shihonage
Samurai,
If you hang around the Aikido world for a while you will hear that Chiba Sensei has a reputation for practicing a very “hard” style. Some accuse him of purposefully hurting his students. I’ve met someone who was damaged by him first hand. Personally I like a more hardcore practice. I don’t study Aikido anymore, but there’s nothing wrong with doing it in a hardcore way. If your experience is different, more power to you. I’m just letting you know that it’s not the Wang Versus Chiba incident that is the root of this reputation for brutality, it’s been around a long time.
In my experience Shihonage is an elbow break. If you do it with a jolt instead of a smooth flowing motion there are arm breaks throughout the technique. At the end, instead of gently bending the hand over the shoulder, you can put massive force on the elbow by taking the arm laterally away from the body as you bring it down. This is a very dangerous thing to do to someone’s arm. Not that I’m saying anyone did this to anybody, I’m just saying that the technique is an elbow break if you want it to be.
The Chiba Versus Wang story has been going around for at least ten years if not longer, Kumkuat was just repeating it for our enjoyment. It’s from a time when all concerned were much younger men, so the people we know today are certainly a lot mellower. Back then things were very different. Wang hurt a lot of feelings by proclaiming that Japanese arts were inferior so it seems possible that challengers would be on the offensive.
Anyways, I personally like what I’ve seen from Chiba Sensei’s school. I hope you keep up the training and offer us insights as you get them.
-Jess O