Alcatraz

I think I've been misunderstood. My complaint isn't that the Japanese/Okinawans themselves are snobbish about thier Karate, but rather the fact that non Japanese/Okinawans have a Japanophile attitude to Karate; that somehow Japanese/Okinawan Karate-ka are automatically going to be superior Karate-ka than someone who is not Japanese/Okinawan. I'm sure that we would all agree, that to hold to that opinion does border on racial snobbery.

Martialart, Your post was tongue in cheek, wasn't it??

I don't normally link to Youtube, but I thought I would share the following 2clips with you. They are from my buddy, Robert Devane who runs the Martial Arts Inc Dojo in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. Rob has been a member of the WKA and WAKO Eire Squads, and has picked up European and World titles in Semi- Contact (Points), and Lght-Contact (Continuous), and (as seen on the second video) he has beat WUKO and WKF 'Traditional' Karate-ka at their own sport as well. Rob is now a pro-MMA fighter with a record of 2-1, but he still keeps his hand in at the Sport Karate/Kickboxing side of things. Enjoy. 1. 2.

We all 'love' the McDojo phenomenon, but below is an article I wrote a couple of years ago for a British publication. Your comments would be appreciated. ARTICLE: Now, before I start, I just want to make it quite clear that I am not against martial arts instructors making their living out of teaching martial arts. As a matter of fact, I applaud anyone who is willing to take that step, as I’m sure many are aware, there are many pitfalls around numerous corners that the prospective full-time instructor can fall into which can bring the dream to a bitter end. I have attended many full-time dojo where the training is hard, and people stay because they want the substance over the superficial, and these are the ‘Professional’ instructors I wish to applaud. In recent years though, as highlighted in publications such as COMBAT and TRADITIONAL KARATE, there has been a leaning here in the UK towards the US model of the ‘Franchise’ martial art school, a model which I find to be disturbing for the ‘grass roots’ instructor who is only interested in teaching Martial Arts for the love of the art/sport. There is a term which is bandied around in Martial Arts circles which is used to describe these types of schools, ‘McDojo’. I’m not going to deny, that I have used this phrase on numerous occasions myself, but in recent months, I’ve come to the conclusion, that what others do is entirely their own choice. I don’t have time to waste worrying about the dojo which has a ‘seven year old black belt who is excellent at self-defence,’ despite the fact that the school has a policy of non-contact. In fact the phrase Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware) comes to mind when thinking of students who fall for the shoddy practices of these schools. If someone is gullible enough to fall for the pink and fluffy approach to Martial Arts, then that has to be the potential students decision. The purpose of this article however is to highlight the practices which are employed by these franchise schools to legitimise themselves. As I said at the top of this article, I don’t have a problem with people teaching for a living. However those who do teach for a living should not demean those of us who do not. Both my wife and I have well paying jobs, therefore I am in a position where I do not need to make a living out of teaching Karate. I suppose this allows me the option of having a’My way or Highway’ attitude when it comes to teaching. I recently spoke to an aquaintance who attends a franchise school up here in Ayrshire, and students are basically taught that they are consumers, and the more expensive something is, the better. Effectivly, if you pay a little you receive little in the way of training. If you pay a lot, you get more. Whilst this can be true for many things, it is not so for martial arts. The knowledge of the instructor should be the important factor when choosing a school or class, not pseudo-marketing ploys. Take myself for example. Although I don’t teach at the moment, I have done so in the past. I didn’t charge over the odds, just enough to cover costs. The reason I taught Karate was because I love the art, self-defence and the sport aspects of Karate, and I wanted to pass my knowledge onto others who were willing to learn. If we take the argument of the franchise owner to its logical conclussion, this means that what I was teaching was somewhat less than what was being taught at the franchise school, despite the many achievments that my students had attained. That these achievements were somewhat moot because I didn’t charge £XX per month. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the logic in that argument. I would rather teach five students who were dedicated, than two hundred who were in the class because it’s the next cool activity. Another bug-bear regarding franchise schools, is the use of contracts as a retention tool. The argument from the franchise instructor is, ‘I’m dedicating my time to teach, and the contract is the students commitment to being taught.’ It is my argument however that the contract is a lazy method of ensuring income should the student decide to leave the school. The legitimate instructor should have no worries about the student leaving. What is taught is either for the student or it isn’t. It’s a simple as that. Or at least it should be. If the instructor teaches below par martial arts, and the student eventually sees through the ‘crud’ and wishes to leave to join a more fulfilling school which he/she has seen, she will be financially held hostage and be unable to leave. Looking at the pro-contract argument, to me it reads like ‘I’m going to teach you, and you’re going to pay regardless of the quality of the instruction.’ The one thing I really love about the franchise school is the ability to make up weird and wonderful rules for your students to follow. I am reminded of a time when I visited a new class which had opened up in Irvine (Ayrshire) which isn’t too far away from where I live. Here is a rundown of the rules. (I have arranged the order as it is different on the form). 1. No student shall train at another Karate dojo or any other martial art school. This shows disrespect to your Sensai (sic), and your ryu. 2. Students shall not enter Open Competitions. 3. Students should not enter into correspondence with Martial Art Publications or Internet Forums without the express permission of your Sensai (sic), regardless of topic. There were others, but these were the ones that stuck out in my mind. I spoke to the instructor, and she seemed a very amiable lady. She asked if I was interested in joining, and I explained that I had my own class, but I wanted to make myself known, so that if there were any seminars or comps we could work together (which I did with a few other local Karate, TKD, and Kickboxing classes). She then asked me to leave, because they were having a closed door session, and effectively, she didn't want me to steal her training methods which were "copyrighted" to the franchise to which she belonged. No-one else was asked to leave, and I believe I was 'ejected' because I may see faults in her system, not that I would be rude enough to point them out. I also heard from a guy whom I used to go to the gym with, who trains with this lady, that her students MUST call her Sensei at all times, even if they meet her in the street, which is wrong. Respect must be earned, not demanded. One final ploy of the Franchise is to advertise for instructors, who are in effect ‘door knockers’ trying to drum up numbers for a new class. Quite often these ‘instructors’ are themselves kyu/kup grades, who are teaching what they themselves have just been taught very recently. These instructors may go by the job title of ‘Self-Defence Consultant’ and wear lovely black and white, zebra belts so as to conceal their true level of knowledge. Out of all the practices of the Franchise, this is the one I find most abhorrent. Now I must point out that this practice is not carried out by all Franchise schools, however it is a method carried out by a couple, and it is a method which I find to be, at best, dishonest, and at worst, dangerous. What we have to ask now is, are the Franchises, those who may have been labelled McDojos in the past, the model we wish to create as the norm when it comes to students choosing a school? Does the contract operating school who charges £XX per month really have a better quality of instructor than Sensei Smith who teaches Okinawan Goju-ryu to half a dozen students? Unless one looks at both schools, one cannot say for sure. However it is the personal opinion of this Karate-ka that once the pound becomes more important than what is being taught; serious alarm bells should start ringing. I would ask the prospective student to look beyond the slick marketing, and fancy studio dojo, and really look at what is REALLY being offered. What I mean by ‘being offered’ does not mean quantity of ‘programmes’ available to the student, but rather the quality of what is being taught. Don’t be conned by ‘Little Monkey’ classes or special ‘Black Belt’ classes where you are fast tracked to the ‘Coveted Black Belt’. Really look at what is being offered by the instructor in terms of quality instruction. Read between the proverbial lines. I suppose it comes down to one question Do you want to STUDY a martial art, or do you want your ego soothed? The answer to that question will determine your path in martial arts. Choose well.

The main reason cited is because students are consumers and they need to know why they are doing something, and to certain degree I have always believed in this philosophy and practice, but..... Can questioning be taken too far? Many, if not most, of us practice an Asian based martial system, be it Okinawan, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, etc, etc, and many of us like to train with established and well trained teachers from these parts of the World. I remember as a 13 year old training with the renowned Shito-ryu teacher Kusano Sensei. His two main languages are Japanese and French, with a sort of Pigeon English thrown in. He showed, we did, he physically corrected, we did again, and he would either correct or nod. We were unable to question due to the language barrier, but the seminar was one of the best ones I have ever attended. The reason for this post is because I was once invited to train at the dojo of an aquaintance who teaches Shorin-ryu. The training was not milataristic, but the dojo definitly followed the Sempai/Kohai system, with Sensei teaching, the class breaking up with Sempai working with Kohai to correct, and Sensei stopping off and working with the different sub-groups. Nobody was questioning what was being taught, but physically, and aesthetically, some of the 5th Kyu students were of a higher standard than many black belts I have seen in recent years in other Dojo/Dojang/Kwoon. I asked Kev (my Shorin-ryu friend) about this approach. He told me that he would never shout a student down for questioning him, but in the 4 years he has been teaching, no student has ever questioned the technique being taught. I walked away from that Dojo with a slightly changed attitude. Questioning is OK, and should be encouraged, but not just for the sake of it. If Sensei, Sifu, Saboonim, Guro, etc has done his/her job correctly, then the need for questioning the why's and wherefor's should become moot on the students part. What do you think?

Now before I start, i want to make it clear that I am aware that Okinawa is a devolved prefecture of Japan,, but for the purpose of this discussion, when discussing Japan, I am talking of 'Mainland' Japan as opposed to Okinawa. Karate only reached the shores of the UK in the late 1950's, which if I'm not mistaken, was just 30 or so years after Karate was introduced to main-land Japan from its prefecture of Okinawa. 30 years in the grand scheme of things is no time at all. So my question is, why do so many Western Karate-ka feel this need to almost deify Japanese instructors? There seems to be prevailent thought amongst Karate-ka that the 'Holy Grail' of Karate study can only be found in Japan,and whilst Western Karate-ka are very highly respected, there appears to many, to be an almost mystical view towards Japanese Karate-ka. Just to illustrate, I'll tell you a wee story... I had a student of Chinese-Malaysian origin called Tony Au. Tony was born and raised in Glasgow (Scotland) as were his parents, and as such, Tony was/is as Scottish as I am. Tony is now about 45, so he was about 40 when this story happened. Like many blokes these days (myself included) Tony always had a shaved head. One night we had a guy come in to discuss joining the class, before the class started. We were all limbering up killing a few minutes until everyone was ready, and the guy heads straight to Tony, bows from the waist and hollers 'Oss'. The guy the went on to ask Tony if it would be OK for him and his kid to join the class, and that he had some experience as a 1st Kyu in Shotokan. Tony nodded his head, pointed towards me and said (imagine a strong but polite Glaswegian accent), "Aye. It shouldn't be a problem, but you better ask the big man over there. It is his class after all." The guy looked as though the bottom fell out of his world. Firstly he had mistaken a Scottish guy of Chinese-Malaysian origin as a Japanese Sensei. Secondly he assumed that Tony was the highest grade, when infact he(Tony) had only recently, about 3 weeks before the incident, passed his Shodan, and I had just passed my Yondan. The question from my little tale is; why are people so pre-disposed into believing that people of Asian origin are always going to be better instructors? We could back and forth all day giving examples of good Japanese instruction and good Western instruction, but I would like to close by giving two final anecdotes relating to this topic from my many years in Karate. 1. About 3 years ago I was invited to teach on a triple instructor seminar down in Newcastle, teaching the Ryuei-ryu Kata Paiku. Now when it comes to 'lining up', I'm not a stickler for doing it by grade, but I was a tad annoyed when a visiting Japanese Sandan student was lined up as being senior to me. I approached the organising instructor ( a Shukokai Godan) after the seminar, and he told me that the reason he placed the Japanese Sandan ahead of me, was not to disrespect me, but to show respect to the visiting Japanese Sandan. Said Japanese Sandan incidently was not visiting from Japan solely for this seminar. He was living in Hexham on a student visa as a foreign University syudent 2. I used to live in Peterborough down in England from when I was 19 till I was 22. During that time I had the good fortune to be invited to train at the Dojo of a famous Japanese Shotokan Sensei based out of Nottingham, which when you consider I'm not a Shotokan stylist was quite an honour (I had performed an Okinawan Kata demo at a Shotokan tournament in Peterborough. The same Peterborough Dojo who invited me to do the demo had passed a VHS copy of the event to their 'Higher-ups' and thus the invite to train with said Japanese Sensei.) Unfortunatly, on the day I arrived in Nottingham the Japanese Sensei had flu, and was unable to attend, but I was asked to stay by an English assistant instructor. The guy was very nice and soft spoken. However, when he started giving his instruction, he started speaking in almost incomprehensible pigeon English with a pseudo-Japanese accent. This is the deification of which I'm discussing at an extreme. Does anyone else find that the concept of Japanophilia borders on racial snobbery, and could be seen as demeaning to non-Japanese Karate-ka who may have a better understanding of the arts than their Japanese peers? Your thoughts would be appreciated.

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