Okay... i am working on my yondan test. I think I understand little bit of seme but still confused. When you seme how do you know if you are going to attack or wait ? When do you decide I am going to attack ? How do you feel, sense or see them ? Do you see any movement from your opponent ? Do you see if your ooponents repeat same movement when you seme and decide what to attack ? What the F$%& do you do when your opponent has dead strong center ?
Your Men is mine....
I think it is much easier to learn to feel this initially when you and your partner agrees to keiko a certain way.
Here are some things that worked for me:
1. Have people that agree to work their way in from to-ma. If you start from tips not touching at all or tips barely touching and work your way in, you should have this feeling of going from “out of range…out of range…getting close…getting close…I think I can reach them…I *know* I can reach them…hit hit hit”
2. Both people have to try for the shodachi. If you get someone that’s going to sit there and camp and try to react to your attack with a knee-jerk de-kote or knee-jerk kaeshi-doh, this is hard to sense. Both have to be trying to get a shikake attack in…a primary attack when you are trying to find an opportunity to do a direct strike.
3. Once you can feel that tension of being out of range to being in range, change it to feeling whether you can feel like you are not in the opponent’s range to when you are in the opponent’s range.
4. Now, this is the fun part. If you feel your opponent is ready to attack, you can attack from further away since they will be coming in as well. However, if you don’t feel that your opponent is going to attack and come closer, then you need to enter deeper for the same strike.
5. It helps also if you and your opponent agree to do this without backing up…moving a little from side to side is one thing…but not adding backing up until you can feel the range makes it easier as well.
In short, I think it is initially easier to do this if people agree to tip play and feel their way in and only do a plain kote or men. As you start to feel this sense of being in range, you can add other options back in and feel those differences.
And people really have to be honest with themselves and only strike when they feel something...throwing paint on wall and only want to hit someone really gets in the way of this.
YMMV.
Oh fun questions. Looking forward to answers. I have no idea of them. FWIW, I was at a seminar with Takanabe-sensei recently, who said that when his opponent has a very strong center, (which for him must mean, uh, very strong) he uses tsuki.Originally Posted by rainmaker
He said it so particularly that I wondered if he was making a point about his point in the finals of the 2011 all japans.
I was just browsing through my old notes...and one of the comments really has a nice feel.
Seme is like working the clutch...you have to feel the gears engage....
YMMV.
This is nice. Something I can start work with.... ^^ Thank you thank you and I cannot thank you enough... Love to hear more suggestions !!!
Your Men is mine....
We have had many threads on seme but I can't help feeling that even after all that it's misunderstood or made too complicated.
Seme at its simplest means pressure and I think our understanding of it deepens over time; certainly that seems to be the case for me, and I just passed the yondan exam after numerous failures. But seme simply means you apply pressure and the opponent reacts, you capitalize on that reaction and take ippon.
Here's where it gets tricky. Seme can be something very specific you did like stepped in or pointed the kensen to a specific place. But it can also be a lot of things you did that aren't conscious like subtly guard kote or exchanged a number of aimen that got the opponent spooked. You're a sandan and you've been using seme intuitively for years. Now for yondan you have to develop a deeper understanding of it, take it to the next level. I love what DC Pan said above, because if you've ever driven a stickshift, you simply know by feel when you're in gear and can accelerate. You should ask yourself - when I get ippon, how did I do it? What do I need to improve?
Anyway we can make seme too simple and too complicated. Too simple: point at kensen and there's your seme. Too complicated: seme is a mystic force that only wise old masters have. Truth is it's a combination of everything, being conscious of it and being able to make it work. So I think the key is to ask yourself: when I take ippon, how did I do it? When I failed, why? When I own an opponent or set the pace, why? How do I make that happen all the time? When do I feel a match turning against me?
Hope to have a good discussion.
Charlie Kondek, EMU Kendo
Box of tea?
For seme, I think it’s important to keep it real.
What “batsumaru” sensei wrote in an earlier KWF thread really stuck with me. He wrote something along the lines of how he would strike with a men from far away so the opponent knows and believes he can hit him. After that, you can make him respond.
Seme without the ability to complete the strike is just posturing/bluffing. So, there’s no seme unless you are in a place where YOU believe you can do something to the other guy.
Check out the Alex Bennett interview on empty seme if you haven’t had a chance already.
Was that in the last ish, DC? There have been some good articles on this topic in the last couple issues of KW.
BTW I should clarify that I *think* that seme is used in Japanese to mean both something specific that you did (like step in) but also holistically everything you are doing (like making your opponent guard men and be hesitant about where the next attack will come). Here's a good vid of the former:
http://youtu.be/RnB-6GXmqS4
Charlie Kondek, EMU Kendo
Box of tea?
**Sidenote: I LOVE this autosave feature on here. My computer froze again and it saved me from remember what I typed!!! Moving on...
Seme is definitely a very confounding subject to explore. Over time, our perceptions of what it is, what you can do with it, and how it's performed changes dramatically. When I think about things as complicated as this, I like to break things down into their main components and then start off from there.
The literal definition of seme means attack, or offense. But due to it's deep, philosophical connotations, I take it to mean, "the methods and applications of attacking." From there, that's when I think about the other things like applying pressure by stepping in, feeling the opponent's shinai, see how they react to my advances and how to ultimately take advantage of that. In short, I take in data to use throughout the match. As a colleague said, it's not about what you can do, it's about what you can make your opponent think you can do. With that in mind, I like to think of the definition of seme being a personal thing that varies from person to person, but ultimately leads to the same goal.
There's a lot that I can type about what seme is, what it means to me and how I've been trying to apply to the point of making an absurdly long post. Plus, I'm not sure how much it would help with the conversation. But what I can leave you with are two links:
The Reality of Seme - Translated notes from Furuya Fukonosuke as featured in a past article on Kenshi247.net
The Fundamental Theorem of Kendo - Written by Stephen Quinlin from the Kingston Kendo dojo that has a section on seme, amongst other things, that might prove useful to your question.
Christopher George
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Too bad it wasn't free...but here it is.
http://www.kendo-guide.com/interview...x-bennett.html
If they don't react you don't go. If they react sufficiently you do. Seme must provoke a reaction or lack of sufficient reaction or else it's empty.
You have to order it from Imafuji sensei who conducted the interview: http://www.kendo-online-course.com/i...-Alex-Bennett/ well worth it.
Can you tell me if the transcription includes the full dialogue? I'm severely hearing impaired so I miss a LOT of the audio of the interview.
Can you please explain this a little more? Because it sometimes happen that I will move in and receive no reaction, which I suppose that could be because my opponent feels no pressure or simply moved too slow; either way, it leaves me for a split second feeling very awkward in chikama. I'm not supposed to back up at that point back to issoku. So how can you not "go"?
Haha, I recently had to deal with this too. I'll give you the same advice tango gave me as I think it really helps. Basically, move in with smaller steps and after each step or movement, wait more patiently for the reaction. Tango told me to count to 10 before moving in again. That actually feels like a long time, a lot longer than I was used to waiting. The idea is to give you opponent enough time to process your action and decide whether to react or not. I had a tendency to step in too quickly and then step in again without giving my opponent enough time to react to the first step. So, I was getting to chika ma very quickly and being forced to either step back and start over or just attack.
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