In the Beginning

I'm the old fart on the left. I can take a punch and frequently am on the receiving end of punches.

Through the grape vine I have heard of yet another karate association rift filled with accusations of treason, misappropriations of funds and abuse of privilege. This is the same tired story that everyone that has been involved in karate for any length of time has heard far more than anyone could possible believe.  As someone who is now outside of the karate culture looking in, the ongoing, continual backbiting and infighting is akin to watching pre-teen boys arguing over stick-ball rules in the junkyard sandlot.

This will be a short "blog", perhaps only ten or fifteen entries. I am hoping to instigate some honest debate over just what the hell is wrong with world-wide karate, but failing that, at least this blog will be a record of the crap I have seen as a practicing karateka, in four clubs and two styles over the last 25 years.

 I will give you a very short and hopefully truthful biography of me. I am a fifty-one year old man who has practiced martial arts since 1983. I started in Tai Chi Chuan while I was still in college, getting into the peaceful martial art simply because I noticed a sharp-looking blond was part of the club. I was young and my little head did most of my thinking for me back then.  I really enjoyed Tai Chi and I still do the Yang Style Long Form nearly daily.  I actually see far more value in Tai Chi now than I did back in my youth, but back then I was doing the martial art for lust rather than love. 

I got into Shotokan Karate-do in 1991 and, with the aid of my near-photographic memory and my natural athleticism, I progressed very quickly through the first few kyu grades.  Don't get me wrong: I was no "Bruce Lee" and, even from the start, it was quite clear I was never going to be a karate savant. I was and am, merely proficient at the basics. I understand what I am supposed to do and I know how to do it, but nobody is ever going to comment on my Godlike form or my lethal techniques.  I am just another week-end warrior wannabe; just like 99% of the rest of karateka world-wide. Nothing lethal here.

I eventually earned my Shodan rank in 1997, grading to black belt under Rick Jorgensen, the current (or former maybe?) chairman of the ITKF.  I genuinely earned that Shodan rank and I am proud that I did stick with karate long enough to wear the coveted black belt.  On the other hand, I freely admit that having a Shodan ranking means one thing only: the colour of my karate belt will never change from now on.  I am not "sensei", I am not a "tough dude" and I am not even all that athletic. I just stuck with karate and hammered away at the basic skills until I became proficient enough to wear a black belt. That is the truth for just about every other black-belt in this sport: we just stuck with it long enough to earn the belt.

I never bothered grading beyond Shodan.  By the time I had spent all my free time for seven years pounding away on the hard-wood of a dojo I had learned a few dirty little secrets about karate.  One of the truths I learned was that the Dan ranking system is a complete farce; anything above Shodan and you are looking at a simple seniority ranking system. If you have been around forever, you likely are highly ranked regardless of your skill level.  Certainly there are some miraculously skilled karateka with high Dan rankings, but I would bet those skilled few were amazing athletes at simple kyu levels. High Dan rankings combined with amazing athletic skill merely represents physical ability combined with physical durability, also known as "The last man left standing syndrome". Unfortunately, the ability/ durability quotient does not correlate with intelligence, teaching ability, morality, or common sense. Many of the highly ranked karateka I have met are just aging jocks with immense egos, limited intellect, and delusions of grandeur.  And karate culture grooms them to be that way; we worship their brutality, we enable their dictatorships and we kiss their asses. BTW: I have never stopped training since earning my Shodan. In fact, my number of hours on the dojo floor actually increased substantially after reaching black belt. I did not quit karate; I just quit chasing the imaginary brass ring of rank

Very early in my karate training (some of the more grandiose of karateka call it "a career") I recognized the cognitive dissonance between what I was being told and reality. We are expected to accept blindly whatever spewed out of sensei's mouth, no matter how silly those ideas may be.  Right from the start I realized that there was many versions of the truth out there and, most importantly,  it is the duty of a real student to find those truths.  I read everything I could about martial arts and I indeed became an expert in the science of karate by my own rights. In the early years I consumed everything I could and believed nearly everything I read; my opinions changed every time I bought a new book for my library.  It was only after nearly a decade of teaching karate and listening to the naïve comments from my own students that I learned to edit almost everything I heard and read about karate.  There is only one truth that every karateka needs to learn: nobody knows the real truth because every person's truth is different.  Certainly there are more capable instructors out there and there are all sorts of gifted athletes on the dojo floor, but capable instructors and gifted athletes are very much two different things.  Often those that can teach are not great performers and those that can perform cannot teach. Finally and most unfortunately, often those gifted few that are charismatic, capable and instructive are morally barren and should not be allowed to lead an club of rotting corpses much less young athletes.  Karate is an individual sport/ pass-time and therefor learning karate is mostly independent study. The moment a karateka abandons responsibility for his own instruction and allows sensei to dictate his path, he has left his true way.

This blog will document the wild breaches of trust and common decency that I personally have witnessed over the years.  It will be decidedly not a "kiss and tell" blog because I will leave out all the pertinent details that might implicate specific individuals. You are welcome to guess about identities and you might be right, but all the concrete proof is long gone and all you have is my word for it. And  really, who the hell am I? Just another internet hack with an axe to grind.

The blame for the sorry state of affairs in martial arts sits squarely on the shoulders of the students.  We cannot blame O-Sensei or Grand-Master or whatever lame title you wish to give the aging old fart in white pyjamas because we created the monster that we call "Sensei".  We bowed to him, we followed his lead without question, we boot-licked and ass-kissed until those sainted souls were placed permanently upon a pedestal so high that God himself would be hard pressed to knock them off. I have actually sat at a lunch table and heard an attractive, fit young woman ask an aging, overweight, pear shaped O-Sensei how he maintains his amazing physique: even the O-Sensei blanched at the shameless flattery.  I half expected to hear offers of sexual service in the next sentence. We need not raise these instructors up on high; they are just humans with human frailties. They eat and sleep, they urinate and defecate and yes, they pass gas often (but frequently are filled with little more than hot air despite farting).  Of course instructors should be respected and treated with courtesy, but often behaviour around "Sensei" borders on mindless worship.  It is no great surprise when the odd "Sensei" takes advantage of that worship and falls into bed with a student or absconds with club fees when he runs short of funds.

Part of the issue is the expected goals karate students have from training.  If all of us were true to both ourselves and our colleagues, we would admit the real reason we started karate. Cut the crap; we all joined karate because we had some romantic idea that immersing ourselves in a martial art would make us bad-ass and somehow superhuman.  We watched the lame Hollywood (or Hong-Kong) movies where highly rehearsed actors performed choreographed fight scenes and looked invincible, effortlessly destroying numerous opponents without so much as shedding a drop of blood. We ignored the fact those same actors had the benefits of untold hours of training and rehearsal, numerous takes to get the routine perfect, several camera angles and edits to cover flawed performance and often performance enhancing aids such as wires to really pump up the action. Often karate students have already departed from reality before we ever step onto the dojo floor, so it is not too difficult to imagine that we might be susceptible to wild expansions of the truth uttered by our instructors.  We accept the lies because we want them to lie to us; we want them to maintain the false façade that karate will make us invincible and superhuman, just like the deceased Bruce Lee (note that all the "Black Belt Magazine" issues that feature Bruce Lee on the cover are top sellers.  We continue the myth that a diminutive Hollywood actor of over forty years ago was "the greatest".)

I still like karate as a form of exercise and a pass-time.  As a form of "whole body" exercise it is excellent: it does truly train the body and the mind. Unfortunately, there is a miserable dark side to karate that has been frequently revealed but thus far ignored: the people running the show are corrupt and it is we, the students, who corrupted them. It is our fault and only when we stop the mindless worship and thoughtless  cult behaviour will our leaders truly deserve their positions.

Stay tuned for "tales from the dojo".