Counter Throws: Kaeshi-Waza for the Attacks Everyone Throws at You

But a committed attack is the most honest kuzushi in judo: the attacker has put their weight exactly where their throw needs it, on one leg, travelling in a known direction, and for about half a second their balance belongs to whoever is ready to take it. That half second is where kaeshi-waza lives. The counter throw is not a trick played on their technique. It is their own momentum, invoiced.

Kaeshi-waza, counter techniques, are a formal family in the Kodokan classification, named in grading syllabi and dan study lists, and they answer a specific club problem: defending is common, converting is rare. The Defending the Second Throw article in this series teaches surviving combinations. This article teaches the other half of defence, the half that scores: the map from the attacks everyone throws at you to the counters those attacks carry inside them, and the timing rule that decides whether the counter is a throw or a donation.

Section 01The Timing Rule: On Commitment, Not on Sight

Every counter in this article obeys one rule. You counter their commitment, never their intention.

An attack passes through three windows. In the early window, they are shaping the attack: gripping, stepping, feinting. A counter thrown here meets a player who can simply stop, and your counter becomes a lunge they can use. This window belongs to defence: posture, grips, position. In the commitment window, their weight has genuinely left one leg, their reaping leg is in the air or their back is turning with their hips loaded. They cannot take the attack back. The counter thrown here lands on a body that has already spent its balance. In the late window, their throw is completing. A counter here is not a counter. It is ukemi with extra steps.

Beginners throw counters on sight, the moment an attack is recognized, which is the early window, and get thrown by the feint or the real attack indifferently. The training fix is unfashionable and absolute: block first. The counter game is built on a block that works, because the block is what buys the information that the attack was real. A player who cannot block an attack does not get to counter it. They get to survive it, drill the block, and earn the counter later. The companion guide builds the whole progression on that gate.

Section 02The Map: Attack to Counter

This is the article's core table, the club-level map. It is not the whole of kaeshi-waza; it is the counters for the attacks that actually arrive in club randori, week after week.

Several counters repeat across rows, and that repetition is the map's kindest feature. Tani-otoshi answers most turning throws. Tsubame-gaeshi answers most foot sweeps. Uchi-mata-sukashi is one evasion pattern. A beginning counter player needs three counters owned properly, not eleven recognized vaguely: one for turning throws, one for reaps and sweeps, one evasion. The map grows from there.

Section 03The Three Doors, Explained

The reap-back counters (the gaeshi throws) reverse a leg attack with a leg attack. Their leg has travelled to you and committed; your leg answers it in the same space. Gaeshi counters demand the least travel and work in the smallest room, which is why the inside reaps and sweeps, attacks thrown at the closest range, are answered this way.

The drop-behind counters (tani-otoshi above all) answer turning throws. The attacker turns their back to load you, and their whole throw stands on the legs behind them. You sit to the rear corner, taking that ground away, and their loaded weight completes a fall they built themselves. One safety rule governs this entire family and it is not negotiable: tani-otoshi drops beside their leg, never onto it. Your body weight falling across the back or side of their planted knee is how knees are ruined in judo. The drop lands to the side, your hand controls their upper body, and your weight goes to the mat, not through their joint. A counter that injures your partner is a failed counter whatever the scoreboard would have said.

The evasion counters (sukashi) are the purest form of the timing rule. Uchi-mata-sukashi does not block the reap or fight it. It removes the leg being reaped, at the last honest moment, and the attacker's own full commitment carries them past their balance point into the fall. Done early it is just stepping away, and they re-attack. Done on commitment it is the most effortless-looking score in the art, which is exactly what half a second of perfect timing looks like from the outside.

Section 04Why Counters Score Out of Proportion

A counter begins with the kuzushi already done, done by the attacker, to competition standard, because their throw required it. Your work is direction and timing, not force generation. That is why counters so often produce clean, full scores from what looks like a small movement, and why a player with a real counter game changes the whole arithmetic of a room: attacking them carelessly becomes expensive, so they are attacked carefully, which slows opponents down, which gives the counter player the calm exchanges their game prefers. The counter game is a style of judo, not a bag of responses, and its practitioners are recognizable by how unhurried they look.

Section 05The Feint Problem, Faced Honestly

The counter game's tax is the feint. A smart attacker who knows you counter will show you attacks designed to draw the counter, then throw you with the real one as you commit to answering the fake. There are three defences, and none of them is "counter faster."

First, the block-first gate. A counter launched only after a real block has made contact with a real attack cannot be drawn by a gesture. Second, counter the weight, not the shape: your trigger is their weight leaving a leg, a physical fact, not the visual pattern of a throw, which can be acted. Third, keep your counter kit honest about range. Most drawn counters are launched from a step too far away, where only a fake could have reached you anyway. If their attack could not have landed, your counter was answering theatre.

Section 06Where It Goes Wrong

Countering on sight. The early-window lunge, answered above. If you have been thrown by the same player's feint twice in a session, your counters are being fired by your eyes. Re-gate yourself to block first for a month.

One counter for everything. Tani-otoshi attempted against foot sweeps, reaps, and the weather. Each attack family carries its own counter family, and the map exists because the doors differ. Own three counters properly before collecting more.

Tani-otoshi onto the knee. Repeated because it is the family's one serious injury mechanism. Drop beside the leg, weight to the mat, hand controlling their fall. A player who cannot yet place the drop does not use the counter live. The guide's safety card gates it like any other load-bearing technique.

Countering from a lost grip fight. If their grips are set and yours are absent, their attack launches from a platform and your counter launches from a deficit. The counter game is downstream of the grip game, always. Counters drilled without grips are choreography.

The statue's reward. Waiting, visibly, doing nothing but hunting counters, is passivity, and referees penalize it and partners solve it. The counter player still attacks, still grips, still threatens. The counters are what their attacks' failures run into.

Sitting on a counter that stopped working. Rooms learn. The counter that scored all spring is scouted by autumn, and its owner keeps presenting the same attacks to draw it. Counters, like tokui-waza, are rotated and re-earned. The map has more doors than the three you own. That is what they are for.

Section 07The Companion Guide

This article gives you the knowledge. The companion guide turns it into training. The Counter Map Reference prints the full attack-to-counter map as cards, one card per attack family, with the timing window, the steps, and the faults for each counter. It gates the whole book behind a block-first standard, drills the block, then the block-and-off-balance, then the counter, in that order, adds feint-discipline drills that punish early counters, and prints the tani-otoshi safety card where the drop counters are taught. A counter kit worksheet picks the three attacks you actually face and the three counters you will own first, and the log records counters attempted, counters scored, and counters drawn by feints, in separate columns, because those are three different lessons. It is for the player whose defence is a wall, ready to put a door in it that swings their way.