beyond their 'mental' understanding.

There are two other effects that occur, one more so than the one described above- the occurrence of feeling very hesitant or slow- not as pronounced as the first mentioned effect. The uke is slowed down...

The next effect is, on experience, 'rarer'. The opponent will feel like they have been 'hit' emotionally- like that ( most ) terrible sinking feeling in your gut when something terrible happens. They will be rendered incapable of continuing the attack- totally drained. They may even fall down. Staggering is not uncommon...

These can be expressed in a number of different ways/'directions'- mae irimii, yoko irimi, sagiri irimi & ushiro-e irimi,...are the names that shintaido calls them. My own teacher was directly taught by Egami- I have watched all these be executed by him- the were never called that in my presence- although the appear exactly the same.

I will not speak more directly about my own experience here- suffice to say they are direct under Egami's yudansha, additioanlly trusted acquaintances have experienced the use of kiai within 'shintaido' as the 'disruption' rather than the use of timing distance and rhythm.

Kenji Tokitsu conjectures,....no real experience ( his admission, not mine)...It is my opinion that there is little or no value in his opinions on this phenomena.

In closing the most interesting thing about this 'phenomena' is the fact that it CANNOT be executed against an opponent who doesn't have the 'intent' to strike you or other wise engage with you, as there is no 'gap' between thought and action....Karate ni sente nashi...

[Miguel]