Take a Big Koshiki and Call Me in the Morning

I tell people that Tommy key aikido is the love child of judo and aikido, but Ive heard that specifically its a mix of Daito Ryu and Kito Ryu.  Kito ryu is the parent form of Judo from what I hear.  Somebody told me that kito means  rise and fall.  I always assumed that kito ryu is  where we get our cottonballs and footfalls ideas from.   Over the last four years I have tried to feel what the other guys feet are doing.  I have tried to become so sensitive that I can tell how many cottonballs someone has put in my hand in a pitch black room.  So far I suck at it.   

I have a Nariyama book at the house called Randori.  In it he has a couple of interesting tables where he relates moves in the 17 kata to a Kito based Judo kata called Koshiki no Kata.  Its basically how to tip a big dude in armor.  I got to say, I really dig the Koshiki man.  Here's a black and white thing on Koshiki.



Koshiki is  all gross body movements.   It also seems like these guys are operating in an up close and all the way in mode. Its like you put all the atemi waza in a blender.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that our 5 atemi waza aint daito concepts.  They are kito concepts.   also  Koshiki doesnt have anything to do with "sensitivity." At least not the cotton balls and footfalls type of sensitivity. The Koshiki type of sensitivity is basically:  Can I feel this guy trying to run my ass over?  I can also tell you that that damn 2nd step in the walking looks very damn koshiki to me.

For laughs, lets look at a 17. (skip to 3:00) I can tell you that I see a lot of Koshiki here.  It looks like Tommy is basically koshikiing a guys arm, and he does a lot of go to the knees koshiki shit(which effing works).  Hell, his foot work looks Koshiki.  Granted, Tomiki is hitting the Geritol pretty hard at this point.  And its a demonstration Kata, but Tomiki doesnt ever look like any of the other Ueshiba students.  He never has.  Maybe its the Koshiki.   


Theres a lot of talk about kuzushi and taking an ukes center and connecting with center and what have you.  Its all pretty damn confusing. I relate it to hakamaitis.  The more you wear a Hakama the more confusing and abstract your explanation of Kuzushi becomes.  Like some conversation Yoda would have on the force or some shit. Truthfully, I'm about Kuzushied out.  I think I'm going to start using the term Koshiki, as in, " this aint no good cause you aint Koshikied the guy yet. "

I started reading a book by this lady: Martina Sprague. Its on throws, takedowns, and locks without all the Yodas and shit.  What I take from reading her stuff is that a lot of what we do is proportionate to the amount of head movement away from straight up center.  Basically where the head goes the body goes.  The other night I started to think about techniques in relation to the amount of  head movement (dipping down or swaying back) I got.  A 6 inch movement gets a 6 inch technique. a 1 foot a 1 foot technique and so on.  This is what I call kuzushi.  The dip and sway.  A kuzushi can come from a gnat flying up your nose.  It can come from a notion.  samurai swords and testicles. There I just kuzushied you.

Koshiki has another thing going on here.   You can see the rise and fall shit.  And yeah you can say the guy would have got kuzushied into them.  But these things dont arise from fine finger work and chalice steps.  I aint good enough to articulate everything here, except these are gross motor movements going on.  easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to feel.  Because you aint trying to feel a cotton ball, you are getting a cinder block dropped on you. 


When I think of daito ryu, i think of suwari waza angle tricks, slick hand grabs, and knuckle punches, shomen uchi stuffs, very specific locks and pins and pressure point stuff.  very fine stuff, detailed stuff.  stuff you have to go slow to learn.  Stuff that really doesnt really go right at speed.

Releases can be defined into two ways.  It depends on the hand grabber, the bigger the grab(more stepping) the more Kito. the finer, more static the grab, the more daito.     Daito guys only step when they need to step.  They stand still, do something very finely defined, and then move. As opposed to get offline/ move, feel where the ox is going, and help the ox hit the ground,  or koshikiing the guy. 

Anyway,  I think we have to look at our randori concepts.  (Honestly, I write about this shit a lot but my randori skills suck so please, I'm begging you, take anything I say with a grain of salt.)      I think we need to look at the slowness of it.  The more slow the more daito you are.  The bigger faster stuff is kito/koshiki.  Most of the 17 depend on a big koshiki  of some sort.  Techniques never happen because people put to much daito in their koshiki or too much koshiki in the daito.  Or else you just get a koshiki dump of some sort with no daito.  I'm going to  call it the Big Koshiki.