Customer Reviews

Wado Ryu Karate Vol 1 - The Way of Peace & Harmony (Tsunami) [VHS]

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I first saw a review for this video in a French magazine (for the French language edition) and assumed therefore that it had been made in France. Wrong! It was made in the US then exported all over the place and translated into different languages including, would you believe, Japanese. The reason is that, apart from being beautifully made, the video is unique because it includes about 20 minutes of professionally made film of the man who started this style of karate performing his own creation. Rather like watching Wolfgang Mozart, play Mozart! The film was taken at Berkeley University in 1965 and had been in a private collection ever since. Its discovery was a landmark event as no high quality record of this long dead karate master had been available previously, but now we could study every movement at normal and slow speed and rewind to our heart's content. The show is sensitively and very professionally presented with traditional flute and koto background music and really nice old photos of the master in his youth. Obviously the people who put it together loved the subject because every small part of the production is done with real style and the show, even after many, many viewings still looks really polished to my eye. I bought part 2 when it came out and will buy the same two shows on DVD when it is released

I used to be a Kobayashi Shorin-ryu karate-do "purist" in that I thought the kata were holy script, not to be altered. (Of course this was before I learned that there is no single authoritative version of a kata-that all the teachers put their own spin on them.) However, after practicing kata as demonstrated by Otsuka-sensei, I can see that he made some very intelligent and useful modifications. The most important change, I feel, is that he made the moves of the kata more closely related to how one would perform the techniques in self-defense.

For example, in the Pinan kata, I noticed that he never does a formal "front stance," or as I like to call it, the "please kick me in the groin stance," with feet wide apart and the center of gravity pushed so far forward that you are perpetually on the verge of falling over.

All his forward movements are done in-line, like a fencer; even his in-line blocks are done with the back straight, not leaning over ridiculously, as is emphasized in most Shorin-ryu kata training.

Of course, for the first two years of karate-do practice I was told to do the half-crescent step over and over, but when sparring I noticed neither the advanced students nor the teacher moved this way. I find practicing a movement different than what you will actually do to be a waste of time, and am glad to have this confirmed by so credible a source.

No commentary is as valuable as seeing the author's own work. A first-rate video.

I only hope I can move that well when I am 73.

The film footage of Master Otsuka doing basics, kata, and kumite is excellent. Technically speaking, the tape was quite revealing. It demonstrated the differences between how Master Otsuka practised his Wado karate and how Master Ajari practises his Wado karate. This is important to show that although Master Otsuka is dead, Wado karate can still evolve.

This was an interesting high level overview of Wado style Karate as taught by Yoshiaki Ajari (Wado-kai?). The highlight of this tape is film footage transferred to video of Hironori Otsuka, the founder of Wado-ryu Karate. Between Otsuka and Ajari there are examples of kihon, kumite, and kata Pinan 1 to 5, Kushanku, Naihanchi, and Seishan. As a student of Shotokan style karate, I found it interesting to compare what we learn in the Dojo to what Otsuka and Ajari were demonstrating.

Wado Ryu was evolved by Hironori Otsuka who became disatisfiedwith Shotokan karate and used his extensive knowledge of Jujutsu tocreate an effective hybrid system. The results can be seen in this video demonstrated by the Founder himself on some recently dicovered, very high quality film footage shot by Berkeley University in 1965. The quality of this video is extremely high, a famous Japanese musician performs the sound track, and the production values are impressive. Interestingly we see Mr. Ajari demonstrating with his teacher in the 1965 footage and then more than thirty years later with his own students. I enjoyed it, found it immensely useful, and view it as one of the most important videos in my collection. Clearly I am not alone. According to "Ceinture Noir" it's currently on sale in seventeen countries including Japan, in three languages. Wado Ryu is subtle, complex, efefctive, and not as "obvious" as simpler styles. Just like this video in fact!