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A number of questions:
1. I am from England (nottinghamshire) and am interested in Taijutsu. any books or Schools?
2. I have herd the term 'dotanuki' used when refering to a type of sword, i am under the impression that it is a battle sword, like a Katanna?
1-There will be books out there somewhere
2-I believe it was a form of Dagger like the Tanto, or a shorter version of the Katana, the Wakizashi
Are you referring to the unarmed fighting system of the ninja? It's divided into two subsystems: daken-taijutsu (striking) and
ju-taijutsu (grappling). If this is the taijutsu you refer to, I hate to disappoint you but there is only one known style of ninjutsu left, it's head dojo is in Japan, and there is only a small chance of getting in. Only one foreigner has ever been excepted. If you're interested, his name is Stephen K. Hayes and he lives in Dayton, Ohio. (He wrote a book called The Ninja and Their Secret Fighting Art published by Tuttle, ISBN 0-8048-1656-5)I believe he has founded a school in the U.S., but I'm not sure it has spread much further than that.
Hi Crxow,
go to this site
http://www.winjutsu.com/
and click on "yellow pages". There you will find a list of dojo's who are teaching Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu in your area. But beware: there are only a handfull of truly competent teachers worldwide, while there are loads of "black sheep" who'd gladly take your money, but really have no clue about Bujinkan.
Anyway, you can always attend seminars by very competent instructors like Sveneric Bogsäter or Pedro Fleitas.
Taohn,
you shouldn't believe all the crap that Hayes has written in his books.
Look at this site
http://www.bujinkan.com/
and you can read under "Bujinkan guidelines" who is allowed to train in the Bujinkan and who's not. Believe me, there are more than enough non-Japanese running around in Noda, attending Sensei's trainings (in fact, there are currently many more Westerners studying Bujinkan than Japanese).
BTW, Taijutsu is not synonymous with Ninjutsu. Jujutsu is taijutsu as well (taijutsu roughly translates as "body art").
Hatsumi Sensei is soke of nine ryu, and only three (and a half http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif) of them are in fact Ninjutsu ryu, wich are
Togakure Ryu Ninpo Taijutsu (Ninjutsu)
Kukishinden Ryu Happo Hikenjutsu
Shindenfudo Ryu Dakentaijutsu
Takagi Yoshin Ryu Jutaijutsu
Kumogakure Ryu Ninjutsu
Gyokko Ryu Koshijutsu (not a Ninjutsu ryu, but has been adopted by some Ninja "families")
Gyokushin Ryu Ninjutsu
Gikan Ryu Koppojutsu
Koto Ryu Koppojutsu[/list]
* edited because of numerous typo's http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/rolleyes.gif
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fudoshin
[This message has been edited by Hanzo Hattori (edited 05-02-2002).]
[This message has been edited by Hanzo Hattori (edited 05-02-2002).]
[This message has been edited by Hanzo Hattori (edited 05-03-2002).]
Thanks for filling me in, Hanzo.
By the way, what's so bad about Hayes?
[This message has been edited by Taohn (edited 05-05-2002).]
Konnichiwa,
A dotanuki isn't shorter than a katana. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, a dotanuki referes to a 'school' of smiths, more precisely a type of katana.
The post sengoku era was a relatively peaceful era in Japan. The sword (pair of long katana and short wakizashi) was the statussymbol of samurai, and one considered the sword to be the weapon of the samurai, while the bow in the 12th and the spear in 16th century "might" have been more important for samurai (as weapon). As the sword function was shifted from a 'tool' to 'solely' statussymbol, it lost some 'functional quality'. Not so the dotanuki (produced by some smiths in this era), which could still be used in battle.
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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi
http://www.takiyama.cjb.net
[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 05-08-2002).]
[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 05-08-2002).]
Hi Taohn,
well, what's "bad" about Hayes? I guess it's the way he seems to be misleading people (either intentionally or by accident) with his publications. Just look what impression about the Bujinkan you yourself got by reading one of his books.
On one hand, his books gave Ninjutsu great publicity in the Western world (which was good, and I guess that was Sensei's intention when he encouraged Hayes to write his first books), and got a lot of people (myself included) started in the Bujinkan, but on the other hand, he got "carried away", and wrote about stuff that he obviously has no real knowledge of.
Basically he was "selling" Ninjutsu during a "Ninja boom" in the early 80's to an eager American audience who didn't know much about it except what they saw in some "Ninja-movies" à la "American Ninja". It just looks like he overemphasized the "selling" part.
The problem I have with Hayes is that he didn't miss a chance to portray himself as the Godfather of Western Ninjutsu, when in fact there were several other (and better) western students attending Sensei's training before destiny orchestrated the "historic" arrival of "Odysseus" Hayes in Japan http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif. The first non-Japanese student (and, according to Sensei, probably the only westerner who will ever know as much about Bujinkan as the Japanese shihan do) was Doron Navon from Israel, who went back to his home country to teach Ninjutsu even before Hayes started to learn it.
I have never met Stephen Hayes in person, so I can only guess about his intentions. All I know is that his books only give a very blurred (sometimes blatantly false) image of the real Bujinkan. I have seen some of his training video's, and I have seen a video of a daikomyosai (a seminar given by Hatsumi Sensei in Japan, which takes place every year in November/December) where he managed to tie himself up with a kusarigama, and what I saw was not very impressive.
Well, I didn't want to do a Hayes-bashing with my post (although it does sound like one), but I once was mislead by his books myself, but was fortunate that I ended up with competent instructors who have shown me the real Bujinkan.
But all this is moot anyway: AFAIK Hayes has left the Bujinkan Dojo and started his own "Quest Center"....whatever that is.
For a good read about real Ninjutsu I'd recommend to read the books by Hatsumi Sensei himself (nothing beats the original)
Sensei once said about Hayes: "It would be better if he'd stop writing these many books and start attending training more frequently instead."
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fudoshin
[This message has been edited by Hanzo Hattori (edited 05-09-2002).]
[This message has been edited by Hanzo Hattori (edited 05-09-2002).]