Daito-ryu Aiki-budo (3) – Arrest Technique for Police Officers

This article by Hisa Takuma for Shin Budo magazine follows on from the series that he wrote about Aiki-budo¹. In the present issue, he is explaining specific arrest techniques adapted for the use of police officers, based on the extensive curriculum of Daito-ryu techniques. I was able to access the original in Japanese thanks to the help of fellow budo researcher Baptiste Tavernier², who was kind enough to retrieve them for me from the archives of the International Budo University (国際武道大学, Kokusai Budo Daigaku). The person demonstrating these techniques is Yoshimura Yoshiteru (吉村 義照), who was one of the members of the security team of the Asahi newspaper who received the kyoju dairi³ from Takeda Sokaku in 1936. Yoshimura was indeed a former police officer and according to Hisa, he also had the opportunity to use Daito-ryu’s techniques in real combat during Japan’s war with China.  Note that I have combined the content of three issues (January, February and March 1943) in this article since they deal with the same theme.

Police Arrest Techniques

by Hisa Takuma, menkyo kaiden⁴, shihan⁵

In the previous articles, I wrote about the history of Daito-ryu Aiki-budo and also explained the principle of gyaku kime. In this article, I would like to discuss some of the arrest tactics used by the police. I created these gyaku kime applications for use as practical martial techniques.

Naturally I have a deep sense of gratitude for the efforts of the policemen who struggle to perform their daily duties, day and night, in the heat or cold, or wind or rain; these men are active on the front lines in maintaining national public order during the Great East Asia War⁶. However, especially when policemen arrest thieves, murderers, or political offenders with dangerous ideas, they sometimes have to make sacrifices, and for this I also feel deep respect and sympathy. Why can’t policemen, who always practice arts like Judo and Kendo, avoid such sacrifices? The main reason that they cannot do so is that they must arrest criminals without killing or injuring them. I do not think that Judo or Kendo as they exist now are adequate for this purpose. I was concerned about this, so I studied the tactics that the police uses to arrest or question criminals safely and surely without being harmed. I then applied these tactics to the secret techniques of Daito-ryu Aiki-budo techniques.

After being asked to present some of these techniques to policemen I made some of them public as hogi hiden⁷, and distributed this report widely among the police. Here, I would like to introduce a few of those techniques as well as their methods.

Methods of interrogation or arrest

When you deal with a person you wish to question, you should be prepared for any dangerous situation including:

1. The suspect may be armed with a dangerous weapon
2. The suspect may unexpectedly try to resist
3. The suspect may try to escape if he sees an opportunity to do so
4. The suspect may try to commit suicide with a dangerous weapon or by taking a deadly poison
5. The suspect may make a false statement in order to slip through a police cordon

You should be prepared to deal with these situations adequately at any time.

Stance at the time of confrontation

It is necessary for you to be prepared for these situations as well as to be able to freely cope with them in various ways. When practicing Judo or Kendo, you take a specific stance when facing your opponent. However, this is not a suitable position for evasion when someone suddenly thrusts at your vitals. In Daito-ryu, we always make it a rule to take either the left or right hanmi stance and also to always position ourselves about one step away either to the right or left at the time of questioning or investigation⁸. Then, if a criminal moves to attack you, you can open your body either to the right or left, pivoting on your right foot, while at the same time attacking him with gyaku kime to control him. I would like to explain these methods with the aid of photographs. The methods used in these photos were thought out by my fellow student, Yoshimura Yoshiteru Shihan-dai, based on his own long experience as a police officer.

First technique

Second technique

The next series of techniques were published in the following issue of Shin Budo.

Third technique

Fourth technique

Fifth technique

Sixth technique

Seventh technique

Profile Of Hisa Takuma

Born 1895 in Shikoku. In 1915 entered the Kobe Business School and in 1927 joined the staff of the Asahi Newspaper. Promoted in 1934 to Director of General Affairs of the Osaka Asahi Newspaper company. Invited Morihei Ueshiba to teach at the newspaper office dojo in Osaka in the early 30s and studied under Sokaku Takeda from 1936-1939. He received the menkyo kaiden scroll in May 1939. In 1970 his students formed the Takumakai, dedicated to teachings. He died on October 31, 1979.

1. The reader can refer to part 1 and part 2 here.
2. You can watch an interview with Baptiste Tavernier here.
3. The kyoju dairi (教授代理, lit.: “representative instructor”) title is the same title that Ueshiba Morihei received from Takeda Sokaku in 1922.
4. The menkyo kaiden (免許皆伝) is the highest certificate of proficiency awarded in many traditional Japanese martial art systems. Hisa Takuma is the only person to have received this title directly from Takeda Sokaku.
5. This suggests that the shihan dairi (師範代理, deputy teacher) was a formal title given by Takeda, which is unusual since it is a relatively recent title compared to the traditional system. Though some people have mentioned shihan dairi through the years, I was not able to find references to such title in the parts of the shareiroku and eimeroku registers that we have at our disposal.
6. Hisa refers to World War II
7. Hogi hiden (捕技秘傳), lit.: “secret arrest techniques”.
8. The insistence of Hisa on hanmi (半身, lit.: “half of one’s body”) is interesting since it is not usually prominently taught in the modern Daito-ryu curriculum. In fact, in the basic kata form of the 118 techniques of Takeda Tokimune’s hiden mokuroku, a student is usually instructed to stand with his hips square in front of his partner. At higher levels, it is usually shizentai (自然体, lit.: “natural posture”), which is adopted. On the other hand, Ueshiba Morihei was known to strongly emphasize hanmi and it has become the standard position in Aikido. This perhaps indicates how much Hisa was influenced by his initial study of Daito-ryu under Ueshiba, before he went on to learn from Takeda Sokaku.