I was reading
Mark Bishops latest Facebook piece today and I started thinking.
Karate which had previously been a closely held group practice within the Okinawan Bushi , was of course changed for a school activity.
Itosu wrote
“In the past masters of karate have
enjoyed long lives. Karate aids in developing the bones and muscles. It helps
the digestion as well as the circulation. If karate should be introduced
beginning in the elementary schools, then we will produce many men each capable
of defeating ten assailants. I further believe this can be done by having all
students at the Okinawa Teachers College practice Karate. In this way after
graduation they can teach at the elementary schools that which they have been
taught. I believe this will be a great benefit to our nation and our military.
It is my hope you will seriously consider my suggestion.”
http://www.traditionalshotokankarate.co.uk/ten_precepts.html
A tradition
began (or continued?) of crafting kata for beginning students.
There does not
seem to have been a need to shape those students for street defense as Okinawa
was not a violent place. Rather for the strengthening bodies.
The thought was
that karate might be used for self
defense was very secondary to the thought that it might build a stronger
populace. After all why would people want to train young people to fight in the
streets when there was little need to have them do so? Logically knowledge of
kata applications was not the goal of the training. If any of them continued
their studies it would be under an instructor in a traditional manner, and more
than time enough for those studies at that time.
Then karate
underwent a disporia and moved to Japan. That karate had a self defense purpose
was not hidden from those Japanese students, the instructors even shared some
of it in their books, but it does not seem that there was a direct linkage made
for the student between kata practice and defensive use of karate.
Although is was
the pre-war years, University students for the most part were not being trained
to become weapons. Rather by design to
produce healthier students for the society. Training them in more than basic
applications would be a very poor use of the brief time they had to train at
university for 4 years.
Then when
‘bunkai’ for kata was explained, that became the new buzz word for
understanding kata in part. More so after the war, and Japanese karate had
developed differently from Okinawa. So they developed their own explanations
for those kata tools, which were by design prepared for a different purpose.
New times, new
answers.
1 comment:
At that time I knew less about the use of Karate in the Okinawan school systme.
Today I am aware that some karate training was used to prepare stydents for military service.
I still think this is worth considering.
Post a Comment