| The Search for Traditional Martial Arts | |
| This essay is informed by two main events that have shaped my current thinking regarding traditional martial arts. The first was our decision as a group to leave the Australian branch of WKF, even though we are foundation members, and pursue friendly relationships with other traditional martial arts groups in Australia. The other event was my own recent experiences travelling in Europe. Australian Ryusei Chitokai had persisted for too long to be active members of the WKF even though our focus was not on modern competition but on the search for understanding of traditional martial arts. This is a difficult quest, as all of our centers are full-time family-oriented dojos with a majority of students under the age of 12. These students of course, are motivated by the desire to have fun and to reach regular goals such as gradings. And of course, many students are motivated by the desire to excel in the sport of karate, hoping to gain state and even national representation. We had considerable success in this area, but it has never been our main focus. | |
| | Their parents though, are interested in a dojo that promotes the values of honesty, leadership, empathy, strength and self-control. They want to develop social skills and character that will serve their children well as they try to navigate through an increasingly stressful world. I believe that we have become very good at delivering this promise to parents, and it probably explains the considerable success of our 6 full-time dojos. But there is also the life of martial arts for adults and for instructors. If we teach traditional martial arts, we are not turning our back on best practice in modern athletic kumite, but rather embracing the idea that kumite, kata and bunkai fit together as pieces of the same puzzle. |
| This includes weapons training. I should note that as Chief Instructor of Australian Chito-Ryu from 1991 to 2005 I attended the Chito-Ryu headquarters in Kumamoto every year. I asked many times for instruction in the Chito-Ryu weapons tradition only to be ignored beyond the limited Bo program. For this reason, I sought instruction from Shinpo Matayoshi and began my journey in Okinawa Kobudo. I had always said that if the Chitokai weapons tradition would only be shared, that I would no longer need to study other weapons systems, as I had heard many times the idea that karate and kobudo are two spokes in the same wheel. I think the very same thing may have happened in North America, but I can’t speak for their motives. So, it is with happiness and a deep feeling of gratitude that I see that Sakamoto sensei expressed a willingness to share the knowledge of Ryusei weapons technique to the next generation. I note though that there have been several articles and emails where I feel there is a view that the tradition of O’Sensei’s Chitoryu is lost now. This disappoints me to hear, as there are so many dedicated students in the world training hard daily to try to get an image of the technique that O’Sensei sought to spread. I had even heard a reluctance to teach anything that may have religious overtones. I am greatly surprised by this and I respectfully need to explain my view here. | |
| travelling in Europe Let me connect my second thought, a realization from my recent travels. As a history teacher for 26 years, I was excited to finally travel to several archaeological sites in the Aegean. I marveled at the wonderful excavations of Akrotiri on Santorini, dating back to the 16th Century bc, the amazing Roman ruins at Ephesus, and the majesty of the Parthenon. I noted to our tour guide at one location, a retired archaeologist, that there are many similar structures in Peru and I wondered if there had ever been human interaction between these peoples. He suggested it may be all part of the collected unconsciousness of man. This is a theory of Carl Jung, that humans are all somehow connected and share the same unconscious values, attitudes, needs and wants. | |
| | My travels over the years have shown me that people all over the world are more similar than dissimilar. They all share the same way of smiling, show fear, doubt, surprise, compassion, love with the same expressions. And our religions are strikingly similar. All in their way are seeking to provide answers to the vexing questions of existence, the hereafter, and guidelines to live a meaningful life. If I seek to understand a tradition, I need to understand the historical and cultural context that made the movement, in this case martial arts, unique and lasting. If this requires an exploration of the religious context that may have helped shape the tradition, then it is right and proper to adopt a curious and accepting approach. As a historian, I find this to be a natural approach. So, I am very happy to explore the Buddhist or Shinto influence on the martial arts tradition, and to consider where the lines of ritual, self-defense and introspection may blur and interconnect. |
| I believe that in my study of Koryu kata so far this has already become apparent to me. Sometimes in my own training of koryu kata I seek technique, but at other times I seek harmony with my environment, and at others I just seek peace. It is vexing, and hard to know if one is on the right track or lost in the wilderness. It requires a strong connection with the past, and a desire to try to understand the motivations of those who developed these techniques before us. If we can capture the essence of this, then we have a chance to keep the tradition going. Too often in this world, we look forwards and don’t take the time to look at the best practices from the past. It’s not always good though. I recently spent a week riding a bike along the World War 1 battlefields in France and Belgium. I could not reconcile with the idea that tens of thousands of young men could die in a single day, charging toward the enemy machine guns in hopeless and futile gestures of patriotism or mateship. I ruminated often on this. We celebrate the efforts of these soldiers every year in Australia on ANZAC Day and indeed they play the Last Post every single night at 8.00 pm. at the Menin Gate in Ypres in Belgium. People remember and honour this tradition of selflessness on the part of a generation of young Australian and Canadian men. But that doesn’t mean I want to see it happen again. I am interested in what made people do these kinds of things, to understand the tradition, so that we can move forward with better understandings about humanity and avoid the errors of the past. We are not very good at this. | |
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| So, we don’t seek to bury ourselves in the martial arts past, to repeat old practices just because they are old. It is important to strive to understand the essence of the martial arts we practice, to truly embrace the historical and cultural context that made it unique and special, the concept we call tradition, so that we don’t dilute its unique promise by allowing its diffusion in a modern and complex world. This is why we study traditional martial arts, where the technique, philosophy, culture and mind/ body/ spirit connection make it worth studying as a means to assist us to navigate through this difficult world. Recently I closed a workshop in social skills development I was conducting with teachers and support workers. The program is called Rock and Water and I teach it all over Australia, along with my wife Sandy. An indigenous man welcomed us in his native aboriginal language, a tradition which was nearly lost but is now slowly recovering. At the end of the program, he’s asked to do a special ceremony and then he played a didgeridoo, walking around us in a big circle, cleansing us with the sound of the earth, his indigenous friend chanting a beautiful song in aboriginal language and using clapping sticks. It was deeply cultural and very special, but he said, “we are all the same mob (people) and there are no boundaries between us if we don’t want them”. He was happy to share his wonderful tradition if it could help connect us and promote our wellbeing. He wasn’t holding back because of any religious or spiritual secrets that he thought he shouldn’t share. He wanted to open his heart and reveal his culture and its potential to connect everyone. | ||||
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| I think that may be a similar sentiment in our pursuit of traditional martial arts, as though we lost something wonderful and are trying our best to find it again and to correctly and responsibly pass it on to others as something of great value. In my recent training with Sakamoto sensei, I realized in a sudden flash of understanding that my lack of understanding of the religious and cultural context in which todi was birthed and grew, was holding me back in my own journey, as though I was merely a visitor on ground that belonged to someone else. This doesn’t have to be case, and I note with a feeling of gratitude that Sakamoto sensei continues to research and strive to place Ryusei Koryu technique in its cultural and religious context, in the hope of passing on something of real value and deep meaning. Brian Hayes, Principal and Chief Instructor, Australian Ryusei Chitokai Karate Association, Hunter Valley Martial Arts Centre | ||||