Change and Shimabuku Tatsuo

I’ve been thinking what we know about Isshinryu’s founder without an autobiography. If we simply place him in the context of his life in Okinawa.

Consider among the changes he experienced:

Karate becoming an open study.
Formal utilization of the karate-gi
Formalization of a ranking structure
Watching many students become instructors of their own systems, each a little different from the others they trained with.
Trained in the days when it was possible to train with different instructors.
Saw the days when that was no longer accepted practice as the systems became ‘closed’
Viewed many different karate practices birthing.
He was obviously more than a private student of his instructors. Likely he maintained friendships with older training ‘buddies’ and continued to share with them throughout his life.

If you want to see how much or little Isshinryu may be from other Kyan students perspective, check out the Shorinji Ryu Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6mmokFCg84&t=31s

Especially view the clips on Chinto and Kusanku and see how close it is to Isshinryu’s version. Likewise look at how different the movement flow is, regardless of the style of punch or block.

I believe it’s quite obvious both traditions developed from the same source.

Change wasn’t done to change. I believe each one was done because the instructor(s) felt they were developing the strongest tradition but change did occur.

I’ve recently been reading on the Goju record taped of Hiagonna Morio in the 1960’s, 1970’s, his Panther films and his Tsunami films.  Throughout the 40 years represented there are small changes in his kata and/or performance. So it is reasonable that his students in different era were taught differently too.

Change is an observable matter whether individual performance or larger issues.

Shimabuku sensei and his friends could not help observe those differences.  I don’t believe they experienced change as being evil, and in all likelihood they fully participated in this too as they became instructors.

 

But a small statement in Shimabuku Sensei’s use of the I Ching, a method of trying to understand the nature of change.  He could not have used it to ‘tell fortunes’, or the other systems he employed, without some basic belief in their nature. Specifically the I Ching (from a very minor study I made on its use and nature) trys to dip into the change with a system of interpretation, frequently from dropping a handful of sticks, and using the result (too long to comment on in detail) to consult the oracle the I Ching. But to interpret the words of the I Ching requires a personal commitment or belief (assuming he’s not being the mystic fortune telling fraud).


The I Ching, a work dealing with the nature of change, had various impacts on several Chinese Arts (notably Tai Chi and Bagua Zhang).  I do not say we can interpret Shimabuku Sensei applying the I Ching or other studies to his Isshinryu, but the fact he consulted it to deal with change for people in question, would continue to make him aware of ‘change’ Okinawan Karate’s real constant.

Shimabuku Sensei, took the Marines (and others of course) and taught them his system. He taught them what would become a complete system of study. Whether it was the same as everything he knew or not is irrelevant.

Yet we have a rather fragmented record that change continued throughout his role of instructor. It is also evident he did not ‘trust’ any one person to communicate his change to be spread throughout his former students. Why take the next step and try and explain why he did what he did or didn’t do.

He saw how his changes affected his life. Many of those changes cost him students on Okinawa, who voted with their feet. He could not have been unaware that it is the students that make the teacher, not the teacher who make the students. After all without students one isn’t a teacher, regardless of what one knows.

But change didn’t make him shy away from his choices either.

 

We can see photographs of what seems to be a large family. It is only reasonable to assume he followed normal Okinawan practices and loved and supported them. The man who didn’t shy away form breaking with much Okinawan tradition regardless of who he offended, because in those hard day, the cash flow from teaching the Americans would have made a real difference to his family.

That same man who loved what he created, was unwilling to not let his son take over. He had broken many traditions in his day, but love for his son would seem to be more important.

Of course is it unreasonable that his knowledge of change had something to do with that too. Perhaps the knowledge that it was Change itself who would be in charge of the future of Isshinryu.

And change is in charge and will continue to be so.

I know I can’t tell my students what course to follow when I’m no longer here. They’ll do whatever they please, and in turn their students will do the same. I guess I’ll simply have to be content to be the one who introduced the jump spinning kick into Nihanchi practice as a way to slake teenage energy away from the students.

So stepping away from the ‘actual details’ and looking at the large picture in context, I think we can see a lot of where Shimabuku Sensei was, and still is today.