Genkaku: What's the Point?

This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Q&A

Q&A

Genkaku is prob­a­bly the most-reviled rule in tour­na­ment Taido. Players hate it. Judges hate it. In fact, most judges never force genkaku in jis­sen. Many tour­na­ments explic­itly for­bid it.

I don’t think genkaku is all bad, but it’s def­i­nitely not my favorite part of jis­sen. I’m more into the meat — the part that involves hit­ting peo­ple. However, I can see some value to train­ing genkaku and even in occa­sion­ally using it in jis­sen. After all, it was good enough for Shukumine…

Could it be that genkaku has some mean­ing besides giv­ing peo­ple a chance to flip out like nin­jas dur­ing jissen?

What's the Point of Genkaku?

I’m actu­ally not bad at genkaku. I can do the excit­ing flips, and I can do con­tin­u­ous rengi too. The two times I’ve had to do genkaku in com­pe­ti­tion, I’ve been awarded yuko for out-genkaku-ing the other guy. In one case, that yuko was the decid­ing fac­tor in me win­ning the match.

In dis­cussing Taido with some friends online, I men­tioned that I was a lit­tle embar­rassed about win­ning by genkaku. Here’s where the dis­cus­sion went from there:

You were embar­rassed? Great com­ment. I´m still laughing.

I´m not sure on my opin­ion about genkaku, espe­cially in the mid­dle of jis­sen. Maybe if it was some­thing apart, a com­ple­ment… but dur­ing jis­sen I´m not sure.

I think that’s a very com­mon atti­tude. I responded with:

Well, it’s good to force some action when both oppo­nents are stalling or fail­ing to take an offen­sive. In some cases, two play­ers will be very closely matched, so genkaku gives the judges a chance to see what they do in a non-standard sit­u­a­tion. In the­ory, the supe­rior player will be able to per­form with aplomb even when forced to do strange things (and genkaku is cer­tainly strange).

Maybe I should clar­ify — I wasn’t embar­rassed to win, but that I couldn’t get a bet­ter score besides my yuko advan­tage from genkaku.

Then we got

What can you get out of Genkaku?
That is a good ques­tion, and I don’t really think you can get much out of it, because you just apply already known tech­niques on Genkaku. But you must do them faster !! (ok, maybe there’s some­thing to get out of it )
You can try to mis­guide your oppo­nent and get­ting a point out of it. But it’s hard, at least for me it is :) And usu­ally I only get myself trapped again in a cor­ner.
Maybe that’s the thing…trying to make the oppo­nent think you’re going one direc­tion, and then chang­ing it, so you can reach the other cor­ner in safety.
Then Genkaku is all about speed and/or misguidance! :)

And that’s cer­tainly one way to look at it. Personally, I think genkaku is about encour­ag­ing peo­ple to use unshin and rengi:

Well, the pur­pose of genkaku is to encour­age high-level tech­n­qiue in jis­sen. The cor­ner guy tries to use nice tengi and the inside dude can use tengi or try a rengi com­bi­na­tion of three or four tech­niques in series. The prac­tice is to per­form them while being aware of where you and the other guy are so you can tran­si­tion back into com­bat mode effectively.

As for what you can get out of it, it really depends on how you prac­tice. If your usual Taido prac­tice is com­plete, prac­tic­ing genkaku only helps make you bet­ter at genkaku in case you have to do it in a tour­na­ment. I don’t think it was designed for train­ing. Just a chance to break up the game and being in higher-level movement.

So what do you think?

I’m curi­ous for oth­ers’ opin­ions about genkaku. At the WTC in 2009, I remem­ber hear­ing that a lot of Europeans think genkaku is pretty stu­pid — though I’m sure there are oth­ers who enjoy the practice.

When I come across some­thing I don’t like or under­stand in Taido, the first thing I try to do is think about why Shukumine would have included it. That also entails try­ing to under­stand what his goals were for Taido. Then I look again at my own goals and vision of Taido and fig­ure out how I can make genkaku, or what­ever, work for me in that context.

Any ideas?

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6 Responses to Genkaku: What's the Point?
  1. Pedro O

    Hi Andy.
    A ques­tion: do you think Master Shukumine idea about Genkaku was just “a chance to break up the game in a jis­sen and being in higher-level move­ment”? I know that is your com­ment, but did you make it before or after seek­ing the rea­son why Genkaku exists?
    If so, can I take the con­clu­sion it only exists as a tour­na­ment rule, and for tour­na­ment use?

    After writ­ing this, I just remem­bered that some times dur­ing prac­tise in jis­sen I found myself “trapped” by my oppo­nent against one of the cor­ners of our dojo. It’s very hard to escape (you can attack, but most of the times it’s a no win sit­u­a­tion), unless you know what to do because you don’t have time to think. Genkaku helps in those sit­u­a­tions? I think it can. What do you think?

    Regards from Portugal

  2. andy

    I doubt Shukumine was con­cerned with ‘break­ing up the game,’ but I’m almost cer­tain that he saw genkaku as a way to bring more tengi and rengi into jis­sen. Most jis­sen rules exist in order to push play­ers to use ideal Taido move­ments. From what I’ve gath­ered in talk­ing to var­i­ous teach­ers, it’s also sup­posed to develop strategy.

    Genkaku is not prac­ticed seri­ously by many peo­ple in Japan. It’s viewed almost exclu­sively as a tour­na­ment rule, and only a few peo­ple seem to give it much con­sid­er­a­tion. It’s occa­sion­ally prac­ticed before major tour­na­ments, but it is never trained con­sis­tently or with real enthusiasm.

    Surely, prac­tic­ing genkaku can help one learn to per­form bet­ter in cor­ner sit­u­a­tions, but it’s not the only way to develop those skills and strategies.

  3. Amir

    I think I would rather see this rule when the fight ends in a draw… you know, like penal­ties in soc­cer :)
    Not a big fan of break­ing up the game, espes­cially when some­one just made the mis­take of stand­ing still…

    • andy

      Interesting. To me there is very lit­tle more frus­trat­ing than watch­ing two play­ers at a stale­mate in jissen.

  4. Dmag

    I know this is an old feed but I just hap­pened to come across it.

    I believe that Genkaku is more effec­tive as a train­ing tool but agree that it is not met with much enthu­si­asm dur­ing actual train­ing. The fact that it is kind of thrown at us right before a tour­na­ment is prob­a­bly a neg­a­tive as well.

    Maybe if we were allowed to hit the guy doing tengi it would be more fun. If the per­son escapes with­out get­ting hit then maybe I would award him a point.

    To me it’s all about the effec­tive­ness of each com­peti­tor and we all know that a true Taido prac­ti­tioner will never get caught in a corner…

    • andy

      Thanks for chim­ing in D. You’re always wel­come to voice your opin­ions on any­thing here.

      I think you’re right about the unfor­tu­nate tim­ing of almost all genkaku train­ing. It’s always like “Oh shit! We bet­ter do this a cou­ple of times before the com­pe­ti­tion tomor­row.” Not the best way to estab­lish com­fort or pos­i­tive feel­ings with the rules of play.

      For the record, you can in fact hit the guy any­time he’s not in the air. That could mean hit­ting him before he launches his tengi (while he’s doing unsoku, or wait­ing to decide which way to go). Hitting some­one in mid-flip is ille­gal because it could cause some­one to break their necks.

      And I totally agree with the last bit.

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