Northern Wind

So the subject of atemi came up recently. Atemi, of course, refers to striking, punching, smacking, bitch-slapping, whatever. Ignoring for a moment the first five techniques of randori no kata / junana hon kata, we're talking about moments in other techniques (mostly in koryu kata) in which tori takes the opportunity to bop uke before moving on. The student of modern aikido should understand that it did originate, after all, from arts that were designed and practiced by samurai—professional warriors, whose job it was to kick some serious ass. Now, for the most part, punching or kicking didn't do a whole lot of good when dealing with an opponent wearing armor (hence the predominance of joint locks, throws, choking, etc.), but samurai were occasionally called upon to deal with violent situations while dressed in their civvies, so why not add the proverbial insult to injury by cracking a rib before you pin him and politely separate his head from his shoulders. But Ueshiba ...

The kata Owaza Jupon has always been a unique one in my mind. It feels sort of out of place, thrown in there between junana hon kata and all the koryu kata as an afterthought. I'm sure I'm not the first one to wonder why exactly. And from what I can gather, it's not a very common kata either, even within other Tomiki schools (mostly American ones, it seems). Which means finding more in-depth information about it is tricky, and what I can find is often inconsistent. But this is what I know so far about why it was developed, or what we can learn from it: Who it came from Owaza jupon was apparently developed by Hiroaki (Riki) Kogure sometime in the 1950s, who taught in the US for a few years in the early 70s. More movement It seems that much of the basic Tomiki aikido training coming out of Waseda University was typically exercised with a static uke. So, in an attempt to create a more dynamic situation, Kogure pieced together some techniques that demanded mo...