Christian Tissiers Kenjutsu
Aikido an der Uni Kiel
maybe some of you have seen Christian Tissier, high ranking aikido teacher
from France, before. Beside aikido he practices a sort of kenjutsu style he
(or his major students) call "Kashima". I already asked some of his high
ranking students but they knew nothing about its origins (although they
teach it).
Does anybody know where this kenjutsu comes from? Does it have something to
do with Kashima Shin Ryu or Kashima Shinto Ryu? Who was Tissiers teacher?
How long did he study it? Or is this just some
"aikidoka-know-how-to-handle-the-sword" stuff?
As this is my first post, I would like to introduce myself: I'm an aikidoka
and iaidoka from Kiel/Germany, practising and teaching both at the
university and a club.
Thank you
Inken Luedersen
Meik Skoss
>Dear list members,
>Maybe some of you have seen Christian Tissier, a high ranking aikido
teacher from France, before. Besides aikido, he practices a sort of
kenjutsu style he (or his major students) call "Kashima." I already asked
some of his high-ranking students but they knew nothing about its origins
(although they teach it). Does anybody know where this kenjutsu comes from?
Does it have something to do with Kashima Shin-ryu or Kashima Shinto-ryu?
Who was Tissier's teacher? How long did he study it? Or is this just some
"aikidoka-know-how-to-handle-the-sword" stuff?<
I knew and trained with Tissier some in Japan, back in the mid~late '70s.
He was a very dedicated aikido student, particularly of Yamaguchi Seigo,
and trained with Yamaguchi in a number of places. Yamaguchi also taught a
man named Inaba, a Shinto priest and teacher at the Shiseikan Dojo at Meiji
Jingu, who learned a bit of Kashima Shin-ryu (but was/is NOT a qualified or
authorized instructor). Inaba, in turn, taught a lot of people in the
Yamaguchi-gumi (as I call 'em) some of that stuff. I can't say how accurate
that particular interpretation of Shin-ryu is, but my understanding is that
there are some significant differences.
Other senior French aiki-types who learned Inaba's version of Kashima
Shin-ryu are Frank Noel and Gerard Something-or-other (a big guy, used to
be pretty good at judo) and, here in the U.S., a guy named Bill Gleason.
<snip...>
>Thank you.
Hope this helps.
Meik Skoss
Koryu Books
Koryu.com: http://koryu.com
Karl Friday
>maybe some of you have seen Christian Tissier, high ranking aikido teacher
>from France, before. Beside aikido he practices a sort of kenjutsu style he
>(or his major students) call "Kashima". I already asked some of his high
>ranking students but they knew nothing about its origins (although they
>teach it).
>
>Does anybody know where this kenjutsu comes from? Does it have something to
>do with Kashima Shin Ryu or Kashima Shinto Ryu?
Mr. Tissier's swordwork derives from Kashima-Shinryu, via Inaba Minoru, the
head Aikido instructor at the Meiji Grand Shrine in Tokyo. It is NOT,
however, Kashima-Shinryu--in either a formal or a practical sense.
Inaba has worked a bit of Kashima-Shinryu kenjutsu and some other weapon
training into his aikido curriculum at the Meiji Grand Shrine. Neither he
nor his teacher, Tanaka Shigeo, however, has any formal connections with
the current Kashima-Shinryu soke or shihanke, and neither has any
Kashima-Shinryu license or diploma from either Kunii Zen'ya (the previous
soke/shihanke) or Seki Humitake (the current shihanke; Inaba has a diploma
written by Kunii, but unsigned, which he received from Kunii's widow).
The Inaba connection with KSR began when Tanaka wished to learn Kashima
Shinryu from Kunii, because he was teaching Aikido at the University of
Tokyo, and his students were becoming discouraged by their inability to
hold their own in friendly matches with the karate club students, who
practiced at the same time. Determining that what his students needed was
some weapons training, he went to Kunii to learn kenjutsu. But, as he was
already 40 at the time, he found he was not learning well, and so he
brought one of his senior students, Inaba, at the time an undergraduate
university student, to study with Kunii as well.
Inaba studied KSR for less than a year, and never received any official
diploma from Kunii Zen'ya, from Seki, or from the Kashima-Shinryu
Federation of Martial Sciences, but he did, at the request of Kunii's
widow, receive permission to teach kenjutsu (but NOT other weapons; he had
never actually trained at any KSR weapons other than the sword) at the dojo
of the Meiji Grand Shrine. Sometime after Kunii's death in 1966, one of
Inaba's supervisors asked Mrs. Kunii for permission for him to teach
Kashima-Shinryu to the shrine attendants, noting that Shinto authorities do
not recognize Aikido as proper martial training for shrine attendants,
because it lacks any form of *harai* (exorcism). Under the circumstances,
it was determined that this request could not be refused. Nevertheless,
the permission granted Inaba extends only to the teaching of fundamental
kenjutsu techniques, because his period of training was far too short to
learn and understand the arcana of Kashima-Shinryu. He has no authority to
issue Kashima-Shinryu diplomas, nor does he have any right to use the name
Kashima-Shinryu or to allow any of his students to use it. Thus Inaba's
formal status within Kashima-Shinryu is that of teaching fundamental
kenjutsu techniques within the framework of teaching Aikido at the Meiji
Grand Shrine dojo. His students and the students of his students, other
than those teaching under him at the Meiji Grand Shrine dojo, have no
formal relationship whatsoever to KSR.
Aikido and Kashima-Shinryu have elements in common, but they are really
fundamentally different in strategy, philosophy and patterns of
movement. (A rough analogy might be the differences and similarities
between Islam and Christianity.) Inaba's interpretation of KSR kata is
heavily flavored by Aikido and thoroughly reshaped by minimal initial
exposure to the real thing compounded by 3 decades of practicing in
isolation. Many of the kata are unrecognizable to students of orthodox
Kashima-Shinryu; most of the basic patterns and rhythms of movement and
application of power are.
Mr. Tissier has been apprised of these facts, and has indicated that while
he had been unaware of the situation, he will no longer call what he
teaches KSR.
There are currently only two places in Europe (one group in Helsinki and
one in Frankfurt) where legitimate KSR is taught under authorization by the
current shihanke.
Karl Friday
Dept. of History
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
ph. (706) 542-2537
kfr...@arches.uga.edu
Mark Gorsuch
> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:06:54 +0900
> From: Karl Friday <fgue...@HI.U-TOKYO.AC.JP>
>
> Mr. Tissier's swordwork derives from Kashima-Shinryu, via Inaba Minoru, the
> head Aikido instructor at the Meiji Grand Shrine in Tokyo. It is NOT,
> however, Kashima-Shinryu--in either a formal or a practical sense.
>
> Inaba has worked a bit of Kashima-Shinryu kenjutsu and some other weapon
> training into his aikido curriculum at the Meiji Grand Shrine. Neither he
> nor his teacher, Tanaka Shigeo, however, has any formal connections with
> the current Kashima-Shinryu soke or shihanke, and neither has any
> Kashima-Shinryu license or diploma from either Kunii Zen'ya (the previous
> soke/shihanke) or Seki Humitake (the current shihanke; Inaba has a diploma
> written by Kunii, but unsigned, which he received from Kunii's widow).
>
>
That was a very informative post for me. In the recent past, I was learning a
Meiji Grand Shrine filtered version of KSR kenjutsu. From 1994-96 I was a
student at Kanazawa University where I began my study of aikido. The shihan for
the club is Tanaka Shigeo so KSR kenjutsu was part of the curriculum and testing
requirements. Because Kanazawa and Tokyo are a fair distance apart, we only
trained under Tanaka a few times a year when various gasshuku were held. As is
the case with university martial arts clubs, most of the teaching was done by
the students (usually juniors and seniors along with a few grad students). We
were told the kenjutsu was KSR and there was never any mention of the limited
amount of time Tanaka and Inaba spent studying it formally. My guess is that the
other students didn't know (and probably wouldn't have cared), but maybe this
was just another instance of Japanese knowing perfectly well what the situation
was but seeing no reason to talk about it.
If I am not mistaken, there are nine kata in KSR kenjutsu. Only the first five
are taught by Tanaka/Inaba. I learned three, none of them well, before changing
dojos. Some of the students were quite serious about their study of kenjutsu and
spent a great deal of time working on it after practice. Sometimes they made
trips to Tokyo over the weekend or during vacation to train under Inaba. They
held him and his kenjutsu ability in very high regard, although I should add
that I highly doubt they had any exposure to someone licensed in KSR.
I only trained under Inaba on one occasion. It was about 3 years ago when I went
with the university aikido club to Tokyo for a demo. He held a special practice
for the club the following day. He lectured most of the time and we only
practiced (aikido, not kenjutsu) for the last 20 minutes or so. I found him to
be very captivating and charismatic, and can understand why he has a following.
Mark Gorsuch
Ishikawa, Japan
Lorraine Fuller
> > Subject: Re: Christian Tissiers Kenjutsu
> > Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:06:54 +0900
> > From: Karl Friday <fgue...@HI.U-TOKYO.AC.JP>
> >
>
> If I am not mistaken, there are nine kata in KSR kenjutsu. Only the first five
> are taught by Tanaka/Inaba. I learned three, none of them well, before changing
> dojos. Some of the students were quite serious about their study of kenjutsu and
> spent a great deal of time working on it after practice. Sometimes they made
> trips to Tokyo over the weekend or during vacation to train under Inaba. They
> held him and his kenjutsu ability in very high regard, although I should add
> that I highly doubt they had any exposure to someone licensed in KSR.
It's a little more than that! Also remember that all of the kata are done
as shitachi and uchitachi, i.e. pairs, with the exception of the
battojutsu techniques (which can be done this way but aren't generally),
so the basis of what is happening is done as if one were fighting. This
is true of all of the KSR kata.
I guess you could say there are nine groups of main sword techniques:
The first group, Kihon Tachi has five basic techniques that embody all of
the principles of KSR
The second group, Uradachi, has 10 techniques, and are yukiai, i.e. the
people are running or walking at each other. These are designed to
capture the opponent rather than kill.
The third group, Aishin Gumitachi is designed for use of a longer sword
and the stance reflects this. There are 5 techniques in this.
The fourth group is Jissen Tachigumi and introduced the oto nashi
techniques. There are ten techniques in this.
The fifth group is designed for use against an armored opponent. There
are ten techniques, and like Uradachi, the opponents are running at each
other.
Within all of these are many situations where the sword is used to control
and take down the opponent.
There are additionally two groups where opponents are locked together,
Tsubazeri and Taoshi Uchi, both of these have 6 techniques each and
revolve around situations that would be seen in duelling.
32 battojutsu techniques
3 Ichi no Tachi
So in the sword alone we have about 90 techniques taht are part of 9
kata that are practiced.
There are also these kata-
7 naginata tachiai
6 sojutsu tachiai
5 kusari-gama tachiai
13 Jo tachiai
15 Tachiai naginata
10 knife
and some number of shuriken techniques (KSR shuriken are about a five
inch long spike, fashioned with with folded steel like a sword, not
those ninja star things)
Now if you move to the "purist" where you have like weapon against like
weapon (naginata vs naginata say) there are-
20 naginata jutsu
10 sojutsu
20 bojutsu
20 jojutsu
This is just the weapon part,
There are at least 80 jujutsu techiniques that are divided into different
kata.
We have a technique for cutting down a charging boar, and a leaping
tengu, so I guess we are complete as it gets.
This is the written part, there are some oral traditions as well.
And it all gets practiced a good bit, some more than others, and the
basic prinicples that govern KSR encompass all of this.
If you have more money than I have you can purchase the videos of all
of this.
Anyway, KSR is a lot more than what you may think or what you may have
seen. A few months doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Maybe a
few lifetimes.
I'm curious what you learned and practiced of this when you worked with
Inaba?
Lorraine Fuller
alfu...@arches.uga.edu
Musashi Natsuki
> Kashima-Shinryu, via Inaba Minoru, the
> > head Aikido instructor at the Meiji Grand Shrine
> in Tokyo.
This wouldn't perchance be the same Inaba sensei that
performed in the 20th Anniversary Embu of Rembukan
Video would it?
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Lorraine Fuller
Of course you can slide on it if it's spilled.
If it's light mineral oil, and you ingest it it is absorbed through the
intestine and has pretty bad effects (toxic).
If it's heavy mineral oil and you ingest it, it isn't absorbed, but has a
laxative effect.
And it does burn quite happily, and may have a good use in the old daikon
gun. But of course not here in the south where they are illegal. You can
tote a .357, but woe be unto you if you are caught with a daikon gun.
Lorraine Fuller
alfu...@arches.uga.edu