On Rank and Okinawan Karate

 

To begin if we try and look at the beginning Okinawan Karate in part owes its existence to a continuing clash of many cultures.

 

Let’s pick a name for convenience, a name like Toudi.

 

For one thing the art(s) which might be Toudi first meant you were born into the correct Okinawan Samurai family. That was the only way you would ever receive training. And the training you received depended on your family’s role to the society. Most likely the instructors were individuals who survived in their roles and had received the trust of those families to pass those arts of Toudi along to young family members.

 

There was no rank. No titles for one’s role. Your role was set before birth and you were just filling that role.

 

Cultures clashed. In the 1500s a small army of Japanese Samurai kicked Okinawa’s butt and from that time assumed some control over Okinawa. Then in a fraction of an instant made Toudi irrelevant, for they took away the Okinawan king, and ended those families role in Okinawan society even to ending those families’ stipends.

 

No longer retaining a function for their Toudi, those disfranchised families turned to Toudi training as a means to retain a part of their heritage for their members.

 

Then they hit on another new idea, that sharing Toudi openly might allow their art to help all Okinawa deal with change. Even to the hope and exporting Toudi might take a hold in Japan, whose foot was on their collective necks.

 

All the instructors involved going public with their art in Japan seemed to agree the best fit within Japanese culture was to train men at University in their arts. They found some acceptance of their roles within traditional Japanese martial culture. That also mean changes to fit in. Rank was adopted as well as many other things, even the name of Toudi became Karate.

 

At first those initial Japanese students were awarded black belts in one year. I am sure there are many, many layers to what occurred, what rank became in Japan is another story altogether. Everything later Okinawan export of Okinawan karate would encounter had already occurred in Japan, just not discussed with the rest of the world, including Okinawa. But the die was set.

 

Okinawa grudgingly bowed to Japan as to the name Karate. But it was the time of war. Changes were occurring on Okinawa too, but the Big Dog bit.

 

Simply put Japan got an A** whipping, America took over. In Japan they permitted karate to continue.

In Okinawa, things were just as dire. Okinawa lost a huge percentage of its population, including most of the karate seniors. Training gradually resumed, and there was a general depression to be dealt with.

 

Locally the US Military was in charge. Some Okinawan found they could make a living teaching the occupying military forces a shorter course of karate.

 

But Okinawa also got the message. They saw Okinawa was to be returned to Japan in 1972. And in the mid 1950’s as a group, individually each group adopted many Japanese karate practices to fit in to what was happening in Japan. The adoption of Rank within those groups happened, but not the same manner in each group.

 

There was no idea that short those students, with short time training, would return to their countries and continue a version of the Karate they experienced. For the most part Okinawa did not realize that was possible. They did not really look in detail what happened in Japan which might have given them an idea what was to come.

 

Of course the whole picture got infinitely more complicated from that point.

 

Just for Okinawa, after adopting so many Japanese practices into their art, they were  unprepared for what the 1972 reversion to Japan would mean.  The change meant new jobs were created, and those jobs came with standard Japanese working customs. That meant far more time required for work, and less time for karate. I have read that attendance in the Okinawan karate schools declined as a result of those societal changes.

 

Okinawa did not flex control over what was happening to their former students. After all they had such little time training on Okinawa, why would Okinawa be interested in what they did. Some Okinawans did come to the States to live. Some stayed, some returned.

 

In 1984 I attended a clinic with Shimabuku Zempo, It was not the karate I practiced. But later in the evening at the reception for him we had a chance to talk. He knew Americans in Isshinryu from the time he lived here, and was very willing to chat.

 

At some point in our discussion he made the following statement to me. ‘On Okinawa no one wants to train with a ni dan or a san dan. They are just students. Those who people want to train with have at least 50 years of experience themselves.’ I got the point he was making about American karate, but other things about it too.

 

Look Okinawan  karate was never one thing, it always was a range of arts and instructors, continually churning and changing. It would continue to change and evolve to what they faced there.

 

But at the same time that small island really had no idea what was unleashed, Karate around the world would echo and grow in many, many different ways.

 

What rank would become was just as convoluted. There is no one explanation how rank grew in those fertile grounds. There literally were no rules. For one thing no one really spent half a century training on Okinawa continually. It fit into so many new nichesm

Rank came to mean many different things, few controlled by Okinawa.

 

In the personal school no one really needs rank to know where everyone is. They all know what each other is doing for one thing.  Everyone knows who knows most and thereby is the instructor. There is literally no need for a formal pecking order.

 

It is dealing with outside Groups where rank comes into play. And then the reality is what we find today, “Anything Goes”.

 

Attempting to drill down on any of the details of this topic, simply is too vast for a short answer.

 

What we know is literally is what our own journey of rank has been, and how we have reacted to what else rank has become to mean. No one has enough details to know the entire story.

 

Suffice it that I respect my instructors, their rank and what they have shared with me.

 

A simple closing tale. My own instructor trained on Okinawa for a year and a half back in the late 1950’s. When he returned he sought out seniors and  trained with them. In time he became an instructor and was one of the early founders of American Karate so to speak.

 Another of my instructors, his student, after obtaining is own shodan, was also stationed on Okinawa in 1972. Training there as often as his job allowed. In the same school as his instructor did. When he left he did not receive more rank. That was never his purpose, rather to learn more.

There are no simple answers what rank came to mean. That you must answer yourself.

 

How do you live?