What is Your Style in a Real Fight?

Below is an excerpt from another thoughtful piece at the Budo Journeyman blog on Substack. The question being addressed is this: despite all of  your training, does your "style" go out the window when you are in a real fight?

It seems to me that a "style" is a training method, and that when the rubber meets the road, you'll express yourself through the filter of your training. Ideally, "no style."

I don't know.

The full piece may be read here.

This has been churning around in my head for a long time.

Years back I remember a magazine interview with a Western Tai Chi stylist who was recounting how he won an Asian ‘open’ full contact match many decades back, with the suggestion being that he fought his way to the top using his Tai Chi training. But, something didn’t quite sit right. There were a couple of still photos in the article that showed him wearing old fashioned, huge leather boxing gloves, like something from the 1940’s. Somehow, I couldn’t square Tai Chi with that way of operating. Maybe I was wrong in assuming so much on so little evidence?

Then, more recently came the new form Karate Combat, in which well-known points fighters used to WKF rules seemed to completely change their style to suit the format (which is understandable to a degree). But most noticeably, not only did the guard rise to almost solely protect the head, but all the energy generation also rose up into the shoulders. The punching just went wild (something that a good boxer would have really punished). These were haymakers that sometimes went so far past the target that the perpetrator was often knocking himself off balance.

To my mind, some of strengths of good karate is that power is created through the smallest of movement. People spend years trying to find a kind of explosiveness that doesn’t rely on a huge wind-up, and to create a skill-set where their footwork and body angling puts them in a great position to really capitalise on the opponent’s mistakes. But that’s just my opinion.

 

Example from Chinese Kung Fu.

Then, this came on to my radar:

 

I tried to find more info on this grudge match/duel between two Chinese masters in 1954 in Macau. The comments underneath said that the participants were; “White Crane representative Chen Ke Fu (陈克夫 or Chan Hakfu) and Wu Tai Chi representative Wu Gong Yi (吴公仪). Both were headmasters of their respective schools.”

I watched it several times trying to see something that would give them the benefit of the doubt. Was I perhaps missing something? Is this truly White Crane (the forerunner of Okinawan karate)? Or do I call it what I think it is; two guys having a desperate scrap, like you might see outside a bar on a Friday night? I see no hint at ‘mastery’, unless I dramatically misunderstand what ‘mastery’ actually means. All that windmilling and bottom kicking, then losing your balance and getting caught up in the ropes looks too much like slapstick comedy.

But it was 1954. I do find myself wondering if the information given in the YouTube page is actually verifiable though. I don’t take anything on the Internet these days at face value.

Does it always have to be like that?

In the early days of UFC there were ‘stylists’ who thought they’d ‘have a go’ and it always ended up badly. Whatever you think of the UFC and its embryonic origins; whether you believe it was rigged in the favour of the Gracie’s, or whatever, it did shine a window on all forms of martial arts activities and excited the interest in the flagging martial arts market place.

In addition, every match of ‘this style versus that style’ on YouTube and other media ends up as a massive disappointment; usually because the people involved are not solid representatives of what their style can produce. And besides, it’s a bit like how people with serious scientific credentials NEVER debate on forums on the Internet. The greater the expert you are in your field the less inclined you are to duke it out with people who have much much lesser knowledge, why waste your time? Just stay in the fast lane of what you do. For example; scientific experts in climate change do not engage in Internet forum punch-ups with climate change denying trolls.

 

Traditional vs Modern Karate

Below is a thoughtful piece from the Budo Journeyman blog on Substack, on the topic of traditional vs modern martial arts, specifically karate. 

My thought is that even the most "traditional" martial art was the new guy on the block at one time. 

The full post may be read here. 

‘Traditional’, call it a label of convenience; call it a handy pigeonhole to categorise what is done. You can even use it as a hallmark of quality, if you want. But how helpful is it, and who cares anyway?

Clearly some people care, or they wouldn’t keep using it. Some wear it as a badge of honour. To the detractors and critics it becomes yet another thing to take a swing at, a convenient target, their favourite strawman.

What does ‘traditional’ mean?

A key part of my college training was to look at the early history of advertising; selling through the message and labels were important. We were told that if you wanted to sell something to the Americans you attached the words ‘New Improved’ to it; but if you wanted to sell to the British you were better off using the word, ‘Traditional’. (‘Traditional Marmalade’ gets my vote every time).

I was listening to a political podcast recently in which ex-politician Nick Clegg was asked what it was like working in Silicon Valley (he has a top job with Meta). Clegg said that the interesting thing about the Valley was that everything is focussed on the future; because the industry has no past. He contrasted that with the UK where he was of the opinion that some of the Brits from the hard right were so sucked into a mythical image of Great Britain’s past (one that never existed in the form they assumed) that they seem unable to develop any forward-thinking future ambitions; other than turning it into some kind of warped image of a fictional England.

The past is not only ‘a foreign country’ (as L. P Hartley said) but it’s also inclined to be a toxic swamp.

So why, in martial arts, do we give ‘tradition’ so much kudos?

In the martial arts we make an assumption that it’s because the product was tried and tested, like some historical Darwinian quality control exercise. There is one obvious flaw with that idea; the assumption that the process is continued forward in an unbroken line.

The great crucible that was the hundreds of years of Japanese civil wars is a prime example. For the development of martial skills this wasn’t the steady civilised and disciplined refinements found later in the Edo Period, no this was a total meat grinder. (The battle of Sekigahara in 1600 had an estimated body count of 30,000). It was closer to chaos than it was to organised tradition.

What we know of the surviving Koryu (Old School Budo/Bujutsu), the majority of them were developed and coalesced in the later periods of peace, when they had the luxury of evolving their lineage and traditions, uninterrupted by warfare. This doesn’t lessen their fighting ability (unless the lineage is allowed to drift into decay, as has happened), if anything it gave them scope to really refine the skills and imbue them with a greater humanity – which is always paradoxical in martial arts.

The specific case of karate.

Karate as it is consumed in the West (and in Japan) is a modern thing. Can we attach the word ‘tradition’ to something that is so recent?

In Japan it’s classified as ‘Gendai Budo’, 現代武道 ‘Modern Martial Way’. A line is drawn at 1868; in the years before that it’s ‘Koryu’.

Karate jumped from the rural domain of Okinawan to mainland Japan in the 1920’s and underwent many changes; including elements of militarisation, modernisation and westernisation (consider the influence of the Olympic ideas of Baron De Coubertin which spread across Japan). So, although you might talk about the ‘Olympic tradition’, it would be odd to start referring to ‘Traditional Olympics’ because it would sound so retrograde.

Divergence and Unification in Martial Arts

 

The divergence and unification of martial arts is a topic that I find fascinating. Over at Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, there was a guest post discussing this topic in the context of Shinkage-Ryu Kenjutsu.

Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here.

In an earlier guest essay on Kogen Budō, I wrote:

It is important to draw a distinction between “military inspired” arts, practiced by a military class focused on unarmored dueling, versus military arts practiced by a professional class that drilled and maneuvered in mass formation, on exercises or expeditions.

This is a distinction, ill-considered in a lot of commentary, even though it concerns changes most all kobudō underwent during the Edo period, much less where we find ourselves well into the 21st century. Considering this, I will examine several arts with which I have a passing familiarity, and hypothesize about how their current, very divergent, incarnations could have been more closely related much earlier in time. I then describe some of the psychological considerations arise when undertaking an ongoing practice and, in my case, how I hope to practice sword methods as a form of mindfulness and self-cultivation without losing sight of the origins of the arts flowing down to the current day.

Katchu Kenpō

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”

— The Skeleton in Armor, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What we call koryū are practices surviving from combative training of several military castes (i.e., primarily bushi, but also gōshi and sometimes armed monastics) before 1868, when the Tokugawa Shogunate ended with the Meiji Restoration. Despite these antecedents, the majority you will find today are focused on unarmored single combat as opposed to armored combat in group formation.

Some groups still maintain skills at wearing armor to this day. When thinking of armored swordsmanship, Yagyu Shingan-ryū Heihōjutsu comes to mind, which regularly demonstrates wearing antique armor. Their movements, which can look a bit formalized when practiced in cloth uniforms, allow for the efficient use of the body while wearing armor. Another example is the Satsuma-han Heki-ryū koshiya kumiyumi, which practices in group formation in armor, with patterns of movement that allow for ranks of archers to cover each other as they draw and fire.

Most koryū, however, adapted during the Edo period to a focus on unarmored combat. Some schools may preserve older, armored, version of kata, but it is not clear to me they put the level of emphasis on armored combatives that Yagyu Shingan-ryū or Satsuma-han Heki-ryū do. Some branches of Owari Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Hikita Kage-ryū maintain practices of field weapons such as odachi and have postures (kamae or kurai) that are based on how one might effectively move while armored. They also maintain older version of core kata that stress an armored style of movement. For example, a movement of cutting one-handed from long range while balancing on one leg in an advanced kata might be substituted for a closer range movement using two hands.

During certain festivals, members of Katori Shintō-ryū in Japan wear armor, but it is not clear to what extent wearing armor during practice is a regular occurrence. The first set of paired sword kata in Katori Shintō-ryū (Omote no Tachi) is meant to be katchu kenpō (armored sword methods) while the second (Gogyō no Tachi) is explicitly taught as suhada kenpō (unarmored sword methods), but many lines of the art practice the first set at such a rapid pace that the connection to armored combat is, at least to me, lost.[1]

This shift to primarily unarmored training is not surprising. The last large-scale battle before modern times was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1638. Aside from minor skirmishes in putting down peasant insurrections, the Edo period was peaceful, up until the Boshin War of 1868-69, which saw the end of the samurai. Most kenjutsu ryūha thus adapted to several hundred years of peace (Pax Tokugawa) and were not concerned with armored combat or combat en masse. Feudal domains often had official schools for bushi that taught several arts side-by-side. A bushi might then be licensed in those martial arts and this could include cognate instruction on group movement and military strategy, which would have been taught in an academic sense. Martial traditions that had no official domain imprimatur were less likely to preserve associated practices like how to wear and care for armor, how to maneuver while fighting along other bushi. Due to these shifts over time, even though koryū are associated to a military caste, I am not sure it is a good idea to call them “battlefield” arts, even when field weapons such as naginata or yari are employed.

The example of having different version of kata to explicitly work on armored patterns of movement seems logical, but the next step of taking the time to train in armor is rare. Were one to actually train to fight in armor:

• The easiest part of maintaining a connection to armored combat is understanding where to target on an opponent wearing armor. This kind of knowledge might survive quite well in a practice like Katori Shintō-ryū Omote no Tachi. However, as most people practice today, their pace of movement is too fast, their stances too upright, and their footwork and body maneuvers (tai-sabaki)are too large for use in armor.
• Understanding general patterns of movement that would not work well while wearing armor is absolutely requisite, but beyond that, there must be a focus on posture and moving in a way that would best keep the armor from incumbering one’s movement. Even unarmored, long field weapons such as the spear can become entangled in one’s clothing if used improperly.
• Martial skills such as how to don and remove armor properly, and how to care for it would also need to be cultivated. In previous era, the care and maintenance of armor would have been taught both in domain schools as well as within one’s family.