Terrain and Karate Training - Guest Post: "Dojo"

What follows are some thoughts of my instructor, Pat Nakata, on the literal dojo environment and the effects on training:

In the beginning of Karate (Te, Ti, Di, Toodi) there were no dojo, because Te was practiced in secret. Practice was conducted in remote and hidden areas, such as hillsides, forested areas, grave sites, and in general away from prying eyes and inhabited areas. All training was held outdoors. Okinawa's temperate climate (unlike mainland Japan's more varied seasonal temperature fluctuations) was ideal for practice throughout the year.

Mrs. Nagaishi told me when she was a little girl (in the late 1930s), she would see the men of her village (farming village) go into the mountainside (hillside) every evening with candles. One night she followed them and hid as she observed Karate training for the first time. These practitioners never performed their Karate in public and practiced in the dark of night, thus they were called "kakure bushi" (hidden warrior). Practice even in this relatively modern time, was conducted in a remote outdoor setting.

Nagaishi Sensei talks about his early training (mid 1950s) with Chibana Sensei, where classes were held at a graveyard and light provided by a U.S. military issue, kerosene lantern. Nagaishi Sensei also tells us about clearing glass fragments from broken beer bottles, left behind from people drinking when there were no Karate classes. Besides the glass, the rocky soil had many large rocks that were removed before practice. There was a very small building where Chibana Sensei could correct students on a one-on-one basis, but the bulk of the training was done outside in the graveyard.

My training with Chibana Sensei during the daytime was on his front lawn, with the soil being a mixture of dirt and almost powdered coral. There were no large rocks and the lawn was relatively even and firm. In the evening, we would train at the dojo (Chibana Dojo / Yamakawa Recreation Center), with a training area of not more than 250 square feet. A class of 30 students could do a very abbreviated Kihon Kata with double stepping and the three Naihanchi Kata. The rest of the teaching was done individually or by groups where Chibana Sensei observed and corrected (see Classical Fighting Arts on Part 2 of my interview). The bulk of the practice was on our own and was done outside, which was actually a playground, during the afternoon.

A dojo in Okinawa is a modern phenomenon, which has changed the way we now practice Karate. With the smooth hardwood floors we can now do long sliding steps, wide stomping movements, stepping heel-to-toe (rather than toe-to-heel), and other stance and stepping adjustments. Which way (new or old ) is more effective? It depends on the situation or in this discussion, the terrain.

Returning to Hawaii from Okinawa, my first classes were held at my parents' home in their patio. The flooring for the patio was very porous cement, with a lot of loose black sand (cinders), so stepping was done in the same way as in Okinawa. Teaching at the University of Hawaii, we used the dance studio building which had smooth hardwood flooring, but our classes were conducted more like the "conventional" Japanese styles (Wado-Ryu). Soon after, we started classes in the evenings at the Moiliili Community Center, sharing different evening with the Shito-ryu Karate classes of John Teraoka and the Moiliili Judo Club. The dojo floor was tatami (straw mats) and uneven, so stepping was done in the same way as in Okinawa.

Moving to our own dojo on Waimanu Street, the flooring was tile on a wood floor. At this time, we were heavy into tournament competition and not too concerned with stepping and stance, since we were not as concerned with Kata and were more concerned with sparring techniques. Moving to our Waikiki Kapahulu dojo, we inherited a tatami floor from the previous tenants, Sensei Ed Yamaki's Judo club. We were still quite involved with tournament competition. After I moved to Hawaii Kai, I converted the backyard of my townhouse to a red brick patio, turned over the Waikiki Kapahulu dojo to our senior students, and started practicing with 6 to 8 students on my patio. My Hawaii Kai patio floor surface was a slight improvement over my parents' patio, except my parents' patio was covered, while my Hawaii Kai patio was open and on occasion, we trained in the rain (much like my training in Okinawa). After a couple of years, I resumed practicing at the Waikiki Kapahulu dojo.

The Waikiki Kapahulu dojo gradually evolved. The tatami was removed because it was falling apart and not conducive to our Karate practice. After about ten years, the windows were redone, new flooring installed, and reinforced with additional braces, all paid for by Alan Yokota and Ricky Tokumoto. As time passed, we were no longer into tournament competition. We gradually did away with sparring, and we started to do strict Chibana Karate, which is Kata training. Today, because of our flooring, we can concentrate on heel-to-toe stepping, which allows our Hara to flow.

Over the past few years, I have trained in many different settings and all of it was nice, but training in Tim Muzzin's backyard in San Francisco brought back memories of my early years of training. The Mainland U.S. is like Mainland Japan. With wide temperature variances throughout the year, you almost definitely need a dojo to train throughout the year, but again the old traditional dojo in Japan do not have heaters and you brave the cold during the winter (be it indoors). Hawaii's climatic conditions are even better than Okinawa. It would be nice to find a private place outdoors in Hawaii to practice. Humm...


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Fighting Mentality

Several months ago, me, Sensei, and Snaggy were eating at a Zippy's after practice and talking story, something that happens fairly often. Our conversations end up wandering all over the place, but almost always return to fighting (and food or the other simple pleasures in life). We shifted towards talking about fighting mentality, and one of Sensei's favorite quotes on the subject was revisited. "Tatakaeba, kanarazu katsu." This literally means, "if you fight, win." This line was taken from the 1970s Japanese samurai TV classic, Yagyu Clan Conspiracy. Don't let the cinema or the simplicity fool you. It has to be one of the more resounding statements on the subject. But I will let Sonny Chiba do the talking.



(vid updated... old one was taken down)

For those of you who cannot view the clip, it goes like this:

The secret doctrine of the Ura Yagyu states: "Once engaged in battle, fight to win. That is the first and cardinal rule of battle. Supress all human emotions and compassion. Kill whosoever stands in thy way, even if that be God or Buddha. Only then can one master the essence of the art. Once it is mastered, thou shall fear no one, though the devil himself may block thy way."

What stronger mentality is there? What greater way to achieve ippon kowashi?

This isn't recklessly attacking, blind confidence, or mere words; this is resolution. Without it, you cannot be truly strong.

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The Worst Horse

I like to write. I like karate. I like to write about karate. I've written a few things about the technical side of Chibana's karate, some with varying degrees of conceptualization, some with faint glimmers of understanding, and some with nothing at all.

But maybe I jumped the gun. Perhaps it's a little early to get carried away and write only about understanding. If this blog is supposed to be a reflection of my training, I should be writing about failure... and frustration. Leaving that out would only be telling half the story. No, a lot less than that.

During practice the other day, Sensei roundly scolded me about constantly filling my cup. He said I get carried away after getting enamored with some minor achievement or another which causes me to exaggerate whatever adjustment I made and end up worse off than before. I was a bit hurt and then angry, because anger is an easy emotion that blocks off pain, just like how you might press your finger after you cut it, since the feeling of pressure overrides all else. I started to say, "I don't think I fill my cup with confidence." But I cut myself off after the second word. What did I fill it with, then? Was it confidence? Was it ignorance? Fear of failure, maybe? Was it me focusing too much on not doing it wrong rather than doing it right? I'm no psychologist, but it's probably some combination of all these. Ultimately, does it matter? Whatever the case, he was right. My frame of mind was wrong.

Sensing my deep frustration (I felt very low at that point and was such doing a terrible job of hiding it that you'd have to be blind not to see it), Sensei fell back on an old favorite of his that a lot of us students have read, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki mentions the following:

"... it is said there are four kinds of horse: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the thrid one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run!"

Yeah, no kidding. I'm just trying to learn how to walk.

Echoing Suzuki's commentary on this, Sensei mentioned that everyone wants to be the best horse, but in the end, the fourth horse may end up being the best one after all. Haven't the lessons on running been beaten into the horse's very bones?

In the end, Sensei's whip is there to snap me into the right frame of mind (after the stinging subsides). I always remark that I'd rather have my ego bruised and have good karate than get physically bruised or worse on the street. Of course, like everything else in karate, easier said than done. Sensei told me that all too often, people would say don't take criticisms personally. He then gave his smile with that tinge of amusement and said, "No, you have to take it personally." And... he's right.

I don't know about me eventually becoming the best horse, but I certainly feel like the worst horse right now. Maybe that's the hard part. I'm used to being the best horse. Certainly not in everything (my ego isn't that large). But mostly in the things I care about. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been frustrated by something I cared about this much.

Sensei and the others always like to say "From frustration comes enlightenment." I like Snaggy's corollary to this: "Correction was not a function of time training but one of frustration. After a while, you get so disgusted looking at an ugly kata that you gotta do something..."

Frustration... check.
Willingness to get better... check.
Training... check.
Training correctly... working on that.

In the end, it boils down to training (correctly). I wish there was a shortcut. But as usual, easier said than done. Time for this horse to get going.

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Strongest Move in Shorin Ryu

Someone on Ebudo.com asked rhetorically what the best bunkai (what we call imi, or meaning) for moves from our kata were. Rather than answering rhetorically or philosophically, I answered technically. I don't know about you, but I hate answers that are just "whatever move you are comfortable with" or things like that. My answer was our opening move from our most "basic" kata, kihon shodan. Not that I can take credit for coming up with this on my own, since my instructor talks about it a lot.

I can take credit (blame) for the (potentially flawed) explanation below, however. Those who practice any Chibana-descended lineage school should be familiar with the movement, even if the execution is different. From what I've seen, the meaning tends to be the same among many of the Chibana schools. However, the meaning is just the starting place for study, not the finish line.

Stand in a natural stance, feet about shoulder-width apart (at 45 degree angles) and fists down in front. Weight is in a 50/50 distribution, centered.

Your left foot sweeps out in a crescent step (I get hazy on the exact terminology). Basically, sweeps in and out along an arc and returns to a position shoulder-width apart, but settles back in to where the back of the left foot would be on the same horizontal line as the toe of the right foot. So the left foot ends up slightly forward of its original position with the toes slightly inward and the heel slightly outward.

As the leg and foot moves out, the left arm forms a similar arc, going from in front of your left side, out in front to your right side, and then back in front of your left side, only it does so in an arc along the entire path and ends up around chest level. During the outward sweep, the fingers of the hand are pointed out straight with the thumb pointing down.

Towards the end of the movement, the gripping with the hand takes place. As the gripping takes place, it is timed with the settling of the left foot which pulls the opponent down and off balance with your body weight instead of your arm. It is important to clear the space in front so that an attack from the opponent's left or right side will be cleared. The actual grabbing occurs at the end.

Also during the movement, the concept of back pull is used, where both sides of the back are pulling inwards as if pinching the shoulder blades together as the body angles off (the body doesn't have to angle off, it just does in this technique). This makes the technique stronger by employing both sides of the body and avoiding a collapse in posture. Using the proper muscles is important so the technique locks down properly with your body weight and pulls rather than pushes or rises.

The grab as described above is meant to be used whether the person is attacking you or just trying to put up a guard which you can clear easily (no sense punching around his hands, just move them out of the way). Obviously, it requires a closing of distance, which if studied, is aided by the stepping as described as the distance enters fighting range.

After all that stuff happens at the same time, you punch him... which would also take a while to explain, but I'll leave it at that.

If one watches from the side, it looks like a really simple move, but the concepts of how the weight is controlled, how clearing and entry takes place, how the basic punch is executed, posture, etc. form the basis of study for every single move in our kata. The moves we tend to do are very simple, but we put a lot of work into them.

I wish doing this was as easy as writing about it.

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Shallowness of Thought

"First of all, everyone fancies the insignificant principles of the martial arts, whether in knowing how to give the wrist a three to five inch advantage with the fingertips, or in understanding how to gain the victory by extending the forearm by handling a fan. Or again, by taking up a bamboo sword or something like it, all may study the simple advantage of speed and, in learning the functions of the hands and feet, specialize in the lesser advantages of alacrity."
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, 1645

Sadly, the no-nonsense warning issued centuries ago by the great fighter Miyamoto Musashi remains largely unheeded today. Many martial artists, traditional or otherwise, pride themselves on their debates over the advantages of circular vs. linear, hard vs. soft, punching vs. palm strikes, knowledge of "bunkai" (application), etc. This reveals shallowness of thought and fighting ability. Ignorant of the mechanics of generating power or the other realities of fighting, they are reduced to smugly debating these "lesser advantages". I was one of these "enlightened martial scholars" focusing on buzzwords rather than practical application. My goal was certainly practical application, but my entire mindset was incorrect, reflected by participating in these pointless debates so prevalent today. Many will claim to be in agreement with me, but most will not be intellectually honest with themselves. Now, I care little for the differences between linear and circular, nor do I obsess about grappling or being "soft" or "hard". All I know is strong or weak, effective or useless. As Musashi would say, "study this well."



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Hawaii Karate Kenkyukai

On Saturday, 22 September, the Hawaii Karate Kenkyukai (Research Association) held its first meeting. Like any good karate research association worth its salt, it wasn't about committees or reading dusty old history books, it was just training. The instructors present were Senseis Bobby Lowe (Kyokushin), Pat Nakata (Shorin Ryu), Alan Lee (Goju Ryu), Charles Goodin (Kishaba-juku Shorin Ryu), and G. Hisae Ishii-Chang (Shotokan). There were several students from various instructors, although I was the only student of Nakata Sensei present.

As we all had different ways of doing things, we worked on some of the simple basics of punching. Nakata Sensei introduced our methodology of punching and had everyone put the theory to the test by punching some hand pads. Observing everyone's punching styles allowed me to see advantages and disadvantages of each. We also practiced the concept of "creating a one-step" situation where you take advantage of understanding range to pick off an opponent when he has to cross certain range boundaries in order to attack. It was interesting to note that despite the necessity of moving forward into the attack for this to work, some people still had the natural tendency to adjust range backwards before launching their counter strike. Throughout this section and the entire training, there was continued emphasis on natural striking, moving into the opponent, and smooth movement.

We then moved on to some gedan mawashigeri (low roundhouse kicks), which are definitely not my specialty. To add a little realism, attackers and defenders were allowed to move around. While my mawashi geri isn't all that great, as we tend to employ simple, direct kicks in training, I saw the effectiveness of breaking up an attack or defense using the direct walk-in to the opponent. This was the same for the one-step situation creation earlier.

Afterwards, we worked on a little self-defense drills run by the Kyokushin group and some people did some sparring as well. As with the other parts, it was interesting to observe the fighting styles of the participants.

All in all, it was enjoyable and I think everyone benefited from the exposure to the multiple viewpoints offered during the training. I look forward to the next session.


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What Is Okinawan Karate?

Over the years, my view on what Okinawan karate is has changed dramatically, so I will now restate my views.

The Okinawan Shorin karate that I know is smooth, relaxed, and powerful. The stances are natural, narrower, and shorter with toes pointed out to allow the flowing of hara forward and stepping is done heel to toe. Weight is towards the outside of the foot. The transition between each technique is just as important as the endpoint, to include how stepping is done and how the entire body moves from A to B. Moving with the weight continually into the opponent to crowd him is what we call "osae".

Flow does not mean there is no kime. Without kime, there is nothing, just like without a strong stance or a good posture, there is nothing. There is no muscling of technique, but there is an incredible amount of muscle, ligament, and tendon usage.

The rhythm of movement is done at a natural breathing pace with no artificial breathing. While it does flow, there is a staccato when there is kime. It flows relaxed into the kime. Each movement is done with a separate "count", as maximum power is generated for each block, strike, and kick. The goal is to end the confrontation with a single technique.

The emphasis on analysis is not on "what" is being done in kata, but on "how" it is being done. Knowing the meaning of movements is necessary, but knowing how to do it is essential. The interaction of stance, posture, timing, weight, and muscle/tendon/ligament/skeleton usage is what is analyzed. The "what" appears to be incredibly basic, because it is. The vast majority of our meanings for kata are simply punch, kick, and block. There is some grappling, but it is quite simple--again, the emphasis being on "how" and the transition between movements rather than "what". The meaning, or bunkai (popular term used nowadays), should match the kata movement exactly. Any deviation and either the meaning or the movement is wrong.

When fighting, there is no offset between you and the opponent. You walk straight in and destroy him; there is no deviation. The goal is not an exchange of technique, it is one-sided destruction.

Okinawan karate is neither Chinese nor Japanese; it is Okinawan. It borrowed some from Chinese arts, but its nature and development is uniquely Okinawan. I have seen karate with so much flow and no kime it looks like Tai Chi. I have seen karate with so much tension and muscling it looks like the robot. I have seen karate with so much grappling it looks like judo or chin na. None of these is the Okinawan karate I know.