The difficulty of preserving tradition.
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(begin quote) “It is very difficult to keep tradition, not only in karate do, but also in other martial arts. In order to do so, both teachers and students seriously need to do their best. Students need to have an understanding of karate while enjoying it. Of course, teachers have to pass on all their knowledge and technique to their students. I think this is very important.” (end quote) – Sadaaki Sakagami 4th Soke Itosu-ryu
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If you teach or run a traditional martial arts school, it seems that today kids will make up the majority of your students.
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For most kids, their first exposure to “martial arts” are movies, cartoons and TV shows. They will see a superhero in a costume flying in the air throwing spectacular spinning kicks, performing acrobatic feats, getting into exotic poses, screaming their lungs out.
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Watching modern sport karate, the “bunkai” to the kata performed in front of an audience, is now full of gymnastic moves, leaps, tumbles and acrobatic floor routines, reminiscent of Olympic floor gymnastics, perhaps mimicking those movies and TV shows.
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Can the old more traditional karate exist alongside its theatrical equivalent?
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Unfortunately, many of the actual applications to kata have been lost in time, either because they were not passed on by the teachers of today, or the students who received the old techniques have decided to make changes to the kata for aesthetic, competition and stylistic purposes. So now, traditional martial artists are left with forms that are mainly judged on how “pretty” the kata looks. Therefore, the “combat” applications derived from these modified kata really don’t make sense in real-world settings.
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Being traditional does not mean that things don’t change. It means we are following the principles used in the past. Tradition is not history. History refers to nothing more than the measurement of the passage of time. Tradition, on the other hand, is about continuity, and evolution.
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I believe in sharing the knowledge we have been given by others with the hope that someday, in some way, it again will be passed on and shared. However, we are not to create students in our own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.
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The tradition and culture of pre-war karate can still exist in the present day, but it is different fundamentally from its earlier ancestry.??
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? Photo Credit: Itosu-ryu Karatedo International Federation. Quote from an interview with Sadaaki Sakagami 2002
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