https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0
While the issue of instructors teaching for free, draws discussion every time it comes up. I do not have a clear picture of what Okinawa actually did, in the past.
Of course, we can find revered instructors who felt fees were the way to go, and those who were against charging for classes.
I have never heard it mentioned what was done in the 1800s. Were the instructors who taught Tode (karate) compensated or not?
I remember there was a multi-style instructors' group that got together to train in the 20s or 30s. It fell apart as I recall because people didn’t pay their agreed fees.
After the war I think that Shimabuku Tatsuo accepted a contract for students training, from the USMC showed a way to make money for the family in the 50s depression. It also proved to others they could do the same. Yes, he got paid, he also lost Okinawan students who did not want to be associated with Americans, did not with the changes to Kyan’s art which they had previously studied, or perhaps they weren’t paying?
Then Hohen Soken reportedly would not accept payment, but students would get around that by giving gifts of food, etc. to his wife.
I do not have a clear answer what was being done on Okinawa.
Running a successful karate program as a business requires you place the necessary business practices first. One of my best friends has a very successful program, and he has had a successful program the entire time I have known him for 35 years. I have observed firsthand what running such a program means from one’s time and efforts.
That is fine if that is what you want to do.
On the other hand, that has never been what I want to do. I enjoy seeing each new student and understanding what I have to do to lead him over the next 20 years and beyond.
Many commercial programs do not succeed because the instructors do not do what is necessary to run the business. It is just I have different interests. It really is not a question of better or worse; Taking the time to listen to the range of practices and differing conditions of Okinawa’s past, just allows us to understand what variance karate has developed in differing times.
As I own no allegiance to any association of organization, I am free to follow my own desires. That is how it should be. Strive for success in whatever manner you choose to follow.
Thank You to everyone who has contributed to this topic, I have learned much from your sharing.
A small point about karate instruction for youth on Okinawa. The Okinawan school system at the turn of the century I have read was not for the common masses. Rather it was for the well to do...
And while other instructors had programs, I question whether it was widespread in the Okinawan schools. More of an afterschool program than a regular class.
As I understand it most karate after the war was for adults and it was around 1985 that a group of instructors developed a karate program for gym classes.
On the other hand when Fuknakoshi taughi in Japan, the karate seems to have been geared for 4 year programs at Universities.
Not the same as secondary schools in Okinawa. And Mabunii also had his programs in the Universities. So they were older students, than what was on Okinawa.
Tory Ellerson In general martial instruction was much, much more expensive in the 19th century and before, by the end of the 19th century martial arts had mainly fallen out of public favor and were dying out at a rapid in Okinawa as well as China and Japan. This spawned movements to repackage them as some type of spiritual self-improvement activities.
During this period most teachers couldn't give away their knowledge much less charge for it.
While the complete repackaging created a renewed interest in martial arts and created what remains to this day the underlying (completely inaccurate) perspectives of most martial artists on the historical roles and origins of martial arts, it also created a ridiculous expectation that martial arts teachers were somehow inheritors of some type of spiritual tradition and were supposed to be altruistic enlightened spiritual guides.
Granted martial artists today could never charge what they traditionally charged. The social structures which supported a sizable number of decent paying jobs for people trained n the martial arts is now gone.
Traditionally studying under a serious martial arts teacher was a path to employment. It was more or less the same as a college education and people paid accordingly.
I certainly don't see many college professors giving out free education to the sons of rich people because they need an education for their profession.
Aside from that many rich people hired martial arts instructors to teach their children because it was believed to make them healthier.
However martial arts also existed at all levels of society. Many villages had their own martial traditions for village defense. This is as true in the Ryukyu islands as it was in China and Japan.
In general, these methods were less exacting and well developed, but they were very common and widespread.
Practice in these arts was generally a village activity involving all the healthy males in the village and sometimes the younger women as well.
The idea that peasants with no training can go up against a disciplined military force equipped with arms and armor just because they are angry is ridiculous.
For every peasant rebellion that succeeded there were hundreds that failed, even with their martial arts training.
Just look at the history of Tibet under the Dalai lama, you'll find massively outnumbered armored military monks slaughtering huge numbers of desperate starving peasants. (Which is the actual purpose of martial monks, which is also why anywhere in Asia that there were martial monks, which is virtually everywhere, they took special vows as they were seen as being somewhat animalistic and spiritually less developed and not capable of fulfilling even the basic vows of Buddhist priests.) Not to mention that the martial soldier monks under the Dalai lama repeatedly proved themselves to be anything but an effective fighting force when faced against actual trained and equipped troops, but still had no trouble putting down massive peasant rebellions.
Actually, pretty much all the "peasant rebellions" that succeeded anywhere in Asia had a core force of highly trained ex military commanders directing men who had previous military service.
Furthermore, there is a major difference between martial arts such as karate or kobudo and actual military traditions.
Very few of the early historical martial artists we know of from the Ryukyu kingdom were military men in any sense of the word.
They were largely either government functionaries or if they actually had jobs relating to some type of physical altercations it was usually in local law enforcement or as bodyguards.
Military arts are very different from karate, most people in the military only learned extremely basic introductory hand to hand combat methods, if that.
Which is to say that basically there were a lot of folk and family martial traditions, however if you wanted to learn high level martial arts you generally either had to be born into a family that had inherited them, which usually meant a family which had a tradition in working in jobs which required them, or you had to pay accordingly.
But of course, unlike modern colleges, there was no regulation, if someone wanted to teach for free, they could do that, it just wasn't normal, and it wasn't seen as some obligation.
Professional martial artists were professionals, you didn't spend large amounts of money and years in brutal training to give away your skills and live in poverty.
You did it because it gave you access to the best jobs you could get given your resources and social position.
That and possibly because you were influenced by the various fictionalized versions of historical tales and completely fictional tales of martial heroes popular in folk tales, plays, and literature.
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It’s funny what role serendipity plays in our searches. I found this video. Risshi kan karate – Choko, Kyuna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt1L99aEnNM
Which is a very slow-motion version of Seisan kata.
I did not know who Choko Kima was, so I used Bing and discover this interview. I believe it goes a long way to explain how pre-WWII karate was taught.
From the time you began training until now, has traditional Karate evolved or changed in anyway?
Kyuna Sensei: When I began training, Karate was still a secret. There was no open practice, doors were always closed. After World War II Karate started to be taught to foreigners and they were also asked to start paying fees. From this point the mentality became more open and Karate became more accessible. Also, after the War, Karate became more sports orientated and it started to grow bigger and bigger. That’s when we first realized we needed to develop traditional Karate to make it stronger and stronger. It is really important that we make sure people understand and learn about traditional Karate and its values and now little by little, traditional Karate is getting stronger.
Modern Karate is more about how it looks and pleasing the audience. But traditional Karate is different; we don’t care how it looks to other people. Some sports Karateka change the blocks slightly, so it makes their Gi create a noise to make it look better. Or they perform movements with a really big motion to make it look better, when traditional Karate-do is about small movements, just moving and protecting your own body – we don’t need big movements.
It’s also important to practice for someone who is stronger than you. You develop the skill to use your opponents’ power against them.
Higaonna Sensei: Karate was still practiced in secret at this time and to even join a Dojo you needed someone’s reference; you couldn’t just show up. Karate instructors back then felt they were giving a dangerous weapon to students, so they wanted to be sure they could trust the people they were going to teach. The instructors felt responsible for all of their students, because if they fought outside, they may kill someone, and they didn’t want this.
Sometimes people with ego’s would come to training and the instructor would send them away saying no you’re too strong already, you don’t need Karate training. The same would go for street fighters who would come to training, they would be turned away and told you’re good enough already [laughs].
Miyagi Chojun Sensei learned from Ryuko Aragaki Sensei from when he was 12-14 years old. Because Chojun Sensei was studying so hard and taking his training so serious, Ryuko Aragaki Sensei wrote a reference letter for him to take to Kanryo Higaonna Sensei. It is only because of this that Chojun Sensei would have been allowed to become a student of Kanryo Higaonna Sensei.
Back then it was different. Karate was always practiced behind closed doors; you didn’t show anyone anything. People would always come trying to steal your techniques.
Kyuna Sensei: Yes, people were always coming trying to look in on training to steal techniques. Also people who were training for one year, were taught differently to people who continued on for two or three years.
Higaonna Sensei: Yes, yes that right.
Kyuna Sensei: A person who had been training for only one year was taught Kata slightly different to those who had been training for two or three or more years. They were all taught slightly different.
Higaonna Sensei: That’s why in Goju-ryu all the Sensei’s Kata are slightly different.
Kyuna Sensei: Naifanchi in Shorin-ryu for example is a three year Kata, you had to study it for at least three years. But people who training for three years and people who trained for ten years had different Kata. So to determine why a person did their Kata the way they did, you would look at which Sensei they were training with. To be taught a higher level, the Sensei would look at how many years of continuous training they had done and also how many hours they were training alone every day.
The full interview is at http://www.iogkf.com/newsletter/edition_2013_Sept/articles_giants.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8P80A8vy9I
Karate Training Places in 1898, 1899, show Division by Ideology
Posted on March 6, 2016 by Andreas Quast
In 1898 and 1899 the first notes on training places of Karate in Okinawa appear in newspaper articles. From one of these early descriptions, it can be seen that Karate was taught in the context of political activity and ideology.
In the earliest case (1898) Karate was taught by a member of the former Anji class, that is, a member of the royalty in Shuri. This man had stayed in China for many years as a royalist fighting for the restoration of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. He is also said to have employed teachers “of doubtful origin” and taught various other Chinese thought to school kids in his private home in Shuri.
In another case (1899) it can be seen that the Karate instructor demanded fees for his instruction; the amount is described in the article. This instructor lived in Kume Village of Naha. He was described by the newspaper as a scoundrel who teaches brawlers and ruffians. This is also the earliest case we actually read about what is called kakedameshi, i.e. a “contest of old-style sparring”. From this last fact alone these are important historical materials that must not be neglected in the historical study of Karate.
Both the above training places – one in Shuri, one in Naha – were open to exclusive members only and closed to outsiders. In this sense, this was a kind of “secret training” we so often are told about.
Now there’s one thing that should be borne in mind: The media at the time was more or less slave to the political authorities. Therefore, the two above mentioned articles and their extremely negative tone might be regarded as semi-official attempts of character assassination by help of the media: Obviously both the above noted Karate schools were considered enemies of the political establishment of Shuri, an establishment who by that time had already completely succumbed and assimilated to Japan, knowingly or not.
Meiji era Ryukyuans: Can you tell which side they were on from looking at their faces? Picture source: Wikipedia.
I therefore wonder if the designations of “Naha-te” and “Shuri-te” are merely retrospectively harmonized divisions of what was in fact a division in political ideolog?
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