Japan
and Karate are not often popular with Okinawan stylists. Today many decry the different
ways those arts differed.
But
there is a remarkable work by one of
Funakoshi’s original Japanese students, that asked many of the same
questions we still ask today. And he acted on those questions, making choices
based on what he found on Okinawa. While we might agree or disagree with his
choices, or those of each other, we can still recognize the quest that drove
him. For that reason alone he is well worth the time to study what he wrote.
In
my beginning years there was little writing about Isshinryu or karate itself available
in the book stores. There were magazines like Black Belt and others. But there
was little of depth.
I
knew there were differences between different systems but did not understand
what those differences were. When I began my study I had a brother in the Jhoon
Ree system of TKD, a brother
studying a Chinese system in NH and a younger brother and sister in Shotokan in
York Pa.
We
did not live near each other and did not discuss our training. Of all of them I was the only one who kept
training.
When
I began my training my father presented me his copy of Nakayama’s “Dynamic Karate”, a superior book in its own right but as I was
studying Isshinryu it did show something
of Shotokan it also didn’t mean a great deal to me.
Our
study of Isshinryu was not from
books (which came later) but that of sweat equity on the dojo floor. Several
years later my wife bought me Funakoshi’s
“Karate Do Koyan”
for Christmas. Again a great book I would appreciate more as the decades
passed.
But
in 1976 I purchased a new book, my first,
Engami Shigeru’s “The Way of Karate Beyond Technique.” As I read it I recognized it was something
different. Did not exactly know what the difference was, but as the years
passed it said more and more to me.
Now
at the time the book was written in Japan, he was in his 40 year in karat
(coincidently I am there myself as I write this).
The
karate he studied was different from what the JKA had become, for many
reasons. Karate had changed (as it
probably always did, even on Okinawa). For one thing the Karate-do that
concerned Funakoshi did not seem to resonate within the younger man. He began
to understand why some changes were made.
For
one thing the original version of Knuckle Toe Kicks (one of many Okinawan
variations on toe kicking) was discontinued because of the pain from training.
He too (as many still do) traveled to Okinawa to understand what was being done
there for his own reasons. Then he acted on those answers he experienced and
changed the way he did karate. He also followed his own logic making other
changes. Trying holding to the original traditions he studied from Funakoshi.
To
seriously understand the difference from what Funakoshi originally taught,
seeing his own observations of Okinawa, and then seeing what that knowledge did
to his karate, and the reason for those choices, I recommend this book.
It
was later reissued as “The Heart of Karate” perhaps slightly different but
still the same book.
Shigeru Egami was a
pioneering Japanese master of Shotokan karate who founded the Shōtōkai style.
He was a student of Gichin Funakoshi, who is widely recognized as the founder
of modern karate.
Timeline
1912: Egami was born on December 7, 1912, in
Ōmuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
1949: On May 27, 1949, he helped establish the
Japan Karate Association under Funakoshi.
1957: Following Funakoshi's death in 1957, Egami
began trying to change karate's poor reputation as a 'deadly martial art,'
something Funakoshi had tried to do all his life.
1981: Egami died at 7:00 PM on January 8, 1981,
in Tokyo.
1 comment:
Amazing read and amazing video. Thanks Hanshi.
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