Tori and uke: the job of the partner being drilled on

When a technique is drilled, two people are working. One performs the movement. The other is the person it is performed on, and then they swap. The four jiu-jitsu pages read for this piece call that second person a partner or a training partner, which is also what they call the first. None of them has a word for the job itself.

Judo has one. A teaching text prepared for the International Judo Federation's Academy courses, which says its terminology follows the Kodokan's Japanese-English dictionary of judo, puts the two roles at the head of its list of terms. Tori is glossed "doer" and "the thrower": "The person who applies a throw or other technique during repetition (uchikomi) or controlled (yakusoku) practice." Uke is glossed "receiver" and "the thrown": "The person who receives a technique during repetition (uchikomi) or controlled (yakusoku) practice."

This piece reads what judo's own documents ask of the receiver, then what jiu-jitsu has written about the same job. It ends with an argument that is ours and is marked as ours. It describes roles and gives no advice about training.

The Kodokan publishes English textbooks for its kata. Its site describes kata as practice "following a formal system of prearranged exercise" and sets it against free practice. The textbook for Nage-no-Kata, which the site translates as forms of throwing, states its purpose in the introduction: the basis of throwing "is acquired by practice of Kuzushi, Tsukuri, Kake and how to receive the technique". Receiving is in the purpose statement, next to the throw.

In the text itself the first movement is often uke's. Many techniques begin "Uke attempts to grasp Tori". In four, by the listing in the federation's judging criteria, uke opens with a blow to the top of tori's head. Tori acts second, and the textbook's recurring phrase for it is "Tori seizes this opportunity".

Uke is then written as someone who does not want to be thrown. Pulled forward, uke steps "so as to try to protect his stability", a phrase the textbook repeats through the form. In Tomoe-nage, "Uke resists Tori's push and attempts to push back", and the throw goes in "At the moment Uke pushes back". In Yoko-guruma uke "suddenly bends his upper body forward to try to avoid the throw", and tori takes "the opportunity of Uke's defensive posture" to throw a different way. In each case the reaction is what makes the throw possible, and the reaction is uke's part of the script.

A count points the same way. In the text extracted from the two textbooks read here, the word Uke occurs more often than the word Tori: 215 times to 174 in the throwing form, and 237 to 141 in the form of holds.

Katame-no-Kata, in the Kodokan site's translation forms of grappling or holding, has fifteen techniques in three sets of five. Its textbook says the form teaches "correct methods of pinning, countering those pins, strangling and locking joints". Countering the pin is listed with the pin.

For the first hold uke lies on his back "with both arms along the side of his body". Once the hold is on, the text reads "Uke tries to escape, for example, by", and three attempts follow, closed with "and so forth". All five holds are written that way. Then, in the textbook's words, uke finally signals "Mairi" when he cannot escape tori's control. The signal is given by "tapping Tori's body or the mat twice with his hand", or by tapping the mat twice with a foot when neither hand can be used. In the strangles and joint locks uke makes one attempt, and the sentence shortens: he tries to escape, but signals "because he cannot escape".

Read in order, the receiver in this form has three jobs: to give the position, to try to get out of it, and to say when the attempt has failed. Our piece on the tap read five competition rule sets on the last of the three. The kata textbook also scripts the attempt that comes before it.

The International Judo Federation runs kata as a competition, and its Kata Commission publishes the criteria the judges use. The version dated January 2024 lists six criteria for each technique, among them efficiency, realism and fluidity. The score it describes belongs to two people: a forgotten technique halves "the total final score of the pair".

Several of the listed mistakes are uke's. Among the situations that score zero for a technique: "Uke doesn't move, Tori grabs Uke and does the action." A big mistake is recorded "If Tori or Uke does the full action correctly but the other does not apply the correct principle of action, attack or technique." Among the elements observed in the first throw is "When Uke is thrown, he doesn't jump". For the holds: "During each technique Uke must demonstrate three attempts to escape."

Two articles the federation published in September 2026 say the same in prose. On the throwing form: "The work does not belong to tori alone." Uke "attacks, gets into position, reacts and receives the technique with precision". On the form of holds: "Uke does not merely submit to a sequence."

In these documents a receiver who stands still and a receiver who jumps are both making errors, and each error has a line in the judges' criteria.

The jiu-jitsu writing read for this piece is advice, published by instructors and organisations under their own names. Stephan Kesting's site Grapplearts carries a short article of his from January 2005 that sorts drills into three types. Two need a second person. In a cooperative drill "you are working together with the other person to develop a certain motion or technique". A competitive drill has you working "against partial or full resistance from your partner".

The fullest account of the receiving job on that site is by Jason Scully, in an article published in March 2012 with additions from members of his forum. He remarks that the subject is rarely discussed. He names stages of drilling, among them "Dead Pattern Training", with no resistance, and "Progressive Resistance Drilling", and says what a partner owes at each. In the first, a good partner "Will not be a dead body" and will not tip over the moment a sweep is tried: "React a bit to keep your balance because if your partner does the move correctly they should sweep you." In the second, resistance is added a little at a time, and the two people "should discuss when more resistance should be added".

Two more pages make the same points briefly. Marika Dasbach, writing for Easton Training Center in July 2022: "Giving our partner the right amount of resistance, especially when drilling, is important." Too little is a fault as well: "Don't just flop over before the sweep has even happened." An article on ONE Championship's site from February 2017 tells readers to "take note of how to react correctly when the move is being done on you".

All four pages describe the job, and all four call the person doing it a partner. Neither tori nor uke appears on any of them. Four pages are four pages, and we make no claim about how rooms in general talk.

What follows is this site's argument. Receiving is a skill with content. The judo documents and the jiu-jitsu pages describe the same three parts of it: a posture or an attack that gives the technique something to work on, an amount of resistance, and a reaction like the one the technique would meet outside the drill. Because partners take turns, it is also half of every repetition a person does.

Our piece on drilling separated rehearsing against a compliant partner from repetition against a defined and honest resistance, and argued that a room which calls both drilling cannot audit its own week. A coach can announce which of the two is meant. The person who makes it one or the other is the receiver. The same sweep is a rehearsal if the receiver lets it happen. It is a problem to solve if the receiver keeps their balance until the movement is done correctly, which is Scully's point and, in other words, the Kodokan's phrase about protecting stability.

Kata settles the matter by script. The textbook says what uke does and when, and a judge can mark it. The jiu-jitsu pages read here leave it to the two people, and Scully says so directly: "It is up to you, being their partner to tell them just how much resistance you might want also." On our reading that is the difference a name makes. A role with a name can be taught, demonstrated and corrected. A role without one is done however each person happens to do it.

This is not a case for borrowing Japanese vocabulary, and nothing read for this piece measures whether naming the role changes anything. Our piece on judo's two principles argued that jiu-jitsu's customs are carried by rooms and not by texts, and the receiver's job is one of them. In a flow roll, as the people who teach it define it, both partners turn resistance down at once. In a drill one of them does it for the other. Judo gave that job a name and a script, and jiu-jitsu relies on it in every repetition without having either.