The phoneme “hô” in such Aikido
terms as kokyu- ho, tenkan-ho is written with the kanji character (
)‚which has a variety of meanings:"law", "doctrine",
"principle", "technique", "method". For example,
the faculty of law in a university in Japanese is hô-gakubu
In the term kokyu-hô () the first two characters stand for "breath" or
"respiration". Thus the general meaning of kokyu-hô is "method
for using breath". It is also known as kokyu-ryoku -yosei-ho,
"method for training breath power"
There is, of course, another term: kokyu-nage (). Here nage derived from the verb nageru meaning "to
throw", "to hurl", "to fall". Whereas in some Aikido
books the terms kokyu-ho and kokyu-nage are used interchangeably, there is in
fact a difference in nuance. In kokyu-ho, it does not really matter whether
uke is thrown or not: the emphasis in on breathing. In kokyu-nage it is
important that uke is thrown, but by means of the breath.
Another rendering of “hô” () means "direction", "side", "way". As a suffix, it
means "manner". Thus, if we put the two characters for “hô”
into one compound, we get () ho-ho, which means "method".
In the aikido term shiho giri (), shi means "four" and giri is deriver from the verb kaeru
meaning "to cut" (as with a sword). Thus the term means
"cutting in four directions". In the technique shiho giri tenkan-hô,
as explained in the text article in this Newsletter, the meaning is
"method of turning while cutting in four directions".
The kanji for tenkan is made up of two
characters:().The first element, ten, basically
means "to turn" or ‘"to change"; and the second element,
kan, is also read as: kaeru, and this has the precise meaning
of "changing", "replacing", "converting": (e.g.
meaning "conversion" or "exchange rate"). Thus, although
the term tenkan is commonly translated "turning" or "changing
direction", we might understand the technique as "method for
diverting (uke ‘s force) by/when cutting in four directions".
from " Newsletter British Aikido
Federation", No.37, November 2000.