Help! What are we bowing to before class in Kyokushin?

[CanuckMA]

24fightingchickens,

I feel we are kindred spirits.

As an observant Jew, I live by certain rules. I have been asked to leave clubs because I refused to bow to anything other than a real-live person in front of me. I will not bow to a Budhist altar, I will not bow to the picture of some dead guy. I can greatly respect the founder of the style for what he has done, but will not bow to his picture.

[24fightingchickens]

24fightingchickens,

I feel we are kindred spirits.

As an observant Jew, I live by certain rules. I have been asked to leave clubs because I refused to bow to anything other than a real-live person in front of me. I will not bow to a Budhist altar, I will not bow to the picture of some dead guy. I can greatly respect the founder of the style for what he has done, but will not bow to his picture.

It is their right to ask you to leave, and we can be grateful to people like this who give us an opportunity to stand up for our principles and not be cowed into compliance through threats, coercion, or manipulation. You must be gratified to know that you have the guts to walk out rather than surrender your strong faith and way of life. I admire you for sticking to your guns.

[Karate_Girl_07]

I don't mean to insult either of you, but I think you may be missing the point of bowing to the Shinzen or to Sosai's picture. When you bow to the Shinzen, you are not being asked to become Shinto or Buddhist. You are not being asked to worship these things, just to pay your respects to the origins of the art and to the founder. You may have your own ways of showing respect and you may believe that you don't have to bow to show respect, but in the culture of the founder and of the Shinzen, bowing is the way of showing respect. You may ask why you should have show respect in "their" manner, but by learning their customs and showing them respect using their customs just shows them that you respect them that much more.

[b3n]

I agree with Karate_Girl_07.

[Why_Worry]

Yeah, i wouldnt particularly like bowing to something other than the air or a person. I think of bowing as a way of showing respect and i guess thankfulness sometimes as well to other people. Also, its just kinda like puts you in a mind set and helps to clear your mind and just put you in the moment. Those are the reasons i bow, but i would not like bowing to a statue or picture or object but i dont see anything wrong with just bowing the emptiness/nature or a person out of respect or kindness/thankfulness for them. Its kinda hard ot exactly write what you mean about this, so dont take all this too litterally, cause i couldnt realyl figure out what to write exactly.

[Skeptic 2004]

No, I do not find it wierd for me to speak Japanese words that I have been trained how to pronounce "wierd." I do feel wierd trying to imitate a Japanese while interacting with someone else trying to imitate a Japanese when neither of us has the background to bow properly.

I'm going to agree with 24fightingchickens. It irritates me to no end to encounter Western guys pretending to be Japanese, bowing incorrectly, and butchering the Japanese terminology when they're better off just explaining it in English (I had an instructor attempt to correct me on the pronunciation of a term once...I had to kindly tell him that I actually speak the Japanese language conversantly and that his pronunciation was WRONG). There's a fine line between appreciating the culture and trying to imitate it: everyone likes having their culture appreciated but becomes irritated when people suck miserably at copying it.

Why are Western martial artists so afraid to be Westerners? If you've read Shorin Ryuu's article on traditional martial arts, the only thing traditional about them are the kata or forms. As long as you preserve and practice the kata or forms of whatever system you do, you are being traditional. Everything else is fluff. Funakoshi once said, "Karate is for life." It doesn't mean that karate is the end all be all of your life, but that it's something for the purpose of enriching your life; i.e., it should mold and fit who you are. Statistically speaking, YOU ARE NOT JAPANESE (if you are, please disregard).

Uh..oh yeah...uh..."shomen" means front, so when you bow to the shomen, you're bowing to the front. I'm not educated enough on the religious connotations.

[ivette_green]

So many people (not particulary anyone here) go on and on about how learning fighting terms in japanese is useless and how we all waste time studying these terms under a harsh light in a cold basement in our spare time when we could be training.

But when I first entered karate I didn't know more than three terms in english about fighting. I pretty much only knew kick, punch and block. I've just learned these terms in japanese and it's never been a problem. You have to learn the names for techniques, why not let it be in japanese? It's not too difficult to transfer back and forth between simple japanese and english. If someone else doesn't know the japanese for a technique, show them the technique and they can probably supply you with the english. It's like being raised in a bi-lingual enviroment, which is always preferable to a enviroment with only one language.