There is precidence for such a technique. Its called half swording, and normally only used in armored combat with a longsword this is because the only effective way to attack a man in european plate armor was to thrust, and gripping the middle of the blade with the weak hand would turn the sword into a short spear of sorts. Now the fingers were protected by the armored gauntlets, but the hand was still targeted, a thrust to the leather palm of the gauntlet was quite effective. maybe you made it up with a katana, but there was a similar technique used in europe in special circumstances, only to thrust, not to cut, and almost exclusivly in armor, almost.

I am familiar with that technique, but I think the difference is that katana are considerably shorter, which tends to put the front hand much closer to your enemy and thus putting it in more danger. It also doesn't hurt that katana are generally a great deal sharper, although I understand that it was not uncommon to take the razor edge off the blade before going off to war. Even so they are still plenty sharp and it would not be wise to grab the edge as is done in WMAs.

even with a western sword you need to maintain a firm grip that doesnt shift so to avoid cutting yourself. of course the leather guantlet helps with this, but even with the longer swords, as I said, the hand was still a prime target for locks, and thrusts. But I agree that it doesn't seem in any way practical with a katana, and from what I understand, even in full armor only the back of the hand was usually protected, which leaves both the fingers and the palm nice and ready to be sliced and diced and all cut up

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Nik

Ands that one of the other problems with his "invention" of a sword style.

Its not "new" at all.
Its a pretty common use of the weapon in both Eastern and Western swordsmanship.
The reason he was not aware of it is that its of limited use outside of a specific combative situation.

Charles, our Kissakigaeshi from the Toho set seems closest to the described hand on blade/thrusting technique.

Technically that technique is not MJER at all. It's Hoki Ryu. We aren't really gripping the blade during the cut though, only supporting it on the mune, and it is intended to be a very close infighting kind of attack. We do something vaguely similar in some of the tatehiza waza where we support the blade in order to push our opponent over, but the blade is already embedded in their innards at the time. Again a very close range situation. We're just getting an extra hand on the mune to support the effort to push them over. I don't think this is at all what Zanshi was describing.

He was describing something very much more like what the WMA guys were describing, except that I'm pretty sure he was not advocating wrapping fingers around the edge, but rather gripping it with the fingers on the sides of the blade.

Aside from Maegiri which I know is supposed to be Eishin Ryu, is the Toho set just to give a taste of other styles since it's not MJER? How accurate are these wazas to the styles that each waza supposedly represent? Like Zengogiri, is that really a Mugai Ryu waza? Do the Toho wazas come unchanged, unaltered and exact directly from the other styles or are all the Toho wazas just approximate immitations?

My understanding is that they are largely, but not entirely unchanged. Look at the differences between mae and maegiri for an example of how they have changed. I believe the purpose behind the changes was to unify them as a set. So we kiai on all 5 of them, even though kiais are not part of the seiza version of the mae. Little changes, but the key principles are supposed t retain the spirit of the original waza.

Now how well they have stayed true to their original form is another question entirely. They are Toho. While Mae-giri is from MJER, it is not really part of the regular MJER curriculum. It's toho. The real question is how much drift there has been since the original inception of the set.