Information about Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate and Budo by Garry Lever
I’m away on holiday for a couple of weeks from today so there will not be any updates for a little while.
I’ll leave you with this quote, again from Scholar Boxer;
‘If he does not move, I do not move. If he is about to move, I move first’
I think this describes the ultimate aim of self defence…………depending on your interpretation.
Whilst reading through the book Scholar Boxer by Chang Naizhou, I came across the following quotes which fits in quite nicely with yesterdays post;
‘Do not let corrupt scholiasts know. If they once know they will quote scripture and ancient precedents and speak a lot of misleading and irrelevant maxims that annoy people. Be careful to avoid this.’
‘There are always braggarts who think themselves clever. They say of another persons boxing that at one glance they know it. They don’t realize that, while at one glance they knew it, if again they glance, they won’t know it.’
It appears that 18th century China was no stranger to some of the problems that occur all too often in this day and age!
It never ceases to amuse me how quickly people will jump to inform you that you are wrong! A quick glance through the archives of any martial arts related forum will reveal hundreds of arguments over trivial matters, which in the grand scheme of things, have little or no effect on how the person practices their chosen art anyway.
What amuses me most is the total lack of courtesy between practitioners. It appears near impossible to have a remotely intelligent dialogue without it turning into a mud slinging contest.
If karatedo is supposed to produce people who are more aware of how their actions are perceived by others, then it looks as though it is performing woefully in this department.
Having an opinion in the world of karatedo is a lot like walking along sidewalk of a motorway. If you follow everyone else and don’t stray from the accepted path then you’re pretty much guaranteed a problem free journey. If however you chose to make your own mind up and wander into the middle of the motorway then eventually you’re going to get hit by a big truck!
The funny thing is, karatedo history and theory isn’t anywhere near as simple as trying not to get hit by a big truck.
The history of karatedo is made up of here-say, rumour, exaggeration, lies, exaggeration, a bit more rumour, and the odd exaggerated lie. With this in mind how can anybody be so sure of whats right or wrong?
All we can do as practitioners with enquiring minds is to look at the information we have and try to make sense of it all for ourselves.
Just don’t be too quick to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with what you discover!
Miyazato Sensei’s dojo kun advises us to practice with creativity. Nowhere is this more imortant then in regards to kata.
The kata work as a textbook of practical techniques preserved over hundreds of years to enable their inheritors to study various methods of responding to common self defence scenarios. The beauty of karatedo is that because of the issues around secrecy, and the fact that so much information was lost due to WW2, nobody really knows for certain what the creators of the various kata had in mind when putting together their catalogues of favoured technique.
Whilst this may be frustrating to many people who feel that they are left wondering around in the dark, in actual fact, it is a blessing. This scenario gives us the perfect setting with which to make an unbiased study of the kata.
If the answers are laid out in front of you, it is easy to stand right on top of them and not even notice they are there!
It is important to keep approaching the kata with an enquiring mind, always asking why and what? Why this stance, why this strike, why this angle? What are my target areas, what if he defends, what if I’m standing too close?
By studying kata in this way you will add more and more depth to your training and begin to comprehend how karatedo can be a lifelong practice.
A large majority of my own training is done alone in my dojo, so testing new ideas can be problematic. Visualisation is extremely useful but can sometimes be deceptive and upon meeting a live partner you may find that the technique which existed in your mind is actually impossible in reality.
An excellent go-between of visualization and live partner training is the tou. The tou is a wooden post similar in some ways to the wing chun wooden dummy. Borrowing ideas from Kinjo Hiroshi Sensei’s tou which he affectionately calls ki san (Mr Wood) I attached flexible arms and a straw makiwara at face height. My sensei modified his even further by adding removable rigid arms at jo, chu and ge levels, and half a tyre for practicing kansetsu geri. I also have a length of wrist thick bamboo on a length of rope which helps me to practice blocking and catching an arm.
I’ve found training with the tou to be an excellent aid to visualization, and an essential tool when it comes to investigating and developing bunkai.
I don’t think Miyagi Sensei’s karatedo was ever intended to be a finished product. He appears to have been constantly evolving with diffierent students learning different variations at different times. There’s no problem with this, as if anything it provides us with a decade by decade guide as to what was going through Miyagi Sensei’s mind. The sad thing is now that the decendants of his students now all swear that their own method is the correct way and that everyone else has been taught wrong, or has changed/misunderstood/forgot what was learned.
The thing is though, this sort of hype sells, right? There’s always going to be a market of people who are willing to follow blindly and believe whatever they are told as long as it’s coming from an Okinawan source who can vaguely be traced back to the founder.
This type of thing is further fuelled by some of the video producers who encourage this sort of behaviour in order to shift a few more copies of the latest DVD claiming to reveal the ‘true secret teachings’.
I love Motobu Sensei’s book, and the fact that he chose to call it watashi no karate - ’my karate’. At the end of the day, thats all it is – his karate. The title suggests to me that he couldn’t care less what everyone else was up to. He found value in studying what he knew, and studying it deeply.
In karatedo we have been left a set of tools and its left completely up to us what we build with them. We can either copy every other house in the street or build something that has value to us.
Its all down to what people want out of their training, whether its for recreation or for budo. If it is for budo then it’s our absolute responsibility to question everything about our art and have a reason, as without reason we are just following blindly without purpose.
