Tenzan Heihō is the culmination of fifteen years of collaboration between Ellis Amdur, a leading exponent of Araki-ryū torite-kogusoku & Tenshin Bukō-ryū heihō, and Bruce Bookman, aikidō shihan and yudansha holder in iaidō & Brazilian jiujitsu. Their work together resulted in the creation of several weapons sets: kenjutsu & five-shaku jō. The jō and the ken are ‘analogue forms.’ By this, we mean that they follow the same basic sequences of movement, and therefore, share the same names. The actual techniques that are expressed within the patterns of movement are quite different, however, based on the most effective way to use the two weapons. [The jō forms can be executed with an approximately four-shaku jō, which is more-or-less standard in both aikidō & Shintō Musō-ryū, but the practitioner should know that this is less than optimum.]
The system that Amdur and Bookman have devised has a number of unique criteria:
- Each of the five kata focuses on different overarching principles.
- The spacing (ma-ai) in each kata is different, from far away in the first kata, to very close in the fifth.
- The kata are symmetrical—the last move of each form reverses things so that uke becomes tori and tori becomes uke. The kata can therefore be practiced as a continuous loop.
- Bookman and Amdur have developed the kata as ‘open-source,’ so that, executed one way, they are exemplary for the development of Bookman’s aikidō students, whereas, executed another way, they are suitable for Amdur’s Taikyoku Araki-ryū practitioners. In fact, the jōjutsu forms have also been integrated within a third system, Yangkiyin jiujitsu, an American system derived from Meiji jūjutsu, using somewhat different technical parameters.
This system is rare in the martial arts world in that it is a true collaboration of two individuals with very different training histories who have successfully merged their knowledge into something they feel has more depth than anything either of them could have come up with on their own. This system streamlines the essence of many principles of classical Japanese martial arts and gives background for a deeper understanding of Japanese sword and staff beneficial to koryū or aikidō trainees alike.
This is a membership site, intended for students of Bruce Bookman and Ellis Amdur, and those who have taken a training seminar on aspects of Tenzan Heihō from either of these instructors.