The Journey

 

When I began the study of Isshinryu karate in the mid 1970s that there were differences between Japanese karate, or the suggestion Okinawan karate was better than Japanese karate was never suggested or even discussed.

 

The study of karate at that time was much focused on tournament kata competition and tournament sparring, along with other training of course.

 

Then when you attended those tournaments in the NorthEast United States, you were faced with a wide array of opponents. There were Okinawan stylists (Isshinryu, Goju, Shorin Ryu and others), Japanese stylists (Shotokan, Wado etc.), Chinese stylists from a wide variety of sources, Tae Kwon Do and other Korean stylists, And systems that today would be classified as something else.

 

They all ran hard forms and there were incredible fighters from each of those systems. Always a different mixture. Always anything was possible.

 

You would hear rumors the head judges might have their favorites, but on the floor everyone just competed. No one on the floor ever discussed anything like style A was better than style B because of country of origin.

 

Of course those were the Open tournaments. I realize that styles remained closed like the JKA, TKD, Chinese styles and others. But as you didn’t see them you did not concern yourself with what you didn’t see.

 

Too soon I was on my own as a Shodan, one of the ways I kept pushing myself was competing against all of those people on the floor.

 

I also started training with many friends I made at those tournaments, and I started judging there.

 

I experienced a wide array of styles, originating from many locations.

 

Judging more of my experiences were from the Okinawan/Japanese types of systems. I had much more difficulty judging for example Chinese or the more modern creations of American karate. I did not have a wide template to understand what they were doing. Not for kumite, that was pretty much the same for all, but in forms.

 

I eventually acquired enough knowledge of many karate systems that I could judge them by their systems general standards. So if I was judging a Goju stylist, I knew enough about their forms to understand pretty much if someone had made a ‘mistake’. And I felt much about the same way for many of the systems I was seeing. Simply because friends had taught me those forms, of course only on one level of understanding.

 

Then one day, about a year in my tai chi study, I had an idea. I asked my instructor would it be helpful to learn some Chinese forms to be a more informed judge. No doubt partially as a way of having fun for his own reasons, he agreed, and for the next 5 years I studied some forms from a wide array of Chinese systems. Not that I became a Chinese stylist, but it did allow me to judge other Chinese stylists from a more informed opinion.

 

About 1984 I remember judging in a brown belt division, with an array of judges who I knew had no experience in those systems. We had a young man perform his form before us. To me, I could see he was very much learning the form, and judged accordingly. But as I watched the other judges score he got the highest scores. My assessment was that instead of being prejudiced against Chinese systems, deep down they may have felt that those systems were more authentic than karate and so judged accordingly. Of course just an impression, but other karate-ka who did much better performance in that division did not receive scores that way either.

 

Over the next decade I moved more and more away from tournaments. There were far more important things I wanted to do in karate that that.

 

A few years later I did see more and more emerging forms, clearly created to reflect tournament performance. They included more kicking, flips and gymnastics and I had a difficult time understanding how to fairly judge them. On one hand their physical abilities were evident in their performance, but I did not really understand the forms logic.

 

Then one night my tai chi instructor after 15 years of work, tore my form completely apart showing me how much I did not know. Then he showed my why that was so, giving me a method to correct that (and explaining his own instructor waited 15 years before he explained that to him).

 

I immediately found that method worked at understanding and a way to improve my students karate too. And all it was doing was reinforcing exactly what I had been originally been taught. I could see how it could work with all systems, but more importantly became a tool to understand errors made by an opponent facing you. In turn a tool to understand what those doing those ‘new style’ forms were doing, and then a way to judge them.

 

Of course by that time I was no longer competing or judging, and only attended a few tournaments. But it was interesting to make my own observations and compare my thoughts with the way the judges scored them.

 

Another thing is how my understanding of karate kept evolving over the years.

 

An example. When I began we did not work on applications of the kata. Nor in most of the schools/styles I trained with was that ever discussed. (No doubt I do not know everything in any of those schools/styles).

 

Then I ran into an instructor who was taught from childhood that was exactly what the art of his karate was for. And he had real trouble understanding why no one was doing so that he could find. Over the years he patiently explained much of his methodology. Not that I knew the whole thing, but I could see how it developed for the student with him.

 

For one thing the application of kata was not for kyu study, They had far more important things to work on. It was for dan study and in such depth that decades of new material would be presented. A far more challenging karate experience than most others seemed to present.

 

Then time passed and the in thing was the application of kata. And many started pushing that it was for everyone, all the time. A very different approach from what I had experienced.

 

Later still I met a man who returned from Okinawa and spent the next 40 years looking at every application potential for every movement and kata, in the Isshinryu system. And was most fortunate to learn a little bit of his art. After his time with us on this plain of existence, his senior student shared even more.

 

All of this is just a backdrop to what happened against my own studies over my years.

 

I viscerally feel that too often we really are unaware of what other systems are really doing, too soon we want to pigeon hole them into boxes labeled good and bad. And doing so IMO can lead to making assumptions that can be used against us.

 

The true depth of reality is really more than we can grasp.

 

We need to keep an open mind, as we work to make our art work against anything that moves in our direction.

 

It is a journey after all, one each of us must make.