Sports Model

The "Kowakan" blog spoke of the idea Americans have toward "traveling and studying karate-do in Japan." It seems that Americans, generalization where I do know this is not literally a blanket toward all practitioners, tend to think that to really be good at karate-do you have to study under Asian masters in Japan, i.e. truthfully for karate it would be more accurate to say Okinawa."

Personally, for my view only, there are few in the entire world capable of and knowledgeable/proficient enough to teach/instruct martial combat forms of karate. I not only include Japan but Okinawa, the birth place of karate. I firmly believe except in rare cases the combative aspects of karate were removed long, long ago when in the late 1800's and early 1900's the karate aficionados pushed hard to put it, the watered down version, into public schools. I further believe due to the demand for the competitive aspects it was also, around that same time span, converted to "the sports model" of karate.

I would go a bit further to say that the "Do or Way" of a martial system was incorporated in the late 1950's and on to fill in for the lack of substance many military took with them after the short duration of practice and training received during, mostly, a single tour of duty on Okinawa and/or Japan.

I don't mean to denigrate/degrade what we have today for it serves a purpose. After all, all bottles are good for they all serve a purpose so the sport model does just that but the fog rolls in as to what people believe vs. what is reality, etc.

I would then surmise that in America the karate world is comprised almost exclusively of the sports model of training and practice. Lets use the 90-9-1 model, i.e. 90% are of the sports model, 9% are of the "club" model, and 1% are actual budo modeled dojo.


Note: I really like this model analogy percent thing, really helps express things.

Bibliography:
McKenna, Mario Sensei. Kowakan Blog Post, "So you want to move to Japan." http://www.kowakan.com/?p=1015