As part of the interest in kirikaeshi generated by Inoue sensei’s visit to the UK, the debate on whether or not to make taiatari part of the exercise has been brought back into focus.
Recently,many instructors have been teaching kirikaeshi without taiatari, as they feel that its inclusion leads to bad posture. This is particularly true for less experienced players who tend to lean forward and use the strength of their shoulders and arms when they make body-contact with their opponent. On the other hand learning taiatari equips the student to aim for the centre, to make successful hiki waza and when the chance allows, give their opponent an extra shove to gain hansoku in shiai.
The clue is in the name. Taiatari means “body strike”, not “push”. To do it successfully you simply drop your hands to the height of your navel, engage your opponent’s shinai in correct tsubazeriai (omote side to omote) and push down using the strength of your back and hips. You should hit just once with the forward momentum of your attack. Your hands and arms should be relaxed, your posture should be upright and your left foot should be in the correct position following hikitsuke from the preceding strike.
Taiatari almost always follows an unsuccessful strike when you are directly in front of your opponent. By dropping your hands you also ensure that you do not put him or her in danger by pushing forward with your hands at throat height, potentially causing neck injury.
In shiai the rule is that a “one hit” body strike that pushes your opponent over the line, results in a hansoku in your favour; a repeated or concerted push which is not connected to a valid attempt to strike a target, could result in the penalty being awarded against you.
The intention of taiatari is not necessarily to push your opponent back. With heavier opponents it may be that your aim is to gain distance by bouncing off them. It is however possible for a lighter person to gain ground with the strength of their taiatari. I have seen 45kg female player move a 100kg male opponent with a well-timed body strike.
To practice taiatari we use butsukarigeiko, where we follow a forward strike with taiatari and a hikiwaza. So a possible sequence might be – men, taiatari, hiki-men; men, taiatari, hiki-gote; men, taiatari, hiki-dou. Or of course you can practise by introducing correct taiatari into kirikaeshi; which brings us back to where we started.
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Thanks for the post sensei,
I will invest in correct kirikaeshi and taiatari as a way of improvement.
Why not incorporate taitari and non-taitari into a single kirikaeshi? Its easy to do!!
It’s really true. Sometimes we understand some kendo exercises like an aggression, maybe doubt to our occidental point of view. Thank you very much sensei
I thing it was “unfair shoving” because you ran after the person to push him/her as DcPan mentioned. But…since according to Neil’s explanation the person didn’t make the world aware that he/she knew she was going out of bounds, the receiver gets the penalty. That’s normal in kendo. Look, after you do a cut, even if it misses, you aren’t going to stop and put yourself in perfect hiki waza distance for your opponent to hit you. You are going to carry on through, if the opponent is in the way, too bad. The same with the push. He went for men, went into taiatari and pushed the guy away to get maai back. You’ll get this all the time in shiai. Men-taiatari-men. The guy will go for men, miss, taiatari you, make you stumble then go for a nice men cut. Its the same with Ando’s match in the all Japan’s. His Jodan opponent hit his kote(no score), Ando kept back paddling, the opponent gave chased and then pushed him in tsubazeriai. It happens…Ando was aware he was near the line and twisted his body to avoid it. Its kendo people. Its a contact sport/art. If the guy pushes, then work around it. I say this because I use my size a lot in taiatari and have bowled over my fair share of people. But every japanese/experienced kendoka I’ve fought never took this as an unfair advantage. They worked around it. Personally, I think the guy went down easy.