The Link Between the Samurai and Karate

[White Warlock]

Okinawans trained karate with a karate teacher and educated themselves in other issues elsewhere. We go to school when we're kids (learning the etiquette of our own culture) and then study other things. Karate isn't about learning the etiquette, honour or respect - those should already be natural for us. Karate is karate - it's a way to learn how to fight.

If we're going towards "perfection of character", I think that we should search it from our own cultures. It would just be so much more adaptable.

I hope everyone reads this part twice. It is a very important point that is often lost in the miasma of cultural transplantation so typical of martial art schools.

[24fightingchickens]

Okinawans trained karate with a karate teacher and educated themselves in other issues elsewhere. We go to school when we're kids (learning the etiquette of our own culture) and then study other things. Karate isn't about learning the etiquette, honour or respect - those should already be natural for us. Karate is karate - it's a way to learn how to fight.

If we're going towards "perfection of character", I think that we should search it from our own cultures. It would just be so much more adaptable.

I hope everyone reads this part twice. It is a very important point that is often lost in the miasma of cultural transplantation so typical of martial art schools.

Indeed. I used to think that the answers were in Japan. Then I got there and found them as lost as I was. The answers are not in another country. The answers are not in another culture. The answer is inside each of us ourselves - in our own desire to be better people - not outside of us. Trying to change the world around us to become better will only change the backdrop of a really bad play. We must change the actor, the script, and the costuming if we are to improve upon it. Then no one will notice the backdrop, and it will not matter what it is.

[ivette_green]

Thanks for the answers.

[Takeda Shingen]

Good posts -- thank you. I thought that many of the great karate-ka have roots in judo, kendo, ju-jitsu, many with samurai ancestry --- Though I was raised in the US and Japan, I would never claim to know the bottom line of anything about either country.

I would suggest that you read a few of the following:

Again, not saying this is the whole story, but at least some solidly researched info, decent scholarship, history, lore, and others to help you find your answers. You decide.

The Zen Way to Martial Arts -- by Taisen Deshimaru,

Book of Five Rings -- by Miyamoto Musashi

Bushido -- by Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Hagakure -- by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

The Code of the Samurai -- by Yuzan Daidoji

Secrets of the Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan -- by Oscar Ratti, Adele Westbrook

Samurai Fighting Arts: The Spirit and the Practice -- by Fumon Tanaka

Osu.

TS

[kzshin]

if it's tradition okinawa karate aka To-te, then no, there is no link.

if it's Japanese karate, then yes, the philosophy is greatly inflenced.

[Jussi Häkkinen]

if it's tradition okinawa karate aka To-te

Actually, more often just "ti". "Tu-di" is a name that is used in some publications in Japan during the early 1900's, but the name that Okinawans generally seem to refer to the "old karate" (before the name "karate" in its modern writing form) is "ti" ("te" in Japanese).

[24fightingchickens]

The Zen Way to Martial Arts -- by Taisen Deshimaru

This book is written by a man who's focus is preaching his religion and its connection to various activities as a way of making it pallatable to the Westerner. His agenda, imo, is generally to connect a "Zen" to everything he can - including some other religions which would consider him a blasphemer for saying so. While the work is certainly an interesting view into Zen, it is essentially written for the purpose of "selling" Zen - not really relevant to Samurai so much, since Zen was not widely practiced amongst them. In fact, in the last 300 years of their existence, sword fighting was not widely practiced amongst them! Sword carrying was what they practiced, as it was a badge of office for them - not so much used as a weapon during the Tokugawa times as a symbol of authority and status. When it was used as a weapon, it was often against someone unarmed.

Book of Five Rings -- by Miyamoto Musashi

While Musashi's classic is referred to by many for concepts on strategy (and understood probably only by the kenjutsu practitioner), it doesn't really contain any relevance to the Samurai lifestyle or connections between it and karate. Musashi is the same man who once jumped out of the bushes, attacked a small boy and killed him, and then fled to the Kenchiin temple in Kyoto and lived there under "Sanctuary" for some time - before heading off to live like an animal in a cave. I still get a big kick to remember businessmen in the US carrying a translation of this book around with them as if they were learning how to buy and sell stocks and bonds or manage companies better from Musashi's quite literal instructions on how to use a blade to cut someone to pieces and prepare for death. God save us from fads.

Bushido -- by Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Hagakure -- by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

The Code of the Samurai -- by Yuzan Daidoji

Secrets of the Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan -- by Oscar Ratti, Adele Westbrook

Samurai Fighting Arts: The Spirit and the Practice -- by Fumon Tanaka

All good works on the Samurai lifestyle and what it meant. Summed up in a few lines, a Samurai is a perfectionist warrior/poet who studies everything he can in hopes that it will make him a more perfect weapon. He is fiercely loyal and obedient, and values this over his own life to an extreme. He tries to live and die in beauty.

Left out of all of these expositions is any political analysis which reveals that the Samurai were also a ruthless, totalitarian class of nobles in an oppressive dictatorship most of the values of which are outlawed today in any civilized nation.

I would agree with anyone that said that many Japanese instructors of karate wish that they were training people to be like Samurai, because it would essentially result in ultra-loyal customers who valued that loyalty above their own well-being, enabling the "sensei" to pretty much strut around without worrying about his clientele complaining about anything.

My central argument on this topic does not address any of this, however. I am more interested in why people think that karate, a set of instructions for physical movement and tactics while playing a sport (or fighting as some believe), has a philosophy. Karate cannot have a philosophy. It is not a person - it is an instruction set. Only the people who do it can have a philosophy.

I would say it is more accurate to say that karate instructors have philosophies - that karate players have philosophies. The karate instruction set does not contain ethical instructions within it or anything inherently moral or ammoral. It contains only movements and applications of those movements. The philosophy and ethics all come from either Hollywood, corporate karate associations, and individual instructors who attempt to enforce or teach a code of conduct.

But there are also instructors who preach no code of conduct at all, and they merely teach the tactics and leave it up to the student to determine their own ethics.

[Takeda Shingen]

24FC:

Good editorials. I imagine ivette and other people are allowed to read those same books and draw their own unbiased conclusions and opinions. Opinions and beliefs are really only important to the people who make the conscious choice to live their lives according to those ideas. – if they choose.

My Judo, Kendo, and Karate Sensei's were hard core old school Japanese samurai ethos...but I must say, I developed a sense of loyalty to them because of their kindness, generousity, and sense of fairness and values....they were tough, and demanding, but I did not respect them because they demanded obedience, blind loyalty, or espoused certain philosophies -- fortunately for me and others..they led their lives and trained by example. Along the way, I came to realize also, it was not just because I was Japanese.

I like your philosophy of letting the practitioner decide, so, I took my quote from previous post about “civilized societies’ I presume you are talking about the US of A.

“US society - taking its cue from democracy - a Greek concept. Read about Plato, Socrates, and while you are at it the origins of Xenophobia - fear of outsiders, the unknown; literally meaning "fear of the strange".

Another Western/Greek phenom - Spartans. Good parallels between them and Samurai. I guess the Japanese did not have a monopoly on all that "nasty" stuff. We all can learn from the good and bad of humanity.

Once again, YOU decide what is best for YOU.”

Still cracking up on your description of B.O.F.R. -- and still see the Western biz man in the trench coat waving the paper and briefcase like Dai-sho…so, 1980s - good one!

Thank you.

Osu.

TS

[Dark Shogun]

This reminds me of a jujutsu influence on karate thread I started on the jujutsu forum a while back. Those interested in this thread may wish to visit and resurrect it.

http://www.karateforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=16579&highlight=

Also have a look at this site on the subject of Japanese influence on karate.

https://www.kempo.4mg.com/articles/okinawan.htm

[cluelesskarateka]

Interesting looking thread.

Well, Samurai connections to karate do exist, but it depends on the style. I'll just state what i've heard.

Firstly, Wado-ryu karate is 70 percent shindo yoshin ryu jujutsu, and jujutsu is a samurai art correct? There's one link, but admittedly it's not of the sort usually made.

And the other bit of trivia I've heard is that Ankoh Azato, teacher of Funakoshi Gichin and Gigo/Yoshitaka actually studied Jigen Ryu swordsmanship, which may have included open hand techniques of some description. Azato took inspiration from Jigen Ryu and modified the karate he already knew, which he passed on to Funakoshi, this is part of the reason why Shotokan karate is radically different from the okinawan karates. For more information on this type of thing with Shotokan search for Taiji Kase, or Steve Cattle.

I'm not sure how accurate this stuff is, but its what i've heard, and i'd rather believe that than think Shotokan is so different simply because its teachers didn't know what they were doing.

.... wish i knew what i was talking about....