The Philosopher of Kendo

Over at Kenshi 24/7, there was an article about one of the seminal works regarding the theory and philosophy of Kendo, the One Hundred Keiko. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Following on from my last post I’d like to introduce to readers my favourite kendo (note-like) book: Ogawa Chutaro’s epic “hyaku-kai keiko” = “one hundred keiko.”

I have written a little bit about Ogawa Chutaro (1901-92, hanshi kyudan) in a couple of articles before. Just to remind you, he was:

“…  a kendo student at Takano Sasaburo’s Shidogakuin/Meishinkan before being taken under the wing of Saimura Goro (and later Mochida Seiji) and attending the newly founded Kokushikan (he eventually taught kendo there as well as at Keishicho). Right from the beginning, his teachers noted that he wasn’t the usual type of kendo student, that there was something different about him. He came to believe that there was something deeper to be had from kendo than mere fighting with sticks.
He studied zen and kenjutsu, and placed emphasis on the process of shugyo more than anything else. In the early 1970s, when most of the older generation of kenshi were complaining about the shiai-centricity of post-war kendo, he was charged with re-defining what “kendo” was by the ZNKR. The result, published in 1975, was The Concept and Purpose of Kendo.”

Ogawa sensei was – in my considered opinion – the only real kendo philosopher (a sort of public kendo intellectual) in recent kendo history. In the same vein as Yamaoka Tesshu or Naito Takaharu, he looked beyond the mere physicality of kendo itself and into deeper spiritual (even mystical) realms. His background in kenjutsu – rather than the new “pure kendo” of the vast majority of his peers – gave him a deeper historical and cultural understanding as well, allowing him to remain more “grounded” in tradition than he might have otherwise. 

Since his death I have yet to hear about, read books by, meet, or talk to anyone who comes close to his intellectual stature in the kendo community.

The quite-chunky book “One hundred keiko” consists of note like entries written by Ogawa Chutaro between the 16th of November Showa 29 (1954) and the 5th Of November Showa 36 (1961),  a 7 year span. The entries chart the one hundred times Ogawa practised with Mochida Seiji – what he was working on, how the sparring unfolded, what he felt, the advice he was given, etc. It also includes copious amounts of Buddhist terminology as well as discussions on kenjutsu theory and its application to kendo.  

Mochida, a graduate of the Bujutsu Kyoin Yoseijo, was a direct student of Naito Takaharu and – like Saimura Goro – followed his sensei’s teachings: large strikes from a far distance and lots of kirikaeshi and kakari/uchikomi geiko. A highly skilled kendoka with a modest character (a rarity then as now!), he was a highly popular and respected teacher.

In 1929, while he was teaching kendo on the Korean Peninsula (in Pyongyang), he won the first of the three Showa Tenran-jiai. After this success, he was recruited by Noma Seiji the following year to teach at his dojo in central Tokyo, Noma dojo.  It was there, via the introduction of Saimura Goro, that Ogawa was to meet and start doing kendo with Mochida. 

It wasn’t until after the war in 1954, however, that Ogawa started his one hundred keiko project. At the beginning of the process Mochida was 69 years old and Ogawa was 53.

As noted above, this book of notes is my favourite kendo book. Some of the entries are small, many are long. Not a few use very complicated terminology including deeply difficult Buddhist terms. It is a book that I will pick and re-read multiple times over my life. Today I want to pull out, translate, and share a small handful of interesting passages. 

If there was one kendo book that would inspire me to study Japanese if I didn’t already know it, this is it.

The Three Hands of Taijiquan

Adam Mizner is a well known taijiquan teacher of the Huang Sheng Shyan version of the Cheng Man Ching form. Below is an excerpt from a post he wrote about levels of expertise in taijiquan. The full post may be read here. Enjoy.


Within my training and teaching of Tàijíquán, I emphasize two primary areas that must be developed and balanced. On the one side we have technical skills or ‘Quan’ – born from ting, timing and having trained the correct responses to different situations. The other side of the coin is power or the development of Gong Li. In practical application, these two aspects must not only be balanced but also be simultaneous and in harmony. Some of my teachers have emphasized skillful application of technique and while others have focused more on the development of Gong Li.

With regards to the technical skills, in ones personal development, we must pass through 3 specific stages to achieve a high level of in Tàijíquán:
1. Stupid hands
2. Smart hands
3. Mysterious hands

We all start out with ‘Stupid hands’ and its a sad truth that most of the taiji world never graduate beyond this level. One of the famous sayings of Cheng Man Ching is “Don’t resist, Don’t insist” – stupid hands are characterized by insisting and resisting. When one insists on what they want to do and resists what their partner is doing, it is impossible to develop the skills of stick, adhere, join and follow, which after all, is the primary purpose of training in pushing hands.

Knowing that we all start out and are often stuck on the level of stupid hands does not help us – we need a method to transcend this level and move onto the level of ‘Smart hands’. The transition from stupid hands to smart hands is mainly accomplished by training drills to familiarize yourself with the ‘eight gates’, and learning how and when to apply them in a pushing hands situation. The eight gates are the four orthodox hands of Peng/ward off, Lu/roll back, Ji/squeeze and An/press down, and the four corner hands of Tsai/pluck, Lieh/split, Zhou/elbow and Kao/shoulder.

I remember when I first met one of my teachers, Sifu King, I had already developed some good root and fajin, as well as what I thought was a good arsenal of techniques. When we met and began to push, I quickly found myself insisting and resisting, as I simply could not answer all the questions he was throwing at me. Compared to my Sifu, I had very stupid hands and at that moment I knew that just having good ting and gong li was not enough – I needed to develop smart hands.

In every movement our partner makes, it is as though they have asked us a question – the essence of smart hands is in having the correct answer. We must learn to use different combinations of the 8 gates to answer our partners tactical questions. In this way, an accomplished push hands player is like a skilled debater. He or she can ask a skillful question, knowing the answer the opponent will give – and they can then respond in a way that makes the opponent vulnerable. It is a game of tactics and subtlety governed by Ting jin / listening.

Shigeru Egami: the Hidden Karate Master

Shotokan is one of the most widely practiced styles of karate. Shotokan as we know it today was created after Gichin Funakoshi passed away and some of his senior students decided to make some changes that would widen the appeal of Funakoshi's karate, which led to the formation of the Japan Karate Association, ie Shotokan karate.

But not all of Funakoshi's students bought into this. They didn't think a wider appeal was necessarily the best thing. They wanted to stick to the way they themselves were taught.

Chief among them was Shigeru Egami, who practiced what he called "Shotokai" karate, which is largely a throwback to the way he was taught by Master Funakoshi.

Below is an excerpt from an article about Master Egami that appeared at Finding Karate. The full post may be read here. Enjoy.

Shigeru Egami has been described as fearsome and possessing both physical and psychological strength. Although not commonly recognized in the West, Egami is considered Gichin Funakoshi’s one student who most closely followed his Principles, especially in the believe that Karate was not just a physical pursuit.

Egami was born on the 7th December 1912 in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. Like most children of the time his first experience of the martial arts was in Judo, starting at the age of 13.
By the time Egami entered Waseda University in 1932 he had been practicing Judo for a number of years. He had also been practicing Kendo and Aikijutsu, an early form of Aikido.
At Waseda doing some form of sport was a requirement to obtaining a degree. Karate was still fairly new in Japan, having only being introduced ten years earlier by Funakoshi. As a way of promoting the art, Funakoshi taught the art in several universities. Formed in 1936 the Waseda University Karate club is one of the oldest in Japan.
Egami joined Waseda’s Karate club, training under Takeshi Shimoda, Funakoshi’s assistant. Shimoda is often considered to be Funakoshi’s most talented students, having trained with him since 1922. Motonobu Hironishi, who would go on to become President of the Shotokai organisation, also started at the Karate club at this time.
Shimoda died in his early thirties from pneumonia. Some sources state he died in 1932. However the common consensus is that he died in 1934. His teaching duties were taken up by Yoshitaka Funakoshi.
Yoshitaka Funikoshi was Funakoshi’s third son. Much of the advancement in Shotokan Karate can be attributed to him. He introduced the characteristic Shotokan long stance and also various kicking techniques. His dynamic style made him popular among the younger students.
The 1930s saw Egami travelling around Japan with Yoshitaka Funakoshi, giving various Karate demonstrations. The aim of these trips were to promote Karate. Also 1935 saw the formation of the Shotokai association, which brought together all of Gichin Funakoshi’s students.
After graduating from university Egami had the option of getting a good job through his father’s connections. However he worked as a waiter so that he could continue his Karate training.
In 1937 Gichin Funakoshi appointed Egami to the Shotokan Committee for evaluation. He was the youngest instructor to be given the honor. A little after this time he was called up for active military service. However, he was released after only four day as it was found that he was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis.
In 1939 Egami worked for the Department of of War at the Nakano School, an institute for the training of elite forces personnel. Yoshitka Funikoshi and Tadao Okuyama were also teaching with him.
The period of 1941 to 1945 was mixed for Egami. He was married in 1941 and by 1945 his wife had given birth to two of his three sons. Between 1942 and 1945 many of his peers and Gichin Funakoshi’s students were killed during the Pacific conflict of World War Two. 1945 saw the destruction of the Shotokan dojo during a sustained bombing of Tokyo. The dojo located in Zoshigaya had been the first Karate dojo built in in Japan, in 1936. During the bombing raid his house was destroyed. He and his family had to live in the ruins. 1945 saw the death of his teacher and friend, Yoshitaka Funakoshi, from gangrene of the lungs.
After the war many of Gichin Funakoshi’s students who had had survived wanted to resume their pre-war Karate training. However, through lack of training some of those students’ technical skills had declined. To address this decline of technique the Nippon Karate Kyokai (Japan Karate Association) was formed in 1949. The aim of the association was to gather Karate knowledge. Funakoshi was named Technical Director of the JKA. It should be noted that a few years earlier Egami had become his assistant, helping him with teaching duties.
In 1948 Egami’s third son was born. In that same year he opened a dojo in Mitsui Miike factory.
The 1950s saw Egami increase his teaching duties. At Waseda University he was manager of the Karate club. He was also a lecturer in Physical Education at Chuo, Toho and Gakushuin universities.
Egami’s health began to suffer when he was in his forties. Between 1956 and 1957 he underwent two operations for stomach ulcers. He also suffered a heart attack which resulted in him being dead for almost ten minutes. The illness led to a curtailment of his personal Karate training, but not his teaching duties.
On 26 April 1957 Gichin Funakoshi died. At the hospital his close family were present. Egami was his only student present at his bedside.
Following the wishes of Funakoshi, the Shotokai was reformed by a group of individuals, including his family and various university groups. The aim of the organisation was to take car of his funeral arrangements. However, a disagreement occurred between the Shotokai and the Japan Karate Association (JKA). The JKA believed that the should be organizing the whole funeral and would not participate once the Funakoshi family declined the offer.
After the funeral Shotokai continued as an organisation. Several of the university groups however decided to leave the organisation. Egami and Hironishi remained with Shotokai. Egami became the Chief Instructor with Hironishi eventually becoming president of the organisation.
1957 saw the JKA and Shotokai eventually part ways. The JKA under Chief Instructor Masatoshi Nakayama were beginning to follow a more sport-oriented approach to Karate. The Shotokai believed in following a more traditional approach, in keeping with Funakoshi’s teachings.
Since the early 1950s Egami had been looking at new ways in which striking could be improved in Shotokan Karate.He believed that the body should be more relaxed prior to striking. He also believed that makiwara (striking post) practice should be lessened. Egami also believed that the perception of Karate was of a martial art used for violence. He wanted Karate to develop more in line with Gichin Funakoshi’s Principles.

Mastering Mental States

Below is an excerpt from a very good article that appeared at Zen Habits. While the author is writing of a life skill and it certainly is, I think it is relevant to our particular study of martial arts. The full post may be read here.

The Discipline of Mastering Mental States

By Leo Babauta

I’m far from mastering this skill, but one thing I’ve been playing around with is how important mental states are to our productivity, happiness, focus, health habits and more.
For example, if you’re tired or feeling down, there’s a good chance you’re not going to focus on your meaningful tasks, and instead will look for distractions and comfort.
If you’re feeling frenetic and in quick-task mode, you’re not likely to focus on deep work, but instead will look for easy busywork to do.
Mental states will usually affect whether we do our exercise, eat healthy, binge watch TV shows, drink alcohol, eat junk food, or are open-hearted (or rude) with the people we love.
So it’s really important to monitor mental states. It’s also an incredible skill to be able to move yourself into the proper mental state to do focused work, to create, to meditate, to exercise, or do whatever you find meaningful.
In this article, I’ll share some ways to get better at moving into the mental state you need to be in to do that meaningful work. But I’ll also share an advanced skill — being able to do what you need to do, no matter what your mental state. I think of this as an “antifragile” skill (in the terminology of Nassim Nicholas Taleb).

Getting Good at Moving Into a Mental State

Let’s say you want to do some writing (or other focused work) … and to do that, you want to be in a calm, focused, energetic, positive mental state.
But right now, you’re feeling frazzled and distracted. How do you move from one state to the other?
First, you have to recognize that you’re in the wrong mental state. It’s not likely to lead to calm focus. It will lead to you doing busywork or seeking distraction.
Second, you have to experiment to find a set of actions that can help you move into the right mental state. This is going to be different for each person, even for each different mental state that you’re in or that you want to get to. But with some experimentation, you can discover things that work for you.
For example, some common actions that often help move into a better mental state:

• Meditation
• Go for a walk
• Get up and move around
• Talk to someone (if you’re worried about something)
• Having a cup of tea
• Taking a power nap
• Having a cup of coffee (differs for each person)
• Getting into a quiet, uncluttered environment
• Turning off your wifi router
• Using full-screen writing apps
• Playing calming music
• Reading an inspirational quote or article
• Talking to someone (including a therapist, if needed)
• Bringing playfulness to the task

There are many other possibilities, of course, but you get the idea.
Another idea is to look at whether you’re feeling discouraged or encouraged. If life has conspired to discourage you from a project, a habit, doing a meaningful task … you’ll want to find ways to encourage yourself. The power of encouragement to change your mental state can’t be overstated.
This is a skill you can practice every single day. Throughout the day. Bring mindfulness to your current mental state, ask yourself what you’d like to be doing and what mental state would help you do that, and then experiment until you find a way to move into that mental state.
Practice and experiment until you get good at moving into the right mental state. Mastery will take daily practice, and constant play.

The Tang Dynasty Poems, #76: A Song of a Girl from Loyang

The Tang Dynasty was a high point of culture in ancient China. Especially esteemed were poems. There was no home coming or leave taking; no event too small to not be commemorated with a poem.

Some of the best poems of that period have been collected into an anthology known as The 300 Tang Dynasty Poems. A online version of the anthology may be found here. Today we have #76: A Song of a Girl from Loyang.


A SONG OF A GIRL FROM LOYANG
There's a girl from Loyang in the door across the street,
She looks fifteen, she may be a little older.
...While her master rides his rapid horse with jade bit an bridle,
Her handmaid brings her cod-fish in a golden plate.
On her painted pavilions, facing red towers,
Cornices are pink and green with peach-bloom and with willow,
Canopies of silk awn her seven-scented chair,
And rare fans shade her, home to her nine-flowered curtains.
Her lord, with rank and wealth and in the bud of life,
Exceeds in munificence the richest men of old.
He favours this girl of lowly birth, he has her taught to dance;
And he gives away his coral-trees to almost anyone.
The wind of dawn just stirs when his nine soft lights go out,
Those nine soft lights like petals in a flying chain of flowers.
Between dances she has barely time for singing over the songs;
No sooner is she dressed again than incense burns before her.
Those she knows in town are only the rich and the lavish,
And day and night she is visiting the hosts of the gayest mansions.
...Who notices the girl from Yue with a face of white jade,
Humble, poor, alone, by the river, washing silk?

The Dojo Notebook

Below is a post that appeared at Kenshi 24/7. The topic is a "Dojo Notebook," which strikes me as a really good idea. Towards the end of the post, the author gets into some actual entries in the notebook.

The full post may be read here.

"Be Brave."

 Very recently I started a “club note” system here at my kendo club here in Osaka. For the benefit of readers who live in countries where schools don’t have active after-school clubs like Japan (my school in Scotland certainly had no such thing) let me explain briefly: I prepared a note book for the club which gets passed around all the members in a certain order. After each days keiko the designated student takes the notebook home and writes some stuff in it. The next day he or she hands the notebook to me (or places it on my desk if I am not around). During that day I read it, write some comments, and at the end of the school day the student comes and picks it up of my desk and reads what I wrote. They then pass it on to the next person and it all starts again.

To some it may seem like a strange thing to do, but what it does is it gets the club members to think back on the days session and, putting pencil on paper, have them write their thoughts in a more concrete manner than they might done have otherwise.

The students are encouraged to write freely, and they usually use the space talking about what they did, what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what they are working on. Of course, there is a quite a bit of graffiti and some random chat as well, which is fine (I enjoy their creativity).

But the benefit gained goes beyond the students. Obviously, if the students go to the trouble and spend time putting their thoughts down on paper, I am obliged to read those comments seriously and write my own responses. Not being a native Japanese speaker and never studying the language at a school, this has proved to be a good language exercise for me. Plus, it has given me a real chance to use my knowledge about kendo, that is, it’s theory and history, to educate the students about the culture of kendo itself.

In one particular case a student was told to “step in more” by a visiting sensei whose advice they, of course, wrote down in the notebook. This immediately reminded me of the teachings of Saimura Goro sensei, one of the only five 10th dans that ever existed, a member ofthe first crop of Busen graduates (when it was still known as the Bujutsu Kyoin Yoseijo), a student of Naito Takaharu sensei, and one of my favourite historical kenshi. He said:

“During keiko you should attack energetically from a far distance with large strikes. This style of kendo is not only elegant and manly, but it will lead to improvement in your kendo over time. Attack from a far distance – be energetic and lively – attack with abandon.”

With my students I attempt to emphasise the following points in order to engender a more positive kendo style which would, of course, help with the stepping in problem:

1. For large strikes: start from a quite far distance, step in, raise the shinai high above your head (the angle doesn’t matter), step in deeply and strike;
2. For small strikes: start from a far distance and either move in slowly and carefully to your attack distance and strike, or move in to distance in a quick action and strike, either way a large step is emphasised;
3. I treat hiki-waza as a minor set of techniques and don’t like to spend much time on them;
4. Whenever I teach waza, I always teach a forward movement, e.g. kote-gaeshi-(forward!)men;
5. Emphasis and praise is always for waza that are executed in a forward motion: during ippon-shobu I completely ignore students hiki-waza and only acknowledge attacks that are executed in a forward motion;
6. I obsessively point out if a students fumikiri is too weak or their fumikomi too shallow or light – push off strongly and step in deeply.

Stepping in is, at least to me (and probably to Saimura too), a sign of confidence. A large step at a close distance will result in overly-deep strike, so it is best to attack from a relatively far distance. 

The further the distance is that an attack is launched from the more chance of it being countered and, usually at least, the buildup easier to perceive.

Someone with little confidence* will often prefer not to attack from a far distance because they fear 
counter-attack. Where Saimura sensei and I almost certainly agree on is that this fear is a mental weakness.

To the student who received the advice and wrote in the club notebook I gave simple advice:

Be brave.

Wing Chun Wooden Dummy Demonstration

Below is a video of some Wing Chun wooden dummy work.

The Formation of Modern Shotokan Karate

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at Finding Karate, regarding the legacy of Masatoshi Nakayama, who is credited with founding the Shotokan Karate as we see it today. The whole post may be read here.

It could be argued that no person has done more to expand Shotokan karate around the the World, thus  carrying on the legacy of Gichin Funakoshi, than his long time student and anointed successor, Masatoshi Nakayama. As the Chief Instructor of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), he oversaw the expansion of Shotokan Karate from an art practised only in Japan, to an art practised internationally by a diverse range of people.

Nakayama was born in 1913 in the Yamaguchi Prefecture,  Japan. He came from a family descended from the Sanada samurai and steeped in the martial tradition. His grandfather and father were accomplished Kendo instructors.

Being from a medical family, Nakayama was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, he had a love of Chinese culture and secretly took and passed an entrance exam for Takushoku University, the premier university for those wanting a career in the foreign service.

Nakayama entered Takushoku University in 1932. In a twist of fate Nakayama mis-read the timetable for attending a kendo class and instead found himself in a Karate class. Karate was still a fairly new martial art in Japan. Nakayama was intrigued and stayed to watch the class. He thought since having a background in kendo and Judo he would find karate easy. 

So he decided to come back and try the next lesson. In that lesson he came to realise just how difficult karate really was. He began his training under Master Gichin Funakoshi and his son Yoshitaka, thus began a lifelong love affair with karate.

On competing his university studies, Nakayama travelled to China as an exchange student, to further his studies in Chinese language and history. While in China he continued his karate practice and even taught a few classes. He came into contact with Kung Fu training under several masters. His main teacher was Sifu Pai, with whom he studied a Northern Kung Fu style. Northern style Kung Fu is characterised by having long stances, deep punches and high flashy kicks. Under Sifu Pai, Nakayama learnt taisoku uke (pressing block with sole of foot) and reverse roundhouse/hook kick (ura mawashi geri). Both of these techniques were eventually incorporated into the Shotokan syllabus with the permission of Gichin Funakoshi.

During World War II,  Nakayama remained in China working as a translator. In 1946,  Nakayama returned back to a Japan  devastated by the war. He tried to get in contact with some of Funakoshi’s senior students. However, many of them had been killed during the war. Master Funakoshi’s son, Yoshitaka, had also died from tuberculosis. In 1947 he did manage to gather what was left of the senior students and they resumed their training under the watchful eye of Master Funakoshi.

In 1948, Nakayama and other senior students of Funakoshi gave a karate demonstration to personnel stationed at the U.S. Air Force Base at Tachikawa. It was well received and for the next couple  of months he travelled around Japan giving demonstrations and teaching karate to the Americans.

With the permission of Master Funakoshi, Nakayama and some of the other senior students formed the Nihon Karate Kyokai – Japan Karate Association (JKA) in 1949. Master Fuankoshi was named as Chief Instructor with Nakayama as Chief Technical Adviser.

In 1951 American Air Force personnel were sent from the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to learn various Japanese martial arts, karate being one of them. This proved to be an important learning experience for Nakayama. The Americans asked a lot of questions and wanted to know the theoretical background for performing techniques in a particular way.

In an interview given to Black Belt Magazine (November 1982), Nakayama said:

“It immediately became apparent to me and to Master Funakoshi that if we were were going to teach the Americans, we would have to provide a theoretical basis for our art.”.

So under Master Funakoshi’s instruction Nakayama began an intensive study of kinetics, physiology and anatomy. The idea was to provide a scientific grounding to karate and the body dynamics it incorporated.

In 1955 Masatoshi Nakayama was elected the head of JKA.

In 1956  with the help of Teruyuki Okazaki, Nakayama formulated the JKA’s Instructor Program, which was intended as an intensive one year karate course.  Among the first graduates of the course were Takayuki Mikami and Hirokazu Kanazawa. Apart from the intensive karate practice, students were giving a theoretical grounding in karate. They were also taught kinetics, physiology and anatomy. Also they were exposed to the key principles of other fighting systems. Many of the graduates of the program were sent around the world, with the aim of expanding the JKA’s brand of Shotokan. For example, Kanazawa spent time in Europe and Mikami in the United States.

Nakayama believed if Karate did not change to incorporate some form of competitive element, like Judo or Kendo, then people would lose interest in karate. With the permission of Master Funakoshi, Nakayama started looking at ways of adding a competitive element into Karate. He explored many avenues, including having competitors wear a form of light amour, similar to Kendo practitioners. However, this still resulted injuries.

Hung Gar Snake Form

Below is a trailer for an instructional video from Wing Lam Enterprises on the Hung Gar Snake Form.

The Historical Role of Religion and Spirituality in Martial Arts

Below is an excerpt from a post at Kung Fu Tea regarding the historical role of religion and spirituality in traditional Chinese martial arts. The full post may be read here.

Can the confused lead others to clarity?  Perhaps the title of this essay risks overselling the contents as I can think of no subject within the field more demanding of nuance, yet less likely to receive it, than the relationship between the martial arts, religion and spirituality.  Entire books have been written attempting to define the latter two terms, both of which are always culturally and historically bounded.  And we all expect that it’s only a matter of time until someone decides to give us a book length definition of martial arts as well. (Whether that is a good idea is another question altogether). 

 All of which is to say that bringing these three subjects together in the same sentence is a recipe for complexity.
 
Nor is it a coincidence that this subject creates polarized opinions within the ranks of practitioners and scholars of martial arts. How could it be otherwise? On some level I think that we all look to the actions and opinions of others to lend credibility to our own investments in the martial arts.  And what could be more fundamental to understanding the nature and purpose of these practices than the notion that they convey a deeper mystery that transcends the outward practices which we all observe?
 
If you are of a certain generation, chances are you were introduced to the Chinese martial arts by the image of either David Carradine (Kung Fu) or Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon) philosophizing with warrior monks in mysterious temples.  This orientalist imagery fit nicely with the growing currency of the TCMA in a counterculture movement that was steeped in the writing of popularizers like Alan Watts. Nor was it simply a product of the Western imagination. Important early teachers of the Chinese martial arts in the West, individuals like Zheng Manqing, explicitly framed their efforts with the promise that one could combine martial, artistic, medical and spiritual achievement through the mastery of a single martial discipline.  Such a promise must have been music to the ears of a generation dealing with the disenchantment of globalization, social upheaval and geo-political conflict.  When looking at period sources it is thus interesting to note that the Asian martial arts seem to be spiritualized in the discussions of the 1970s-1980s in ways that even the same systems were not in the 1920s-1940s.
 
The excesses of this countercultural approach to the martial arts sparked their own backlash.  In the practical realm a number of arts and schools increasingly defined themselves in opposition to these images or, in their view, misconceptions.  Wing Chun schools in America tended to do away with the incense burning and memorial walls so common in other Hong Kong derived kung fu traditions.  Ip Man himself discouraged the practice of music and Lion Dancing within his organization and moved any discussion of traditional medicine into the private realm.  His practice was to be a modern self-defense art open to all.  And in a situation like this, it is hard to read the term “modern” and not also think “secular.”  The post-war process of embedding and localizing the Asian martial arts in North America (such as the rise of competitive contact Karate or Olympic Judo) often seemed to be accompanied with the distancing of these practices from their “traditional” (or perhaps spiritual) missions.
 
Researchers like Stanley Henning, Brian Kennedy and others in the first generation of what we might think of modern Martial Arts Studies would tackle the supposed spiritual origins of these practices head on.  Both individuals were influenced by traditions of Chinese martial arts histography that were established by scholars of the 1930s-1940s. These were the decades of the state sponsored Guoshu reform movement, perhaps the first moment in China’s history when the tools of modern scholarship and cultural criticism could be turned on the Chinese martial arts.  In general, scholars of the era (individuals like the pioneering Tang Hao) attempted to place the martial arts on a sound materialist footing by rejecting stories of wandering monks, Daoist immortals and divine inspiration. They instead sought to find the origins of systems like Taijiquan or Bagua through documentary criticism, sociological theory and fieldwork in places like Chen Village.
 
The image of the Chinese martial arts which the work of Kennedy and Henning generated was remarkably secular and mundane compared to the clear flights of fancy that television programs like Kung Fu had promoted a few decades earlier.  They focused on martial arts traditions that were eminently practical, the domain of village militias, KMT sponsored military academies, government sponsored programs or university-based physical culture programs.  All of this stuff did exist, and it did dominate much (though not all) of the public discussions of the Chinese martial arts in the 1930s.  I have written about these same subjects in many places on this blog. These were the sorts of modern martial artists that were sent to represent China at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
 
Its probably worth noting that the reformers guiding the KMT and the Central Guoshu Association during these years were very influenced by Western ideology and scholarship. Indeed, their writings are full of contemporary concepts like “Social Darwinism.” They were well versed with the sorts of theories and concepts that are now called the Modernization Hypothesis, and they seemed to accept its corollary, the Secularization Hypothesis. They believed that China could not reach its potential as a modern state without dumping the superstition and backwardness of its past.
 
In effect that meant purging traditional religion and activities associated with ritual religious practice (such as vernacular theater traditions which were at the heart of every town’s temple festival) from their reformed and modernized martial arts.  Given that individuals supporting these notions both wrote many of the surviving records of the period and laid the theoretical foundations for future historical studies of the Chinese martial arts, it is perhaps no surprise that later scholarship came to see the traditional martial as being primarily practical and secular practices.  The always excellent work of Peter Lorge would be one example of this school.  As is so often the case, the sort of image that the Central Guoshu Institute wished to project into the future also came to define much of how we see China’s past.
 
Clearly much of this scholarship has value.  And we are all better off if we are not forced to rely on David Carradine as our defining image of the Chinese martial arts.  The vast modernization efforts of the early 20^th century generated a broad base of support within Chinese society and largely continue to define our experience of the Chinese martial arts today.  They are the proximate cause of the world that we have inherited, and so scholars must respect and deal with these impulses.  Still, it would be a mistake to assume that this is all that has ever existed.
 
My own historical work on the development of the Southern Chinese martial arts illustrated, at great length, how successful Guangdong’s martial arts community was at resisting and subverting these modernization efforts during the 1920s-1930s.  When Masters fled the Pearl River Delta to areas like Hong Kong, Taiwan or Malaysia in the 1950s they were able to preserve many of the “superstitious” cultural practices and beliefs (practices like spirit writing, spirit possession, and exorcism rites) that the KMT had worked so hard to stamp out decades previously. And the love of supernal warriors that had dominated Cantonese opera stages soon found a new home (minus its former ritual context) in Hong Kong’s martial arts film industry. Anthropological scholars like Daniel Amos were able to document all of these practices in the 1970s and 1980s during the course of their fieldwork.
 
While the practice of the TCMA seems to be struggling, we are currently living in the golden age of martial arts studies scholarship.  We now know, as Scott Phillips has argued, that accounts of Southern Chinese martial arts interacting with the world of opera are very plausible (though it did not always take the glorious forms that various kung fu stories would have one believe).  While scholars like Shahar have demonstrated that the Southern Shaolin Temple of legend is a myth, interviews and fieldwork have demonstrated that Guangdong and Fujian had multiple Buddhist temples where monks really did supplement their income by teaching marital arts (in addition to basic literacy) during the early 20^th century, and a few of these seem to have adopted the Shaolin label as good advertising.  

Further, the careful ethnographic work of Avron Boretz in Southern Taiwan and Southern China has demonstrated that the religious and spiritual aspect of the martial culture is not only very much alive, but also remains a primary method of self-actualization for marginalized young men throughout the region.
 
Yet Boretz’s work also located and illustrated the point where this conversation becomes difficult.  

While his field work initially focused on martial arts students in Taiwan, he became interested in the fact that many of them were also members of temple ritual societies. These temple troops led processions through the neighborhood and were often practicing both a mixture of mundane skills (music, lion dancing, theatrical martial performance), as well as more exotic spiritual technologies (possession, exorcism rituals).  In point of fact, the individuals who ran these groups were often martial artists.  Yet the temple troop (which was a community non-profit organization) often maintained a separate corporate identity from any of the commercial martial arts schools that these individuals may also have been part of.  So to what extent can we say that the practice of martial arts in Southern Taiwan, in the community of marginal individuals that Boretz observed, had a religious or a spiritual component to it?

Happy Fourth of July!

I love this song.

Judo Giant Seiichi Shirai

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at the Mokuren Dojo blog about one of the sometimes overlooked giants of classical age of Judo, Seiichi Shirai. The full post, which contains some interesting vintage videos, may be read here.

Our judo and aikido teacher, Karl Geis, attributed a significant portion of his newaza doctrine to seemingly little-known judo sensei (at least in America) Seiichi Shirai. Geis even called part of his groundwork doctrine, "The Shirai System." .
But there is relatively little online about a Shirai-sensei, so who was this Shirai guy? It turns out that he was one of Kyuzo Mifune's uchideshi, favorite ukes, and later Mifune's nephew-in-law. That clue gives us some research leverage because there IS a lot online and in print about Mifune! .

We can get a glimpse into Shirai-sensei's thinking on judo from these quotes in Draeger's Training Methods book:

.

.
...and from Draeger & Otaki's Judo Formal Techniques book:
.

.
...and from some lessons quoted from the Spring Park Judo Club at Garland TX:
.

"...Another of judo’s first generation who trained under founder Jigoro Kano was Seiichi Shirai. He also trained with Mifune and eventually married Mifune's niece. ...a story that Shirai would tell about the importance of repeating a lesson:.The mind is like a tea cup. And if you fill it again and again with green tea, the cup will eventually turn green, absorbing the lesson. “And that’s the way,” Shirai would say, “I would repeat a story, over and over and over again.”...Another lesson ... from Shirai was about gaijyu and naiko. While the outside appearance of people in dealing with each other should be soft and gentle – gaijyu, the mind and the heart inside should be strong like steel – naiko."

.