Hokei Assignment

This year will mark the com­ple­tion of ten con­tin­u­ous years of oper­a­tion for the Taido club at Georgia Tech. We are the first group to have suc­cess­fully admin­is­tered a Taido pro­gram in the United States out­side of the honbu dojo. We are also the only non-commercial Taido prac­tice group in the coun­try. This year, we will pro­mote our first three black belts, as announced here.

Over the years, black belt tests in American Taido have come to be lit­tle more than a for­mal­ity that occurs after a few years of train­ing. While we aren’t sug­gest­ing that the phys­i­cal black belt test is all that big a deal, Bryan and I have long thought that it should be the final step in a process of black belt can­di­dacy that is at least some­what trans­for­ma­tive to the stu­dent. This process should require growth and demon­stra­tion of com­pe­tence in the core areas of Taido prac­tice and philosophy.

Since we see our club as an extended exper­i­ment in Taido prac­tice and teach­ing, we decided long ago that when the time came for our stu­dents to test for shodan, we would do things a lit­tle dif­fer­ently than they are usu­ally done. Bryan and I have been work­ing for over a year now on a new method of test­ing stu­dents for black belt. I will be grad­u­ally releas­ing the details of our test process on this web­site as the stu­dents work towards their phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion (date, TBA).

Upon learn­ing of their can­di­dacy for shodan, the three stu­dents were informed that they would be required to cre­ate a new and unique Taido hokei and write a paper defend­ing it. Here are the guide­lines I sent them in an e-mail ear­lier today:

Your Hokei

Create your own hokei based on the fol­low­ing criteria:

1. Base your hokei on any one or two (no more) of Taido’s sotai (sen, un, hen, nen, ten). You may use other tech­niques, but focus on one or two types of movement.
2. You may use a stan­dard enbusen (lay­out) from an exist­ing hokei or cre­ate a new one.
3. Performance must last between 2 and 3 min­utes in duration.
4. Your hokei must fit in the space of a stan­dard Taido court.
5. You must return to genten.
6. The use of new or inter­est­ing tech­nique com­bi­na­tions is desirable.
7. All strikes must have a clearly tar­geted opponent.
8. You must pre­scribe breath­ing meth­ods for your hokei.
9. Your hokei must show under­stand­ing of the 10 hokei per­for­mance guide­lines (ex. You need to have slow parts as well as fast, relaxed parts as well as tense).
10. Your hokei must also demon­strate your under­stand­ing of the doko 5 kai for the sotai you chose.

Your Paper

You must also pre­pare a paper explain­ing the think­ing that informs your hokei design. here the the paper guidelines:

1. Successful papers will explain the deci­sions involved in cre­at­ing a new rou­tine and how you went about mak­ing them in a man­ner that demon­strates your under­stand­ing of Taido.
2. You should be able to explain: how many oppo­nents you are fac­ing; why you chose cer­tain tech­niques and com­bi­na­tions; why you breathe when and how you do; and any other per­ti­nent information.
3. Please do not describe your rou­tine, we will see it for our­selves when you per­form it.
4. Papers will be as long as they need to be to explain the rou­tine. A more straight-forward rou­tine will require less expla­na­tion than one that uses a lot of com­pli­cated combinations.
5. Please spell-check and try to fol­low gram­mat­i­cal conventions.
6. Be con­sis­tent in your spelling of japan­ese words — it’s OK to be incor­rect because you don’t speak Japanese, but please choose one spelling per word and stick with it.
7. Format your paper in a man­ner that lends itself to easy eval­u­a­tion. For exam­ple, eight pages about a rou­tine built on hengi will make it dif­fi­cult to ref­er­ence your sec­ond ebigeri. Use sec­tion head­ings and typo­graphic cues to direct nav­i­ga­tion of your paper.
8. Papers will be sub­mit­ted to andy and bryan via e-mail in a word for­mat no later than two weeks prior to your phys­i­cal examination.
9. Papers, along with our com­ments, will be posted on the web­site no later than one week prior to your phys­i­cal examination.

Your cre­ativ­ity and abil­ity to defend your deci­sions are the pri­mary eval­u­a­tion points for this assign­ment. Have fun.