Motobu Choki

[DaveB]

A while back, I read somewhere that one of Funakoshi's original students said Finakoshi wasn't very good, from a physical stand point. But you don't have to be the best practitioner to be a great teacher IMO. Phil Jackson and Pat Riley weren't exactly elite NBA players. Look how their coaching careers turned out.

I haven't heard Itosu or Funakoshi weren't good teachers before. I can't confirm or deny this, as both died before I was born. Their influence and students' abilities have however proven to me that they weren't crap.

Funakoshi was an old man when he started teaching in Japan. Most of those who spoke about training under him caught him not long before death. It's not surprising he'd slowed a bit.

If you want to hear real criticism of Funakoshi, track down the more zealous students of Shorin ryu who base their argument on how different Shotokan is to their Itosu derived karate.

Where Itosu became more famous because of his expansion of karate into schools and creating a wave of new teachers who spread his art, everyone assumed that he was Funakoshi's main teacher. If you read carefully GF's words and compare his karate you see actually he was Anko Azato's student and he picked up some stuff from Itosu as he was his masters best friend.

Azato was a student of Bushi Matsumura which is why there are differences between how Funakoshi does Itosu kata like pinan and naihanchi and how mabuni did them, most notably the lack of cat stance.

Motobu calls cat stance "floating foot" and says it is bad budo, for dancing not fighting. This is obviously something he learned from Matsumura as cat stance is also missing from the Matsumura family style.

You are right, you can be a good teacher without great fighting ability, but that doesn't mean the person teaching you well, isn't teaching you a pile of excrement while teaching you well.

Look again at what I wrote and what's in the article. The divide being drawn is between the old and the new. Funakoshi in particular was very explicit on how different karate had become as he aged. What you think of as the great skill of these mens' martial descendants is great skill in the only karate we know. True old school karate may have involved the ability to weave baskets while fighting and it is the lack of a finely crafted basket that these elders were so against.

Sadly the indicators suggest it wasn't basket weaving that was lost, but real combat relevant elements. Possibly much of the locking methods, bone crunching conditioning and close in fighting methods. But honestly we all knew that. Bunkai has only been a big deal for most karateka in the last decade or so. But what we have in the now corroborated view of Itosu as a bit not good, is the idea that the new karate wasn't just a development by someone who knew the old stuff but saw the need for change but someone who had never quite got to grips with the old stuff and taught others his way that cut out those bits he'd fallen down on.

So what do we do with this? Get all defensive about the style you love and deny everything? After all the old masters were demi gods, totally infallible. We could, but what do we gain except a chip on the shoulder against history.

I propose going forward with eyes open. Acknowledging why we each train and looking honestly if the art we follow matches our goals. If you want self defense that can be hard because we might not know what it looks like, but in the information age it's not too hard to find out.

Ultimately it is how we train now that determines whether we reach our goals or not. What some dead Okinawan dude did or did not do is neither here nor there, but the lesson of history is always be mindful of the now. Don't just follow blindly for a decade before bothering to ask, "will this fulfil my goals?".

Understanding that those who laid the path were just people and that they do not have to walk it or live with the results. That is what I take from this.

...and a cool comeback against over-zealous Shorin guys B-)

[JR 137]

Interesting post, DaveB. I think a lot of the earlier changes such as elimination of throws, locks and chokes was due to introducing karate to mainland Japan. It has been speculated that he needed karate to be distinct from others (judo included) to be accepted in the school system.

[fuad42]

learn a lot of thing.

[CredoTe]

...

If you read carefully GF's words and compare his karate you see actually he was Anko Azato's student and he picked up some stuff from Itosu as he was his masters best friend.

Azato was a student of Bushi Matsumura which is why there are differences between how Funakoshi does Itosu kata like pinan and naihanchi and how mabuni did them, most notably the lack of cat stance.

Motobu calls cat stance "floating foot" and says it is bad budo, for dancing not fighting. This is obviously something he learned from Matsumura as cat stance is also missing from the Matsumura family style.

...

Absolutely. The fact that Funakoshi was mostly Anko Azato's student, and not Itosu's, speaks volumes regarding the differences between Funakoshi-ha and Itosu-ha waza.

The issue is less about Itosu Shuri-te vs. Shotokan, and more about the waza of Shuri-te and Tomari-te as practiced by Matsumura and Matsumora and others of the time. IMHO, this may be one of the reasons why many Chotoku Kyan-ha ("Shobayashi" Shorin-ryu) and Choshin Chibana-ha ("Kobayashi" Shorin-ryu) like to emphasize Kyan's and Chibana's training with Sokon Matsumura more than their training with Itosu (but, they do not ignore/neglect Itosu).

The specific issue of nekoashi-dachi brings up the general problem of waza being misinterpreted and misunderstood (and, therefore, taught in error) over the years. What Choki Motobu was referring to was the development of waza at the time into useless "dance moves". I agree, the way nekoashi-dachi is taught in most karate dojos, and what it's used for, is about as useful as dance moves in a fight (i.e. moving forward in a cat stance is largely meaningless in a fight, but we do it in kata). But, a specific discussion regarding this waza or that waza, and/or why it's done this way or that way in kata, are topics for a different thread...

To say exactly why any given style has or doesn't have a waza is a little difficult (e.g. changes over the years, lack of historical / contemporaneous records). Seito Shorin-ryu has changed over the years just as much as any other. So has Shotokan, so has all the Shorin-ryu-ha... IMHO, it should be about the pursuit of truth and finding waza that make fighting sense, all the while striving to master oneself. I follow Matsubayashi-ryu (Shorin-ryu) / Ryukyu kobudo (Hozon Shinkokai) / Ti because these make the most sense to me. Of course, these all have their faults. Anything human-generated is going to have faults. As long as we keep this in mind, the pursuit of truth and fighting sense waza will not be obscured.