Repeating history, Expecting different results.

Any of my readers that actually know me from Shotokan Planet, 24 FightingChickens, KTJW or Karate Resource boards, probably have an idea where this blog is going.  It's going to be a comment on the current ITKF blow-out.  I know the Chairman (Ex-Chairman?), Rick Jorgensen, of the ITKF after training with his "foundation club", Midwest Karate Regina, for nearly twenty years.  I also had access to many of the private documents detailing the JKA break-up after Nakayama died, the break with the Canadian NKA in 1996, and the final death of the Canadian TKC in 2005.  I also was a key player in the break-up of the Saskatchewan Karate Association in 2004 (or 2005?).  In truth, I am karate's own version of Forest Gump: I am an idiot savant who bumbles into turning points of history without a clue what he was seeing.  I have met or know of many of the people involved in the ITKF debacle and believe me, this situation was inevitable.  Karate associations are not about democracy; they are about the culture of charismatic leaders and mindless disciples.  In many ways, karate would be better off by dispensing with all pretence to democracy and just allowed itself to wallow in quasi-religious idolatry.

Let me digress for this particular instalment to describe a simpler situation that will further illustrate many of the problems the hero worship that is intrinsic to karate creates.  This will give me time to consider the far more complex problem of the current ITKF implosion. The problem is basically the same, just bigger.

After seventeen years of training with a strict and very prominent ITKF club in Regina Saskatchewan (strange but true, those karate clubs in the Great Plains produce some great karate), I moved west  to a small village on the edge of the ocean.  Here, in my village, there is really only one karate club, a professionally run Goju club that truthfully is more about spandex-clad kick aerobics and "little ninjas" than anything else.  The "sensei" who runs the club is a great guy and was originally a great athlete, but  his club is absolutely all about paying his bills and filling up his retirement fund.  The only other outlet for a guy who misses traditional karate is a tiny band of likable guys who puddle away in low rent dojo accommodations and play at traditional Shorin-ryu karate.  Today's entry is all about these guys.

The Shorin-ryu club here is best described as three grown men who have been convinced what they are doing is the "only true way".  Otherwise intelligent, decent middle aged men have entirely swallowed the kool-aide of an ageing Japanese-Okinawan who was likely little more than the helpful water-boy in the old school Okinawan dojo back in "The Golden Era" of karate.  I won't bother naming names, because names really don't matter. All these great Grand-Masters or "O-Sensei" are the same: elderly men who remember their glory days as being bigger and better than they really were.  Pretty much the same as any middle aged man well past his prime trying to impress the teen-age boys who date his daughter.



The Old Masters: combine the tendency of old men to tell "big fish
stories" and all of us to make our heroes invincible and we end up
not having a clue how capable these guys really were.

The kata of Shorin-ryu are all basically standard Matsumura derived kata that any Shotokan or Shito-ryu player would recognise immediately. Certainly there are many subtle variations that make them challenging, but only because a Shotokan or Shito player would have to constantly stop themselves from reverting back to their original style.  The biggest challenge is the extremely rigid breathing pattern that the karateka must follow to do the kata to style standards and the fact that the Shorin-ryu style has required applications for each kata that must be memorised.

Known applications for each move of each kata, you say? Most karateka would think that is a great thing and the correct way that kata should be taught.  The problem here is two fold; the first problem being is that the applications that are taught are not only completely idiotic, they are taught as the only possible applications for those movements, no exceptions considered or allowed.  Furthermore, as they are taught, timing of application is not considered in the least and thus they have no educational value whatsoever. The student merely remembers this movement against that attack in said kata and then repeats that application to pass his examination. The results are absolutely artificial and would be considered "martial arts" only in the most basic, village-idiot level.

Consider this comparison.  In Pinnan Nidan/ Heian Shodan, the first movement is a block, stepping foreward to the left.  In the simplest application, the defender notes an attack coming from his left and steps into the attack pre-emptively, cutting the attack off short and effectively unbalancing the attacker by an "attacking block".  This application is of limited martial value in that simple form, but as a teaching mechanism it is highly worthwhile because it teaches the student to pre-emptively attack an opponent as soon as they sense the first attacking movements. The Shorin-ryu comparison is Naihanchi Shodan, where the first movement is a step sideways to the right, maintaining Naihanchi-dachi and applying a tate-shuto to a rigidly extended punch that, for some reason, the opponent threw into the air about three feet from the defender.  The student is taught to look at the attacker, watch him throw this head punch and then step in to block the extended punch practically after it is completed.  No other application is possible according to O-Sensei.

I thought the dojo instructor was teaching the most basic form of the application when I first started training with the group and, after a couple of sessions I started to ask what other ideas the instructor had for that particular movement. I was interested because the Naihanchi/ Tekki kata is a favourite of mine for teaching applications to students and I hoped that the dojo instructor would have some new insights on the subject.  The instructor, no less than a seventh-degree black belt, just looked at me with a dumbfounded expression as if I had suddenly broken into ancient Latin in mid-sentence.  He replied that the applications he taught came straight from O-Sensei himself and therefore those are the one and only REAL applications.  Any other possible applications were just wrong and should never be considered.  In further discussions with the very decent, friendly and otherwise intelligent gentleman, it became apparent that not only was he unwilling to consider alternative applications, he was intellectually incapable of thinking outside the box built by his "O-Sensei".  This ability to close his mind to any other ideas is exactly how he earned his seventh degree ranking; he was absolutely mindlessly faithful.

Being the anal-retentive sceptic I am, I thought that I might get better instruction if I actually consulted the source. I ordered the complete Kata on DVD series straight from O-Sensei himself. The DVD series was moderately high priced, but what the hell, if you are going to do something, you might as well do it right.  The DVD series was an immense disappointment and actually led me to question everything the Shorin club was teaching.

You see, the O-Sensei, even allowing for his advanced age, just was not all that good. The poor quality of the production did not help (it was obvious that the videographer had done everything based on one take, practically no editing and was using just the sound recording system on his digital camera), but the O-Sensei was frequently unsure of himself, off balance and had none of the fluid movement that is the hallmark of a modern "Master".  Furthermore, each kata demonstration featured those daft applications that even a fresh beginner with no fighting experience would have problems believing.

O-Sensei was no karate Master, he was just a likable little Okinawan dude who happened to teach mediocre karate to a bunch of gullible American GI Joes and therefore got labelled as "O-Sensei". Through the years his reputation grew and pretty soon it became impossible to question his opinion without incurring the wrath of dojo colleagues. Peer pressure led otherwise capable intelligent men continue to follow him without question because everyone around them says they must. The emperor is indeed naked, but his loyal followers only see golden robes.

This entire experience did not open my eyes in the least: it merely serves to confirm my longstanding belief that karate itself is teetering on the narrow and unsure shoulders of men who were masters only because we made them so.  We made giants and demigods out of gifted athletes and fighters who were otherwise men of mediocre quality. Unfortunately, our need to create heroes out of  these few gifted athletes has also led us falsely attach many other qualities to the karate masters that they rarely demonstrate.

 We all need to be bluntly truthful about the capabilities of every sensei: does anyone really believe that a man who has dedicated himself to the study of martial arts is also a master of commerce, morality and philosophy? Why would we expect a man who spends hours perfecting kata to have any medical, legal or scientific expertise?  The answer to these questions seem self-evident, but yet we continue to set up senior instructors to run global, internationally recognised karate associations dealing with millions of dollars in transactions annually.  Furthermore, when those ageing "jocks" inevitably fail miserably at running said multinational corporations we just discard them and replace them with some other ageing "jock" who happens to be the hero of the day.


Before I completely alienate everyone, please note that I am not actually attacking the skills of the masters. Kanazawa, Nishiyama, Enoeda, Asai and Yahara were likely all great athletes. I personally have seen tapes of Kanazawa and Asai doing things that I did not actually believe were humanely possible. Mr. Nishiyama indeed did really know his karate and I still find his schools system to be the most comprehensive and logical approach to teaching combatives I have ever seen.  I have seen the power and speed of Yahara and there is no doubt in my mind that Enoeda was really as dangerous as everyone says he was. Kudos to all the masters going all the way back to Funakoshi and Chokki Motubu.  I just don't think that we should make a bunch of athletic guys who liked fighting into unassailable figureheads.

Bluntly, I am not convinced any of the karate masters, named above or otherwise, had any business running any organisation.  Good business managers know how to work diplomatically to find resolutions to challenging problems. Good business managers keep clear, well organised account books and get their paperwork done in timely fashions.  Good business managers care to provide excellent service for fair compensation.  Karate masters are well known for abysmal diplomacy, negligent accounting practises, complete lack of time management (everyone knows what the term "karate time" means) and, truthfully, most karate masters overcharge and under-achieve when it comes to client satisfaction.  To tell you the truth, the great masters of today and yesterday are really no different from my friendly little Okinawan dude with the funky DVDs, they just have bigger bank-rolls.

The "Legendary" Chokki Motobu.  He was the scion of a wealthy family who
chose to spend evenings drinking in the red light district and beating people up.
In the west we would have called him the wastrel drunken second-son of an honourable family,
 but karateka make him into a hero instead.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results each time.  In my experience, karateka will blindly follow a "master" until they finally can no longer deal with the contradictions any intelligent mind should see. Once the karateka finally sees that the emperor indeed is naked (and fat, limp, sagging and ugly), he then discards that emperor...only to start worshipping yet another naked ape.  Thus we run from the JKA to the JKS or the SKI or the ITKF and then when they fail we just re-arrange the alphabet and bow down once again.  Karateka always make much of the fact that we are fighters, but it seem so me that we spend a lot of time kneeling with bowed heads to men we barely know.