Wastelander

I've seen one or two gi that have a pocket for a mouthguard, but that's obviously too small for much else. I could definitely see the benefit of having one normal pocket in the pants, but I do think adding more or bigger ones would be inviting people to carry around phones or keys on the mats, either by accident or on purpose.

Fraud is definitely a concern, but it is frustrating that many people seem to feel there is a link between popularity and legitimacy. This is something I have seen time and time again in the martial arts world--people who think that if an art is legitimate, it will be popular, and if it is popular, it must be legitimate. I have actually faced that quite a bit with regard to KishimotoDi, personally. All I can do is keep publishing information and putting out video content, and encouraging others to do the same. I don't think you have wasted your time, at all! It is definitely sad to lose a rare art, however. The "not knowing what you don't know" aspect of the knowledge bell curve is pretty common! Yeah, not everyone is a writer, or thinks they have much of value to write, even if they do, but books absolutely help. I'm sure time and resources are barriers to entry, but there are usually options available to learn at least a little bit of what there is to learn about rare systems if you really want to. Uchi-deshi programs are definitely rare these days, and I think most of them are in fairly popular styles. Maybe that will change. Cross-training is absolutely important for a well-rounded martial education, but it's really unfortunate that competition seems to be the only way for a style to gain mainstream popularity. I understand why, but the combat sports communities have done a good job of convincing people that traditional martial arts don't work in modern combat sports, so people with an interest in competitive fighting aren't likely to seek out traditional arts. With regard to KishimotoDi, specifically, it shares 3 of its 4 kata with other Shuri-Te lineage systems, but it is quite distinctly unique in movement and power generation, so the crossover isn't as significant as you will see in modern karate styles.

I'm not aware of any pronunciation guides for karate, specifically, but you can find lists of terminology pretty easily, and then use Google Translate or Jisho.org to look up the words and listen to how the words are pronounced there.

I'm sure that availability plays a role, but at the same time, I would say that Hakutsuru material wasn't very available in the 90s, but people sought it out pretty extensively. Personally, I don't think keeping Tachimura no Passai private for direct students is really a barrier to entry for the system, since the other 3 kata are available to be seen publicly, but I suppose everyone has different ideas about that. I definitely don't expect people who are new to karate will seek out rare systems, because as you say, they don't know anything about karate styles. It's always going to be people with experience who seek out rare systems. I will admit I didn't consider the relocation complication. You're right about that. People definitely do want to be able to transfer their rank and experience when they move, so they don't have to restart. Yeah, I've heard and seen that issue on Okinawa. Most Okinawan youth seem more interested in western activities, like baseball. There have also been seasoned instructors on Okinawa who have said you can find better karate in the west than on Okinawa, these days. It's unfortunate, and will likely result in the loss of knowledge and systems.

Right. I believe that's basically McKenna's point--some people, today, have taken to calling karatedo a "bugei," when it has never historically been considered a bugei. It could have been, had the Japanese known about it, but even then it wouldn't have been called karatedo, but more likely Todi, Ti'gwa, or Ti, with or without the "-jutsu" suffix, depending on when it was imported and by whom. The art we know of as karatedo is and always has been a budo, because that's where the "-do" suffix came from, and the budo culture of Japan was inserted into karate on purpose. Karate-jutsu, Todi, etc., were largely not classified as anything, they just existed as their own entities and everyone knew what you meant when you spoke about them. As to Ezomatsu's point about McKenna's background, I suspect they were just adding context to the source material. I have followed McKenna's work for a very long time, and I have found him to be a thorough and earnest researcher and translator with a strong understanding of karate, its history, and its culture. This experience with him and his work is why I feel I understand the points he was trying to make in this particular article.

Congratulations! I was promoted to 4th Dan, myself, in December of 2023, and that came as a complete surprise, to me

We all know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of martial arts styles from Okinawa, and there have almost certainly been many which have been lost to time. Today, there are still a few rare styles which I would say are at risk of dying out, and I think this is partially due to a shift in mindset among karateka over time. From what I've gathered, it seems like from the 80s through the early 2000s, karateka were very interested in learning the oldest, most rare styles and material they could find. This includes the Hakutsuru (White Crane) craze that resulted in a bunch of people fraudulently claiming to teach it, and several kata being made-up for profit. Sometime after that, though, it seems as though karateka lost interest in seeking out older, rarer systems and material. I can't help but wonder if the Hakutsuru mess had something to do with that, but I can't say for sure. I am curious to know if anyone else has seen or felt this shift in interest? The reason I ask is, of course, largely driven by the fact that I personally train and teach a very rare style called KishimotoDi, which I generally consider to a system of Shuri-Te, but not karate, as it hasn't undergone the modernization process popularized by people like Itosu and Miyagi. It's a small system, with just 4 kata, and it aligns perfectly with what past masters wrote about the Ti/Todi of the past. It's something that I find incredibly interesting, and valuable to my understanding of karate, and yet it seems that almost no one is willing to even try learning it--they basically say they've never heard of it and ignore any opportunities to learn more about it. Motobu Udundi had a bit of a popularity boom back when Uehara Seikichi began teaching and demonstrating it publicly, but you will be hard-pressed to find people teaching it, today. Even when people have heard of it, they seem to see that it doesn't really resemble karate and decide to ignore it. To'on-Ryu is a sister art to Goju-Ryu, and yet I rarely hear any Goju-Ryu practitioners talk about studying it. Kojo-Ryu essentially died out for a brief period of time, and now there is a bunch of political conflict surrounding it, but it's still an old and rare system, and yet people seem content to let it live in Mark Bishop's books and nowhere else. Have you seen a drop-off in interest when it comes to rare systems and material? What are your thoughts on why this might be happening, or how we can promote these systems and material to help prevent them from dying out?

I didn't get the same impression that you did regarding the terminology. The way I read it, he's very specifically talking about terms used to refer to karate, and the fact that bugei, while it has existed in the Japanese lexicon for a long time and has been used to refer to martial arts, has not historically been used to refer to karate. Instead, karate has been almost exclusively referred to as a budo (bearing in mind that karate, as a term, only really existed after 1905, and wasn't mostly-universally adopted until 1936), with a few exceptions prior to 1936 where it was referred to as karate-jutsu, specifically. I also tend to think that the "apologist" bit is mostly just encouraging people to ignore insults and understand that karate doesn't have to be about fighting. The way he words it suggests that karate has never been about fighting, which I would not say is strictly true, but I would say that during the lifetime of the art under that name that has definitely not been the most important aspect of it for quite some time. A great many Okinawan masters have said, time and time again, that they consider karate to be a budo, and that the most important thing about karate is how it improves character and health. Even Itosu pointed out that it didn't have to be purely for self-defense.

There are very few companies offering embroidery that only shows up on one side of the belt, which is necessary in order to put different embroidery on both the front and back of both ends of the belt. I've never actually seen a belt that was embroidered on both sides like that in real life, but I have seen some examples online. Most were either the exact same embroidery on both sides so that they don't have to worry about which direction they put their belt on, as Bob suggests. Some had Japanese or Korean on one side and the English translation on the other. That's all the examples I can think of. It's very much not a typical practice.

Thank you, everyone, and congratulations to all the other winners!

I haven't tested on Okinawa, but I know plenty of people who have, and their experience mirrors yours. All of my testing has been in the US, and so they have been pretty intense ordeals. Many Americans in my old organization would actually do two tests if they wanted to test on Okinawa; an easy test on Okinawa, and a real test back home after the fact to essentially validate the grade. The Okinawans really don't consider shodan to be a big deal, and many Japanese instructors are the same way. It's not uncommon for kids to join karate clubs in school and have a shodan within 3 or 4 years. More intense testing tends to be reserved for teaching licenses, like a Shihan license or Menkyo Kaiden. The ranks aren't all that important, by comparison. In the West, the importance of these ranks was inflated when soldiers came back from 6-18 month deployments on Japan or Okinawa with shodan, nidan, and sandan ranks (with the expectation they would return regularly for training). Those soldiers set up shop teaching, and they needed a way to keep their students long enough to make those return trips, so they added more belts, or more time required between them, or extra material they could test them on. This also made the soldiers-turned-instructors seem more impressive, because they managed to get these ranks in record time, by comparison. We then entered the "blood and guts era" of Western karate, where being hardcore was the goal. It wasn't until the 80s, I believe, that ranks did a 180 for the purposes of making money, which has caused a strange dichotomy within Western karate when it comes to rank. On the one hand, belt mills and McDojos are common. On the other hand, a lot of the "blood and guts era" instructors still have legacies of more hardcore testing practices in many schools.

My answer is sort of bittersweet, I think. I would like to go back and relive my Shodan phase, for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that my late Sensei was still alive and in good health, and I would love to have all that time to learn from him again. I would ask so many more questions, and workshop so many more things with him. There's also the fact that, for a long time after getting my brown belt, I just figured I would never actually earn my Shodan, both because I didn't really see it as very important and because I didn't think I was good enough.

Welcome back, and thanks for sharing! It looks quite similar to some of my karate material.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

One of the requirements I have for my students going for black belt is to go learn a kata/form from some other style and learn or develop applications for it. I have taught kata to people from other styles on a number of occasions, as well. My only real caveat is that I would prefer them to be at least an intermediate level in their core style so they have a foundation to work with.