MarkF
10th September 2002, 08:31
Funakoshi's Contribution?
A friend of mine who lives to argue with me (and I love him for it) has pointed out that the stylized self-defense practice that is accepted today must be there for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason is yet.
His argument sounds good, but it asks me to just have faith, and I am absolutely incapable of believing anything without reason. As noted earlier, I have occasionally fallen under the spell of wanting to believe, which is close enough to mindlessness (i.e., faith) to render me deaf, blind and stupid. In retrospect, it frightens me to know that I was so impervious to logic, and on an important subject, no less (self defense is about life and death, is it not?), so I am now ultra-sensitive to anyone's suggestion that I "just believe."
But concerning his point that somebody added this stylized self-defense practice to the curriculum for a reason, I agree wholeheartedly. Of course it's there for a reason. Just like kata. But what might that reason be?
We already know who added the Straw Man Attack. It was none other than "the father of modern karate" himself. According to the karate "classic," Karate: the art of "empty hand" fighting, "In the 1920's, under the leadership of Gichin Funakoshi, a system of elementary sparring was devised." Right about the same time as he dumbed down the kata in order to teach them to school children for exercise, I'm guessing.
But why do you suppose he saw fit to throw in this "training technique," without which he and every other master who'd ever lived since the beginning of time had become formidable fighters?
Here's my theory. Funakoshi understood the true applications of his art. He said in his autobiography that, in a confrontation, "once karate enters, the issue becomes a matter of life and death." He spoke of many confrontations in his autobiography, and each time, he spoke of karate as being not dangerous, but deadly. When he was asked to teach it to school children, he jumped at the chance, since karate had been so good for him, physically and psychologically. But (he says in his autobiography), "hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change, too. The karate that high school students practice today...is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa....What is most important is that karate, as a form of sport used in physical education, should be simple enough to be practiced without undue difficulty by everybody...."
Note the shift from "life and death" to "sport." He made these changes in the 1920s, right after the end of "the war to end all wars." Despite (or because of?) his deadly abilities, Funakoshi was a pacifist. (Incidentally, this is the impression I got from his autobiography; I urge you to read the book Karate-do: My Way of Life and draw your own conclusions.) He would go out of his way to avoid any confrontation, and he seemed to live in fear that one of his students might harm others with something that he (Funakoshi) had taught. Funakoshi repeatedly stressed that use of karate technique is a last resort only. He believed that deadly and debilitating techniques were outdated with the end of the First World War, but that karate still had a place in society--as a sport.
He wanted the children to benefit the way he had from the art, but he didn't want the responsibility of teaching them dangerous techniques. Is it possible that his revolutionary "elementary sparring" was only camouflage? I suggest to you that it is not only possible--it is probable. If it really is an important training tool, why was Funakoshi the first the think of it? And why was it non-existent until karate made the transition from "survival tool" to "sport"? If anybody is motivated to get the techniques perfect, it's the guy whose very life hangs in the balance, not the guy trying to reduce his potbelly.
So Funakoshi teaches schoolchildren some "basic applications," right? If the children had examples of the basic movements in action, they would assume they understood the move, and not look any deeper. And it worked. Today, Funakoshi's calisthenics for children (i.e., karate) has a worldwide following and has blossomed into a multi-million dollar industry, and almost every hard artist I meet says in absolute sincerity that the motion we call a low block was designed to deflect blows to the midsection.
P.T. Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.
Speaking of the low block, I wonder...at what point did our basic movements get their commonly accepted names? The Chinese arts from which karate was derived had esoteric names, like Dragon Wags Its Tail or Cherry Blossom in the Typhoon. In a way, the Japanese found a way to hide the true nature of the art better than the Chinese did, simply by pretending to not hide anything at all. The Chinese names don't presume to tell you how to use the moves; their labels actually encourage you to find your own interpretation. And there's always a chance you'll hit the jackpot.
But the Japanese made the art "more accessible" by providing more descriptive names for each move, didn't they? The best place to hide anything is in full view. Thus, we learn the "low block" and practice it, all the while making the natural assumption that no one would name a move for what it's not. This mislabeling has been so effective that we continue to see this move as a block, even when it is repeatedly demonstrated that such an interpretation is untenable.
Did Funakoshi create and standardize these misleading labels? Well, he altered several aspects of the art. By his own admission, he changed the Japanese characters that represent "karate" from those that meant "Chinese hand" to "empty hand." He changed the names of the forms (some of which, I've heard, originally gave hints for interpretation). He simplified the forms so that schoolchildren could learn them with little trouble, and in the process, he altered hand positions and movements that might be clues to valid interpretation. Changing the names of moves to something more descriptive would definitely fall under the "make karate accessible for everyone" ideal. After all, "outside block" is far easier to remember than "Cat Cleans Its Ears," or whatever the technique was originally called. He certainly had the most opportunity and reason to change the names, so...there's a good chance that it was him.
Funakoshi's contribution was a mixed blessing, at best. We Occidentals may have never learned any Oriental martial arts if it weren't for him, but I question how much we're really getting out of the diluted version we have.
(c) pdb, 15 Jun 2000
http://sezme.twistedpair.net/karate/strawman.html
Mark
A friend of mine who lives to argue with me (and I love him for it) has pointed out that the stylized self-defense practice that is accepted today must be there for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason is yet.
His argument sounds good, but it asks me to just have faith, and I am absolutely incapable of believing anything without reason. As noted earlier, I have occasionally fallen under the spell of wanting to believe, which is close enough to mindlessness (i.e., faith) to render me deaf, blind and stupid. In retrospect, it frightens me to know that I was so impervious to logic, and on an important subject, no less (self defense is about life and death, is it not?), so I am now ultra-sensitive to anyone's suggestion that I "just believe."
But concerning his point that somebody added this stylized self-defense practice to the curriculum for a reason, I agree wholeheartedly. Of course it's there for a reason. Just like kata. But what might that reason be?
We already know who added the Straw Man Attack. It was none other than "the father of modern karate" himself. According to the karate "classic," Karate: the art of "empty hand" fighting, "In the 1920's, under the leadership of Gichin Funakoshi, a system of elementary sparring was devised." Right about the same time as he dumbed down the kata in order to teach them to school children for exercise, I'm guessing.
But why do you suppose he saw fit to throw in this "training technique," without which he and every other master who'd ever lived since the beginning of time had become formidable fighters?
Here's my theory. Funakoshi understood the true applications of his art. He said in his autobiography that, in a confrontation, "once karate enters, the issue becomes a matter of life and death." He spoke of many confrontations in his autobiography, and each time, he spoke of karate as being not dangerous, but deadly. When he was asked to teach it to school children, he jumped at the chance, since karate had been so good for him, physically and psychologically. But (he says in his autobiography), "hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change, too. The karate that high school students practice today...is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa....What is most important is that karate, as a form of sport used in physical education, should be simple enough to be practiced without undue difficulty by everybody...."
Note the shift from "life and death" to "sport." He made these changes in the 1920s, right after the end of "the war to end all wars." Despite (or because of?) his deadly abilities, Funakoshi was a pacifist. (Incidentally, this is the impression I got from his autobiography; I urge you to read the book Karate-do: My Way of Life and draw your own conclusions.) He would go out of his way to avoid any confrontation, and he seemed to live in fear that one of his students might harm others with something that he (Funakoshi) had taught. Funakoshi repeatedly stressed that use of karate technique is a last resort only. He believed that deadly and debilitating techniques were outdated with the end of the First World War, but that karate still had a place in society--as a sport.
He wanted the children to benefit the way he had from the art, but he didn't want the responsibility of teaching them dangerous techniques. Is it possible that his revolutionary "elementary sparring" was only camouflage? I suggest to you that it is not only possible--it is probable. If it really is an important training tool, why was Funakoshi the first the think of it? And why was it non-existent until karate made the transition from "survival tool" to "sport"? If anybody is motivated to get the techniques perfect, it's the guy whose very life hangs in the balance, not the guy trying to reduce his potbelly.
So Funakoshi teaches schoolchildren some "basic applications," right? If the children had examples of the basic movements in action, they would assume they understood the move, and not look any deeper. And it worked. Today, Funakoshi's calisthenics for children (i.e., karate) has a worldwide following and has blossomed into a multi-million dollar industry, and almost every hard artist I meet says in absolute sincerity that the motion we call a low block was designed to deflect blows to the midsection.
P.T. Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.
Speaking of the low block, I wonder...at what point did our basic movements get their commonly accepted names? The Chinese arts from which karate was derived had esoteric names, like Dragon Wags Its Tail or Cherry Blossom in the Typhoon. In a way, the Japanese found a way to hide the true nature of the art better than the Chinese did, simply by pretending to not hide anything at all. The Chinese names don't presume to tell you how to use the moves; their labels actually encourage you to find your own interpretation. And there's always a chance you'll hit the jackpot.
But the Japanese made the art "more accessible" by providing more descriptive names for each move, didn't they? The best place to hide anything is in full view. Thus, we learn the "low block" and practice it, all the while making the natural assumption that no one would name a move for what it's not. This mislabeling has been so effective that we continue to see this move as a block, even when it is repeatedly demonstrated that such an interpretation is untenable.
Did Funakoshi create and standardize these misleading labels? Well, he altered several aspects of the art. By his own admission, he changed the Japanese characters that represent "karate" from those that meant "Chinese hand" to "empty hand." He changed the names of the forms (some of which, I've heard, originally gave hints for interpretation). He simplified the forms so that schoolchildren could learn them with little trouble, and in the process, he altered hand positions and movements that might be clues to valid interpretation. Changing the names of moves to something more descriptive would definitely fall under the "make karate accessible for everyone" ideal. After all, "outside block" is far easier to remember than "Cat Cleans Its Ears," or whatever the technique was originally called. He certainly had the most opportunity and reason to change the names, so...there's a good chance that it was him.
Funakoshi's contribution was a mixed blessing, at best. We Occidentals may have never learned any Oriental martial arts if it weren't for him, but I question how much we're really getting out of the diluted version we have.
(c) pdb, 15 Jun 2000
http://sezme.twistedpair.net/karate/strawman.html
Mark