Kagami Biraki 2023

Our group participated in a Kagami Biraki ceremony to observe the Lunar New Year in Seattle in January 2023. We performed kata selected from the curriculum of Jiki Shinkage-ryu and were honored to watch presentation from the Tenshin Buko-ryu class at Lonin.

One puzzle in to no kata is that shidachi does not win at the end of each kata. He or she loses, again and again. This departs from most classical traditions, where uchi is teaching shi how to win and in stark contrast to one of Jikishinkage-ryū's goals: developing a dominant spirit in the practitioner. At the end of each of the 14 sections, uchi performs an large upward cut and then flows with nagashi into an angled cut to the neck, chasing shi away. There are several kuzushi associated to how shidachi would actually address the upward cut and not have to retreat. But in the basic or omote way the kata is performed, shidachi cuts down to stop the cut in place and uses the momentum of the cut and its rebound it aid themselves in springing back and away.

This stiff-legged jump is quite unique to Jikishinkage-ryū kata practice and does not seem to have a combative rationale other than to retreat quickly from an engagement, and possibly was developed as part of point sparring in the Meiji and Taisho era. Retreating repeatedly breaks the dominant spirit that the art is trying to develop in the student and yet it is a difficult movement that repeats in most kata of the set. Maintaining a dominant spirit even while retreating might be one explanation for the emphasis placed on the movement, when so little instruction is placed in Jikishinkage-ryū on what to actually do when at disadvantage when maneuvering or in retreat.

Mark Raugas
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