Pissing Contests

A friend posted a link the other day on Face Book for yet another karate blog complaining about karate and how to fix it. Note that my very special blog offers no solutions whatsoever: I am just bitching about what a pile of crap we have all collectively created.  The author writes well and makes some great points, but I am afraid he is yet another symptom of one of the problems we have in karate: the idea that karate is all about self-defense: http://ryukyuma.blogspot.ca/2014/07/10-things-karate-must-do.html

So the above blog assumes that the goal of karate is to train to defend against realistic street attacks. The author suggests that we should all train, from the very start, to defend against head shots thrown in a multiplicity of ways with intent to harm. The incoming attacks should be multiple, should be using both hands and should be from a realistic distance. We, as the defender, should use both limbs in our defense, dispensing with the traditional "hikite" unless we are planning on simultaneous trap and attack strategy.  Our writer also frequently refers to the famous Chokki Motobu as his inspiration and muse.

The man is right: if we are trying to learn how to street fight, traditional karate training is of little value. If you are simply interested in warding off attackers at the ATM or during the inevitable, expected and eventual apocalypse, you should probably just join a fight club and duke it out with like- minded thugs street style.

On the other hand.......

Let me deconstruct the above argument.

1. The hopelessly paranoid belief that we all need to be able to defend ourselves in hand-to-hand combat:

While all of us will suffer petty theft, burglary and public aggression sometime in our life, very few of us are ever going to be faced with the necessity of physically defending our lives or the lives of our loved ones. In fact, while hardly any of us are ever going to be assaulted, every karateka will be injured while practicing karate (if we train with any intensity).

 I personally have had a severe knee injury requiring surgery, a torn bicep muscle (permanently damaged, has never worked properly since), a crushed testicle (destroyed and had to be surgically removed), a broken nose, three broken ribs, broken bones in my hand and have been knocked out at least twice while sparring (once by a 5th degree BB who supposedly had "perfect" control. Same jackass crushed my testicle....for fun he said.). This is all by "friendly fire" training in the dojo with club-mates. Meanwhile I can only think of two incidents in my adult life where I might have needed to actually defend myself; both of those were well covered by keeping my distance, calmly discussing the problem and calling the police.  In fact, I only know one person in my life that has been physically assaulted several times, and my brother-in-law is dumber than a prairie dog dropped on his head at birth.

Unless you are intentionally looking for fights, are a habitual thug or a law enforcement officer (or dumber than a gopher), advanced combat training is just an invitation to visit the emergency with training injuries. You would be better served by learning to run fast, call 911 and learn conflict avoidance. Hell, truthfully, each one of us would be better off taking defensive driving classes since we are far more likely to get in a car accident than we are to get mugged.

BTW: The original karate, as described by Funakoshi and his cohorts, appears to be more about fighting than true self-defense. Funakoshi describes  covert, barely organized gatherings that are essentially "fight club" and a few street challenges that amount to gang rivalries (followers of a Sensei against drunk sailors and neighborhood punks). Very few of the "tales of yore" describe the typical modern street attack of blind-side blitzkrieg followed by rape, robbery or murder. Combine that with the tendency of old men to tell big fish stories when describing their distant youth, and you cannot believe much of anything written about the masters of old.

2. We should compare ourselves and be answerable to "real" combative training like MMA.

So, just for the fun of it, let's just compare karate clientele with MMA clientele and ask ourselves if it is in karate's best interest to "take it to the streets".

  Enter the typical commercial karate dojo (or non-profit club for that matter) and you will find many different types of people. There will be the ill-mannered children sent by parents to learn self-discipline and get physically active. There will be the rare adults that started karate as children, enjoyed it and just kept going. These exotic birds will usually be your tournament players and they will be the long-term members who dominate the club. There will be the adult hobbyists who joined karate as a disciplined pass-time, perhaps looking for that mystical mind-body connection touted so widely by martial artists. On the other hand, there will be very few true combat-ready "fire breathers" who want to mix it up with like minded individuals and who don't mind getting hit and spilling blood.

Now walk on down the street and visit the local MMA/ Brazilian Jiu-jutsu Club and look through the door. What do you see?  Well, there will probably be the ever-ubiquitous children enrolled in martial-arts day-care. There will be quite a few teen-aged boys trying to emulate their television  tough-guy heroes. There might even be a few tom-boy girls challenging the male-dominated status-quo (and several girls who joined to chase the above boys). That leaves the overwhelming majority of the paying members who are typically young, athletic men who desperately need and want to find their manhood in the salt of the sweat and the metallic smell of flowing blood. The MMA clubs attract and are filled with those mythical "fire breathers" who love competition and don't mind limping into work each morning having to explain yet another black eye, broken nose or bloodied lip.

You cannot and should not compare MMA with karate: they are different things and attract different clientele. If the karate dojo tries to go head to head with the MMA dojo, they will alienate their bread and butter and that spells financial ruin. Karate is a martial art, the emphasis being on "art", while MMA is a combative sport. Two different things.

Oh, and yes, I am sure your club trains for reality. Everyone thinks their club is the real thing; it's called loyalty and that is a good thing. I have trained with many clubs and have been told by more than a few that I am a bit too intense for their comfort level. It's kind of funny: I think of myself as a bit of a coward and barely competitive at all.  Just take it from me: very few karate clubs are real enough to be street lethal.

3. Traditional Karate training is useless and unrealistic.

Yes...unless the instructor really understands the drills and uses them appropriately. Unfortunately, a huge number, perhaps the majority, of instructors have no idea what each drill does, how to use that drill, and when to stop using that drill. The typical instructor teaches the way his sensei taught and his sensei probably followed suit the same way. Test your sensei sometime: ask him what a specific drill trains and critique his answer. I would bet that many of us would get the standard answer: "Shut up and train". The rest of us will get a convoluted, cryptic answer that makes sense only if you are drunk, stoned or stupid.

  Here is general guide of what the heck some drills might be about:

a) Five step sparring: teaches distance, range (how long your arms are) and timing for the receiver.  It only takes a couple of strikes in the face for the student to figure out the timing of a block (and maintaining distance). Why five? Repetition left, repetition right ....repetition again.  For beginners the drill is Ok, for black belts it should be relegated to "warm-up" and then should be done at full speed with intent....until the sweat is flowing.

 If you really want to challenge fighters, you can have them play with the timing of the attacks and the length of their steps (broken timing, variable distance challenges). Try that and just see if a few of you black-belts don't get smacked upside the head.

b) Three step sparring is more advanced only because the student only gets three chances to get it right. At this point the student should be trying to play with timing and variations on a theme. We SHOULD be playing with karate; that's what having a hobby is all about. Again, this should be relegated to a warm-up drill rather than an integral part of the session.

c) One-step sparring: should never be done slowly unless you are teaching alternative responses to attacks. For the standards, it should be done full speed with intent.  The point of a "stepping in attack" IS NOT realism; it's about giving a student more time to pick up the attack and effectively defend. Of-bloody-course students should be using alternative attacks once they have the basics mastered.  This is a step wise program where the student must learn to walk before they run.  Having said that, karate needs to remember that kids learn to run very soon after walking; we should be pushing the envelope for each belt rank for each session.  All sorts of attacks should be attempted, but appropriate attacks should reflect the ability of the student: if you beat the crap out of your white belts, don't expect to have too many students of higher rank around. Nobody except the MMA guys like bloodied lips.

d) Free sparring is not about learning to fight. It's about learning to control an opponent, think on the fly, keep your cool under pressure and, perhaps, learn to enjoy controlled aggression.  If you are not getting that out of sparring, then you should quit karate or find a new club. Sparring should not ever be about the alpha of the dojo bullying the losers (but usually it is): it should be about everyone in the club testing, challenging and teaching each other.

  Sparring on a regular basis MIGHT help you in self-defense, but don't expect your dojo training to come into play much when some drugged-out psychopath jumps out of the bushes swinging a baseball bat and demanding your wallet.  Even you steely-eyed black-belts will likely scream like a little girl, soil your shorts and run like a gazelle when that happens. 

e) Kata is part of the art. It defines karate. If you dump kata, you are not doing karate. It would be like skipping the tea in the tea ceremony.  Having said that, there bloody well should be some effort to find intelligent applications for each move in each kata, even that goofy jump in Unsu (I have one for that that really works; damn near killed a student once and I never tried it again). If you are not "playing" with kata then you are not studying karate; you are just memorizing and regurgitating for the useless grading.  Make the kata useful as intellectual challenges and keep the karate examinations useless as they always were and always will be.

f) Kihon is about exercise and....repetition.

 Hikite? At kudansha level it should be done for form in kata and while teaching, but at kyu level it is about using both left and right arms.  Watch your beginners: most of them do the technique with one arm while allowing the other to hang like zombie meat ten-days dead. If all our students started in Tai Chi, they would automatically use both limbs simply because all the Chinese forms assumes two arms acting simultaneously but doing different things. Karate likely assumed the same action back before some tournament white pajama wannabe (as I was once called by a martial arts celebrity and famous author) turned it all into a kicky-blocky-punchy game of tag.

Either way, you need to have some basic standards and skills before you can break with those standards and skills (hopefully somewhere around Shodan).  Otherwise we might as well do....Tae Kwon Do.

Now that I have offended everyone, I would like to piece this all together. Karate is an art, a hobby and a pass-time.  If we are passionate about it, we should be concerned about doing it "just so".  Doing the kata properly matters to karate the same way that performing a ballet properly matters to a ballerina. Have standards and pride yourself in being exacting in those standards. That is why this is a demanding discipline rather than an easy going, anything goes crap-fest.  This is where the "zen" nature of karate comes in; winning a competition does not matter nearly as much as how you performed. Furthermore, this is where the "training for life" comes in. The fire-breathing macho combat-boys will never understand this until they enjoy their first trip to the hospital for a bad back, a kidney stone or new titanium hip, but enjoying the exploration of the art of karate will always eventually replace the love of the battle.

By the way: Chokki Motobu is a great unknown in karate. He was never well liked or widely followed as an instructor in his time. He left practically no records detailing his beliefs and the majority of what we know about him is second hand or manufactured posthumously.  By all accounts, he was best known for drinking excessively, fighting frequently and rolling in the gutters. He was a thug that us westerners have adopted as a "karate legend" simply because created history has fogged reality. Holding up Chokki Motobu as an authentic karate master is like holding up Mike Tyson as a boxing hero: both men were indeed great fighters, but a thug is still just a thug no matter how gently history treats him.

Toxic Ranks

After more than a decade of reading his eloquent posts, I still follow Rob Redmond. Despite his sometimes caustic tone, there is much truth in what Rob says. Sometimes I think he might be the last truthful man in America.

Just the other day Rob posted something to the effect that karate ranks were essentially meaningless. This was nothing new from Rob and, frankly, after having some detailed arguments with Rob on the subject years ago, I fully agree with his point of view. Karate ranks have no more meaning than ranks in any other pastime: whether it be computer gaming or a community service lodge such as Rotary.  Karate ranks, while being a badge of honor and achievement, do not improve a person's social or professional standing in the "real world" one iota. In fact many people might just consider a person little more than a brutal thug for being interested or participating in a blood sport. Publicly claiming a specific karate rank may in fact hurt you in the "real world" where people hear the word "karate" and think of bloodied ring fighters or prepubescent children in white pajamas.

I was not really shocked by Rob's comment that karate rank was meaningless; I was shocked by the acidic reaction from many, if not most of Rob's readers.  I mean, I can accept some of junior kyu grades still being naïve and defensive over their bunny-eared and treasured belt, but I would have thought anyone over Shodan rank would have figured out the reality of their belt rank by the time they had spent a few years in the dojo. Ranks are achievement ribbons; hard earned by the individual but of no more value than the prizes earned at childhood sports-day outings. Unless you are planning on teaching (or coaching) martial arts as a life-long career, that rank is worth nothing outside the dojo. In fact, considering the miserable state of world wide karate politics, your rank is likely worthless outside your own home dojo.  Go to the dojo across town or across the country and your very special rank diploma becomes little more than expensive but coarse weave toilette paper.

Some of the replies Rob received were barely more than veiled threats of violence: "Go tell Dave Hazard or Scott Langley that their ranks are worthless".  My thought when I read that reply was two-fold: my first thought was that the writer was suggesting one of those two gentlemen would violently reprimand Rob for daring to question the value of their rank while my second thought was that the writer was assuming Mr. Hazard and Mr. Langley held the same juvenile opinion of karate ranks as themselves. I did not see any proof that either of those suggestions was true.

  The other thought I had was that both Mr. Hazard and Mr. Langley both do value their karate rank because, unlike the vast majority of karateka, they actually earn their living as karate instructors.  For those rarified people that are actually professional karate instructors, rank actually does mean something....within very specific bounds.

So exactly where do karate ranks actually count? Let's look at that logically:

1. In the real world? As a business owner and a karateka, I can confidently say that having a black belt in anything would not influence my opinion of a potential employee in the least.  My business does not employ "door men", "bodyguards" or "enforcers", so the ability to physically subdue potential customers does not interest me. While earning a black belt certainly does take some dedication and physical effort, it certainly is no reflection of intelligence, professional capability or management skills.  In fact, in my experience with many black belts (myself included) is that we tend to be slightly obsessive, somewhat self-absorbed, and often quite combative.  While some of these values can benefit a professional, they are hardly key qualities for professional or social advancement.

2. In the karate world?  Do we even need to discuss this?  Everybody knows that rank certificates are rarely honored between affiliates within an association. Ranks are almost never honored between clubs of different associations within the same style (consider the alphabet soup of Shotokan associations alone) and if you change styles, you will almost always be busted back to white belt, even if you can chew-up and spit out the senior sensei of the club without breaking a sweat.

In an addendum to this, black belt ranks are often not honored by the associations that actually awarded them. When the KUGB imploded, many of the high dan ranks were suddenly busted back to kyu grades by the JKA, while Nishiyama himself demoted all Canadian dan ranks during a 6 month fit of anger over some ITKF financial issues. I even heard Mr. Scott Langley had his credentials questioned simply because he had the temerity to publish an autobiographical book without getting the nod from JKS head-office.  How can rank mean anything if the powers that be can snatch that rank back the moment they don't like your politics (or the flavor of your book)?

Of course there is also the other side of the coin: the "signing bonus" dan rank if a leading instructor decides to jump ship and join the competing association.  We have all seen this bizarre little twist: a sudden dan elevation over a short summer when a controversial instructor decides New Generation ITKF is better than Old School ITKF (just as an example).  How seriously can we take Dan ranks if they are held out like carrots on a stick for political favors rendered?

3. In self-defense? I don't want to address this in the least. The most dangerous men I have ever met were untrained sociopaths who would smile one moment and kill you the next. We have all met dan ranked karateka who could dance like the devil on the dojo floor and would pee themselves in fear if anyone ever approached them with evil intent outside the dojo. Hell, I have met highly ranked kudansha which fold, spindle and collapse if you give them the slightest pressure in sparring; these athletes are depending on the referee to save their biscuits and often win by forcing a disqualification.

4. In the larger world of martial arts: Judo and jiujutsu think karate ranks are a joke because we don't have to fight for them, MMA thinks karate ranks are a joke because they don't use ranks, and aikido don't think much about us at all because it disturbs their Ki.  Certainly nobody seems to know what our ranks actually mean (and neither do we, really). Some groups seem to assume black belt means "sensei" while other groups just assume it means "registered killer".

5. How about in your own dojo? Nope. I cannot count how many times I have heard someone say that a person earned Shodan based on a "pity-grade". Hell, I have heard that about myself (and it might just be true despite the fact that I spent more time training a the dojo than any three other club members combined in the years I was most active; I'm just not that talented.) I personally have sat through dan gradings where I was practically rolling on the ground laughing at the pitiful performance of a karateka as they graded for a higher dan rank. I once watched a poor middle-aged woman stumble through an abysmal performance of two upper kata and then get literally dismantled in sparring by a kid twenty years her junior.  I personally would have busted her back to about 4th kyu or lower, but she successfully attained Nidan rank that examination. Her dan ranking was all about her personal journey, not my vision of what karate should be.  And that is the point.

Rob Redmond clearly stated that karate ranks have no true value, but he did not say they are worthless. Anyone that has attained a dan level ranking in karate has something to be proud of because it represents years of hard work and dedication. We should all be proud of our dan rankings, but not one of us should have it appear on our resume or expect it to carry any weight outside our own dojo (and, depending on who is attending class that day, sometimes not even there). Unfortunately, any mature adult with any degree of common sense will have to admit that his dan rank is comparable to any personal award, including on-line computer game rankings: something to pat yourself on the back about because almost nobody else cares.  

History Everyone Predicted

The pretenders square off, ready to fight.

Last year a commercial debuted on television for the chocolate bar "Twix".  The commercial is mildly irritating, but it makes a great point about....karate.  I'm not sure it sells the damned chocolate bar, but it sure illustrates karate perfectly.

The commercial starts off in the late Victorian era with the inventors of "Twix" having a disagreement over the manufacture of the chocolate bar. Neither of the brothers would give up control of the production in favour of the other, so they took the only logical step: they divided the company out of spite and set up opposing factories (that were mirror images of each other). The production of chocolate bars in each factory were quite different: in the left factory they flowed caramel over the bars and bathed the finished product in chocolate, while in the right factory they cascaded the caramel over the bars and cloaked the bars in chocolate.

The irony and humour of the commercial is that the production methods and finished product are obviously identical.  The problem is that the two brothers really believe their methods and products are completely different and they have invested their entire life and all their money into that belief. The morons doubled the cost of production and divided the profits by two. If this does not sound exactly like karate to my reader, sorry, but that just means you have not studied karate long enough. Train some more.

The death of Hidetaka Nishiyama in November of 2008 was the beginning of the end of the ITKF as we know it.  Rob Redmond, a well known karate critic commented on the ITKF split with this clear statement. I cannot say it better, so I will just quote him directly:"Well, ITKF was always doomed and we knew it and talked about it on 24FC a long time ago. ITKF/AAKF was a cult of personality built around Nishiyama exclusively just as ISKF is built around Okazaki. When Nishiyama died, that was it. Anyone following in his footsteps would have to be his equal in reputation. No such person exists. It is a golden rule of management that if you follow a star, you either have to destroy their reputation to succeed or somehow outperform them. It is the worst possible position to be in. Anyone following a star is a doomed leader." Mr. Jorgensen was the dark-horse successor to Mr. Nishiyama and thus was doomed as the chairman from the moment he stepped into the position.  Besides the fact he was not an elderly Japanese gentleman, Rick had three overwhelming problems as he stepped into the position.

The first, obvious problem, is that Rick Jorgensen is not now, nor has he ever been, a high profile instructor. He is not a physically imposing man, nor is his karate terribly flashy. He does not come with a long list of tournament wins or any highly acclaimed books and instructional videos. Rick does not even maintain a web log filled with deep martial thoughts, half-baked theories on human physiology and superficial philosophical drivel. Rick travels, works, travels some more and works a lot more. He is basically that grey little man that gets the stuff done the rest of the instructors are too self-important to do. While they are being flashy he is allowing them to be flashy by being a bureaucrat.( BTW: do not mistake lack of "flash" for lack of effectiveness. Quite the opposite. Rick tends to emphasize the basics while others emphasize largely useless flash)

The second major problem here is that Rick is not very open and communicative. Rick is actually one of the most secretive men I have ever met. Whatever you think that Rick might be up to, he is likely working on three other projects simultaneously.  Rick's naturally cautious nature is typical of a lifelong bureaucrat.  Unfortunately, his tight-lipped nature tends to make people believe he is up to no good when he is usually just too busy keeping the wheels on the bus to give us all full disclosure.  Furthermore, Rick, right or wrong, really does believe he knows best about how things should be run. His attitude makes for tense, one-sided conversations from time to time.  Over the years training with his club and taking his instruction, I have come to understand his methods and now I can see where he is going. Most people cannot get by his stonewalling and clipped instructions, wanting instead flashy demonstrations and complete bullshit explanations you might find from better known instructors.

The third problem Rick was facing was the fact that the ITKF bureaucracy was in disarray when he inherited it.  Mr. Nishiyama had been running four different organisations out of his office toward the end of his life, and he was far from a healthy man. I saw Mr. Nishiyama as late as 2006 and I could see death in his eyes and his body.  When he spoke you could barely hear him, even if you were in the front row. When Nishiyama Sensei walked onto the floor, every step was taken carefully and obviously was painful. His right ankle was swollen till it practically matched his calf in size and his steps were short and plodding.  Mr. Nishiyama was old and should have been peacefully dictating his memoirs to a secretary rather than demonstrating karate in cold gymnasiums internationally. Unfortunately, Mr Nishiyama's primary business secretary was also elderly herself and quietly succumbing to Alzheimer's disease, so the paperwork at the ITKF headquarters was quickly becoming an insurmountable problem.

The long a short of it, many of the problems of the ITKF are not really caused by Rick Jorgensen as much as they are caused by our perception of Rick Jorgensen. If people actually understood the position and duties of the chairman of the ITKF instead of looking for a reincarnation of a legendary figurehead such as Hidetaka Nishiyama, then Rick likely would have been better accepted as the chairman and international instructors would have cooperated with the program. Unfortunately when you are looking for a hero and you get a business manager, very quickly everything he does is an issue. 

So the question still sits: what the hell precipitated the current break-up?

You can follow the shit-storm yourself by looking through the web log of this crazy Greek guy.  He tends to editorialise and the story is pretty one-sided (Obviously he does NOT like Sensei Jorgensen. He likely does not know Rick from Adam, but he really hates Rick.)  Here is the link:  http://www.eurokarate.eu/03ietkf/030cont.htm

The battle lines were drawn over the "ITKF World Cup" held in Poland this summer. It seems the Cup is a pretty select event, Eight men and eight women are selected from the ITKF pool and are invited to the competition with all expenses paid. The idea is that the best athletes can be show-cased in a big venue without there being any concern about affordability to the athlete. The list is made up by committee and then submitted to the ITKF head office for approval.  From the correspondence, it looks like there was a colossal lack of communication between head office and the Polish venue resulting in the Polish branch of the ITKF just proceeding with the "World Cup" using their own list of competitors and judges. Rick, at head office and cut out of the loop,  proceeded to boycott the competition, claiming that it could not be called an ITKF "World Cup" if it did not adhere strictly to ITKF protocol. Everybody all the way around had their own version of the truth, but the impression I get is that the Polish contingent already had their own agenda and were intent on bulling-it through the head office regardless of ITKF protocol. Once Rick at head office voiced his objections the Polish ITKF was too invested in the project to reconsider their position. In every decision tree there is a point of no return where to back-track would cost too much prestige and cold-hard cash.

A jab is thrown, but the opponent bobs and weaves.

It appears that from this point the situation spiralled around the toilette bowl vigorously.  Mr. Kwiecinski, the head of the Polish ITKF and the Vice-President of the ITKF cried foul and extended the complaint to query how Rick Jorgensen could be both the Chairman of the ITKF and be appointed the Chair of the Technical Committee (There is that contentious technical committee issue that killed the TKC  once again. Five years after his death and ten years after it was first proposed publicly and Mr. Nishiyama's planned technical committee still remains an embryonic concept. So much for everybody following the true way of Sensei Nishiyama). Mr. Kwiecinski also queried the financial situation of the ITKF head office, requesting detailed financial statements. The financial situation appears to be a grinding point with some.

The financial status of the ITKF is indeed a bit of a mystery. As a corporate entity the ITKF actually lost legal status in the late nineties when Mr. Nishiyama allowed the California corporate license to lapse.  The trail gets a bit messy on this point, but there seems to be some question as to taxes paid and an effort by Mr. Nishiyama to get the ITKF declared a non-profit organisation during the interim years. Despite nearly two decades having passed since then, the actual legal status of the ITKF still hangs in limbo. This situation is complicated by the fact that the Nishiyama family has moved to legally protect the family name and the intellectual property of Nishiyama Sensei against unauthorised use. It appears that even immediately after Sensei's death a number of groups claimed rights to promote the Nishiyama school. Many of these pretenders had only attended a couple of day seminars with Mr. Nishiyama.  Anyone looking at the situation would have to admit that it's pretty messy considering the number of independent groups claiming to uphold the Nishiyama legacy.

Just as a side note: every one of us should look at this mess and understand that this is what all of us leave behind when we die: immense amounts of unfinished business that some poor fool has to decipher.  Keep your personal matters in order because you never know when your card is going to be punched.

Of course, the question of the validity of Mr. Jorgensen's position as Chairman was brought up by many.  Mr. Kwiecinski is the head of a huge organisation and controls access to "Stara Weis", probably the best martial arts facility in the entire world. Certainly, if you are considering only accolades, championships, and national organisation size, Mr. Kwiecinski would be an excellent choice for Chairman of the ITKF. Avi Rokah, the acclaimed karate instructor out of Los Angeles, certainly was a dedicated student of Sensei Nishiyama, training with Sensei practically every day for over two decades. If we consider only personal exposure to Mr. Nishiyama, then perhaps Avi Rokah would be the natural heir to Mr. Nishiyama. There are any number of instructors who consider themselves "senior" to Sensei Jorgensen, either in rank or simply in years on the floor. Names such as Tabassi and Fusaro are certainly more illustrious than the simple Canadian Rick Jorgensen, at least in the USA.  Many actually questioned the Seventh degree ranking Sensei Jorgensen was awarded by Nishiyama Sensei, somewhat along the lines of those who question whether President Obama is actually American (The same people who question the seventh degree ranking awarded by Nishiyama himself also seem to plead the most dedication to the legacy of Mr. Nishiyama.)

All of these questions were dealing with people's perception of Mr. Jorgensen't physical ability at karate or the training resources afforded him as a Canadian versus, for example, socialist Poland. (there was at least one derogatory comment to the effect that Canada is just a frozen backwater with no decent karate anywhere by one of the critics). The questions had very little to do with his administrative qualifications and certainly did not address the administrative abilities of his proposed successors.

When it comes to being a "true student" of Mr. Nishiyama, certainly Mr. Kwiecinski has no more claim to that than Mr. Jorgensen. I rather doubt that our Polish colleague spent more time travelling with Nishiyama Sensei than Rick. In fact, I would rather doubt that anybody can claim more one-on-one time with Mr. Nishiyama than Mr. Jorgensen.  Having trained a fair bit over the last 25 years, I know that time spent on the dojo floor with an instructor ( the basis for Mr. Rokah's claim against Mr. Jorgensen) is not necessarily the kind of personal exposure that gives one insight into the head instructor's master mission statement.  On the other hand, Rick Jorgensen was the guy that transcribed most of the original ITKF constitution and several of the key statement documents, transcribed directly from Mr. Nishiyama as he dictated late into the night while on the road to various seminars.  From having to deal with Rick while I was president of Midwest Karate Regina, I know that he was on the road with Sensei practically every weekend over the last ten years of Mr. Nishiyama's life. Those two men discussed many of Mr. Nishiyama's intentions for the future development of the ITKF and, of course, Mr. Nishiyama's personal philosophy with regards to karate.

No doubt there are many people who are more visually proficient at karate than Rick Jorgensen (which is very different from actual effectiveness), but can any of them succinctly encapsulate Mr. Nishiyama's global view for the future of the ITKF?  Does being flashy at karate have anything to do with administration of an international organisation?  Do any of the pretenders to the throne actually want to run the organisation, or do they just want the prestige of being "the chairman"?

A counter punch is thrown, but was it really successfully blocked?

 

This brings us to the fateful "Extraordinary General Meeting of the ITKF" held August 17 of this year.  I read the letter of announcement and there were many inferences of "illegal acts" and "broken laws", but no specifics. In fact, I am not sure any statement was actually made as to which country the laws were broken in.  Perhaps the letter referred to American law, but then I am not sure how a senior Polish karate instructor would know much about American law. Perhaps the letter was referring to ITKF law, but then we would be discussing the constitutional law of a sports federation which is about as binding as the rules of pick-up street-hockey (we karateka really do take ourselves so very seriously).  The  crazy Greek gentleman was loudly screaming that Jorgensen Sensei had broken Greek law by holding a karate seminar in Greece without the express agreement of the Greek Traditional Karate Association. It seems to me Greece is an excellent venue for the ITKF summer camp since Europe appears to have the largest ITKF contingent. You would think the ITKF players in Europe would have appreciated it. I have a hard time believing anyone in cash-strapped Greece would prevent an international karate federation from renting a privately owned property for fear of offending a tiny national karate organisation.  In fact all the arguments and grinding points appear to be fabricated solely for the purpose of impeaching Sensei Jorgensen outside of the normal democratic process.  All this sounds very much like the previous debacle in the TKC in 2006.

The meeting proceeded pretty much as expected.  Numerous delegates from many countries convened for the express purpose of killing Mr. Jorgensen's Chair position at the ITKF.  The assassination was a classic karate method: burn the entire house down rather than just redecorating. Thus we now have the "New" ITKF, just like the old ITKF but now run by a new bunch of leaders operating outside the democratic process with head offices in that hotbed of traditional karate, Geneva Switzerland.  I guess elite, secretive banking and karate instruction are synergistic.  The voting process was very interesting: the petition forming the New ITKF appeared to be signed by many people that were not really active in karate politics either nationally or internationally.  It appears that a cadre of alienated karateka unilaterally decided to designate themselves "leaders" and signed a petition on the behalf of their students and followers without actually getting full consent (of course that would have required full disclosure, which would have likely let the cat out of the bag and the blind-side of Mr. Jorgensen might have failed).

Lets look at the Canadian situation.  Back in Saskatoon, the head instructor of Midwest Karate had barely tolerated Mr. Jorgensen's leadership for decades.  The friction between the Sempai (used only for clarity here, the man truly deserves the title "Sensei") and his former Sensei was well known but intentionally overlooked by everyone that knew the two men.  Sempai (a very capable Godan over fifty years of age with many national and international tournament successes under his belt) had been given very limitted latitude by Sensei Jorgensen for years, even to the point of being unable to carry out kyu level examinations for his own club and for associated clubs in Saskatchewan. At one point I had personally thought to step in and make a direct request to Nishiyama Sensei to allow the Sempai to perform grading exercises up to Shodan, but my wise and capable wife told me to just step back and keep my scrawny mutt nose out of the big dog's business ( I should clarify this: the Sempai actually told me I should do it and then I thought about it. In retrospect, I would have been basically throwing myself upon my own sword on behalf of a  man who really could care less about me). As far as I know, until August 17th, all of Sempai's rank awards were considered "proxy" ranks because Jorgensen Sensei had not directly awarded them. ( but things may have changed since I quit karate in 2010).  Having said that, one must keep in mind that Nishiyama Sensei had specifically requested all examinations were to be carried out by at least two instructor level kudansha, so perhaps the limitations placed on examinations were consistent with Nishiyama-Ryu protocol.

The head instructor out of Saskatoon travelled to Poland to sign the declaration of emancipation from the "old" ITKF under Sensei Jorgensen.  Of course, one should really question whether the gentleman had any moral right to sign that document on the behalf of Canada and his students. Mr. Jorgensen certainly did question how Sempai could sign the document when he was not the official representative of the Canadian Traditional Karate Federation (the legal chairman of record was in fact Mr. Jorgensen).  The reply to Mr. Jorgensen's query was that Sempai had actually resigned from the CTKF prior to his trip to Poland, as had about 60% of the CTKF affiliates, and he was now acting as the representative of that break-away group.  I guess the solution to every problem in karate politics is to pick up all your marbles and storm off the sand-lot to start your own game with your own rules elsewhere. And I rather doubt that Sempai from Saskatoon actually consulted the general population of his students about his decision.

I suspect this is probably the tactic used by many of the delegates who signed that proclamation in Poland.

The attack is telegraphed, the opponent ready and waiting.

So here we sit: two ITKF organisations pissing in each others Wheaties and each claiming illegal acts by the other side.  I don't actually see any police paddy-waggons lining up to start making arrests, but then that would be because this is karate, a simple pass-time mostly practiced by ten year old boys who periodically wet-the-bed and suffer from attention deficit disorder.  The rest of the world, government and prosecutors alike, really could give a crap about our childish, petty little wars.  All this infighting only makes us look like pompous posers and, really, does not change how you might perform a front-snap-kick, reverse punch face combination.  It all comes back to the Twix commercial: we divide the company out of spite, failing to see that nothing really changed in the final product when we parted company.

And karate still is not getting into the Olympics. Hallelujah.

So let's just underline the classic karate tactic that has been repeated unsuccessfully world-wide: form an association around one charismatic, legendary leader.  Keep that association functional as long as that leader is alive. When that leader dies, ignore his original plan while fighting over who should assume his crown. Abandon the organisation the leader worked his lifetime to assemble and form your own organisation while continuing to claim the leader's path as your own.  Claim democracy but ignore the democratic principles of open discussion, debate and election.

Here are a few parting shots for everybody to consider.

Why wasn't the democratic process followed?  If there was such conflict over Sensei Jorgensen's management, why didn't the leaders of the coup just wait until a scheduled general meeting of the ITKF was held, bring their complaints before the assembly and then vote to replace Sensei Jorgensen with a chairman of their preference?  Why, in a martial art that teaches patience, self-discipline and delayed gratification, did the leaders of the New ITKF feel obliged to ignore those principles and carry out this coup?  Could it be that they did not feel they really had the support of the majority of ITKF members? (in fact, do the rank and file members of the ITKF really count for anything in the leader's opinion, or are they just the cannon-fodder that pays the bills?)

The only benefit I can see from all this is that it is going to be much easier to win a "World Championsip" in both of the ITKF organisations since the talent pool is now so shallow that the competitors will probably have to take turns refereeing their own fights and add up their own kata scores for want of tournament volunteers. Hell, maybe I should return to competition. I might just get another nifty participation ribbon and a trip to national championships as the only competitor in my class (the class reserved for old farts with bad knees).

The fall of the ITKF after the death of Nishiyama Sensei was inevitable. Everyone saw this coming and the ITKF would have failed if the sainted Pope himself was voted in as Chairman. I can predict the fall of the New ITKF in the near future as well; the only thing holding it together is a mutual dislike of Sensei Jorgensen and now he is no longer their problem. The leaders of the New ITKF will need another scapegoat to blame for all their problems.

We all should study our history. The Roman Empire was founded on the principles of individual leadership by a single, charismatic Caesar.  Caesar Augustus was probably the only Roman Emperor to successfully survive that leadership: once he died the position of Caesar became a life-threatening career that usually ended in very premature violent death. As Mr. Redmond pointed out, if you follow Caesar in succession you must either surpass Caesar, destroy Caesar or be doomed yourself. 

Good luck to all those new pretenders to the  Nishiyama throne.

I ran out of good karate pictures and I thought the view from my village would at least calm down all those who now want
me dead.

 

 

History I Heard Second Hand

One of my readers commented on how I tend to ramble on and I admit that I really am long-winded. I just cannot tell a story without throwing in all the details  because I truly believe when dealing with history, the devil is in the details.  History is all about big characters, small bit players and inconsequential little Forest Gumps like me. Each player steps onto the stage, plays his part and then either is a star, a recurrent player or a simple extra who tripped a switch that started a domino effect. Leave out one detail and you miss an important piece of evidence to convince your audience.

By the way, I don't pretend that my story is the only truth here; it's the truth I know while other people have their own version that is just as true for them.

No matter who's story you hear, Rick Jorgensen will be the main character.  You cannot tell the story of the ITKF without his name being central to the story.  Friend or enemy alike, everybody has to admit that Rick's single minded dedication to karate and the ITKF is a credit to the man's focus.

Rick Jorgensen
Younger and still teaching at Midwest Karate Regina

The Canadian branch of the ITKF was born out of extensive meetings between several players. I actually got to read the minutes of many of those private meetings after cleaning out the storage locker of Midwest Karate Regina one steamy summer Saturday. The repeat players in the minutes were Sensei Jorgensen and Mr. Nishiyama, but several known instructors were prominent. I will sidestep names here, but a couple of instructors from Montreal had bit pieces as did a well known instructor from Winnipeg. The details of the meetings were pretty dry, but there was one comment from Nishiyama Sensei that really deserves mention.

He emphatically said that Canada should have it's own independent karate association and not allow itself to be a colony of Japan. 

Sensei Nishiyama, a son of Japan who never really mastered the English language and who ran a very traditional hierarchical karate club clearly stated that his goal was to help form independent karate associations to which he would be a technical director and separated from the politics altogether.   Of course that is not how it worked in the end.

 We Westerners will never allow the Japanese instructors to step back because we need someone to worship and bow to. It's not karate unless you are bowing to a small, old, oriental (or somebody pretending to speak Japanese until a real Japanese person enters the room).  This need for Japanese validation is present in every karate association and that need sowed the seeds of the final death of the Canadian ITKF, the TKC.


The Midwest Karate Logo. Legend has it
that the Sensei from Winnipeg is the model.
Ok, Maybe. Or it could be just a standard
karate logo used by many clubs anywhere.

Midwest Karate Saskatoon hosted the 2003 TKC National Championships and for the occasion I abandoned my family and drove up with my camera to shoot some of the action.  I thought I would be able to remain anonymous and just get some good candid shots, but I tend to trip into situations just because I really am a bit of an opinionated ass-hole. One person who I met was John Price-Kataoka, competing for Newfoundland.  I had known John through the Internet forum 24Fighting Chickens and we shared a few laughs (BTW: If you ever meet John, you are meeting a real karateka: he has been training literally for his whole life and now lives primarily in Japan, where he followed his dream. Few of us can claim such dedication.).  He graciously introduced me to his Sensei, a Mr. Lee, and I spent a bit of time exchanging barbs with the boys from The Rock, almost automatically picking up a bit of their Newfoundland accent, still thick from their Celtic ancestry. Mr. Lee, it turned out, was one of those recurrent but key players in our little drama.

Midwest Saskatoon. The floor is slightly sticky,
but very forgiving.

Midwest Regina. The floor is over 100 years old. It has a
few cracks and a few soft spots, but your feet float smoothly over
it's satin surface. It will always feel like home to me after the hundreds
or thousands of hours I spent there. Not likely welcome there though.

After the tournament, I was anxious to get home to my family. Karate has never been a popular subject in my home and now, in my declining years my wife has actually forbidden me to return to active participation.  Unfortunately, as I stepped out of the venue, I bumped into Sensei Jorgensen and was Shanghaied of to the impending TKC/ JKI meeting at a down-town hotel. Sensei Jorgensen told me that important subjects were going to be discussed and I needed to hear the future of the ITKF first-hand.  I personally would rather have a flaming barium enema rather than attend any meeting, but my Sensei asked me personally to attend and you don't say no to a polite command if you are smart in karate.

 I sat at the back of the hall, with the idea that as soon as the lights went down and the discussion started I would slip out the back and make my get-away.  Unfortunately the lights never really went down and my table was filled with karate zealots who would likely rat me out if I exited.

 The arrangement of the podium was a clear indication of how things were going to go in the meeting. Sensei Nishiyama was centre stage, Sensei Jorgensen was directly to his left, close enough to whisper comments in the old man's ear, and to the far right was the senior sensei from Winnipeg, clearly separate from the two central figures. The grey haired gent from Winnipeg was rocked back in his seat, arms crossed, head tilted slightly back, clearly not interested in being on the podium.  Throughout the next two hours the only thing that signalled any interest at all from him was a periodic shuffle through papers and a frequent nod to one of his senior Sempai, a vocal critic,  seated at one of the front tables.  The tension between the entire Winnipeg contingent and Sensei Jorgensen was palpable.

The subject of the meeting was the sweeping changes Nishiyama Sensei wanted to enact in the structure and operations of the TKC and, indeed, his entire karate organisation under the banner of the JKI. Mr. Nishiyama wanted to tighten up instructional and grading protocol and he wanted the TKC to form a committee to propose technical guidelines. Continuing education for all senior instructors in the form of regular seminars was going to be mandatory.  Most examinations were going to be done by a Dan-ranked committee,  the ranks of said examining committee to be determined by the kyu or dan level in question. The intent of the new guidelines were pretty clear to anyone listening.

 Mr. Nishiyama was preparing the way for his inevitable departure and wanted to create a system of checks and balances that would allow his legacy to continue after his death. The "technical standards committee" was to be formed to help maintain the current technical standards while allowing periodic review and thus evolution into the future.  This proposal also dovetailed well with Mr. Nishiyama's adamant opinion that karate throughout the world should not consider itself merely a "colony" of Japan.

In the fall of 2005 Saskatoon was awarded the 2006 ITKF World Championships. It was a great thing; Saskatoon has a great dojo, a large involved membership with a capable and  charismatic instructor. Saskatoon was certainly up to the task, but let's not pretend it was all that much of a challenge.  Due to the recalcitrant nature of Mr. Nishiyama, the ITKF was so diminished and marginalised by 2006 that only 250 to 300 people were expected to attend, athletes, coaches and officials combined.  Compare that to the Canadian football championships "The Grey Cup" where upwards of 30 to 50 thousand fans will invade the venue city for up to a week prior to game day. Regina had a reputation for being a legendary host of the Grey Cup every time it has won that bid; hosting is what Saskatchewan does best.

In the run up to 2006, things were going on behind the scenes both locally and nationally. The karate soup was souring quickly.

 The TKC national executive were chafing under the leadership of Mr. Jorgensen.  In Newfoundland, Mr. Lee was upset because both Sensei Jorgensen and the instructor from Saskatoon had held weekend seminars on "The Rock" without consulting the provincial association (they had been invited by local instructors). In Montreal the head Sensei was upset that a dusty little backwater like Saskatoon had been awarded the World Championships, and in Winnipeg there was some resistance to dealing with Sensei Jorgensen on any level. ITKF membership dues were being withheld by the lead instructor from Winnipeg; he wanted those dues to be paid directly to Nishiyama Sensei, bypassing the Canadian head office manned by Sensei Jorgensen.  Furthermore, the technical standards committee required by Sensei Nishiyama's new protocol as suggested in 2003 had made no headway in creating any technical standards guideline for Mr. Nishiyama's approval.  Complaints mounted and the obvious opinion of the group was that they had Mr. Jorgensen over a barrel because they felt he would not jeopardise Canada's opportunity to host the Worlds and  would cave to their demands easily. Obviously none of them really knew Rick Jorgensen in the least.

Back in Saskatoon, things were not really much better.

Mr. Jorgensen had arranged for a leave of absence from his job in Ontario and had moved back to Saskatchewan to be on site for the World Championships. Jorgensen Sensei had taken a short-term contract in public relations with the Saskatchewan government and had hoped to be welcomed into the Saskatoon dojo as a temporary senior instructor.  That idea was not well received by the head instructor of the Saskatoon dojo; the man had been an independent professional karate instructor for over ten years by this point and he did not relish any senior Sensei just stepping onto his floor as an equal, much less a senior.  The Saskatoon club was not terribly open to the idea either and actually democratically voted to bar Sensei Jorgensen from taking any position at the dojo beyond "honoured periodic guest". Sensei Jorgensen was pretty much on his own that year and was going to have to start his own dojo elsewhere in town if he wanted to continue training and teaching while preparing for the big show.

Somewhere in the late fall of 2005 I started receiving e-mails from my "Newfie" friend John to the effect that trouble was brewing in the TKC executive. John had received copies of some pretty blunt e-mails passing between Newfoundland, Montreal and Winnipeg. The knives were being sharpened and there was clear intent to oust Sensei Jorgensen as the TKC Chairman at the next executive meeting.  I read the e-mails and forwarded them to Sensei Jorgensen as soon as I got them.  I did not really care who was right or wrong; Sensei Jorgensen was my sensei and I owed him enough loyalty that I thought he should be given a "heads up".  I am not sure he ever received my e-mails, but from the final results, it is obvious that Rick had a contingency plan in place when he arrived in Montreal for the executive meeting.

At that meeting Rick Jorgensen was removed as the Chairman of the TKC. The following Monday morning the Canadian Traditional Karate Federation (CTKF) was born with Rick Jorgensen as the Chairman.  Mr. Nishiyama officially recognised the CTKF as the Canadian ITKF and the former TKC was immediately marginalised. Anyone that wanted to have an opportunity to compete at ITKF World Championships in Saskatoon had to be members of the newly formed CTKF.  The TKC executive had been essentially excluded from the ITKF by Sensei Jorgensen with the complete support and approval of Nishiyama Sensei.

I should not give you the impression that the conflict within the TKC was all about Rick Jorgensen. The failure of the group to come to any agreement on the technical guidelines was a major stumbling block for Mr. Nishiyama.  While cleaning up paperwork at the dojo one evening I found a very sternly worded letter from Nishiyama Sensei to the effect that every ITKF member in Canada was officially suspended in rank until there was some agreement on the technical standards guidelines and some cooperation with Mr. Jorgensen in the management of ITKF business. ITKF membership dues were to be paid to Sensei Jorgensen (Nishiyama Sensei actually refused delivery of a check sent directly from the Winnipeg branch) and some headway had to be made on the technical standards.  As I read that letter, it appeared that every ITKF karateka in Canada had been demoted to white belt until the situation was resolved.  The split of the TKC and the sudden formation of the CTKF resolved that situation I assume, though I never heard any different.

Back in Saskatoon the preparations for the 2006 Worlds continued on. Despite my enthusiasm (or maybe because of my enthusiasm) I was completely excluded from contributing any support to the effort.  I only heard fragments of the conflicts from mid-year on. I actually approached the Sensei from Saskatoon and asked him if there was not some sort of compromise that would see him allowing Sensei Jorgensen to lead a few  special classes out of the Midwest Karate dojo rather than setting up his own dojo just down the road.  I was lucky to survive asking that question; I learnt that day to just let the big dogs fight and stay out of the pit if you don't want to get bloody.

 In the end, Sensei Jorgensen started his own club centred around a few old karateka who enjoyed his teaching and a disenfranchised but capable Nidan who had been a Midwest Karate member for many years before falling afoul of the club.  The situation was far from optimum, but there was no way those two men were ever agree to share a dojo, even temporarily. Unfortunately they still needed to work together if they were going to pull off the World Championships.  I actually am quite glad I was never invited to help with the Worlds.  Glad to miss all that drama.  I never actually heard back from anyone if my original bid proposal was ever opened or if it was just filed under garbage back at the SKA office.

The World Championships went off without a hitch. Mr. Nishiyama was actually quite pleased with the venue and the competition in general, though I rather doubt anyone has ever bluntly criticised any athletic venue after the fact, regardless of how bad the banquet food was (and athletic banquet food is always brutal, rubber chicken). The repercussions of the dojo dust-up between Sensei Jorgensen and his former Sempai reverberated for months after the championships were well over, long after Sensei Jorgensen had returned home to Ontario.

So I think I have the stage set for the current ITKF blow out.  We have alienated instructors in Newfoundland, Montreal and Winnipeg waiting for pay-back. We have a capable and charismatic Sempai (I call him that only to separate him from Sensei Jorgensen) chaffing under the leadership of his former Sensei.  We have Sensei Jorgensen, a man of singular determination when it comes to promoting and defending his understanding of Mr. Nishiyama's vision for the future of the ITKF.  There are many people I have not introduced yet and these people are the big players on today's stage. Several of them I have never actually heard of and the few I have heard of I only know as capable, highly-skilled instructors worthy of consideration.  The New ITKF as it is formed now will be a great association with numerous top quality instructors, but it too will fail because it suffers the same cancer all karate associations do: they are based on personalities rather than principles.

Oh, and by the way, if your are looking for a villain here, you are not likely to find one. Perhaps you would like to blame Rick Jorgensen, but then you would be actually pissing on a guy that has given everything (and I mean everything) to karate. He is divorced and lives thousands of miles from his kids. He travels every week most of the year and basically lives out of the Holiday Inn Express or similar hotels worldwide.  His suits always have to be dry cleaned because they always come out of a suitcase rather than a closet.  This guy is all about dedication.  Perhaps you want to blame the instructors that impeached him when he was running the TKC.  Those guys were professional karate instructors who, with the enforcement of Nishiyama's new protocol were going to completely lose control of their own clubs; all examinations were going to be by committee (thus they usually involved calling in at least one senior instructor if the grading involved anything above 4th kyu). Perhaps we should blame Sensei Jorgensen's old Sempai who now runs the club in Saskatoon?  Here is a guy that runs one of the best clubs I have ever trained with (and I have been asked to leave some really nice clubs) and happens to be easily the most charismatic, enjoyable instructors I have ever met. Sempai really knows his stuff and truly was a Sensei after leading his own club for over ten years by the time 2006 came around. Should we condemn a man for defending his own, hard-won turf? I can't.

 In karate there rarely truly is a villain, but damn, there never seems to be a comfortable middle ground. It's this stupid "standing on principle" behavioural pathology we all seem to have.  There is an old saying that graveyards are filled with young heroes.  Karate clubs seemed to be filled with angry and very lonely men (and women) of unbending principles.

History that I know

Just like that girlfriend we all had in our early teens; the one that made us dream but never even kissed us (my girl's name was Carol and I still have bittersweet memories of her blue eyes and sulky smile), I am still going to dance around the ITKF subject for at least one more post.  This particular story will give everyone a bit of a background on the current ITKF disaster. This post might just give the reader some insight into what is going down today. History repeats itself, especially in the karate world.

Today's entry is all about the Saskatchewan Karate Association and the part I directly played in a major association split that divided the active karate clubs in Saskatchewan pretty much down the centre. Indirectly my actions also eventually led to the failure of the Traditional Karate Canada Association and, truthfully, the current ITKF melt down. That's right: it's all my fault and I don't even do karate anymore.

The history of the SKA is absolutely entwined with Rick Jorgensen and the establishment of Midwest Karate Regina. When you study the SKA you are looking at the legacy of the single minded dedication to karate by a few determined individuals, of which Rick Jorgensen is basically the last man left standing.  He is the quintessential survivor: he has outlasted, outwitted and outplayed so many of his competitors and colleagues that smart money will always bet on Rick. He might just surprise all of us this time too.

Way back in the mid-seventies, right after Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris had basically made everyone want to take up "kung-fu fighting", Regina, Saskatchewan was just like the wild west when it came to martial arts. Big boned red-neck boys straight off the farm wanted to learn to kick like "Kato" and be as tough as Chuck. Store-front start-up clubs with no credentials and colourful gi's were popping up everywhere.  "Freedom Karate" was downtown in Regina, situated in a homely little store front with linoleum laid on concrete floor, poster laden white walls and a couple of home-made makiwara. The Sensei was a competent but ageing Dutch gentleman of unknown karate lineage who taught a eclectic form somewhere in between karate, tae kwon do and kung-fu.  Flashy board breaking and big kicks were the order of the day.  This was the first club that Rick attended as a teen, but even then he knew it was not the "real meal deal". 

Rick and another guy, the wild Dr. Dick Jack, were always on the prowl for more karate instruction. Rick picked up a copy of Nishiyama's text on Shotokan karate and the two of them realised they had stumbled on exactly what they were looking for. They searched around (difficult to do back before the Internet) and found an affiliate club of Sensei Nishiyama way down in Minneapolis- St Paul Minnesota run by Robert Fusaro. The two karate disciples started making the ten hour pilgrimage to Mineapolis regularly,  returning to disseminate new ideas after each round trip.  Pretty soon, Freedom Karate started becoming a Shotokan club. The old Dutchman was progressively marginalised, eventually completely retiring with some hard feelings about the time Rick earned his Shodan under Sensei Nishiyama. The club eventually folded and was reborn as "Midwest Karate Regina" at its present location (1100 Broad Street, Regina). Rick and Dick immediately started lobbying the Saskatchewan government for public support and recognition under the banner of the Saskatchewan Karate Association.

In the early years, Rick was rarely home (amazing that the man had any children or marriage at all) between running his own public relations firm, teaching at the dojo, travelling and attending seminars for his own benefit, and then travelling within Saskatchewan to develop the membership of the newborn SKA.  After Dr. Jack died in a motorcycle accident, the SKA was pretty much a one man show for many years. Without Rick's constant efforts, it is doubtful whether the SKA would have ever been formed. 

In 1996 Rick Jorgensen moved away and left the SKA and Midwest Karate, but maintained his direct ties to the association as technical adviser to both the SKA and Midwest Karate Regina (as far as I know the constitution of Midwest Karate still states that ownership of the club automatically reverts to Sensei Jorgensen if they ever dismiss him as technical director).  The relationship was contentious since former students were now full instructors and understandably resented his hands-on approach to management.  Many of those troubled relationships remain problematic to this day; one of his direct students played an active part in the recent ITKF split, signing the declaration of formation of the New ITKF (centred out of that historical Mecca of traditional Japanese karate, Geneva Switzerland.).


In 2009: the grey hair tells the tale: old, past my prime and ready
to retire.  Probably should have retired at 3rd kyu.

 Unfortunately, 1996 also marked the year that Rick's senior club Sempai moved on to greener pastures, leaving the club in the hands of a 22 year old fresh Shodan aided by some resentful kudansha who had been passed over in the succession for leadership.  This is the club I joined as a lowly 3rd kyu, full of my own ideas and not necessarily interested in listening to a kid almost half my age. I loved the club but, not surprisingly, the club did not love me. Hence, I earned the nick-name "The Human Punching Bag" since I was everybody's favourite target. I still wear three surgical scars from surgery needed to repair the punishment doled out to me because of my independent spirit.

I earned my Shodan by 1998, training mostly on my own because by that time the youthful head instructor had written me off as a monumental pain in the ass.  Eventually the head instructor moved on (because even karateka have to grow up and get real jobs) and that left the club with....me and one other Shodan to keep the wheels on the bus.  We essentially were the last men left standing after everyone else got bored and moved on to other toys. 

2009: I made it to Nationals for one reason: only one team
entered Team Kata at provincial level. This is the reality of
dividing associations: the tournaments become jokes where everybody
gets to be a champion.

All this prequel is to explain how I, a junior Shodan of mediocre skill levels, ended up as the president and key instructor of the venerable and once great Midwest Karate Regina.  It took twenty-five years to hit rock bottom, but I can confidently say that under my leadership that club was as far down as it could get; a band of merry fools led by the clumsy village idiot.  The year was 2005 and there was about to be an earthquake in the SKA.

Now the fun starts.

 In 2005,  the SKA spring tournament was also the occasion of the Annual General Meeting and the bi-annual executive elections.  I had nothing to do with the politics of the karate association and while I understood there were some conflicts occurring, I thought they were all pretty trivial crap that could be solved over cold beer and hot wings.  I did not typically attend tournaments; I can waste time and die of boredom without wearing white pyjamas and dealing with screaming kids for twelve hours in a cold school gymnasium.  About a week before the tournament I received an unexpected phone call from Rick Jorgensen just after class at the dojo.

 Rick told me that the upcoming elections were pivotal for our club (I could not see how, but if he said so, then it must be true) and he expected every club member possible to attend. Oh, and by the way, all active members were also required to vote to re-elect the current SKA president.  I guess Rick did not see any problem with vote rigging within a supposed democracy. It bothered me but, on the other hand, I remained a junior Shodan who was struggling just to keep the old club afloat so I did not need to alienate the official examiner and technical director of the club by questioning his word. I agreed to spread the word and attend the meeting myself, despite the fact that the tournament  and meeting were in a small town three hours away from my home.

On my arrival at the meeting, it was immediately apparent that Rick was not the only politician intent on rigging the election.  The rented hotel ballroom was packed with people; the meeting was probably the most highly attended AGM of the SKA ever. The crowd appeared to be pretty much evenly divided down the centre aisle: gi clad competitors and well known karateka on one side and a bunch of new recruits nobody knew or had ever met on the other side of the room.  The newbies seemed to be a mixture of soccer-moms and ageing farmers, all coming from the local farming district. Some of the strange mixture might have been involved in karate, but I am not sure how since a large proportion of the gathering seemed dependent on canes or walkers to remain upright.  I was not sure what the hell was going on, but since I was essentially apolitical and busy just following orders, I shrugged and sat down with my club members to watch the fun.

It was fun. In fact the entire meeting was downright comedy.

After the call to order,  the agenda and minutes of the last meeting were read followed by a short intermission to prepare the ballots for the elections.  Having downed three or four cups of coffee, I thought I should go "water the horse" in the break. I headed for the men's room just down the hall from the ball-room. There was a line-up for the urinals and I ended up standing just behind the incumbent president, an accountant by profession and just slightly older than  myself.  Snickering, he turned to me and said "Well I guess old Wilf pulled a fast-one on all of us this year. Looks like he is going to win this election.  The devil is always in the details".  Puzzled, I asked him what the hell was up.  He then explained to me that Wilf, the sensei who lived in this particular town, had been challenging for the position of president of the SKA for years. This year he had "home town advantage" and had signed up an entire truckload of SKA "associate members" using a little known loop-hole in the SKA constitution.  These were family of active karateka that, for a minimal donation ($5.00), could become active members of the SKA. Most importantly, each new supporter now had a vote at this AGM.  Sensei Wilf had grandmothers, aunts, aged second cousins and probably a couple of suckling babies signed up as "associate members".   While my club and I had been coerced into attending and voting for Sensei Jorgensen's favourite, Wilf's club had been paid to attend (word has it that Wilf himself had signed up the associate members and paid the fee, but nobody actually ever saw a cheque for those dues either before or after the fateful meeting).  The entire voting process was going to be a fraud. So much for democracy in karate.

The issue behind the entire attempted coup was the rather large operating discretionary fund the current executive had amassed.  The incumbent, cautious as all accountants are, had a policy of keeping at least $50,000 dollars in the accounts at all times, This represented a minimal operating budget for the SKA for one year. His thoughts on this were that the association was absolutely dependent on the government and in a unstable economy, one can never be assured that your special interest funding will survive government cut-backs. Dave, the president, always wanted a "one year rainy day fund" against that possibility.  Wilf, on the other hand, thought we should blow that budget on television advertising, and hope to refill the accounts with new memberships.  Wilf had arranged a sweet-heart deal with a local television studio (basically a tiny sound-proofed garage with a few outdated cameras and volunteer cameramen) for the  commercial taping and hoped to use the money to pay for TV slots.

 I am not sure that Wilf understood that 50,000 dollars was only going to afford the SKA a couple of late night slots when only ageing insomniacs, crazy spinster cat-ladies and fat custodians are watching television.  For all that money each club might garner two or three new students for about two months (about the time to the first grading, right?)

When I returned to the ball room with my newly enlightened view, I could see that the emotional timbre of the entire meeting was ratcheted right up to the breaking point. The balloting system was not quite ready yet (in normal years a simple show of hands was more than sufficient as long as everyone could count their ten fingers, with fingers left over) and I was pretty uncomfortable with the entire situation. I thought what both Wilf and Sensei Jorgensen had done was pretty dishonest and dishonourable, so I tried to find some way to mitigate the impending fraud.  I stood up and demanded that each candidate for president make a speech detailing why he thought he should be elected president. The entire room fell silent and stared at me, no doubt waiting for me to crawl back under my rock and disappear.

Time ticked, bladders filled (under the scornful spotlight, my bladder felt completely full again!!) and finally the two candidates stammered in agreement. Dave stood up and told us that he intended to continue to manage with fiscal responsibility as he always had and that he intended to lobby the entire association to put in a bid to the ITKF to hold the 2006 World Championships in Saskatoon. It was short, sweet and to the point.

Wilf reluctantly stood up, told us all how dedicated he was to the SKA, how he had been there right from the start, and how he was disturbed at the falling membership in all the clubs. He felt that the large operating fund should be utilised for advertising and not sequestered.  And, oh yeah, that idea of world championships was a good one too.

The speeches did not give any of us much to work with, but at least the ballots were ready by the time the two had blundered through impromptu stump speeches.  Blank sheets of paper were passed around, followed five minutes later by a couple of greasy baseball hats to collect them.  The counting process was done, then redone, then repeated twice more over the next twenty-five minutes. The results were read quietly and with a couple of pregnant pauses.

 It seems the incumbent had successfully defended his position...by two votes.  Then the loud arguments about election fraud started and the distinct possibility of fist fights in the aisle came to the front.  Wilf's wife was swearing like a drunk, long haul trucker and a robust and angry fire-fighter from Saskatoon was standing up looking to hurt the first son of a bitch that glanced his way. I looked around (but not at the fire fighter, who was standing directly behind me, goaded on by his shrill and combative girl-friend) and realised that the votes coerced from my club, had tipped the scales in favour of Sensei Jorgensen's candidate.

I could see what was going to happen now, having stood on the sidelines of several association blow-outs.  Wilf was going to pick up his marbles and storm away from the playground to find a game he could win by his own rules.  If Wilf left the SKA, several hundred paying members and the substantial government support those members brought would go with him.  I heard grumblings from our side like "good riddance" and "don't let the door hit you on the way out".

 A person really has to ask themselves how karate people manage to be so short-sighted. The long term repercussions of an association split were going to be devastating to the SKA and all of it's affiliated clubs. Our funding would be cut, not to mention our tournaments would become shallow-end farces where everyone gets participation ribbons and nobody can actually claim excellence. I felt obliged to try to stop the impending doom since I had was a pretty pivotal pawn on the board.

 I stood up again and immediately nominated Wilf for the position of "Vice-President", hoping to salvage something from the wreckage.  Wilf, typical of most of the childish buffoons I have met since getting involved in karate waved the nomination off, a smug little smirk on his face as he looked in my eye and shook his head.  Wilf had already made contingency plans in case his procedural trick failed.

There really is a point that "standing on principles" is a foolish approach. Certainly it is important to have unassailable principles, but in the real world where compromises are essential for the operation of any cooperative enterprise, you need to pick your battles. The karate culture is so damned rigid in its principles that we have become comparable to the suburban housewife who would burn down the house rather than just repaint the kitchen.  We destroy our associations over bruised egos and inferred insults, failing to realise that the rank and file karateka who pay the bills and keep the associations functioning have no clue about the issues and just want to have fun pretending to be the new Bruce Lee.  Hell, half the karateka I have met do not even know there are hundreds if not thousands of different styles and schools out there.

Wilf left that meeting soon after the voting ended and a week later his entire organisation joined the provincial association of Manitoba, the province directly east of Saskatchewan.

So the fun at this meeting did not stop there and I should expand the tale a little because it will lead into the next blog post perfectly.  It has to do with the 2006 ITKF World Championships in Saskatoon.


Until the SKA AGM of 2005 I had no idea that Saskatchewan had been suggested as one of the possible hosts for the ITKF World Championships.  It sounded pretty exciting to me when I heard about it and I thought it was a great idea; Saskatchewan handles big events such as national and international sports championships with a practised ease rarely shown by much larger markets. There is a real sense of community in the province and the people welcome visitors gladly and with excitement.  Within Saskatchewan, Saskatoon was the obvious front-runner for the venue; the ITKF club in Saskatoon, Midwest Karate Saskatoon, was large, highly competitive and led by the single most charismatic Sensei I have ever met.  I was appalled when I heard that the club was waffling on the idea of hosting the ITKF Championships.  What I considered a golden opportunity, they appeared to consider a major imposition.

Well, one thing veterinary medicine has taught me is that if you want a big dog to eat something, just offer it to the runty little mutt from next door first and that dog will practically trip over himself to empty the bowl.  No matter how reluctant a diner that dog might have been five minutes before.

 I used the same strategy on my colleagues from Saskatoon.  I stood up and, to the crowd's dumbfounded astonishment, I told the entire meeting that if  Saskatoon was not up to the task, I would offer up Regina as a better venue.  I am pretty sure I pissed everyone from Saskatoon off and over half of my own club executive.  I know my club secretary, a self-important national competitor best known for winning championships by getting her opponent disqualified (by mercilessly pounding her opponent's fists to pulp using only her nose), just about peed her gi trying to distance herself from my suggestion.

Of course I had no intention of ever actually holding any ITKF World Championships in Regina. Hell, most people of the world have trouble finding Saskatchewan on a map, much less Regina (the town who's name rhymes with fun as Mick Jagger once quipped).  My dojo was tiny and barely surviving financially and sadly, I was pretty much the senior belt in the club.  Even provincially, the only reason I was allowed to attend any tournaments without paying entry fees is because they needed someone to carry the matts into the gymnasium.  If Regina was to hold any competition larger than a shopping mall hamster race we would run out of officials when the ticket taker needed a bathroom break.  But just like my ruse with the big dog and the small mutt, all I had to do is make Saskatoon think I might be serious about taking their bone and I would get them to enthusiastically defend that bone with all their strength. Just to push the issue a bit farther, I actually assembled a 120 page bid proposal over the next week and couriered it up to the executive meeting called to deal with the election fall-out.  The results were predictable: Saskatoon happily informed Nishiyama Sensei that they were interested and eager to host the 2006 ITKF World Championships within a week of that executive meeting.

One thing you do learn when you play politics (even though I really was just fooling around and poking the grizzly bear for kicks): you learn who your real friends are and who you can trust.  My club secretary was so upset that I even suggested Regina could host the World's that she spent much of the week prior to that executive meeting calling whomever would listen and telling them that I was just a raving ass hole and that I had no support for our bid from anyone in our club.  She never once approached me to ask what the hell I was doing, but then I probably would have kept up the pretence because I always knew she had her own agenda.  I don't known if I have ever told anyone besides my wife what I was up to, but then I never really trusted any of them then and they don't really matter much to me now.  Saskatoon ended up holding the championships.

And that leads us to the story of how the Traditional Karate Canada association (TKC) self-destructed. Here is a little hint: its all my fault.