Anyone know what "kukinage" or "airplane throw" is in Judo??

Question

Hi, I was reading an article on Wikipedia about Mifune's famous Kukinage throw. I was wondering about how this throw is done and what it looks like. I tried to find it on judoinfo.com, but I didn't find it. Any experienced Judo players know what it is??

Answer 1

complex to explain but its a waza that pretty much no one does anymore.

http://www.cityjitsu.org.uk/content.php?node=57&moviesource=kukinage&theformat=flash

I found this movie of what it looks like.

Judo has evolved greatly and very few high level players use this waza.


Edited to be more PC...

Back in the day...Judo was much more of a comprehensive martial art that included strikes, weapons, dealing with larger opponents...

The judo of today is much more water downed with tons of gripping rules, weight classes, and countless other reasons why this waza just isnt used much. It is normally taught to a green belt and can be done to counter an overhand punch, downward knife strike...

Remember the Jim Carrey skit where he is the martial arts instructor and gets stabbed because the woman won't stab the correct way - if she was stabbing the correct way this waza would counter that. If she stabbed straight - you would be dead if you tried to use this waza :)

Excellent waza for dealing with big punchers that are wearing a gi.

Answer 2

Basically, there's no one version of Kukinage (or, air energy throw, not airplane throw).

Aikido has a version, various versions of Jujutsu have their's, but in terms of Judo's context it's basically this :

As someone enters in with either a vertical weapons strike, or an upper body strike (a punch of instance)....you enter in and across their line of attack while grabbing their lapel and sleeve and throw them over by simply increasing the distance and angle of their already forward movement and giving it a bit of a downward twist.

That's how Judo does it, to supplement this same basic idea in Jujutsu....you'd likely be grabbing something a bit more sensitive like the mat of their hair or the skin on their face for instance to perform the throw.

This same principle is used across many throws, throughout many veins of Japanese Bujutsu and Taijutsu.

Answer 3

Hmmm... the throw in the movie resembles one of the applications of Aikido's Kokyu nage or "Breathe throw".