Rodrigo Kong had experienced aiki-based arts before but nothing like he felt when he trained with Shogen Okabayashi during a seminar in New York City. Totally enamored, Kong traveled to Japan to learn more about Daito-ryu and its aiki. Since returning from Japan, he has established his Yushinkan NYC and continued to train and teach Daito-ryu. Today, Kong took some time to talk about some of the vaguely defined aspects of Daito-ryu. All images provided by Rodrigo Kong. This is the first part of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Hello and welcome Kong Sensei! Thank you for joining us today!
Rodrigo King: Thank you for having me!
MAYTT: What sparked your interest in Daito-ryu?
RK: In short, my interest in Daito-ryu was sparked by the first time I felt the techniques of a Daito-ryu teacher visiting from Japan. It was in 1987 and I had been training in Miguel Ibarra Sensei’s dojo in the Bronx. At the time, there was a series of Daito-ryu seminars being held by Okabayshi Shogen Sensei of the Hakuhokai- later known as Hakuho Ryu Aikibudo. Ibarra sensei had required all his students to attend the seminars. Honestly, I had heard of Daito-ryu, but had no real interest in it, mostly because, I think, I didn’t understand the significance of the art. But the moment I felt Okabayashi Sensei’s technique, that all changed. Not better or worse, just something I’d never felt before. It was far outside the realm of my experiences, and I had been practicing martial arts since 1982, mostly kempo and filipino martial arts, but later also aikijujutsu. Anyway, it was like a light turned on in my brain. Shortly thereafter, I began planning my first trip to Japan.
Unfortunately, my initial attempts to connect with Okabayashi Sensei’s group didn’t work out. However, Ibarra Sensei had exchanged some friendly emails with Umei Shinichiro Sensei from the Takumakai in Osaka, Japan. Actually, Okabayashi Sensei was formerly from the Takumakai, before separating to form his own organization, and had been, I later found out, one of Umei Sensei’s teachers. Ibarra Sensei graciously wrote a letter of introduction to Umei Sensei on my behalf. Umei Sensei accepted me as a student, and in the summer of 1998 I traveled to Osaka to study Daito-ryu. I am indebted to Ibarra Sensei for all he did for me.
MAYTT: To clarify, you were taking a form of Aikijujutsu before the seminar?
RK: That’s right, I had already studied some Aikijujutsu before the seminar, but it was quite different from what I had experienced from Okabayashi Sensei. I started training in martial arts when I was nine years old under the guidance of Shifu Manuel Taningco. Shifu Taningco is a talented martial artist and teacher, and through him I gained a solid foundation. From him I learned primarily kempo and his family’s Filipino martial art. Shifu Taningco is a very curious person. He’s always exploring, always wanting to expand his skills. This led him to study Icho Ryu Aikijutsu, an art developed by Bernie Lau Sensei. As Shifu Taningco’s experience in this art grew, I also began to study it under him.
I trained directly under Shifu Taningco until 1991, and then also, whenever I could, during breaks from college. In 1996 I moved to New York City for graduate school. I eventually began studying under Ibarra Sensei in 1997. It’s my understanding that Ibarra Sensei’s Aikijujutsu represented the synthesis of two main lineages: Daito-ryu (primarily from the Yonezawa line, as well as from other Daito-ryu influences) and Miyama-ryu (from Antonio Pereira Sensei). Although I only studied under Ibarra Sensei for a short time, his lessons deepened my understanding of aikijujutsu.
MAYTT: When you went over to Japan and started training with the Takumakai, were they located in Osaka or are they located elsewhere?
RK: At the time, they were in the Osaka-Kansai area. This was their main area.
MAYTT: When you started to train there with them, was the training you experienced similar to what you experienced in the United States?
RK:Training in Japan was very different from training in the United States. It’s difficult to describe the differences because the metrics with which I would describe them are fundamentally from an American point of view, and the training in Japan really should be understood in the context of that culture, of which I’m not an expert. But, I’ll try. The first major difference was the intensity with which I trained. Training was 2-3 times a day, lasting one and a half to two hours per session, 6 days a week. Mornings were spent training under Umei sensei, and evenings and weekends I trained under Kawabe Takeshi Sensei.
The etiquette and formality was also different from what I was expecting. Actually, let me qualify that. For my first few training sessions, the etiquette and mood was what I had expected. Based on my experiences in the US, I suppose I was expecting a kind of rigidity of decorum, a demonstration of serious deference to the art, the dojo and the teacher through quietly sitting or standing at attention, bowing, and by demonstrating a willingness to learn through affect and body language.
For the first few sessions, that was the feeling. I remember silently sitting and standing at attention, keeping my back straight, people not talking to me, and- after a technique had been demonstrated- I remember being repeatedly, wordlessly, thrown to the ground. Even when I attempted the technique myself, I usually ended up on the ground, because Uke would feel how off-balanced I was, how bad my technique was, and rather than “give” me the technique, or let me run through it, uke would just throw. This went on for several days.
After training, the entire dojo would go out to eat. I remember sitting at the table, with Kawabe Sensei sitting casually and chatting, while everyone else was sitting up straight and interacting with him in a reserved manner. I observed that no one touched their drinks or meal until he did. When he finished eating, everyone was finished eating, and when he was ready to go, we were all ready to go. I remember being on high-alert for what I was supposed to do. My brain strained to take in all the details and I just tried to keep up.
As you can imagine, as a twenty-five-year-old American traveling in Japan to study Budo, these initial experiences played directly into my biases and preconceived notions. So, it didn’t deter me- it actually only fueled my desire to train more. I guess you could say I was looking for the pilgrimage and I had found it.
Anyways after a few days like this, things seemed to change. Training partners were more friendly. And despite the fact that I spoke no Japanese, people earnestly tried to explain things to me in a combination of Japanese and English. Meal times seemed to become more relaxed, too.
During training there was still the formality, but for whatever reason, I also began to observe moments of laughter, camaraderie- even joy. This was confusing. The mood was often surprisingly casual, even playful, and then without warning, could snap into something quiet and serious. I realized that these changes (sometimes overt, sometimes subtle), both in and out of the dojo, were predicated upon social mores and hierarchies, the structure of which was completely lost upon me. The Japanese understand these things intuitively. They understand when you can joke with the teacher, and when you can’t; when you better shut up and listen up. They understand how to sit casually but still show respect. Like any outsider observing a culture for the first time, there was so much going on right in front of my eyes that I didn’t see.
Retrospectively, I have wondered if those first few days of more severe treatment/ training were more a reflection of the energy that I was projecting, rather than them “testing” me somehow. That is, maybe I was treated that way because I was so stiff and formal? Perhaps they didn’t know what to do with me or how to communicate with me. I’m pretty sure I didn’t smile then, which is hilarious, because now I’m constantly smiling during training because of the joy it brings me. And the change that had occurred in the training, well, I don’t think it was a change of what everyone was doing. I think it was a change with how I saw things, things that were already there.
On a different note, regarding the waza themselves, the precision, pain and efficacy of the techniques was completely next-level. I wasn’t expecting it. I clearly remember one of my first encounters with the kata Gyaku Ude Dori. The joint locking technique in the kata is essentially an armbar. Although I had experienced many armbars in prior training, it was nothing like this: exquisitely, incredibly painful, with pressure directed so precisely that I could feel the exact location where my arm might break, and my body was so destabilized and off-balance that I could not effectively resist. It was frightening.
Perhaps more frightening than the pain was how soft the practitioners were. So soft, actually, that they could create kuzushi in my body long before I perceived it. It was like there was some small movement, and then somehow I was on the ground, and I didn’t know why, and I felt like my partner barely exerted himself. This was a revelation.
MAYTT: From the point in Japan to now, how have you seen Daito-ryu as an art change or evolve?
RK: I’ve definitely witnessed changes, but it’s unclear to me if these changes are actually changes to the art, or changes in my perspective as I have grown. Or maybe some combination of both? Also, Daito-ryu, like any living martial art (an art that is still being practiced) must necessarily change as it’s passed forward. 100% transmission of any psychomotor skill from one person to another is impossible. There are too many performance variables that must be accounted for and overcome to make the skill workable for an individual. Maybe 75-80% transmission at best? The individual has got to work out the rest for themselves. So when that person passes on the skill, they pass it on with their personal take on it. Change is inevitable. It’s not like declarative, concrete knowledge that can be passed on the same way every time- like “there are 10 millimeters in a centimeter.”
In a way, these psychomotor skills represent the operational tactics of an art, and, in my opinion, are the most subject to change, as opposed to the underpinning core strategies or ethos of a ryu-ha, which are much more likely to be immutable.
Take deception in Daito-ryu as an example of changes I’ve noticed. Strategically, deception is used to avoid conflict or to control an outcome. Tactically, this can be expressed on the macrolevel: for example, use of a neutral posture (not a “fighting stance” that would give away intention) and diaphragmatic breathing (so your inhalations and exhalations can’t be timed and used by the enemy); and on a microlevel, haptic misdirection that one intentionally supplies to uke (by varying the amount of tension or direction of force that is given at the moment of, or throughout, contact).
Over my years of practicing Daito-ryu, I have seen these tactics become more and more sophisticated, infused with, and expanded by, the ever-deepening aiki and kokyu of my teachers and sempai. For example, Kawabe Sensei has developed a real command of space, breathing, gaze, affective cues, and many other things that are difficult to describe. So when I attack him, my direction, speed, and timing are often within a range that he has dictated. That is, I think that I’m in charge of my attack, when in reality, I was deceived, or coerced, into delivering an attack more on his terms.
Don’t get me wrong. He’s not controlling me with magic or telepathy. I’m speaking about degrees of exerting influence and control, not absolute control.
By oral tradition, Daito-ryu is said to have been created in the 11th century by the warrior class of Japan. I can imagine at that time, and in subsequent violent centuries, practitioners didn’t have the time to delve into the very deep aiki aspects of techniques, maybe prioritizing functionality and speed of transmission. However, now, Daito-ryu is practiced as a civilian art. There is more time to develop aiki and kokyu. Some techniques of Daito-ryu really represent martial genius. They are direct, highly effective, and very painful. With the further development of aiki and kokyu, these techniques have expanded, some requiring less force to execute, some becoming more effective (and without the use of pain compliance). There are also a whole range of supplement training techniques generically called aiki waza which continue to expand.
MAYTT: There is a lot of focus on the development of aiki and kokyu; how would you define aiki and kokyu in Daito-ryu’s context?
RK: It is difficult, maybe impossible, to define aiki and kokyu with words. Both are experiential phenomena that really must be felt to be understood. However, working definitions are important, if only to give a person a rough understanding, or a sort of launching point to begin exploring the concepts.
Aiki could be described as the harmonization of energy, whereas Kokyu could be described as breathing techniques or breath control or power. Both are employed in relation to an opponent. That is, one harmonizes or matches one’s energy with an opponent’s, or one uses their breathing in such a way that it reflects the breathing or movement of an opponent.
Although there may be some discussion about the energetic ramifications of aiki or kokyu (for example, can breathing techniques/ kokyu be used to regenerate energy, can aiki be experienced if no physical touch occurs, etc.), I tend to use a waza-centric framing, at least as a starting point, thinking of both as tools to maximize the efficacy of techniques.
Techniques that are performed with neither aiki nor kokyu can be effective. They would rely on more intuitable, more physically apprehendable characteristics such as speed, strength, and power. As such, the outcome of these techniques, for both parties, can more easily be anticipated, and therefore negated.
With the addition of aiki or kokyu, a practitioner learns to rely more on harmonization and breathing, and not solely on speed, strength, and power. The techniques become difficult to “read”. For example when Kawabe Shihan throws me, he uses primarily aiki and kokyu. I can’t “feel” him, he’s so harmonized with my movement. I can’t accurately measure how or when he touches me, in what direction he generates the initial kuzushi, at what point I’m off balanced, etc. One moment I attack, and the next I am on the ground, and I don’t know how I got there. That is one of the many important manifestations of aiki and kokyu in techniques.
Related to the earlier question, in our modern civilized era, one can actually begin to develop aiki and kokyu beyond the framework of martial arts waza, and perhaps move it into a realm more akin to a kind of energetic marital practice. Or perhaps a meditative practice. This might be some possible future direction.
On a side note, it has been my experience that even for the Japanese, aiki and kokyu are difficult to define. And they seem ok with that. I wonder if as Americans, especially because of the preciseness of the English language (as opposed to Japanese, which tends to be more circuitous), we seek to make distinctions, even when such distinctions are not useful. Another interesting example of this is their use of Daito-ryu, Aikido, and Aikijujustu. My Japanese counterparts are pretty comfortable using these terms interchangeably.
MAYTT: It makes me feel a little bit better that even the Japanese, in their own description of these terms, are vague and not so defined.
RK: Definitely. Physically and intellectually, I think aiki and kokyu are vague until they’re felt. Once you feel it, it’s no longer an abstract concept. It’s a real thing. It makes your waza better. You use less force. You feel more dialed into the movements of your opponent, and you can begin to affect their body in new, more effective ways. You also connect with your training partner on a different level.
So the result of using aiki and kokyu is immediately apparent, but the process to get there is not at all clear and is very difficult. A qualified instructor is essential, but even then the road for each person is different.
Paradoxically, it is the very uncertainty of this path that makes the art so compelling and transformative. And also, on some days, it can be frustrating. Yet, if one commits to the uncertainty (in dojo terms, this means things like delaying immediate gratification, learning to use different muscles you didn’t know you had, trusting in the instruction of seniors, etc.) the process acts as a sort of supercharged catalyst of change. The typical training cycle is something like this: long stretches of training with incremental growth → shorter period of rapid rise in skill → technical breakthrough. Once a breakthrough is achieved, it only opens the door to new questions, which beg new explorations and the process begins again.
This repeating training cycle leads to deeper and deeper explorations of the art, and to insights that otherwise would have remained hidden.
MAYTT: How do you approach teaching aiki and kokyu in your own dojo?
RK: Bottom line: to learn aiki and kokyu waza one must actually feel the techniques from a qualified instructor. There’s no way around this. Although aiki waza and kokyu waza are different, the educational strategy is similar, so I’ll just discuss teaching aiki waza.
Aiki Waza is difficult to learn because it can really only be learned kinesthetically. There are some teaching aids to help with this process, but it’s fundamentally learned by feeling. In fact, what one observes can actually be misleading. Take for example ryotedori aiki age. A learner might observe a teacher moving in a different way every time the technique is executed. That observation might confuse the learner. But to the teacher this makes complete sense. Every grab is different, even from the same person, so the response is different. The movement is subordinate to the feeling. If the feeling is right and the technique works, then any reasonable movement is ok. This is a hard concept to grasp. The experienced practitioner seeks to recreate the feeling of the aiki waza, not the look of it.
To learn aiki waza, one must feel the waza. However, in the beginning, learners can’t even feel it. When I say feel, I mean perceive all of the small and subtle movements of the aiki waza that are being applied on them. It was like when I felt Okayabashi sensei all those years ago, or the first time (and still now!) when I feel Kawabe sensei. I couldn’t- can’t- feel what they are doing. This can be, in part, explained by selective attention: our nervous system’s ability to ignore irrelevant input. For example, as you’re sitting there, you’re probably unaware of the sensation of the pressure of the chair against your legs. The different sensory receptors in your leg of course are firing, but those signals are blocked because by context, by prior experience, or because of the magnitude (or lack of magnitude) of the stimulus, your brain has deemed them to be unimportant, and therefore they don’t even register to your conscious mind.
When someone grabs both your wrists to practice Aiki age, unless you’ve trained to listen to the sensory inputs of your wrists, the back or your hands, the base of your palms, etcetera, your brain will probably deem a lot of that incoming information as background noise, and block out the haptic and proprioceptive minutiae that are occurring there. In other words, you’re getting the input, but you’re not even aware of it.
With training you’d be able to discern if uke is applying more force with the base of his thumb or the middle of his thumb, with his pinky or his ring finger, if his center of gravity is in his forefoot or his hindfoot. All of this and more one could apprend with a grasp. Through training, selective attention is rewired. One becomes more aware of the sensory inputs not just from the hands and arms, but also from many parts of the body that we don’t normally think of as particularly sensate (for example, the back of the shoulder).
To start this training, we use the same methods that were taught to me by my teachers and sempai. It starts with seated aiki age. The first step is having the proper posture and the right head, neck, and arm placement. This creates stability through the anatomical alignment of bones and joints, thus minimizing the need to exert muscular force. Then with a partner, we methodically use specific exercises that demonstrate how to match your partner’s force, how to generate power from one’s core or back, how to focus and extend one’s attention to other parts of one’s own body and even to uke’s body, how to relax muscles that are not being used, and many other things.
Another important training method is the focusing of intention. Aiki age literally means to “join spirit lift.”. Without proper training, if I intend to lift Uke when performing Aiki age, I’ll probably fail. This is because, over my lifetime, I have created motor schema (encoded movement patterns in my brain) that represent what “lifting” is to me. Even if the encoded schema is for something as pedestrian as lifting groceries, that movement pattern would be counter to the development of aikiwaza and in particular aiki age. In aiki age I do not lift by flexing the major flexors of my elbows (my biceps), as I would if I were lifting groceries. Rather the lift comes from using the muscles of the shoulders and thorax to extend the arms forward and up. So if a learner intends to “lift” uke, the learner will automatically activate some prior schema, and therefore never be able to do aiki age.
Another important training method is the focusing of intention. Aiki age literally means “join spirit lift.”. Without proper training, if I intend to “lift” Uke when performing Aiki age, I’ll probably fail. This is because, over my lifetime, I have created motor schema (encoded movement patterns in my brain) that represent what lifting is to me. Even if the encoded schema is for something as pedestrian as lifting groceries, that movement pattern would be counter to the development of aikiwaza and in particular aiki age. In aiki age I don’t lift by flexing the major flexors of my elbows (my biceps), as I would if I were lifting groceries. Rather the lift comes from using the muscles of the shoulders and thorax to extend the arms forward and up. So if a learner intends to lift uke (when doing aiki age), the learner will automatically activate some prior schema, and therefore will never be able to do aiki age.
Therefore, the teacher needs to guid the learner’s intent. The learner must be guided to activate other schema that are more useful for executing aiki age, or create altogether new ones. For example, after the learner has sound physical structure and has gone through preparatory exercises, I might ask the learner not to lift, but to extend their fingers forward as if water were shooting out of them. Or move one’s hand forward as if one were going to brush a flower petal off a child’s face. In this way, I’m trying to get a learner to activate other schema, or at the very least, not use the “lifting” schema.
This highlights another interesting aspect of intent and schema. If the schema I activate, through intent, is appropriate, then the action I execute may seem pretty automatic, pretty natural. However, if I cloud someone’s intent, not replace it, but obscure it, then the right schema might be hard to access, and the resultant action/ performance is muddled.
For example, assuming you’ve played ball sports in the past, if I were to ask you to throw a ball at a target five meters away, you could probably do it without much instruction. That’s because your brain activates known schema, makes billions of calculations in seconds, and then simply coordinates your body to throw the ball and hit the target. However, if I tried to instruct you on every small movement (how exactly to move your foot, what angle to bend your knee, how to grip the ball, etc.), then your brain would be overloaded with information. The intent of the activity may become unclear, and, in my opinion, you wouldn’t be able to effectively utilize relevant schema. Then suddenly that throw becomes more difficult. It’s like choking on a play in sports because of overtraining or overthinking.
So, optimally, a learner is given the right amount and right type of information to process, which helps to clarify the most useful intent, which then activates the most relevant schema, which then generates the right movement.
All of the above exercises are a method to get to aiki waza. They are not aiki waza themselves. Ultimately, and here is the hard part, the learner has to put in the work: years at a legitimate dojo, experiencing aiki waza, trying to apply aiki waza, constantly assessing, tearing down, and rebuilding one’s techniques and conceptual understanding, until one day, it just seems to click.
MAYTT: You are starting small then building up from there, while working with someone qualified.
RK: Exactly. Many Daito-ryu techniques are difficult to learn because of their technical complexity, so, in the beginning, breaking them up into smaller, more easily comprehensible parts is essential. This “chunking” is a pretty common teaching and learning strategy. These small chunks can be used by a beginner as the building blocks for waza.
There are some pitfalls, however. Breaking down techniques in this way creates a simplified, step-by-step version of the movement, and is suitable for initial learning. But it’s not the actual technique per se. It is only a simplified version of it. The learner creates a sort of generic representation of the technique. The real technique emerges only after repeated testing of this representation in partner practice. That takes considerable time. At any skill level, but especially in the beginning, it’s easy to confuse this representation of the technique with the real technique.
One hallmark of the real technique is that every part of it is subservient to the overall goal of the technique. For example, the kata Gyaku Ude Dori, the one I spoke about before, is essentially an arm bar. It begins with a movement to off-balance Uke at contact, then progresses to atemi (hands strikes and a kick), then seizing Uke’s arm, then performing the armbar. All of these actions lead to, coalesce into, the armbar.
Contrast this to the representation of the technique, the version of it that a beginner would learn in chucks. The format allows for- perhaps encourages- mastery of each chunk. That’s great. It’s the way to begin. But if the learner doesn’t then modify each chunk to reflect the overall goal of the technique, then the chunks remain separate, like a bunch of non-cohesive microskills strung together. It might look like the real thing, but it won’t feel like it. It’s about intent again. The learner has to understand the intent of the technique.
This is the first part of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 