Jim Keenan has a wide variety of training/teaching experiences around the world. He offered his insight about martial "drift" could mean. I believe even after many decades this still has great value.
I have a relatively unusual outlook on Isshinryu in martial arts that have arisen from specific factors: the length of time that I've been teaching and the global spread of those who have learned from me.
I began my teaching in 1968 and, in the course of it have taught in both coasts and in the north and south of the United States, for seven years in Israel, and in Massachusetts since 1987. For the years I have taught in the U.S. West Coast, black belts on the East Coast were less frequent teaching contact with me. For the years I was in the U.S. South, the same could be said of those in the north and the west. For the years I was in the north, it was true of the south and the west.
For the years I was in Israel, everyone in the U.S. had less frequent training opportunities with me while the Israelis and nationals of other countries who trained with me who went on to Germany, Sweeden, England and other countries, as well as those who remained in Israel have had only a handful of opportunities for direct physical training with me.
Even when I've been in Massachusetts, those who trained with me in Pittsburgh suffered from fewer training opportunities.
Given all this diversity in both time, space and contact, I have had a lot of experience related to technical or system "drift".
Let me give some examples.
I received a DVD of all the Isshinryu empty-handed katas from one of my overseas black belts who I have spoken to and corresponded with on a regular basis but who I haven actually seen in almost a decade. He and I are a half a world away from each other, schedules and costs have made frequent meetings impractical. The last time we were together was for an intensive stretch of training that lasted nearly two weeks. Among the things I showed him was how to use the spiraling power of Isshinryu. This was supposed to be only for black belts but can see that he is "showing" it in his kata performance in ways that I normally keep hidden. This means that, if one were to compare his performance of a kata next to mine, this represents a drift from a standard wooden-man, vanilla version which is what I usually teach. It is, however, part of the inner essence of my practice.
I received a VHS tape from one of my Dotokushin-kai black belts, reviewing the entire karate curriculum from white to black belt. In the years since he had been an inner student, he had significantly "shotokan-ized" a lot of the Shito-ryu/Kamishin-ryu/Tetsuken-ryu kata and techniques. They now had a much more dramatic -- tournament winning kata look rather than the more practical, down-to-earth but less flashy original technique of the kata. This was a drift from the original form, but the spirit of his practice and teaching was still the same as mine. If I were to perform in a "shotokan-ized" way then our vanilla version would still look the same. Unlike most drifts, the original could still be derived.
When I teach Baguazhang, I recognize when a person has not only gotten all the form and the practice but has also received the full transmission. At that point they have become "graduates." I first began teaching Bagua openly in 1975 in California. I lost touch with one of my graduates there around 1981. Two years ago, he resurfaced and contacted me. He had been practicing daily since he had originally learned from me and was deeply dedicated. It was quite a treat and a special occasion when we were able to meet again after all those years. I invited a number of Bagua graduated and masters of other systems to join me in meeting him and sharing both practice and memories. When he performed his sets for all of us to see, it was clear that the sets were related to sets that I teach but that, over the years he had added and subtracted specific "technical" elements to suit the needs of his ongoing work. If one saw us performing the same sets side by side, one would note many "technical" differences. What everyone commented on, however, was that the principles of his performance, the spirit of his performance was identical to what they were used to seeing fand feeling from me. The "formal" drift which appeared quite significant was actually inconsequential.
Since it is the key idea in both my own training, and subsequently in my teaching that one must make the martial art one's own and not just become a shadow of one's teacher. I felt (and feel) really ok about these and other examples of drift from one might think about as "my teachings" In fact, I think I would be disappointed if things like this did not happen. For me it would mean that what I taught was dead and hollow and not living. Shadows are, by their nature, insubstantial and rote copying of external appearances, now ever faithful, is still devoid of the true substance of the practice.
Tatsuo Shimabuku had more handicaps in teaching than i have had. For instance, he taught a lot of people with whom he did not share a cultural and linguistic base. (To the best of my knowledge there was/ is not a single American soldier "first generation" student who was/is fluent in Japanese, Chinese or Okinawan regional speech.) He would often find himself in a position like someone teaching a blind man to paint like Rembrandt. This was nowhere truer than in teaching American servicemen. On top of this, he rarely got to see again most of those he taught once they left Okinawa.
There is a lot of "drift" in Isshinryu as a whole: drift on Okinawa itself, drift from the individual teachers and their organizations. Luckily Isshinryu is a system strongly grounded in principle and it is easy to test/demonstrate whether one is following the principles or not. I can't help but thinking based on my own experience, though, that the value of the spirit of the practice far outweighs the technical shifts and additions/subtractions that can be found throughout the Isshinryu world.
Sincerely,
Jim Keenan
Dotokushin-kai
Isshinryu Karate
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