Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
You can read Sensei Clarke’s article HERE, it triggered so many thoughts that I had to write this post. There are some things about today’s karate that also give me pause:
- Wearing the uniform and belt in public.
- Using karate as a promotional gimmick to sell karate as a cultural asset of the country.
- How far back does this actually go, it seems like a new trend but is it?
- Is it really just about ego or is this actually about increasing commercial driven income through karate and the flow of travelers/tourists, i.e., the tourist industry?
- Is it really about what we perceive as relatively recent changes toward egoistic behavior as a result of those foreign forces, tourist trades, as a reason and justification for such egoistic behaviors in the karate communities of Okinawa?
- Isn’t it actually a cultural thing for Okinawa and Okinawan karate leadership to take in, analyze, adapt and adopt then synthesize karate to suit their needs especially since that involves their very survival even if just economical in nature to todays way of life?
- Is big-money sport karate actually that new to modern karate?
- Is it really for the best of karate and martial arts to allow any and all actions and deeds to promote and grow karate as a commodity in lieu of an actual cultural heritage way?
- Isn’t all this simply the changes that are natural to the human species that have allowed progress and growth while keeping such disciplines alive regardless of the changes due to modern influences, etc.?
- Who is to say that what is currently occurring in the karate communities is actually shabby and shallow?
In truth, I can see and believe that such trappings existed as early as the 1950’s when my style/system was introduced to the Marines through their special services, i.e., now called Moral, Welfare and Recreation. I believe this because there are many stories of consistency that say simply those Okinawan karate-ka, after WWII, were hurting for ways to survive, to earn and feed their families and lo-n-behold the Marines provided, through contracts with SS or MWR, ways for Marines to learn this most mystical art of martial prowess called, “Karate.”
While, in the case of a singular new form of karate creation, in my system and in those early days the stories told often from those “First Generation Students/Marines” they spoke often of how hard it was and how the need to find ways to support families was needed so it does not surprise me when karate became known that due to its disciplines fit perfectly with Marine ways contracts become lucrative. Those Marines involved in that style at the time actively promoted the Sensei toward those lucrative contracts that put at least one of his sons through University in Japan.
There are many other indicators within the stories being told and the evidence demonstrated with black belts awarded in a years time along with inflated promotions that were presented with caveats that many simply ignored when leaving the island and returning home to the states. It becomes evident to me that the sport oriented commercialism of karate began then and in all likelihood early, i.e., late 1800’s and early 1900’s beginning with the educationification of karate to the school systems.
Today’s karate shabby and shallow situations are just the end results of earlier and ongoing profit commercializations that have changed karate for a long, long time. I even feel it as worse for my system or style because its naming and creation was so new to Okinawan karate, the newest of styles for the times, and belief that the creation is and was based not on the combative form of karate but the watered down educational version easiest to satisfy the customers requirements of all participants making their black belt before the end of the one year, approximately, tours of duty.
I can say emphatically and with confidence that what I was taught in those first years of my system/style were the same requirements of those first generation pioneers of that karate and it has taken a lot of study, analysis, practice and training to find a more appropriate combative self-fense like reality based way that would actually be ineffective for sport and yet more effective for self-fense then what I got in the beginning those many years past.
So, this is nothing really new but just more obvious, prominent and just plain denigrating to the nature and intent we believe karate to have once been of warrior like heritage.
Hat tip (Ritsu-rei) to <Shinseidokan Dojo Blog by Michael Clarke Sensei> as the inspiration for this post.
Bibliography (Click the link)
“In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter.” - Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal (ret)
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