Tachi Tips & Tricks (8)
When you get attuned to the tachi, you discover that it is using the specificities of all the other weapons.
The tachi is a hanbô, a jo, a bô, a yari, a naginata … and sometimes a sword…
You lock the opponent like you would do with the hanbô,
You control the distances like you would do with the jo or the bô,
You stab like you would do with the yari, the naginata or the sword.
Like an hourglass, the tachi is the beginning and the end (in-yo) of our weapon training. All weapons lead to the tachi and the tachi leads to the understanding of a new training dimension for the weapons. The whole training of the past 18 years begin to make sense. We learned the ways of the weapons (1993-1997), then the ways of the taijutsu: taihen, dakentai, koppô, kosshi, jûtai (1998-2002), then the ways of the shin/kokoro with the juppô sesshô (2003-2007). Then it was menkyô kaiden, saino konki, and this year rokkon shôjô with the discovery of tachi waza mixed with happiness!
But the tachi (大刀) is also the tachi (質 – quality, nature of a person) and tachi (館 – a castle or a nobleman) so the choice of this weapon might actually be more profound than it seems and it might imply that the bujinkan has now reached the point where we can all become kishi (騎士 - knights) the archetype of the nobleman; or the kishi(旗幟 -flag, banner, emblem) of a new era in the development of mankind. Like the sand passing through the middle of the hourglass the triangle of man can link the opposite triangle of the divine: kanjin kaname.
Thank you sensei for bringing us so far. 
