Japanese Terms

The instructors at the dojo have begun to expect black belt candidates to know the Japanese terms for things. The first new term to me, other than the names for the arts, was "koshi". Upcoming blogs with include the Japanese name for the basics.

Koshi is the ball of the foot. It is generally what we make bodily contact with when we kick.

I asked a few of the black belts what the term was and they all answered quickly. But when I asked them to spell it they didn't know for sure. Perhaps it has been a long time since they wrote it down in their notebooks.

Prof. Jenkin's Martial Arts Dictionary defines koshi as "ball of foot [tiger's paw]". There are seven different kanji for koshi listed plus Koshi=Confucius. Also note the there are three other kanji for ball of foot :)

In Jujitsu the term koshi is used to refer to the hip or waist.