Two Original Hokei

In light of the recent hokei assign­ment I gave the Tech Taido black belt can­di­dates, I decided to post some notes on a cou­ple of hokei that I have cre­ated. Though nei­ther one would ful­fill the require­ments I set forth in the assign­ment (because they were designed for rea­sons to be out­lined below), their pre­sen­ta­tion may prove ben­e­fi­cial to the can­di­dates as an exam­ple of the kinds of think­ing that may be use­ful in the cre­ation of a new hokei.

Hen/Hen no Hokei ("double weird")

Sometime around 2000ish, I got to the point that I had become com­pe­tent in per­form­ing every hokei in the American cur­ricu­lum, and a cou­ple of oth­ers that only a very few older instruc­tors had ever seen. While I could have con­tin­ued to prac­tice them for­ever, con­tin­u­ally dis­cov­er­ing greater depth, our orga­ni­za­tion was in a very expan­sive mood at the time, in terms of tech­nique. I thought some cre­ative hokei inter­pre­ta­tions would be a good idea.

I decided to make newer ver­sions of each of the –tai hokei. I chose to begin with hen­tai no hokei because hengi are arche­typ­i­cal of Taido, and because the rou­tine appears to be very closed to inter­pre­ta­tion in its orig­i­nal form. In Japanese, “hen” means chang­ing, strange, or weird, among other things. Since I was chang­ing hen­tai no hokei, I decided to call it hen-hen, or double-weird, hokei.

I’ll begin by describ­ing the moves for the cur­rent incar­na­tion of hen-hen. Here’s an outline:

The rou­tine begins from gedan kamae and faces left in the usual fash­ion. However, I use jodan­ga­mae instead of chu­dan here.

part 1:

(from hidari jodan) senjo-ebigeri (with­out touch­ing the kick­ing foot to the ground in between), ushiro nukite (fudo­dachi), stand up, repeat on other side

part 2:

face front in hidari chu­dan, untai keri tsuki, gyaku sha­jogeri, ushiro sen­tai gyaku­jogeri, kiai, return to kamae, untai keri tsuki, gyaku dog­a­rami, untai keri tsuki, turn and morote nukite, step left to hidari jodan

part 3:

sen­tai no tsuki, gyaku sha­jogeri, kaeshi ejizuki, gyaku ebigeri, step for­ward to kamae, step for­ward again, repeat on other side

part 4:

(from migi morote gedan) bakuchu moroashigeri, fukuteki

part 5:

step up to 45 degree angle (hidari chu­dan), keri moroashigeri, turn and repeat on other side, kiai, return to genten

Since this is based on a hokei you all know, I think you can get the gist of what I’m doing here. It should be appar­ent that I haven’t really changed the “fla­vor” of the hokei at all. If any­thing, i’ve increased the things that make hen­tai no hokei so inter­est­ing (to me, that is) in the first place: more chang­ing direct­ing, more hengi, more com­plex­ity. I’ve also got­ten rid of the non-hengi for the first kiai, which has always both­ered me (yes, it’s still tech­ni­cally sengi, but the actual strike is hen­geri…). In gen­eral, I think my hen-hen hokei is very much like the orig­i­nal, only more so.

So why bother, if it’s going to be so sim­i­lar? Well, for starters, I didn’t want the hokei to be unrec­og­niz­able. It’s still hen­tai no hokei — just a dif­fer­ent ver­sion. The orig­i­nal hokei is great prac­tice, and I love it. I just wanted to see how I could “max-out” the frame­work that the hokei pro­vides. Have I done a good job? Well, that depends on what you think Taido should look like.

I’m sure some folks would think the use of jodan kamae is erro­neous. However, I’ve always liked using jodan with sen­tai and hen­tai move­ments, and since the hokei has tech­niques work­ing in oppo­site direc­tions, it seemed like a nat­ural fit. Some folks might wish for more unshin, since the orig­i­nal hokei only has one chance to earn extra points in com­pe­ti­tion, but i’m not very competition-oriented, so it’s not much con­cern to me. I think hen­tai no hokei is about chang­ing — chang­ing the body axis, chang­ing direc­tion, chang­ing level (height), chang­ing kamae for var­i­ous uses, etc. The notion of change is cen­tral to my ver­sion of the hokei.

I feel that the out­line above is pretty self-explanatory. Since the “point” of the hokei is unchanged, I won’t give much in the way of analy­sis of this rou­tine. However, please note that the tech­niques do “flow”. There is noth­ing arbi­trary or non-functional. The prin­ci­ples employed are the same as the orig­i­nal hokei. The tech­niques are (almost entirely) hen­tai. The rou­tine does what it sets out to do by stick­ing to its theme and pro­vid­ing a use­ful prac­tice of hengi at a higher level than the orig­i­nal version.

Now let’s look at my most recent creation:

2006 Asia-Pacific Games "Taido no Hokei"

Later this week, I will travel to Sydney to par­tic­i­pate in the sec­ond annual Asia-Pacific meet. This year’s com­pe­ti­tion event includes a cat­e­gory called “Taido no hokei”. Briefly, the rules indi­cate that the player must cre­ate an indi­vid­u­ally unique hokei, based on a stan­dard enbusen pat­tern used in the exist­ing –tai hokei. The hokei should make use of each of the five sotai move­ments and con­tain some interesting/difficult tech­niques. It also has to be sym­met­ri­cal. That about sums up the stipulations.

Lately, I’ve been spend­ing most of my train­ing time on the –sei hokei series, which are designed to prac­tice go no sen appli­ca­tion as opposed to the sen no sen of the –tai and –in hokei. This dis­tinc­tion pri­mar­ily means that the –sei hokei use tech­niques, and are prac­ticed in an atti­tude, con­ducive to appli­ca­tion in a defense sit­u­a­tion. For exam­ple, the –tai hokei (sen no sen) con­sist of straight-line tech­niques deployed offen­sively against one oppo­nent at a time (usu­ally). In the –sei hokei (go no sen), the per­former defends against sev­eral attacks (some­times by mul­ti­ple assailants) in var­i­ous direc­tions. The –sei hokei use less kick­ing, no unshin, and more-complex unsoku than the –tai hokei, as well as lots of elbows, punches, and grabs.

I’ll get more into this dif­fer­ence in a future arti­cle, but the point is that I really am enjoy­ing the go no sen feel of the –sei hokei, so I decided that I would attempt to bring more go no sen tim­ing into my “Taido no hokei”, despite the fact that it has to fol­low the basic form of a –tai hokei.

Here’s an outline:

Firstly, I should say that I am bas­ing this on the move­ment pat­tern seen in untai and sen­tai no hokei. However, I have made a cou­ple of tweaks. For instance, from the ini­tial gedan kamae, I turn to the left by spin­ning about the front foot, clock­wise, so that I arrive in migi chu­dan, one step west­ward (assum­ing the front to be north) of the stan­dard open­ing step. This is to set up the idea from the begin­ning that I am fac­ing two sep­a­rate oppo­nents simul­ta­ne­ously attack­ing from oppo­site sides. Other alter­ations to the pat­tern should be appar­ent as I proceed.

part 1:

(from migi chu­dan) sen­tai sha­jogeri, ren­zoku nen­tai ejizuki, gyakuzuki, ushiro gyaku dog­a­rami, tobi 3dangeri and morote nukite (hidari eji­dachi), make hidari chu­dan in place, repeat on other side (migi eji­dachi, rear foot on gen­ten), spin counter-clockwise about rear foot to face front (hidari chu­dan)

part 2:

untai keri tsuki, turn and morote nukite, bakuchugeri, turn to north, zen­ten jun­zuki (migi eji­dachi), kiai, left leg steps west to hidari chudan

part 3:

ka-soku sen­tai jun-hangetsuate (at 90 degrees), return by revers­ing the step in gyakusen­tai fash­ion, gen-soku, look to rear (east), ushiro nukite (migi ryunen­dachi), senjo-ebi-moroashigeri, return fac­ing east, shote­barai, sen­tai kin­teki enpi, kaeshi sen­tai gyaku­joate (east­ward), nage kuzushi (hidari eji­dachi, fac­ing west), turn in place to migi chu­dan, repeat on other side (migi eji­dachi, fac­ing east, right foot on kidosen), left leg steps north to migi chu­dan (fac­ing genten)

part 4:

untai keri tsuki, turn and morote nukite, bakuchugeri, turn to south, zen­ten jun­zuki (hidari eji­dachi), right leg pulls 135 degrees clock­wise to hidari chu­dan to northwest

part 5:

untai oshikuzushi, step-in ryunen enpi, uraken, turn 180 degrees to north­west, torite, assist with right hand, left leg steps along the same line in front of the body to fudo­dachi, migi ushiro enpi with arm-break across left shoul­der, left leg steps back to torite posi­tion, drop-enpi, left leg steps in front of body to gen­ten, right leg spins 90 degress clock­wise, repeat other side, kiai, return to gen­ten, have a beer, go to bed

Parts of this are going to be dif­fi­cult to under­stand in writ­ing, and that’s ok. I may post some video some­day, but I’m hop­ing to avoid turn­ing this site into a media-heavy affair with too many stim­u­lat­ing visu­als. In the mean­time, use your imag­i­na­tion and try to fig­ure out for your­self what these tech­niques are, and how they are being used. The dis­cus­sion below may be help­ful in this respect.

How did I meet the require­ments?
Well, I fol­lowed the pat­tern sym­met­ri­cally, and I used every sotai at least twice. What’s more, I tried to use each of the five tech­niques together in com­bi­na­tion. In terms of inter­est­ing (or per­haps even new) tech­niques, I have a few com­bi­na­tions that I have never seen else­where. The shajo ren­zoku nen­zuki is all mine. The senjo-moroashigeri is the advanced level of the senjo-ebi I use in the hen/hen hokei. Tobi 3dangeri was sug­gested as a pos­si­ble point-winner, so I felt I should throw it in. I think I have met the require­ments very well and even pushed beyond my knowl­edge of the expectations.

How did I exhibit go no sen?
This is a more inter­est­ing ques­tion. During each com­bi­na­tion (save the kiai por­tions), I have two oppo­nents attack­ing form oppo­site sides. The com­bi­na­tions deal with each oppo­nent with­out neglect­ing the threat of being struck from behind. For each oppo­nent, there is a defen­sive move, a time-buying move, and a fin­ish­ing move. I’ve also included a good num­ber of throws, joint attacks, and close-in strik­ing. I’ll let you stretch your imag­i­na­tion a bit by fig­ur­ing out the bunkai (though I may teach this rou­tine and its appli­ca­tions to black belts some­day). The main thing is that I think it’s pretty obvi­ous that I am defend­ing against mul­ti­ple attack­ers in this rou­tine. And that’s what I had hoped to accomplish.

The only thing I wish I could have done dif­fer­ently is to make use of more tengi tech­niques (not just in the “up and down” parts) or some better-integrated close/joint work. The tengi and close-in parts are kind of sep­a­rate from the sen-un-hen-nen parts, which are very inte­grated. I would have liked it if I could have found a way to make every­thing fit a lit­tle more tightly together, and I may be able to do so in a future incar­na­tion of this rou­tine. As it stands now though, I had to cut out about half of the tech­niques I really wanted to include because my orig­i­nal draft would have killed me on endurance (it took about six min­utes to do a men­tal walk-through). I traded the oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate the “ulti­mate” hokei to end up with a per­formable hokei that includes plenty of flash while hold­ing on to its purpose.

The End

So that’s the end of my notes on these two hokei. I think they show dif­fer­ent sides of hokei cre­ation in response to dif­fer­ent require­ments. One was designed as an update of an exist­ing hokei, and one was designed for com­pe­ti­tion as an omnibus col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing com­bi­na­tions exem­pli­fy­ing go no sen.

While nei­ther of these would be accept­able for the hokei assign­ment as given, they could be inter­est­ing source mate­r­ial for stu­dents (or any­one) hop­ing to build their own rou­tines. In addi­tion, this arti­cle may be help­ful in decid­ing how to struc­ture the essay por­tion of the hokei assign­ment (though the descrip­tions would be unnecessary).

I hope this demon­strates that the con­tents of a hokei or rou­tine are designed to be func­tional prac­tice for com­bi­na­tion tech­niques. While it’s always nice if a rou­tine looks badass, this is mean­ing­less if the tech­niques don’t fit together with some over­all pur­pose. The two hokei out­lined above are both pretty good exam­ples of these points.

I have cre­ated sev­eral other hokei over the past five or six years (not to men­tion the ones I made up as a child — but I was more inter­ested in tenkai in those days). In addi­tion to “updates” of all the –tai hokei (includ­ing both ver­sions of untai) as well as ten and nen –in, I have done sev­eral combined-sotai rou­tines: sen-un, un-hen, sen-nen, and ten-hen. I’ve also played with the –sei and –mei hokei along the same lines, but I haven’t final­ized any prac­tice that I feel really meets the stan­dards of being called a “hokei”.

This kind of tin­ker­ing with pre­set rou­tines doesn’t have to be lim­ited to hokei. In amer­ica, we prac­tice a lot of shorter rou­tines for var­i­ous tech­niques. I am cur­rently work­ing on mak­ing new ver­sions of all of these too, at both eas­ier and more dif­fi­cult lev­els. The idea is that stu­dents can learn sim­ple rou­tines early on, and then increase the com­plex­ity and dif­fi­culty with vari­a­tions on the theme as they progress. For exam­ple, I have a vari­a­tion on the sim­ple 8-step chu­dan kamae turn­ing drill for each belt level. Black belts find them­selves los­ing bal­ance and trip­ping over their feet when they prac­tice my advanced sen­tai routine.

Perhaps some really forward-thinking stu­dents may be inter­ested in the idea of alter­ing exist­ing hokei and rou­tines as a means of cre­at­ing incre­men­tally pro­gres­sive drills of grad­u­ally increas­ing dif­fi­culty to improve capa­bil­i­ties in some or other theme of move­ment. And if not, i’ll get around to writ­ing an arti­cle about it some­day before too long…