For many years, I have been an advocate of the use of kakedameshi (lit. “test of hanging/hooked hands”), or “sticky hands sparring,” for pressure testing neoclassical/practical karate, even writing an article for Bugeisha Issue #9 on the subject, and teaching multiple seminars on how to engage in kakedameshi. In short, kakedameshi is a symmetrical sparring method where both participants must maintain at least one point of contact with each other at all times, where all manner of combative techniques are allowed, with some concessions made for safety. Nagamine Shoshin, founder of Matsubayashi-Ryu, described it as being like “very aggressive Chinese push hands,” where strikes and locks were allowed in addition to the throws and ring-outs seen in push hands competitions. This provides an excellent platform for testing the techniques found in karate kata, which are the classical curriculum of the art, and it was historically the method used for challenge matches in karate, making it much more appropriate for testing karate’s effectiveness than the current popular kumite rulesets, which are almost universally some version of either point sparring or knockdown sparring, both of which were largely the result of using a Kendo ruleset adapted for a striking-only version of karate developed after World War 2, rather than actually being designed from the ground up with karate in mind.
Of course, most karateka these days do not even know what kakedameshi is, much less participate in it. The only way to resolve that issue is to make the practice more accessible, and more popular, and we all know that, like it or not, competition is the best way to spread martial arts practices. The seminars I have taught and the article I wrote for Bugeisha can help any dojo add kakedameshi to its toolbox, but competition is another matter, because one need not keep score in the dojo. Over the years I have put together a competitive ruleset for kakedameshi, which I have workshopped with small groups here and there, and which I feel work well. I am publishing the draft of these rules, below, and it is my hope that this will help encourage more karateka to practice kakedameshi, and prepare for using it in competition. Ideally, within a year or so, I would like to organize an actual kakedameshi tournament, or at least have kakedameshi divisions added to existing karate tournaments, and that can only happen if more people are aware of and engaging in this almost-lost practice, so please share this information widely and, if you adopt kakedameshi into your training, I encourage you to share video and discussions online (the INKKS Facebook Group is a great place for this) of your kakedameshi practice to help raise awareness!