The future of karate

[muttley]

Something has been seriously bothering me lately and I've not been.able to put my finger on it until now. I shall start by asking fellow forum members this simple question:

"Where do you see the future of karate?"

I am talking about a specific style, I am more interested in the overall future of karate as a whole.

As I see it, now karate is practised as various peoples interpretation of how they were taught, Shotokan is Funakoshi interpreting his teachings by Itosu and Azato, Kyokushin is Mass Oyamas interpretation of what he learnt from Funakoshi (you can get the idea here).

Now to my concern, I am worried for the future of karate. There are people.out there who are happily making a merry buck from "teaching" what they understand or want to promote as karate and it is not good. There are too many people taking what they have been taught (often by "legitimate" instructors) and making a hash job of it into something else, something that isn't karate in order to promote themselves as something new, different and even better than what they were taught when, in fact, it is quite the obvious.

I know of the theory in karate reference the changing circle (can't remember the 3 word Japanese term of it), but surely there is only so much change there can be.

[Luther unleashed]

Well in a sense I'm a person who has changed it myself. I teach a mixture and openly state that. That difference is that I openly state that, though. I base my martial art on Tang Soo Do but I am clear that I don't teach "traditional" Tamg Soo Do. Most importantly the core in which I do teach that is TSD is traditional, and exactly how I learned it.

As for people who teach traditional and teach it different/wrong this concerns me. I witnessed a teacher leave my last school that, I always saw, did not do technique right. He butchered it and I always thought "he's going to teach something different and say it's the same"! Is this what you mean?

[muttley]

Yes, in a way it is. I think there are too many of these "Instructor/Black Belt" special courses now whereby people sign up to a "special offer" and get fast tracked to black belt. Once there, they decide that they are more than capable of opening their own school but interpret it entirely differently/wrong.

Whilst an instructor might have the best intentions at heart and honestly feel they can teach, so many just can't and I fear that.

However, I also fear these schools (not necessarily Karate, but martial arts as a whole) who purport to no touch knock out and who teach the art of zen etc etc

On top of this, I do fear that someone will take the theory of shu-ha-ri (I knew I knew it!) and just go too far with it if that makes sense.

[Wado Heretic]

This brought to mind an interview with Isao Obata. In the interview he expressed the sentiment that he did not feel karate would long survive his death. He passed away in 1976, and in a way he was right. In the 1970s, in Japan itself Kyokushin came to the fore due to its emphasis on full-contact karate and this was in contrast to the prior paradigm. In America, full-contact karate of its own sort was coming into its own. In 1970, the World Union of Karate-do Organizations (WUKO) had formed and was making its own impact on Karate. In 1981, the Shitei Kata was introduced, and these greatly shaped the nature of kata competition by forcing a unity across many different style groups with regards to how said kata were practiced. By the 1990s, with the explosion on the UFC and other MMA organisations, we saw the beginning of practical Karate which in turn took a different route to an increasingly refined variation of sport karate propagated by the World Karate Federation. In a sense, the Karate of Obata is well and truly dead. For he studied Karate as a Gendai Budo, a karate flavoured with the Budo culture of the Showa era, and reflected the ideology of Dai Nippon Budokai. However, Karate-Do, had itself supplanted To-De and Okinawan Kenpo when the Gi-wearing and rank using culture of Karate-do was transplanted back to Okinawa in the 1950s.

I do not think any of us can claim to be practicing the karate of any of our forebears, merely the karate that we have made from what they taught us, and thus karate forever evolves and changes. Arguably, what is important is that we retain the Kata, Hojo Undo, and Kobujutsu for those are the classical warrior practices and arts of the RyuKyu Pechin class. I am not concerned with these disappearing, as an increasing number of Westerners are travelling to Okinawa to learn in the place of Karate’s origins. So long as we keep in mind the origins of Karate, and reflect upon it, Karate cannot be lost.

Will we like Obata live into a time where karate as understood by the masses, is not the karate that we ourselves would recognise? Maybe, but all that means is that it is important to own what you yourself are doing, and focus on keeping that alive.

[muttley]

Solid post.

I certainly do not claim to be studying a form of karate direct from Fuakoshi or Oyama, I study the offshoot of Oyama's version of Karate.

[Luther unleashed]

I understand. It's like somebody trying to find a good school, most of us may recommend a place BUT we wouldn't recommend them all. there are many instructors that don't teach well, and many that just don't have the abilities, or the understanding.

In this way I don't personally fear where martial arts are going, because this is how the world is. There are many mechanics that I used to call "Hacks" when I was a mechanic myself. They thought they were good sometimes but hacked things up.

It's the same as martial arts instructors. There are hacks for sure. As I see it though as long as there are good instructors/schools then things will even out. There will be "good karate" and "bad karate"!

As for the art specifically being passed on. I don't personally believe it's of a great deal of importance. Good karate doesn't revolve around what one may see as authentic because all styles change over time. There can be bad karate even teaching a pure style, and good karate teaching a freestyle version of karate.

[Luther unleashed]

I understand. It's like somebody trying to find a good school, most of us may recommend a place BUT we wouldn't recommend them all. there are many instructors that don't teach well, and many that just don't have the abilities, or the understanding.

In this way I don't personally fear where martial arts are going, because this is how the world is. There are many mechanics that I used to call "Hacks" when I was a mechanic myself. They thought they were good sometimes but hacked things up.

It's the same as martial arts instructors. There are hacks for sure. As I see it though as long as there are good instructors/schools then things will even out. There will be "good karate" and "bad karate"!

As for the art specifically being passed on. I don't personally believe it's of a great deal of importance. Good karate doesn't revolve around what one may see as authentic because all styles change over time. There can be bad karate even teaching a pure style, and good karate teaching a freestyle version of karate.

[JR 137]

Just like everything else, karate must and will evolve. It's our job to keep what is relevant and good about it, and discard what isn't. The problem with that is everyone has different opinions and interpretations on relevant and good. From the beginning of karate, and actually well before it was even called that, there were most likely good/effective instructors and bad/ineffective instructors. Just like us, they were human too. Just like us, they kept the good and discarded the bad. Take Miyagi for instance: he created Goju from several different Kung fu teachers and Okinawan teachers. He couldn't have possibly kept every single thing. He also reportedly taught different students different things; he also modified kata to individual students. That explains different students of his doing and teaching the same kata in different ways. Even the strictest/most "purist" instructors in Okinawa and Japan who've directly learned from the likes of Funakoshi, Miyagi,

Chibana and so on have put their own spin on things. It's human nature; they're not robots.

As a whole, karate will go the way of society. The more respect and discipline society loses, the more karate (as a whole) will lose. There will always be exceptions to this.

I'm pretty sure your post in that thread about a gentleman starting over spurred some of this. I fully agree with what you said there. Society is changing, and it's only natural that karate will follow suit. After all, the teachers of karate are members of society.

In regards to student and school numbers, there will always be peaks and valleys. There will always be a new system/style of MA that's the best thing since sliced bread. Then it'll level off. Look at BJJ and Krav Maga. There will always be a Rocky sort of movie that'll spark an influx of new students to an MA style until the fad fades - Karate Kid, Kickboxer.

Some teachers will borrow from other systems and still call it karate. Others will claim it was practiced that way before the commercializations of it.

When it comes down to it, what is karate really? The only genuinely safe answer is "It's karate because I say it is."

On a different note: no offense to practicioners of Korean arts, but why do many TKD and TSD practicioners refer to their arts as karate occasionally? I've seen it done countless times. It's gotten to the point where the general public doesn't know there's a difference. Again not a shot at those guys. On the flip side, I've never seen a karateka refer to his/her art is TKD or TSD. Here an example:

http://www.wmakarate.com/#welcome

They call themselves WMA Karate. Look at their site; they list TKD, Tai Chi, and Self Defense as their arts, not karate.

[Luther unleashed]

Tang Soo do is called karate in almost every tang Soo do do-jang. I have never personally hear TKD called karate but it essentially is. As a person who studies tang Soo do, and taekwondo along with other arts like hung gar Kung fu, I can say hung gar is grossly different and is NOT like karate in that respect. TKD is clearly very similar. TSD is commonly referred to as "Korean karate" however. I mix things together and call it karate, as you referred to. I do this because the primary art is karate (TSD)!

[Luther unleashed]

And to take it a step further, Tang Soo Do is really the Korean variant of Shotokan karate. In fact the history of Tang Soo Do is said to have been developed when Japan occupied Korea and they openly learned the art from the Japanese. It really very clearly is karate in this manner. It has developed differences like the way Koreans seem to always add skilled kicking into the mix, but it really is a derivative of Shotokan. Taekwondo is harder to pinpoint in this way because it has different styles within the style on a large scale. TSD does not differ from do-jang to do-jang in this way.