Suriage Waza
擦り上げ技
Literally: sliding-up technique
A counter-attacking kendo technique: the defender's own shinai slides up along the attacking blade, deflects it, and sets up an immediate counter-strike.
Quick Facts
Katas containing this technique
About
Suriage waza (擦り上げ技), literally sliding-up technique, belongs in kendo among the oji waza, techniques answering the opponent's attack. The defender catches the attacking shinai, already in motion, and deflects it upward and sideways with his own weapon. Contact occurs between the side surfaces, the shinogi, of both weapons; the motion comes from a half-circle turn of the wrist, with power mainly from the middle finger, index finger, and thumb of the right hand. The defender meanwhile keeps his own attacking position for the counter-strike. Suriage differs from harai, which deflects a blade that is stationary or waiting, in that it reacts to a blade in attack; the wrist mechanics are the same. In practice, men-suriage-men and kote-suriage-men are trained most often, performable from either side of the shinai. Suriage appears in two of the ten Nihon Kendo Kata: the fifth, Gohon-me, as men-suriage-men, and the sixth, Roppon-me, as kote-suriage-kote. The set of kata was completed in 1912 for teaching in Japanese public schools; before that every school of kendo and kenjutsu had its own kata, and the first unification came from the police kata of 1880.