Japanese juggling game

I give Edward credit. The IJA community embraced the game with fervor. One of the earliest records of Combat Juggling. Photo IJA The game had few rules; the last one juggling won. It was a hand-to-hand combat, similar to hockey or American football. Jjugglers ready to do anything to end the juggling of more than 20 jugglers gathered in a coliseum. There were dozens of serious injuries, such as that to Terry Jones, who had to go home to New Mexico due to a 2mm scar on his cornea after a round of Combat Juggling, he also suffered hand injuries.

Jay Gilligan injured his thumb, and Cindy Marvell had a serious accident in Burlington, related to Combat juggling. Consequently, in the 90s, the IJA decided to ban Combat at its conventions.

With totally opposing views, two members of well-known juggling organizations met through messages in a debate in The ethical discussion about the feasibility of Combat juggling was made by the Purdue Juggling Club.

Some of the lines from him say:. We forgive them, we want to help them, and we are part of a well-oiled machine. Playing combat is aberrant juggling behavior. It is ugly and uncivilized. Symbolic acts of violence lead to truly serious violence.

The urge to dominate others is animal. Imagine this: we are playing Combat. I see a guy juggling some Brian Dube turquoise Airflite sticks. He leans forward in what he thinks is a threatening posture; yes, as menacing as a scented French poodle.

He has a goofy smile on his face. The urge to conquer, to slap, to maim rises within me. I crouch down, slide toward him from the side. My clubs are a blur. I throw a fivefold high and hit with the two remaining clubs: once, twice, three times. He is stripped of the clubs from him. His smile is gone, replaced by a look of horror.

He steps away from the mat, with his hands in front of his face… Yes, I love to play Combat. Physical contact with any participant was prohibited. The most used technique was to throw a club as high as possible and knock down as many clubs as possible. However, new strategies were born, such as playing with two clubs in one hand and attacking with the other hand.

Some do sensational tricks amid the pressure of being attacked from the front, from the sides or from the back. Gradually the Softclub clubs dimished from the Combat juggling and the classic clubs were used once again. The first decade of was the revolution for Combat Juggling. In the midst of this boom, Luke Burrage created Fight Night Combat: one of the first Combat Juggling tournaments and the most famous and the most common at the European Conventions.

Beyond Europe, Luke has collected worldwide records each year with tournaments at events or conventions. Contrary to what various media outlets claim, Jason Garfield, president and founder of the WJF , was not the creator of Combat Juggling, as we saw above. However, he did create variations of this game, making it more dynamic, more striking and, above all, sporty, revolutionizing not only Combat, but juggling in general.

You might not think of bubbles as possible juggling props, but bubbles were used by Clara Braatz, Ollie and April Young, and the LaTours in their juggling acts in the s and early s. Some of the bubbles used were soap bubbles and others were similar to gum arabic.

Clara Braatz. Ollie Young and April. Likewise, other similar cultures are reported using balls of clay. Current juggler Jimmy Gonzalez uses clay in his act, creating different numbers of balls throughout the performance.

The idea of using clay in this manner originated with Erik Aberg. Juggglow introduced the first programmable lighted balls in the s. Fairly dense foam balls were used for juggling at least as early as , as with the Floyd Brothers set shown in the following photo.

Silicone bounce balls for juggling first appeared in the early s. Soon jugglers such as Gil Dova and Dick Franco started using them and such balls have been the top choice of ball bounce jugglers ever since. These balls are hard sided plastic balls partially filled with sand, semolina, or similar substances.

They are now a very popular type of ball used all over the world. Stage balls are semi-soft sided, hollow, vinyl balls made for juggling. They are made to have very little bounce and were first introduced by Dube in the early s. Fillers can included sand, rice, sugar, liquid silicone, metal pellets, and water. They were first introduced in the late s. Clear acrylic balls were first used for juggling, especially for contact juggling, in the s, due to the influence of Michael Moschen.

They have been a popular prop ever since. Jo Kamm porcelain balls. David Cain is a professional juggler, juggling historian, and the owner of the world's only juggling museum, the Museum of Juggling History. He is a Guinness world record holder and 15 time IJA gold medalist. In addition to his juggling pursuits, David is a successful composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and singer as well as the author of twenty-four books. You must be logged in to post a comment.

This collection is in the National Museum in Tokyo. You can see it by clicking here. It was at the end of the Edo period , Japan, when balls made of cloth and filled with beans, walnut shells, or stones began to be used. At this time, women were, for the most part, those who practiced Otedama. Its popularity rose after World War II, where women smuggled beans and other grains into ojamis to feed their children.

This caused the materials to make the balls to run out. As a consequence, Otedama was gradually dying out of Japanese culture. They have more than 1, members and more than 40 national and international branches.

Otedama can be played alone or in a group. There are two ways to play it: The first is Nagedama: it is similar to western juggling. It is played in a shower pattern, where the ojamis must follow the leading ball while singing the nursery rhymes. For beginners it is played with two balls; for the experienced with three and up to four balls. The other way, and the most popular, is Yosedama: The player spreads five ojamis on the ground. Then he throws an ojami into the air and with the same hand catches one from the ground.

The procedure is repeated, catching one ball at a time until the player has five ojamis in hand. Afterward, you must drop them and play again. From Yosedama there are many variations. In this video a woman adds difficulty to Otedama. For example, in mode 6, she throws an ojami with her right hand and with that same hand she puts a beanbag on the back of her left hand. She continues like this until she completes the four ojamis in her hand. Japanese grandmothers are the ones who can remember some letters.

A fragment of an Otedama song tells of the Russo-Japanese war of They killed everyone and even attacked Harbin in. Thanks to the Otedama Club of Japan, this game has been screened in various countries around the world.