I just got back from my friend's house, and we had a good time with some cross-training this evening.
My friend whom I have mentioned before in my previous posts on my cross-training experiences with EMA has just come back from a vacation in Italy, and he's learned some things while there.
He had only had some rudimentary training in kenjutsu in what I am theorizing was a pseudo-fencing school some years back, and when we would often cross-train, he would just try to incorporate moves he saw on TV shows into his fight sequences. I would usually defeat him time after time without even trying hard.
Well, that's all changed. Apparently, while on his vacation, he found a certified Iajutsu instructor and bought a book which accurately represents the historical way of fighting with the katana, and he finally learned how to fight for real!
I noticed right away. When we entered the zufechten and took our guards, I saw that his transition between the various guards was very smooth and quite disciplined. He no longer parried edge-on-edge, and became quite good at attacks that happened in double-times (dui tempo for rapier fencers, I don't know the Japanese term for this concept).
He still played a little too defensive, but I could see that he was learning to adapt to my style of German longsword. I thought that some of his parries were a little wide and exaggerrated, so I decided to try some Sprechfenster techniques against this. Little did I know that this was just a deception so that he could close the distance between me and my longer blade when I struck high and then he performed a type of half-sword draw slice and thrust.
His type of half-sword technique was obviously different from the longsword way of doing it. He used the palm of his hand on the back edge of the katana to help push it along my abdomen and femoral artery when he got in close, and his close-quarter thrusts from his half-sword position were done by pinching his thumb and forefinger on the flats of the blade and pushing from the hilt.
The private lessons he received definently paid off, and I was pleasantly surprised that he learned some factual fighting techniques rather than all that pseudo-samurai/anime hype that he was so interested in just a few months back.
He beat me in the first two bouts, but then I realised that he was finally serious in the art of fighting, and I stopped underestimating him and took myself a little more seriously.
In the following bouts, I saw how intent he was on deceiving me with what seemed to be wide parries, but were in fact two tempo moves(kind of like the duplieren in the Western system). He also learned how to take advantage from the bind by running through with either half-sword techniques or closing in to grapple and/or attempting disarms. Luckily, my signifigantly increased experience in grappling thwarted his disarm attempts and I wrapped him up pretty tight in some good joint locks using my hilt as a lever.
In further bouts, much simpler movements like the hauptstucke techniques from the Zornhau and Krumphau proved most effective. He still has trouble defending against my Unterhaus, but he's learning more with every experience(so am I for that matter).
So, the final tally: WMA Longsword 6 to EMA Katana 5
I have a good feeling that all of my cross-training experiences from here on in are going to be a lot more interesting......
Justin
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