A point about uke-waze

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For the last 7 years I have been attempting to 'translate' Ohtsuka Tadahiko's book "Goju Kensha Karatedo Kyohan", as he is the founder of the particular tradition I am in.  As far as I am aware, it has not been translated before into English, so this is the only way I can read it.

I don't speak Japanese, but with a combination of Google Translate, Wiktionary, knowledge of the martial arts and its terminology, youtube videos to teach myself the basics of japanese grammar, and using duolingo to start to get used to the language, I have made a slow, intermittent attempt at turning 1970s technical Japanese into something vaguely comprehensible in the English language.  

The original kyohan was published as a series of 13 booklets in the 1970s and then collated in a single volume in the late 1970s.  It was reprinted in 2009 with additional notes on the Bubishi and with the thirteenth booklet replaced with material on shorin-ryu kata from Higa Yuchoku (with accompanying DVD).  It is the 2009 reprint I have been working with.  I have translated 4 booklets entirely, and have done excerpts from 5 others (so about halfway through).

But the point of this post is something that has cropped up again and again in the book (on almost every page of applications, so several hundred times so far at least).  Almost every time that the picture shows the defender 'blocking' an attack, the accompanying text says to intercept the attack and break their posture/balance.  The term used is "kuzushi" (the text says 相手の体形を崩し - "aite no taikei o kuzushi" lit. "opponent's body shape, break").  The use of uke-waza is therefore meant to have two purposes:
1/ to stop the attack reaching the body
2/ and at the same time put the attacker in a disadvantageous position where either they cannot keep attacking, and/or they can be finished off with a counter-attack.

This is indeed a central tenet of how we train, and is why uke-waza ('blocks') should involve the use of both hands when performed as kihon-waza.  But this is the only place I have ever seen it stated so blatantly and frequently.  Ohtsuka sensei must have thought it was a very important principle to have stated it so often

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