yas

Thanks for the info, Yas. It's important to me not only as a martial artist, but also as a social studies teacher. I had come across the "compulsory" reference at some point, likely last year, in an online article about black belts. When I double-checked what you'd said, nothing online came up about compulsory JJ in Japan. No worries. As I said some schools may indeed have it together with kyudo,kendo,judo whatever school may have to offer. But it all depends on a particular school and teacher and will last a few classes and is unlikely to have any lasting effect on students. I haven't become a dancer after all.

Some schools and universities in China do have taiji as a part of their PE classes. This however does not increase its popularity among the youth, as they see it to be " suitable for old people". Having lived in Japan and attended a local school for some time I have never heard of compulsory jiu jiutsu. We did dancing, swimming and volleyball). Some schools may be different but it is certainly not in the national curriculum.

I always thought skill was something acquired through practice and repetition rather than springing from pure reason.

I hope guys you are more skilled martial artists than you are linguists...

Fighting rarely does indeed. But I tend to get more aesthetic pleasure training in some martial arts than in others. Anyways that is too subjective an experience to go into as you have pointed out.

San soo is just another transliteration of 散手 or san shou using pinyin. Same thing as sanda. A very comprehensive fighting system (or a collection of rules to be more precise) encompassing different kung fu styles, it has grappling as well that comes from mongolian wrestling. There are no belts and spiritual mumbo-jumbo in san soo (or forms to that matter). Nowadays if you study say Northern Shaolin in China you woud almost certainly be getting down to earth every once in a while, in san shou matches. Basically it is a way to give battle application albeit in a somewhat castrated way to all those things you were learning in traditional styles. As a martial art it is not very aesthetically pleasing however, well at least I dont see it that way,