Kokyu-nage (Breath Throw)
呼吸投げ
Not one technique but a whole family of throws without lock or grip. The fall comes from lost balance and timing alone.
Quick Facts
⚠️ Common Mistakes
Common mistakes: reaching for a firm grip, pushing the partner in a direction he is not going, and heaving with the arms instead of leading with the whole body.
💡 Key Tip
Do not look for a shape. Kokyu-nage has no fixed path — only the right moment and the direction the partner is already going.
About
Kokyu-nage, literally the breath throw, is not one particular technique but a collective name for a whole family of throws in which there is neither a joint lock nor a firm grip. By the movement of his own body the defender arrives at the place the attacker's momentum is already heading for and merely extends that direction; the fall then follows from the attacker's own speed and loss of balance. The word kokyu, breath, refers to matching one's own movement to another's — in aikido it is used more in the sense of timing and continuity than of breathing in the literal sense. That is exactly why kokyu-nage is hard to learn from a description: the technique has no fixed shape that can be written out step by step, and it looks somewhat different in every school. Basic training includes the exercise kokyu-ho, in which both partners kneel in seiza and one unbalances the other from a held grip.