Miscellaneous sparring
 

Has anyone sparred against Naginata? Or the weird ninja weapons?
How do you try to overcome the range?
was always curious about these types of sparring

For what purpose?

Do a search for isshujiai.

Going up against naginata players is a lot of fun, alternate kamae start to make sense.

The shins are a valid target in isshujiai, if you are fast enough you can "jump" or step over their strike to the sune and strike men. Due to the nature of the weapon, the strikes are slower than in kendo, but that is offset by lack of familiarity of the sune for the kendo player. Also naginata players can use both the front and back of the naginata to compensate for speed.

There is also stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naV3M...eature=related out there too if you want kendo against XXX matchups.

No, but I once wrestled a 2 foot long meatball sandwich to the ground.










Poor bastard never stood a chance.

I once had an isshu-jiai (it was only a ji-geiko, but you know what I mean) with someone from the naginata dojo in Sydney about a year and a half I started kendo. I lowered my kamae to a semi-gedan (to stop the sune), and I tried to rush in to prevent the naginata user from using his range. The naginata is a slow weapon, but because of its length the opponent was able to slide his hands along the shaft (that sounded wrong >_

Heh. Though in my case it was mostly an exercise in learning about being struck by naginata. My partner was quite advanced, though it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference, really. Watching more advanced kendoka that were having some success seemed to suggest that keeping ma'ai under control is really critical. I saw some very nice, very dynamic movement that (perhaps) left the naginata side with the impression that openenings were present. Once the naginata is committed, there's at least some opportunity to enter ...

John

Yup, I'm in the same boat. I went up against a naginata sensei while I was still ikkyu (maybe nikkyu). Never have I been tsuki'd so many times in one match. Fortunately for me, he has excellent control (and aim), so it never really hurt, just kept me from closing maai.

RC_Kenshi

I've done isshyu-jiai a couple of times. My first was when I was an ikkyu against a yondan (there's a great shot of her hitting my sune long before I was even halfway to landing a strike) and my second was at last year's JSS camp at Bryn Mawr. It's a lot of fun and it makes you think about things just a little differently, especially when it comes to getting inside their reach.

Ever since I started doing naginata along with kendo I've actually been doing isshi-jiai a lot. When kendo gets involved a lot of the koryu stuff seems to make more sense, even if you can't exactly do a lot of it if you don't wanna hurt your partner.

I had a match with a kusarigama guy in NY a decade ago. He scored the first point while in tsubazeriai. It was Kubi, he hooked the back of my neck, yelled kubi, and I lost a point. The second was a Men hit to the head with the weight at the end of the 'chain'.

All in all interesting. After my match Raymond (the Canadian nito) fought the guy and won. He also did and exhibition match with the naginata, can't remember the outcome there though.

Had a similar match, only I decided to be an asshole and just drop my shinai and yank the kusarigama out of the chick's hand >_>

Sounds very interesting...hate to get kubi'ed by the description.
But similar along to what Anonymous said, if you use 1 hand to catch the string and yank it off, would you be penalized?
I really don't know if kusarigama came with chain that was designed to prevent that

The time I did it was with more advanced students from the same ryu. Fortunately stuff like kendo/naginatajutsu vs with very few rules outside of not hurting anyone is allowed/encouraged. Its interesting though, coming from a kendo dojo where they'd teach the students a lot of "dirty" tricks.