Who's This Stuff For?

It is always a good exercise to take account of our motivations as karate teachers and practitioners. Why do we continue on, year after year, teaching and practicing karate? Yes there are a lot of easy, canned answers: cultivation of character, preserving the traditions of the past, to learn to be able to defend oneself, to confront our responses to violence, force of habit. I am sure I am leaving many out.

I don’t think most people scrutinize this carefully. For a variety of reasons, answering this requires us to consider who makes up the community of people to whom we are responsible towards. When the answer is ambiguous it becomes nearly impossible to understand the extent of our responsibilities, and thus what it is we should be doing. The ‘why’ question becomes easier to address when we are clear about what we are doing, and equally important, about what we are not/ should not be doing.

There are those who regard themselves as hard-core ‘traditionalists’ for whom preserving tradition seems to be the ultimate objective. To these people the most important obligation is to ones predecessors in these arts. Of course it is useful and proper to give credit where it is due. We have an obligation to make sure our historical claims are accurate, but that seems like the extent of our obligation to the dead.

Many times in the thirty-plus years I have been involved with martial arts, I have seen abusive and insensitive behavior justified by appeals to tradition.

As a younger black-belt level instructor, I remember struggling with ethical dilemmas that should not have been complicated, however, my judgment was clouded by the imagined relevance of some mumbo jumbo associated with tradition.

Linked News Article: School Judo Deaths Prompt Protest in Japan

This article details a trend of serious, unrecognized injuries and a surprising number of deaths in Japanese youth Judo programs. I found this story to be of particular interest, since Judo is often advertised as a very safe martial arts activity for kids.

The take-home message:

”First of all, many judo instructors at Japanese schools are too ignorant about what to do when a serious incident occurs…”

The activity itself isn’t necessarily unsafe, but the environment and attitude in which it is trained can be. We’ve beaten this particular dead horse for a while, but it bears repeating. Instructors have a responsibility to know:

• their students’ limitations and health considerations
• the risks inherent in their activity
• what constitutes a serious injury
• how to avoid serious injuries
• what to do in the event of a serious injury
• what not to do in the event of a serious injury

The quote at the end of the article brings to mind the mindless culture of obedience, subservience and physical abuse that was encouraged/required in early Japanese University karate clubs (and still is, in some cases):

Mr Murakawa said: ”Children, afraid of getting beaten up, must obey the coach and cannot ask for a rest for no matter what.”

This attitude has absolutely no place in any training hall of any art anywhere. It’s not worth emulating, it’s not honorable, and it is not “traditional.” The sooner it’s discarded, the better. Getting tougher and finding out what you can take is valuable and worth pursuing; sacrificing your safety and health for macho posturing is not.

2010 Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden

If you watch closely you will see two short clips from the TKRI demonstrations at the Missouri Botanical Gardens this year. Nice job guys.

Traditional Karate: Stumbling Block, or Useful Distinction?

Note: I would like to acknowledge the enormous contributions of my teachers and training colleagues to my thinking on this matter: most notably Robert Miller in his essay “Modern Karate: A Reconsidered Pedagogy”; Dr. Gillian Russell’s essay “Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts” and David Campbell for providing a solid sounding board for my inchoate, all-over-the-place musings.

“Traditional Karate”: A Problem of Definitions

Over the past couple of years, an increasing level of conversation has developed amongst karate practitioners about what karate is. As practitioners of the fighting arts learn more about each other via books and the internet, and the rise of mixed martial arts has provided a yardstick for the superiority of this technique or that, the standard answers are becoming more and more inadequate. This process of reckoning is acutely noticeable on online discussion forums.  If you throw the question of “what is karate?” onto a discussion board, the replies will cover a very broad range of interpretations and practices. Some replies will take all facets of training and the contingencies of fighting into account and evaluate them carefully, while others will staunchly defend this major brand name or that as “the” keepers of correct tradition.” In an age where ideas and methods can be accessed at the click of a button and information is more available than at any other time in history, many karateka still insist on wearing blinders. Some who engage in these conversations become very distraught at the suggestion that their school of choice is not recognized by all as being the best (epistemic viciousness at its best), while others actively pursue new perspectives.

Link to "Beginnner's Guide to Bushido" by Alex Bennett

Follow the link below for an excellent article by  Alex Bennett of the International Research Centre for  Japanese Studies:

Excerpt (page 53):

However, a more martial interpretation of bushido came into vogue again in the militarist 1930’s, and many Japanese soldiers read copies of the aforementioned Hagakure, or Bushido on the way to the front. In the aftermath of WWII, bushido fell into disfavour. Foreign and Japanese critics alike blamed bushido as representing all that was most loathsome in Japanese wartime behaviour. Many Japanese renounced bushido as part of the misguided militaristic ideology resulting in Japan’s defeat and shame, and as unsuited to their new post-war democratic society.

The thing with bushido is that it always has been, and always will be, open for interpretation. There is no one ‘school of bushido.’ Recent history has
shown that this makes the idea useful and potentially dangerous at the same time

Click Here.

InYo: Bushido or Bull: Friday

InYo: Bushido or Bull: Friday.

The Hidden Relevance of Japanese Historical Influences

The Hidden Relevance of Japanese Historical Influences.

1970 Bushido: Mishima Yukio and the Shield Society

1970 Bushido: Mishima Yukio and the Shield Society.

WAR / Japanese soldiers finally tell their story / Hell in the Pacific — from vivisection to cannibalism

WAR / Japanese soldiers finally tell their story / Hell in the Pacific — from vivisection to cannibalism.

"Bushido, the Soul of Japan" – On Google Books

Follow this link to Nitobe’s  often cited work ” Bushido, the Soul of Japan” (full text included).

Linked Article "Sport and Physical Education under Fascistization in Japan"

Follow this link to a very interesting article called ” Sport and Physical Education under Fascistization in Japan” by Ikuo Abe, Yasuharu Kiyohara, and Ken Nakajima on the InYo website.

The scantiness of the information about sport and physical education in Japanese history has caused foreign readers to be unfamiliar with the subject. Japanese sports historians have not yet established uniform translations for the technical terms in this field. Although we have a considerable accumulation of historical studies in this field, our first step should be limited to a sketchy introduction rather than a detailed and analytical history. This paper aims to demonstrate, as briefly as possible, the consolidating process of Japanese fascism and its influence on sport and physical education.

***

The formative process of Japanese fascism is subtly but essentially different from Italian Fascism and German Nazism, which had mass parties and are generally called “fascism from below”. Japanese fascism is instead typified as “fascism from above”. The Emperor System and its power groups have constituted rigid power structures and the charismatic governing apparatus since the Meiji Restoration. For this reason, we adopted the term, “fascistization”, and took a relatively long time-span for the explanation of the formative process of Japanese fascism.

Katsumi Irie skillfully described the fascistization of Japanese physical education in four developmental stages: germination (1917-31), transition (1931-1937), domination (1937-41), and culmination (1941-45). Instead of using his precise and accurate turning points, we use two stages — germination (before the Manchurian Incident of 1931) and consolidation (1931-1945). Simplification, sometimes, is needed for a brief introduction to a topic.

Click Here to read the rest of the article.

Dr. Bernard J. Bettelheim: The Misadventures of A European Missionary in 19th century Naha

The story of Dr. Bernard J. Bettelheim in Okinawa is not generally linked to discussion of karate, but he is tied into the recent history of Okinawa in several subtle ways that came to have rather thunderous repercussions. The tale of this missionary doctor, labeled by some as an eccentric and others a saint, is perfectly out of place in what the public imagines to be a kingdom where marauding samurai were dispatched by impoverished yet superhumanly skilled farmer-warriors. Thankfully, this storybook scenario is holding less and less water due to the explosion of serious research into the field. And as unlikely as it may seem the exploits of a European Missionary living in Naha in the mid-1800’s can add yet another piece to our puzzle.