SKSK - Kempo

Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo

The Kosho Shorei Ryu Bujutsu (martial arts) are based on the study of the preparatory arts. This life-study occurs 24 hours a day, and is the most important aspect of Kosho Shorei, True Self-defense. The preparatory arts teach the Kempo-ka to control his environment in a way that inhibits conflict from taking place. In this way, he is able to live in harmony with his environment and the people in it. The preparatory arts allow students to structure themselves such that they effectively prevent self-generation of what we call negative stimuli. This element of control allows one to eliminate self-conflict.

Negative stimuli are any use of our psycho-physical systems which are less than 100% efficient in the resolution of the specific situational conflict we are within. For example, we all have two forms of vision: peripheral and tunnel vision. Kosho Shorei Kempo Bujutsuka, who study the natural truths or laws pertaining to the martial arts primarily, understand this, and its significance. By studying themselves and their systems of functionality, they are most effectively able to use their skills and attributes in any situation. The significance of understanding visual modes is great: Our eyes send nerve impulses to the brain to allow us to perceive and react to environmental stimuli. The cones, which are cells on the retina responsible for perceiving form and color, are greater in number in the center of the retina than on the periphery. Therefore, when we look directly at something, much more detail is perceived, sent to the brain, and processed. This takes time. Tunnel vision makes relatively quick reaction impossible due to the volume of information we ask our brain to process in this mode. Tunnel vision should be used when we want to intently study something. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, was designed for detecting motion. The smaller number of cones on our retina's periphery do not pass along as much information pertaining to color, depth-perception, subtle shading and toning of objects. What we receive is simply where objects in our environment are, and where they are going. The brain then calculates speed and other factors that allow us to deal with our environment. The understanding of peripheral vision's benefits, and specific ancient methods of employing this understanding in a self-defense situation is one of Kosho Ryu's fundamental studies. The additional understanding of posturing, weightedness from left to right leg, hearing and visual ranges, and other factors create quite a large bit of preparation students of Kosho Ryu can use to control an opponent. However, these factors are used mostly in the physical arts, which are the lowest levels of Kosho Ryu Bujutsu.

True Kosho Shorei happens in the mind. Perception of a potential attacker's intent, based upon things such as his demeanor, flesh and eye-white color, degree of apparent excitement or agitation, tone of voice, body language, verbal expression, and of course his words and gestures all help us determine his situation, including his weaknesses. Kosho Ryu teaches you apply this, along with your understanding of your own psychology, in order to better understand yourself as well. We cannot understand attackers until we understand ourselves. Perception of ourselves is not only important for self-diagnosis and self improvement, but also to understand how an attacker might perceive us, and therefore what he might do.

All of these aspects of Kosho Ryu preparatory arts are important within the context of self-defense against a physical attack, but are less important in the entire scheme of things. Our true enemy is not some physical attacker, it is our own mind. Once we study it until we understand ourselves and our spirit, we can consider ourselves safer from disaster. Nothing is truly disastrous unless we interpret it so. We deal with situations on an hourly basis that attack our body, mind, and spirit, but we may never be physically attacked by an assailant. So, Kosho Ryu logically teaches to put energy where it does the most good, in defeating negative perceptions, mostly to what we nowadays call stress. The same Laws apply to the physical realm that apply to the mind. The bujutsu put us in simulated physically stressful situations, and teach us how to control them. This is Kempo. For more information, see the Philosophy of Kempo.

Another aspect of Kosho Ryu bujutsu is the escaping arts. The escaping arts are practiced in order to teach you to avoid physical conflict of any type. By understanding natural principles pertaining to eye-training, hearing, sensitivity to movement and other things involved in mastering the senses, a student can totally escape from harm, never being touched by a would-be assailant. The cornerstone of the escaping arts is awareness. This was taught and practiced in Hawaii by James Mitose Sensei and by his senior Hawaiian student, Thomas Young. In his last eleven years, Professor Young worked hand-in-hand with Bruce Juchnik Hanshi to give him insights he needed to preserve the wishes of Mitose Sensei concerning the importance of the escaping arts and the mastery of the senses. It is interesting to note here that this type of oral one-on-one transmission of the Okuden (inner secrets) of Kosho Ryu and other ancient art-forms is common. These non-tough-guy type arts are never widely popular. Unfortunately, ego is the motivation for many students. Ego is what prevents most students from investing their time into the study of these arts: they don't look as flamboyant as jump-spinning hook-kicks to the head. But, they work! Kosho deals with reality. Escaping arts represent the highest form of physical martial arts. They do no damage to the attacker, and therefore do not injure the spirit of the would-be victim. This is Kosho Shorei.

Next in order of preference, the Kosho Bujutsuka would choose manipulatory arts. These arts, which are widely studied early in the training of Kosho Ryu students, involve folding arts such as throws, joint-locks, holds and pins, and chokes. They also include non-fatal strikes to the limbs of the attacker during his rotation. All Kosho Ryu weaponry is taught such that it can be used to manipulate and control an attacker, or escape from an attacker without causing him harm, as well as in ways which will damage or kill an attacker. Manipulatory arts would be the main Kosho Ryu bujutsu sub-arts used in the context of law enforcement. These arts are used to prevent the opponent from gaining the body posturing and body alignments necessary to effectively continue to attack, and/or subdue him without inflicting permanent injury. Of course, civilian practitioners could choose manipulatory arts as a means to make escape, or in other circumstances where escape is not an option, such as when an attacker is after a nearby child or other person who needs protection and may not be able to escape.

Next, the Kosho Ryu bujutsuka would opt for controlling strikes. This involves shocking the opponent with substantially debilitating strikes to areas which control the rotation of the body, such as the head, shoulders, hips, and legs. This vast and important study comprises much of the training time of beginners in Kempo bujutsu.

Next, the Kosho Ryu bujutsuka would choose striking arts. These are broken up into Onna No Atemi (Female Strikes), and Otoko No Atemi (Male Strikes). Onna No Atemi teaches the importance of 90 degree posturing, which is essential to the methods in Kosho Ryu bujutsu. This study, which comes directly from the Sho Chiku Bai, is one of the foundations of the art. When postured 90 degrees to the opponent, you make him effectively weightless in attempts to continue his attack. This makes him simple to escape from, control, or damage. Although Onna striking weapons and even the strikes themselves are soft and weak, the impact is tremendous to the opponent in his contorted position, and capable of crushing his spine and breaking his neck, back, and leg with one "soft" blow. All Kosho Ryu strikes are actually male then, in essence, to the opponent.

Unfortunately, many other arts, even some of those of the Kempo lineage, do not practice this way. This results in the direct or nearly-direct conflict of force from the two parties involved, which often damages the striking limb of the practitioner attempting to defend himself! What kind of self-defense is that? Misunderstanding of the proper base for striking techniques is also frequent. Wide bases capable of allowing practitioners to generate maximum striking power are not meant to be used when striking opponents who are moving toward you! This is obvious to practitioners who study the natural laws of physics applied to combat. If you're not sure about this, consider the following example: A speeding trailer truck is your opponent, complete with mass and power, and headed straight at you. Do you stand in its path, in your strongest martial arts' stance and attempt a powerful punch or kick straight to the radiator? That would be the wide base solution, with no regard for mass and momentum. What is the Onna No Atemi solution? Simple: move out of the way as you lightly toss anything weighing a mere 5 pounds or more up to the height of the driver's side of the windshield. This soft strike will cause massive damage to the visual plane of the opponent, causing him to lose control of his motion, and probably crash as you walk calmly away. At the very least, this speeding bully would be unable to turn quickly enough to re-attack you in your mobile state. Were he to try to do so at high speed, he would probably contort himself to a such a degree that he'd roll over and crash! This is the power of Onna No Atemi. It is an understanding which comes from the study of Natural Laws of motion.

Otoko No Atemi (male percussion) involves the connection of the upper and lower-body spheres of rotation, using proper triangulation of movements, muscle groups, and meridians to engage maximum energy in the destructive striking force to a stationed opponent. Elements of Earth and Heaven must connect at a specific triangulated point for maximum effect. To understand this, we study the Tao. Stationed opponents are not people who are standing around that we've decided to attack. Opponents are able to be frozen in motion temporarily, or put into positions from which they cannot move without damaging themselves, by studying Kosho Ryu bujutsu and understanding how it is that movement takes place. Again, we return to the study of the self and of natural laws of motion. By creating these frozen positions in the opponent, we create a void in time which we can use to buy the time necessary for the generation of massive striking power. This is the mode in which wide base applications are valid, and power may appropriately be generated by the practitioner defending himself.

When it comes to the study of the striking arts, it is necessary for the Kosho Ryu practitioner to engage in the structure of body types, posturing, and positioning. This is most effectively done through the study of healing arts. Knowing these things tells a practitioner how to adjust his strike to accomplish his goal pertaining to the opponent's anatomy. One linking point between the martial and healing arts studies is Kosho Ryu's Muscular-Skeletal-Internal Striking Theory (MSI). On an opponent with large muscle-mass for instance, muscular blows would cause debilitating cramping. Certain skeletal blows, to the upper ribs for instance, would be ineffective, but others, to the lower legs possibly, would break bones. When massive damage is called for, blows to internal organs through the meridian structure would be used, especially on a body-builder-type, due to the fact that he's stretched his skin tightly over certain areas, actually making these types of strikes more effective! Knowledge of the octagon from the Kosho Ryu Sho Chiku Bai mon, Kosho 7/10 and negative striking methods (which you can find out about at seminars), would be employed here as well to cause the internal damage energetically through organic meridians and tsubo (pressure points). A Kosho Ryu practitioner studies the nervous system, the musculo-skeletal system, and the organic-meridial system, as well as body dynamics and kinetics through the observation of natural movement. All of this knowledge is necessary to know where the targets are that are appropriate for the desired level of damage based on the context of the situation. More importantly, by understanding motion, and dealing with live, moving opponents in Kosho training, students also study when the target is exposed and in the ideal yin state to accept the blow we choose with maximum effect. The study of the combination of tsubo-targets, natural movement and rotation, angle of rotation, breathing, and posturing in relationship to the strike and striking angle determine the type of blow used, and its effect.

In addition to striking arts, grappling arts and throwing arts are covered at length in Kosho Ryu schools. The same laws and principles apply to both. Furthermore, Kosho Ryu sees no difference between striking arts and throwing arts other than intent. Rotation takes place in all motion. By studying natural laws of motion and balance, we can understand kuzushi, imbalance. All movement requires a temporary state of imbalance to regain the next balance point. Without imbalance, movement is impossible. Movement is a falling process. Therefore, when we continue the imbalanced movement of an attacker, we make it impossible for him to regain balance. This is the process used to freeze the motion of an opponent used in Kosho Ryu's Otoko No Atemi. Freezing the opponent disallows him leverage from either side of his body and traps him using his own skeletal structure to do so. We settle our body-weight strategically upon the structure of the opponent so that he becomes our base, and is therefore skeletally frozen beneath us. To do so, we use a heaven-to-earth direction. In the Kumiuchi-type grappling (ancient battlefield wrestling-techniques of the samurai which gave birth to jujutsu), and in judo based systems, the same rotations take place, but are applied in an earth-to-heaven fashion, which requires some power on the part of the thrower. In Kosho Ryu bujutsu, no power is necessary because the law of gravity acting merely on our properly-positioned body-weight accomplishes our goal. To throw an opponent instead of trapping him in a skeletal lock, we simply alter the angle of the settling of our body-weight. It is easy to crush him, breaking his neck, back, and leg, simply by dropping quickly into his locked skeleton with an Otoko attitude, but of course this is largely unnecessary in actuality since the opponent is trapped.

The depth to which Kosho Ryu takes the study of fighting arts is due to its seven hundred and fifty years of development. The study of Kosho Ryu traditional Japanese weaponry, for instance, includes all of the aspects you've just read about: escaping, controlling, and destructive arts are studied with respect to each weapon. Still, all of this expertise only serves to make the competent Kosho Ryu bujutsuka a man of peace, through his understanding of the mon and its philosophies.

The information is out there. It is up to you to go get it and study it. The teacher can only teach. The student must also learn. Other materials to look into are any books on the eastern view of health, acupuncture, or breathing, the I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Go Rin No Sho (the Book of 5 Rings), books on weightlifting or aerobics and the stresses on the body, books or tapes on other martial arts, especially Pa Qua, T'ai Ch'i Chuan and other ancient arts, and material on psychology. Kempo is study!

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		Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo The Kosho Shorei Ryu Bujutsu (martial arts) are based on the study of the preparatory arts. This life-study occurs 24 hours a day, and is the most important aspect of Kosho Shorei, True Self-defense. The preparatory arts teach the Kempo-ka to control his environment in a way that inhibits conflict from taking place. In this way, he is able to live in harmony with his environment and the people in it. The preparatory arts allow students to structure themselves such that they effectively prevent self-generation of what we call negative stimuli. This element of control allows one to eliminate self-conflict. Negative stimuli are any use of our psycho-physical systems which are less than 100% efficient in the resolution of the specific situational conflict we are within. For example, we all have two forms of vision: peripheral and tunnel vision. Kosho Shorei Kempo Bujutsuka, who study the natural truths or laws pertaining to the martial arts primarily, understand this, and its significance. By studying themselves and their systems of functionality, they are most effectively able to use their skills and attributes in any situation. The significance of understanding visual modes is great: Our eyes send nerve impulses to the brain to allow us to perceive and react to environmental stimuli. The cones, which are cells on the retina responsible for perceiving form and color, are greater in number in the center of the retina than on the periphery. Therefore, when we look directly at something, much more detail is perceived, sent to the brain, and processed. This takes time. Tunnel vision makes relatively quick reaction impossible due to the volume of information we ask our brain to process in this mode. Tunnel vision should be used when we want to intently study something. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, was designed for detecting motion. The smaller number of cones on our retina's periphery do not pass along as much information pertaining to color, depth-perception, subtle shading and toning of objects. What we receive is simply where objects in our environment are, and where they are going. The brain then calculates speed and other factors that allow us to deal with our environment. The understanding of peripheral vision's benefits, and specific ancient methods of employing this understanding in a self-defense situation is one of Kosho Ryu's fundamental studies. The additional understanding of posturing, weightedness from left to right leg, hearing and visual ranges, and other factors create quite a large bit of preparation students of Kosho Ryu can use to control an opponent. However, these factors are used mostly in the physical arts, which are the lowest levels of Kosho Ryu Bujutsu. True Kosho Shorei happens in the mind. Perception of a potential attacker's intent, based upon things such as his demeanor, flesh and eye-white color, degree of apparent excitement or agitation, tone of voice, body language, verbal expression, and of course his words and gestures all help us determine his situation, including his weaknesses. Kosho Ryu teaches you apply this, along with your understanding of your own psychology, in order to better understand yourself as well. We cannot understand attackers until we understand ourselves. Perception of ourselves is not only important for self-diagnosis and self improvement, but also to understand how an attacker might perceive us, and therefore what he might do. All of these aspects of Kosho Ryu preparatory arts are important within the context of self-defense against a physical attack, but are less important in the entire scheme of things. Our true enemy is not some physical attacker, it is our own mind. Once we study it until we understand ourselves and our spirit, we can consider ourselves safer from disaster. Nothing is truly disastrous unless we interpret it so. We deal with situations on an hourly basis that attack our body, mind, and spirit, but we may never be physically attacked by an assailant. So, Kosho Ryu logically teaches to put energy where it does the most good, in defeating negative perceptions, mostly to what we nowadays call stress. The same Laws apply to the physical realm that apply to the mind. The bujutsu put us in simulated physically stressful situations, and teach us how to control them. This is Kempo. For more information, see the Philosophy of Kempo. Another aspect of Kosho Ryu bujutsu is the escaping arts. The escaping arts are practiced in order to teach you to avoid physical conflict of any type. By understanding natural principles pertaining to eye-training, hearing, sensitivity to movement and other things involved in mastering the senses, a student can totally escape from harm, never being touched by a would-be assailant. The cornerstone of the escaping arts is awareness. This was taught and practiced in Hawaii by James Mitose Sensei and by his senior Hawaiian student, Thomas Young. In his last eleven years, Professor Young worked hand-in-hand with Bruce Juchnik Hanshi to give him insights he needed to preserve the wishes of Mitose Sensei concerning the importance of the escaping arts and the mastery of the senses. It is interesting to note here that this type of oral one-on-one transmission of the Okuden (inner secrets) of Kosho Ryu and other ancient art-forms is common. These non-tough-guy type arts are never widely popular. Unfortunately, ego is the motivation for many students. Ego is what prevents most students from investing their time into the study of these arts: they don't look as flamboyant as jump-spinning hook-kicks to the head. But, they work! Kosho deals with reality. Escaping arts represent the highest form of physical martial arts. They do no damage to the attacker, and therefore do not injure the spirit of the would-be victim. This is Kosho Shorei. Next in order of preference, the Kosho Bujutsuka would choose manipulatory arts. These arts, which are widely studied early in the training of Kosho Ryu students, involve folding arts such as throws, joint-locks, holds and pins, and chokes. They also include non-fatal strikes to the limbs of the attacker during his rotation. All Kosho Ryu weaponry is taught such that it can be used to manipulate and control an attacker, or escape from an attacker without causing him harm, as well as in ways which will damage or kill an attacker. Manipulatory arts would be the main Kosho Ryu bujutsu sub-arts used in the context of law enforcement. These arts are used to prevent the opponent from gaining the body posturing and body alignments necessary to effectively continue to attack, and/or subdue him without inflicting permanent injury. Of course, civilian practitioners could choose manipulatory arts as a means to make escape, or in other circumstances where escape is not an option, such as when an attacker is after a nearby child or other person who needs protection and may not be able to escape. Next, the Kosho Ryu bujutsuka would opt for controlling strikes. This involves shocking the opponent with substantially debilitating strikes to areas which control the rotation of the body, such as the head, shoulders, hips, and legs. This vast and important study comprises much of the training time of beginners in Kempo bujutsu. Next, the Kosho Ryu bujutsuka would choose striking arts. These are broken up into Onna No Atemi (Female Strikes), and Otoko No Atemi (Male Strikes). Onna No Atemi teaches the importance of 90 degree posturing, which is essential to the methods in Kosho Ryu bujutsu. This study, which comes directly from the Sho Chiku Bai, is one of the foundations of the art. When postured 90 degrees to the opponent, you make him effectively weightless in attempts to continue his attack. This makes him simple to escape from, control, or damage. Although Onna striking weapons and even the strikes themselves are soft and weak, the impact is tremendous to the opponent in his contorted position, and capable of crushing his spine and breaking his neck, back, and leg with one "soft" blow. All Kosho Ryu strikes are actually male then, in essence, to the opponent. Unfortunately, many other arts, even some of those of the Kempo lineage, do not practice this way. This results in the direct or nearly-direct conflict of force from the two parties involved, which often damages the striking limb of the practitioner attempting to defend himself! What kind of self-defense is that? Misunderstanding of the proper base for striking techniques is also frequent. Wide bases capable of allowing practitioners to generate maximum striking power are not meant to be used when striking opponents who are moving toward you! This is obvious to practitioners who study the natural laws of physics applied to combat. If you're not sure about this, consider the following example: A speeding trailer truck is your opponent, complete with mass and power, and headed straight at you. Do you stand in its path, in your strongest martial arts' stance and attempt a powerful punch or kick straight to the radiator? That would be the wide base solution, with no regard for mass and momentum. What is the Onna No Atemi solution? Simple: move out of the way as you lightly toss anything weighing a mere 5 pounds or more up to the height of the driver's side of the windshield. This soft strike will cause massive damage to the visual plane of the opponent, causing him to lose control of his motion, and probably crash as you walk calmly away. At the very least, this speeding bully would be unable to turn quickly enough to re-attack you in your mobile state. Were he to try to do so at high speed, he would probably contort himself to a such a degree that he'd roll over and crash! This is the power of Onna No Atemi. It is an understanding which comes from the study of Natural Laws of motion. Otoko No Atemi (male percussion) involves the connection of the upper and lower-body spheres of rotation, using proper triangulation of movements, muscle groups, and meridians to engage maximum energy in the destructive striking force to a stationed opponent. Elements of Earth and Heaven must connect at a specific triangulated point for maximum effect. To understand this, we study the Tao. Stationed opponents are not people who are standing around that we've decided to attack. Opponents are able to be frozen in motion temporarily, or put into positions from which they cannot move without damaging themselves, by studying Kosho Ryu bujutsu and understanding how it is that movement takes place. Again, we return to the study of the self and of natural laws of motion. By creating these frozen positions in the opponent, we create a void in time which we can use to buy the time necessary for the generation of massive striking power. This is the mode in which wide base applications are valid, and power may appropriately be generated by the practitioner defending himself. When it comes to the study of the striking arts, it is necessary for the Kosho Ryu practitioner to engage in the structure of body types, posturing, and positioning. This is most effectively done through the study of healing arts. Knowing these things tells a practitioner how to adjust his strike to accomplish his goal pertaining to the opponent's anatomy. One linking point between the martial and healing arts studies is Kosho Ryu's Muscular-Skeletal-Internal Striking Theory (MSI). On an opponent with large muscle-mass for instance, muscular blows would cause debilitating cramping. Certain skeletal blows, to the upper ribs for instance, would be ineffective, but others, to the lower legs possibly, would break bones. When massive damage is called for, blows to internal organs through the meridian structure would be used, especially on a body-builder-type, due to the fact that he's stretched his skin tightly over certain areas, actually making these types of strikes more effective! Knowledge of the octagon from the Kosho Ryu Sho Chiku Bai mon, Kosho 7/10 and negative striking methods (which you can find out about at seminars), would be employed here as well to cause the internal damage energetically through organic meridians and tsubo (pressure points). A Kosho Ryu practitioner studies the nervous system, the musculo-skeletal system, and the organic-meridial system, as well as body dynamics and kinetics through the observation of natural movement. All of this knowledge is necessary to know where the targets are that are appropriate for the desired level of damage based on the context of the situation. More importantly, by understanding motion, and dealing with live, moving opponents in Kosho training, students also study when the target is exposed and in the ideal yin state to accept the blow we choose with maximum effect. The study of the combination of tsubo-targets, natural movement and rotation, angle of rotation, breathing, and posturing in relationship to the strike and striking angle determine the type of blow used, and its effect. In addition to striking arts, grappling arts and throwing arts are covered at length in Kosho Ryu schools. The same laws and principles apply to both. Furthermore, Kosho Ryu sees no difference between striking arts and throwing arts other than intent. Rotation takes place in all motion. By studying natural laws of motion and balance, we can understand kuzushi, imbalance. All movement requires a temporary state of imbalance to regain the next balance point. Without imbalance, movement is impossible. Movement is a falling process. Therefore, when we continue the imbalanced movement of an attacker, we make it impossible for him to regain balance. This is the process used to freeze the motion of an opponent used in Kosho Ryu's Otoko No Atemi. Freezing the opponent disallows him leverage from either side of his body and traps him using his own skeletal structure to do so. We settle our body-weight strategically upon the structure of the opponent so that he becomes our base, and is therefore skeletally frozen beneath us. To do so, we use a heaven-to-earth direction. In the Kumiuchi-type grappling (ancient battlefield wrestling-techniques of the samurai which gave birth to jujutsu), and in judo based systems, the same rotations take place, but are applied in an earth-to-heaven fashion, which requires some power on the part of the thrower. In Kosho Ryu bujutsu, no power is necessary because the law of gravity acting merely on our properly-positioned body-weight accomplishes our goal. To throw an opponent instead of trapping him in a skeletal lock, we simply alter the angle of the settling of our body-weight. It is easy to crush him, breaking his neck, back, and leg, simply by dropping quickly into his locked skeleton with an Otoko attitude, but of course this is largely unnecessary in actuality since the opponent is trapped. The depth to which Kosho Ryu takes the study of fighting arts is due to its seven hundred and fifty years of development. The study of Kosho Ryu traditional Japanese weaponry, for instance, includes all of the aspects you've just read about: escaping, controlling, and destructive arts are studied with respect to each weapon. Still, all of this expertise only serves to make the competent Kosho Ryu bujutsuka a man of peace, through his understanding of the mon and its philosophies. The information is out there. It is up to you to go get it and study it. The teacher can only teach. The student must also learn. Other materials to look into are any books on the eastern view of health, acupuncture, or breathing, the I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Go Rin No Sho (the Book of 5 Rings), books on weightlifting or aerobics and the stresses on the body, books or tapes on other martial arts, especially Pa Qua, T'ai Ch'i Chuan and other ancient arts, and material on psychology. Kempo is study! Home
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