"They do not have any rough, noisy, and loud pastimes except wrestling, which they practice as an exercise and art for war." - João Rodrigues (1561 - 1633) This Island of Japon Some practitioners of medieval and early modern Japanese martial arts - koryū bugei - augment their training with some form of combat sport practice in order to add "live" or "freestyle" fighting, as many koryū eschew any kind of sparring practice entirely or do not place much emphasis on it. This includes weapons' disciplines, where practitioners may add an art like kendo, more rarely another Asian weapons or historical European art with sparring; and grappling, where people tend to study judo or, increasingly BJJ ("Brazilian" Jiujitsu). 1 I've explored sumō instead. While I have been interested in it from very early on, after reading up on Chinese wrestling and sensing a connection between them, I first experienced sumō-like training in Araki-ryū. We would do...
Araki-ryu torite kogusoku