Budo international Martial Arts Magazine Jul.-Aug. 2014 | Page 152

attacking the bones. Another factor that makes Tai
Jutsu extremely effective is the use of bars and
angles of locks, fractures, and twisting of joints,
known as Kansetsu no Gikko. There are many
historic explanations about why there are so many
techniques dedicated to the joints. The most
common version refers to the origin of armor, which
was made to be flexible and therefore left only the
joints accessible as targets of attack.

MAKIMONO,
TRADITIONAL DOCUMENTS
If we analyze the composition of a paper well, no
matter how good the text is, it will never truly
express programmatic content existent in the
knowledge of a professional. For the most traditional
Bugei masters, what is written down on paper and in
documents might not be as significant as the
analysis of techniques and their executions. Even
so, it is the best reference or legacy of a master to a
student in so far as the tradition of his thoughts and
his origin go.
In the old days, the values of a training period in
Koryu were placed in documents that had the name
of Kaiden so that related nomenclatures were
spread to Menkyo Kaiden, Densho, Kaidenshom,
Makimono, Ryusho, and others. Though there are
studies that investigate the differences among each
one of them and their respective applications, with
the legacy of Gendai Budo, a great doubt arose
concer ning the grades and titles that were
attributed. With the rise of the modern arts, which
utilize the Dan Kyu grade system, the information

from the past has remained somewhat adrift and
suffocated by the rise of the new arts.
The Kaiden system is known in the West as a
“license” to transmit certain knowledge. In the most
traditional schools, apart from Kaiden, there is the
Makimono, a document that contains the necessary
specifications of each Ryu and the specifications of
its genealogy.
For decades, there were many specifications in
these documents. Their contents were valued by way
of the continuity and direction of a certain Ryu-flow;
current; nagare, which refers to the lineage-which, in
the consistency of the facts, determined the real
heirs and holders of the knowledge of that school.
Ishino Shihan presented the translation of the
documents that represent the Brazilian Bugei
Society and that holds Shidoshi Jordan Augusto as
Daihyosha, or representative, of the Ogawa
techniques in Koryu Seiteigata (established forms in
a specific order).
Shidoshi Jordan Augusto, referring to the
makimono, affirmed in an interview: “Any and all
documents must be seen as a reminder that you
make up or have made up part of something
important, something that was good for you.
Nothing more.” And he goes further: “The document
doesn't make you special in anything, quite the
opposite; all that is symbol becomes a target. As for
that fact that many support themselves in the
documents to conquer a space they think they need,
we have to remember that we are all, at some point
in our interior, fragile and small. The illusionary world
is there and we all participate in it. Respect must
come from the inside out, not from the outside in.”