Читать книгу Aikido Weapons Techniques. The Wooden Sword, Stick, and Knife of Aikido онлайн

4 страница из 27

Pamela Seiser, wife of Lynn Seiser, has read, reread, and proofread every word, of every page, of every draft, of every book. Her eye for spelling, grammar, style, and general readability has been an invaluable service to the authors, the editor, and those of you who read these works. Her support and encouragement made these works possible. Her expertise and eye for detail have made them presentable.

Lynn Seiser painted the original kanji calligraphy for each chapter.

Introduction

The history of the world is often told by the history of war, recorded by the victor. Warriors have always used weapons to fight wars, and any complete fighting system includes the use of weapons. While aikido is an effective and efficient means of self-defense and protection—popularly practiced primarily as a means of personal, social, and spiritual development—it is still, at its core, a martial art.

JAPANESE WEAPON ARTS

The mystique of the use of Japanese weapons appears in the Kojiki or legendary stories of old Japan. The Japanese feudal warrior was called bushi, but later commonly became known as samurai (meaning “to serve”), in the Muromachi period (1392–1573). The bushi’s trade was bugei, or martial arts. Bugei, combative effective martial art systems, were known by the jutsu suffix. They developed systematically from around the tenth century, through vigorous traditional training discipline, for the sole purpose of group protection. The martial arts included both unarmed and armed fighting arts, as well as arts of camouflage and deception, binding, speed walking and running, jumping, climbing, dodging, swimming, fortification, deployment, gunnery, and fire. Within those armed or weapons martial arts were kyu-jutsu (bow and arrow), so-jutsu (spear), gekikan-jutsu (ball and chain), shuriken-jutsu (blade throwing), jutte-jutsu (metal truncheon), tessen-jutsu (iron fan), tetsubo-jutsu (iron bar), sodegarami-jutsu (barbed pole), sasu-mata-jutsu (forked staff), and juken-jutsu (bayonet). The more common weapons were ken-jutsu (offensive swordsmanship), iai-jutsu (defensive swordsmanship), bo-jutsu (staff over five feet long), and jo-jutsu (staff or stick under five feet long). (Draeger and Smith 1969, p. 83)