Taikyoku Araki-ryu Pac NW

Officer deploying knife in weapon retention training I post these with a strong caution. They are GRAPHIC and for some may be quite disturbing. People are seriously injured and stabbed to death in various circumstances in the videos below. Fair Warning. This is not "Knife Porn." They are representative examples of how actual fighting - more often simply assaults - with edged weapons occur. I feel that it behooves those of us who purport to be practicing effective methods for using and dealing with edged weapons - classical or contemporary - know what actual violence with them looks like.  In my career as a police officer, I attended many stabbings and dealt with the aftermath, and saw the video evidence of many more. I have had friends and colleagues stabbed, including one who suffered what a medical examiner said would have been fatal wounds during a chaotic ground fight with a suspect had he not been mistakenly killed by other responding law enforcement.  There are plenty o...

  Our study  focusses on the pattern-practice ( kata ) of Araki-ryū’s close combat catalogue ( torite  and  kogusoku ), with additional emphasis on practical considerations, as most of Araki-ryū’s close quarters kata apply nearly “as is” to modern-day  apprehension and ambush survival  situations where edged weapons are involved.   How  they are trained is our primary concern.  Our expression of Taikyoku’s innovative model allows us to explore new and divergent practice methods of these two aspects of the traditional curriculum. Close combat is violent, and involves intense interactions of physical force and opposing will.  The modern tactical training term for this is force-on-force (FoF). Practice that does not include FoF has been decried as “empty forms” and mere choreography for hundreds of years.  This does not mean simply turning patterns into “freestyle fighting” however. Engagements are constrained by the tactical cons...

There are many resources available for information on classical Japanese martial arts, with popular and scholarly sources in English readily accessible. This Recommended Reading List is updated from time to time as more work is published. Online Resources  Check out  Kogen Budo  for writings by Ellis and others on classical martial traditions.  Koryu.com  gives a good general sense of the modern practice of classical Japanese martial disciplines. This article   at Budo Japan this one by Dr. Karl Friday. Dr. Friday has various writings online and in print addressing and re-assessing Japanese warrior culture in light of ongoing scholarly research. Everything he writes has relevance and informs how we approach practice.  This old thread on E-Budo giving an idea of our approach, including thoughts by Chris and Ellis Amdur: Popular Sources on Classical Martial Arts Good reading for a general introduction to the study of classical traditions would be ...