PDA

View Full Version : Campai



Dominik
1st September 2005, 20:47
i made the experience that many senseis,especially some high-ranking senseis in Japan drink a lot of alcohol and encourage their pupils also to do.you can also find many hints in the MA-literature,especially in that about the Samurai.
sometimes there is the opinion the more you drink the stronger you are...
do theese senseis refer to the tradition of the Samurai or is that just a more general problem in our society?
what do you think about that?
CAMPAI! ;)

MikeWilliams
1st September 2005, 22:13
It's just a cultural thing. The Japanese (like the Brits, Irish, Aussies and Russians) are very fond of a drop or two.

Having had the pleasure of business dinners with Japanese, I can say this with some authority: they like their booze.

Neil Yamamoto
1st September 2005, 23:44
Alcohol is a socially acceptable way to blow off steam and relax in most cultures. The limit of what is acceptable will of course vary widely. Here in the good ol' USA as an example, you run from from one extreme of abstinance to the other of alchololism. Most cultures are pretty similar in this regard really.

Most of the good martial artists I know relax with a drink or ten after class or training session. The more intense the training, the more alcohol is consumed. Get around a seminar, what some people around here call a "Man Camp" - you will see an amazing amount of Bushmills and Jameson, Knob Creek, various Scotches, Captain Morgan's rum, and beer of varying quality consumed in an evening.

Likewise, the greater the level of social pressures that exist in a society, the more acceptable it seems to be to drink and let off that pressure. Now, in those cultures where alcohol is frowned upon, or not easily obtained, there is usually some other form of release and escapism that exists, drugs for an example. Sex is another. Now, why do you suppose most(not all) Japanese men who come over to the USA want to do the same things? The top 5 usually include: Shoot guns, play golf, drink heavily, eat large steaks, and the horizontal bop with a blonde.

One well known aikido sensei I won't name is legendary for his activities with a couple of those things. Another sensei in judo and karate I know likes to indulge in three of those things as well. One jujutsu sensei who I met at a seminar did 4 of those things while here. The only reason he left out the 5th thing was he had his wife with him on the trip.

The social aspect of drink is also going on here. It's a lot of fun to drink with friends and make new friends with a drink in hand. Lowering the inhibition levels encourages a person's real behavior to pop out. (I've known sensei who use this as a test to see how a person's behavior changes when the alcohol lowers their social guards.) This can also help build better bonds amongst a group. There is a common bond that congeals when they all have stupid stories to tell about each other. For example, being drunk at 2AM and a Japanese guy who is only half as bagged as everyone else is driving back to the hotel and a voice calls out from the back seat "Home Kato!"

So, it's really not unusual. What I see as unusual is people somehow expect people who do martial arts as not needing those escapes. If anything, people who are highly focused or disciplined in an art seem to need the release more than others.

Those who don't need to have that release are usually socially inept. Think an engineer who doesn't realize the band aid on his forehead is peeling off and hanging down, and has been wearing the same clothes for a week. It just doesn't occur to him that he's not fitting in and he doesn't care either. Not that he's not brilliant perhaps, he's just moving to the tunes of his own internal i-pod and we can't hear the same music.

So, alcohol does serve many purposes for sensei and his students. Observe your sensei and his drinking habits, those of his students and their students. You can learn a lot if you do. As well as enlarge your liver.

Read "Drink - a social history of America" by Andrew Barr as one take on the topic and "Out of It - A cultural history of intoxication" by Stuart Walton for another.

Kampai back at ya! :beer: