Dropping in late on this thread...
Rather than commenting on every post on this Jodo-taichi thread..
Lots of apples and oranges comparisons IMO.
The ymca, club and park pracitioners of taiji/taiji are numerous
and practically world wide. What they do has little to do with taiji as a martial art. While the original Yang was a superb fighter- later Yang stylists for the most part drained the martial elements out of their taichi.Chen taiji thrived in Chen village -however some Chen masters were mistreated in the Cultural revolution. But top f;ight Chen survived- Feng Zhi Quan and the four tigers including Chen Xiao Wang are the real McCoys. CXW's younger brother is superb and has a school in Chen village. Two of CXW's sons are pretty good- the youngest is just a teenager.
The west has known about judo for some time- but the exposure to Chen was after the cultural revolution was over.. so it is relatively recent.
Whatever Judo was in Kano's time- these days it is primarilya throwing sport. An Olympic judo silver medalist who entered the UFC did fine at first with his throws- but on the ground he didnt know what to with fairly crude punches raining down upon him.
Top level Chen taiji is a complete art- throw, breaks, strikes, chinna-it is all there. CXW can seamlessly move from one function to another withe the ability to fajing with any part of the body practically any time. Fajing is talked abouta lot but without appropriate teaching and learning- people generally muscle it.
I primarily do wing chun but I respect top quality chen and judo as well and have met and "sensed" top quality folks in all 3 activities. Good chen has an edge over good judo. But finding a top level chen teacher is not easy. Judo teachers and bad wing chun teachers abound.
CXW occasionally tours Japan as well and some top flight japanese masters (Kanazawa in Karate) have been learning taichi.
Forget (IMHO) about common taichi and comparing speculatively lowest common denominators of different arts.