Last night’s iaido class was one of those surreal experiences I have once in a while. There was nobody on video, all the folks were muted and video off. Thank goodness Pam was there for me to look at. I spent a lot of the time not looking at the TV screen, which helped.
We were going through Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Oku Iai (tachi waza, standing.) I think most of the students were Muso Shinden, but they are sister arts so no big deal.
Aside from a couple of questions by one of the participants, I had to assume the questions and explanations I was giving. Not as hard as you might think, I’ve heard a lot of questions in the last 35 years of my training.
Let’s see what I can remember.
We talked about the difference between Oku Iai in the koryu, and the oku iai kata in Seitei Gata Iai. Ohmi sensei said, long ago, that the main difference was in Seitei, the instruction is to cut and kill the man on the right and then cut and kill the man on the left, while in koryu that instruction is ‘cut and kill the men on the right and left’.
There is a difference in timing and in attitude. Not really surprising, Seitei Gata iai is for grading, for all levels from beginner to most advanced. Koryu oku iai is for when you’ve gone through all the training of at least two levels of solo iai and two of partner kata, all one on one. Oku iai assumes a wide knowledge and understanding of the kata. One manual I’ve seen is a single stick figure and one sentence per kata. Ready, Go!
I taught that way to a class of seniors one day and they “got it”.
Why talk about Seitei and Koryu oku iai? Because the first three Seitei iai kata are from the beginner set, and the rest (9 of them) are Oku iai, multiple opponents.
Seitei is NOT a beginner set, yet we use it to grade beginners, so it’s performed much differently than Oku Iai. It has to be.
I spoke of the organization of MJER, which is very good. The first set you learn is Omori, Shoden, pretty much the same all the way through, seiza, o-chiburi etc. and the first five kata are more or less the same kata, horizontal cut and vertical finishing cut. The same theme is repeated all through.
The middle set of solo kata repeats two of the Omori Ryu set, then goes on to examine what happens if the opponent is close to you.
The third set, Oku iai seated, starts with a couple of solo opponent repeats from the second set, and then goes on to multiple opponents. The last set, Oku iai standing, repeats numbers 3 and 4 from the seated kata, and then goes on to other considerations, bringing in environmental considerations, gates, that sort of thing.
In Oku iai I personally try not to say “variation”, we talked a bit about changing the parameters of the kata, and when we have created a different kata by our changes. For instance, if we change the angles of our opponents, it’s still the same kata, but if we add another person to the attackers, we’ve perhaps invented a new kata. Put another way, if your change to the kata accomplishes the same thing (cut and kill the men on your right and left) it’s the same kata. If you add in a person to the front, maybe you call it a different kata, or maybe a variation.
By the time we get to Oku Iai we should have absorbed the principles of the school, the fundamentals that make the kata MJER, and the way that the kata relate to each other. Something that’s hard to do in Seitei iai since the kata come from different koryu. Not impossible, the fundamentals are from Kendo no Kata, and that does provide a unifying influence.
In any case, I managed to talk for an hour while going through five kata. I’m sure that will come as no surprise to any of my students.
Next iaido zoom class (Oku iai) will be next Thursday. Next jodo zoom class (shinto ryu) is Tuesday and next Jodo book club is next friday. Next Niten Ichiryu class is Sunday at 11am.
Lots of zoom classes for those who want to link in, video or not.
Seito Bugei Juku 