Fragmentation and Preservation

Only a few short days ago, Tashi Jim Logue, Taika Seiyu Oyata's senior student, passed from this world. It came as something of a surprise. I knew he'd had cancer. I knew he made trips every so often to a cancer-treatment facility (all of which I assumed were to verify that he was still cancer-free). I knew he'd been in the hospital recently. I did not know, and possibly others did not know, that his death from cancer was so imminent.

The whole thing put me in mind of something that I've thought about from time to time: what will happen to Taika Oyata's karate when the inevitable happens and he, too, passes from this world? It is true that Okinawans are the longest-lived people on the planet, on average, and it is true that Taika Oyata's father lived to a very old age, and it is true that Taika Oyata may well live another twenty years. And yet it is also true that he cannot live forever, and eventually, his organization, the RyuTe Renmei, will be headed by someone else. I am sure that that person will be someone of knowledge and integrity. Every person within the RyuTe Renmei with whom I've talked or corresponded has been very dedicated to Taika and his system. They have all been classy people. I have not met any exceptions.

And yet the good folks in the RyuTe Renmei are not the only people Taika has taught. There are a number of people who have studied under Taika and who are no longer with his organization for one reason or another. Do not ask me why. I know none of them and cannot even begin to speculate on why they left or were shown the door. But there are a number of them, some of whom were promoted to fairly high rank before they left. Now, it is true that the art as Taika has taught it has changed somewhat over the years. My own teacher thinks that this is because Taika is still analyzing the art, as he was taught to do by his teachers, still splitting pages within the book, as my teacher might put it, and also because Taika has revealed more of the art as his students have demonstrated themselves capable of understanding and handling it. This should not surprise anyone who has seen a person learn--well, anything, even simple cooking. It is pointless to try to teach a person how to make puff pastry if he has not yet demonstrated the ability to make egg noodles. So it is true that a person who left Taika's organization years ago, despite having attained high rank, would not be teaching exactly the same thing that is being taught in the RyuTe Renmei right now.

And yet, nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances under which they left, and regardless of how long ago they left, each of these people can legitimately claim to have been taught by Taika Oyata and to have been promoted to high rank. And that is nothing to sneeze at! I well remember having first been introduced to what was then called Ryukyu Kempo, back in the eighties (I trained for a while, then dropped out for many years, in case you were wondering. I have not been training continuously since the eighties!). I had been training in Taekwon-do for some little time; my next promotion would have been to black belt. I had trained under two seventh-dans, one sixth-dan, and two third-dans. Not one of those people showed me material as advanced as what my teacher showed me then. Not ONE. Not even close. Nor have I seen the like amongst the local Japanese Goju Ryu crowd (though I have much respect for them and their organization and follow them closely online). In other words, a person might have left Taika's organization fifteen years ago and "missed out" on some of the information he's revealed over the last several years, and he would still, in my opinion, be teaching material vastly better than most people in most "karate" classes around the country are getting.

And that is where I start remembering Yip Man. You may not know about him (I'm sure many do!). He was a very famous kung fu teacher in Hong Kong, a remarkable fellow who'd learned Wing Chun back on mainland China before managing to escape to Hong Kong. Yip Man's kung fu was widely known to be extremely street-effective. He taught a number of people over the years, and last I heard, I believe that there were a minimum of three people claiming to have been his "closed-door" disciple, the only inheritor of the true art of Wing Chun kung fu! And the thing is, each of these people is apparently good enough that you might well believe their claims!

I'm sure there are other cases like this. As a matter of fact, I know there are. Look at the history of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu in Japan. Apparently, that system didn't survive intact past the death of its founder. If I understand correctly, one of the founder's sons went on to teach the Shogun's family, and another stayed behind in the family village, with the one son eventually deciding that the other son had changed some elements of their father's system, and founding his own sub-system, the Owari Yagyu Shinkage Ryu (Don't quote me on this, I may have the details wrong!). And it went downhill from there!

Look at the history of aikido since Ueshiba Morihei's death.

Come to think of it, since there is a sizeable Japanese Goju Ryu crowd 'round here, look at Goju Ryu! How many different sorts of Goju Ryu can you name? Off the top of my head, there is Goju Ryu as taught by the Jundokan, by Morio Higaonna, Seikichi Toguchi, Peter Urban's Goju USA, Lou Angel's Tenshi Goju, "Chinese" Goju, Gogen Yamaguchi's Goju-Kai, and who knows what else!

History and human nature being what they are, then, I find myself wondering how many of Taika's former students will someday be claiming to have been shown the real, true art of karate, of Ryukyu Kempo, to have been Taika's secret disciple. Will any of them have the cheek to claim that that they have it right and the RyuTe Renmei has it wrong? It sounds absurd, but--again, human nature being what it is--I would bet you dollars to donuts that that is exactly what happens.

I'd love to be able to say that I know how to prevent this, but I haven't a clue. And it will be a darn shame when it happens.

Tashi Logue's death also put me in mind of the vital necessity of teaching what you know whilst you have the chance. You never know just how much time you have. Tashi Logue certainly set the example in this case. He worked hard to share his knowledge.

The reality is that each of these systems--I am talking about the older, more classical martial systems--is, at any given time, but one generation away from extinction (the same has often been noted of Christianity, by the way). It is not possible to learn it all from a book or video and there are never enough people practicing them. They are not the same as systems like Taekwon-do or Shotokan or Japanese Goju Ryu or Aikido or Judo or Kendo, which have millions of practitioners throughout the world. I would not be at all surprised to find that there are fewer than five thousand RyuTe students worldwide. The majority of those, of course, are not yet qualified to be teachers. While I do not know, have never tried to make a count, it would not at all surprise me if the depressing reality is that there are really very few members of the Renmei ranked fourth dan or above. Or perhaps there is a high percentage of people ranked at that level, but a high percentage of a small number is still a small number.

This is very sad in a way, yet it is also completely amazing that there is a RyuTe Renmei at all. You can put it down to divine providence or sheer dumb luck as you prefer, but if I understand what I've read and been told correctly, the content Taika Oyata learned from his first two teachers might well have perished with them had he not encountered them. I have certainly not seen anything quite like what my own teacher has shown me anywhere else. That is significant. Over the decades, I have acquired what has to be, I think, as solid a martial-arts library as can be had in English. I have works on aikido, on jujutsu, on judo, on karate, on pressure points, acupuncture, and chin na. I have watched way too many hours of video online. And I am serious, as serious as a heart attack, when I say that what Taika Oyata has revealed, as passed on to me by my own teacher, is different. Not that you can't find similar techniques in those other martial arts. More than once my teacher has said things like, "This is how they do it in aikido. We just do this little (fill in the blank) to (fill in the blank)." There are techniques that look a lot like what we do in RyuTe, but in RyuTe there is always something, something that changes the results of the technique from the "oh-crap-that-hurts" or the "oh-crap-where-did-my-balance-go?" elicited by other systems to the "OHCRAPWHERETHE****DIDTHATCOMEFROM?" that you get with RyuTe. It is just not like anything else, and it was almost lost. As my own teacher has told me repeatedly, Taika's teachers were not, per se, teachers, they were upper-class fighting men, nobles. As far as I can tell from what I've read and been told, Taika Oyata was not simply their premier student, he was their only student, and had he not been there at the right time, huge chunks of the real Okinawan martial traditions would simply have vanished, lost to time. More, the world would not have even known it! The world would have gone right on assuming that what they were being shown in the dojo of modern karate systems was all that there was (as a matter of fact, I have read some fairly amusing stuff fairly obviously premised on the idea that modern karate is all that there is--that is, there are still a pretty fair number of people who simply will not admit to themselves that there is more to the kata or to vital point striking or to karate's grappling than Funakoshi revealed in Karate-Do Kyohan.)

But because Taika Oyata was there, and because he, in turn, has been willing to teach, those centuries-old skills are largely in the hands of middle-class Americans. I sometimes wonder if people fully appreciate what a huge leap he has made in choosing to entrust us with this art. I hope that we do not fail him--and in a larger sense, our neighbors--by failing to pass it on. I think he has certainly done everything humanly possible to make sure that the knowledge is not altogether lost, even if no one else of his capabilities arises for a long time to come. I hope also that everyone realizes that preserving that body of knowledge is going to have to be something of a team effort--have to be, I say, and I am quite sure I am not the first person to have thought along these lines! You see, as far as I know, the weapons knowledge--nunchaku, sai, bo, jo, and so forth--is split up, kind of as though there are, shall we say, "subject matter experts." My own teacher knows the jo very well, and also can teach sai--but although he has nunchaku and tanbo in the weapons racks, he does not know the kata for those weapons and wouldn't venture teaching more than the most basic movements. I am given to understand that this situation is not uncommon--that there are people that know nunchaku pretty well, but not chizikunbo, or vice versa, and so on.

This body of martial knowledge doesn't reside in one man--other than Taika Oyata--but in a body of men, in the RyuTe Renmei and especially in Shin Shu Ho. Part of me wonders if Taika Oyata didn't set it up that way deliberately, so that they would have to stay united.

I won't be in a position to teach much of anything for another couple of years. At that time, I hope to begin teaching on a modest scale, under my own teacher's direction. I particularly hope to spread RyuTe amongst the local homeschooling community. They--homeschoolers and RyuTe--seem natural fits for one another. And I hope that in a modest way, I can thereby contribute to keeping this system alive amongst people who truly need it. And I hope that when the inevitable occurs, I hope that it can be said of me that I played my part in keeping this knowledge available for others.

Bad News

I just heard via e-mail from my teacher that Jim Logue, Taika Seiyu Oyata's senior student, just passed away from cancer.

Very bad news. I have the impression that he was a Christian man, though I don't recall where I heard it. He will be missed, and severely.

Nothing Like a Certain Someone's Kyusho

I suspect anyone interested will know immediately to whom I am referring, and a handful may know what put the subject into my head.

For the one or two people out there wondering, yes, I have a Certain Someone's books, have read them, and I am also studying Taika Oyata's RyuTe under a seventh dan who has been with the system for something like thirty years.

If you're wondering, no, what I have been taught and/or have seen in RyuTe is, I do not hesitate to say, nothing like a Certain Someone's kyusho.

There it is, for what it's worth. People wanting more of what I think about the subject are advised to search Openhand's blog for "kyusho" and "kyusho-jitsu" (or "kyusho-jutsu"--can't remember how he spells it). He says it better than I do anyhow.

My Brain is Full

I went to one of Taika Seiyu Oyata's seminars over the weekend. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but could not escape the feeling throughout the seminar that I was an utterly uncoordinated idiot, quite unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.

All I was trying to do was learn a new exercise. You wouldn't think it would be that hard. I think I've got it, that is, I think I can execute the movements in the correct order. Haltingly and at a glacial pace, perhaps, but I think I can do it. Perhaps in a week I won't look like Frankenstein's monster whilst I do it.

This seems to be one of the benefits to training in RyuTe. You WILL, via some very considerable challenges to your physical coordination, forge new neural pathways. As some consider that sort of thing one of the means by which you avoid age-related mental deterioration, that is a good thing.

A note: if you, as a practitioner of some other martial art, had happened to be in a roomful of RyuTe yudansha on Friday night, and had you known no better, it is my bet that there is no way on God's green earth you would have identified what they were doing as Okinawan karate. It is increasingly hard for me to read people's commentaries on "karate" without thinking to myself, "But there is no way that you've seen 'karate,' at least 'karate' as it was 150 years ago." I'm very serious. What you are seeing as "karate" and what Taika Oyata is teaching his students are different. The surface appearance may be similar, but the underlying reality is very different indeed.

Another YouTube Naihanchi Tour

In this one, I put together some of the video dealing with Naihanchi applications, instead of just performance.

Now, a caveat: I am not going to comment on the appropriateness, effectiveness, or silliness--whatever the case may be--of any set of these applications. Nor am I going to say anything like, "This is similar to what we do in RyuTe." Even if there are surface appearances of similarity between some of the applications in these videos and some of the applications I have seen in RyuTe, there are likely to be minor differences, and those minor differences are often more critical than you might think at first glance. For example--although this doesn't have anything to do per se with Naihanchi--I once kept trying to duplicate a movement I'd seen Taika do on one of his tapes, a movement drawn from Pinan Shodan. I just couldn't reliably get the movement to work on my eldest son, who is noticeably stronger than I am. So I asked my teacher about it and when he saw what I was doing, he immediately said, "Oh, you're missing the nerve strike."

Nerve strike? I didn't see any nerve strike on the tape. Well, turns out it's a subtle-looking, scraping sort of thing that doesn't leap out at you when you see it. You have to be looking for it--but once you know how to do it, the movement works very nicely.

At any rate, I don't want to give anyone the impression that if they get good at some of these applications, they have somehow absorbed some RyuTe into their repertoire.

I would say that the applications shown here are not even close to being exhaustive. I have certainly not seen every possible application of the Naihanchi movements, let alone practiced them. Doing so would be the work of years.

Shoot, this isn't even an exhaustive selection of the bunkai videos on this kata. There were lots more to look at, but I was pretty sure that most people wouldn't even play this many.

Y'know, Choki Motobu was said to know only a handful of kata at most. I seem to recall reading that at least one writer said he knew only Naihanchi. Well, if true, it's no drawback. The reality is that Naihanchi Shodan alone contains enough material that the mastery thereof might well occupy a lifetime.

I know that a lot of you don't believe that, or at least are having a hard time accepting it. I don't blame you. All you see is the 45 seconds or so of movement. You haven't seen different timings, you haven't seen what my instructor called "Naihanchi turnaround," you haven't seen how the stepping motions work, the incredible number of uses to which those "double blocks" can be put, and so forth.

Oh well. I won't lose any sleep over your refusal to believe it. In the meantime, enjoy the clips!















Shoot, let's stop there. There are actually many more clips available on YouTube. If I had linked to them all, you would be here all day...

Openhand on MMA

This was just too entertaining not to quote. I have made a couple of small edits for language. Not that I haven't heard it all before--I've been in the Corps, y'know--but there are some that come here that would just as soon avoid it.

I keep reading Blog's, that “tip-toe” around the whole MMA issue, and frankly I'm sick of it. These individual's are skilled “sports” figures. They are by no means skilled combatants. If you watch one of these matches, note that every one of them, is in prime physical condition. They're young, strong and full of ---- and vinegar. ALL, notable attributes for a “sporting” contestant. I would defy you to take any of them, at age 45 or older, and see if anything (that they presently do in this MMA ----) even works for them at that time. When you can present to me, multiple 70+ year old practitioner’s of any of this MMA (or related) trash, that's even able to do it (much less force any of it to work) then maybe I'll consider bestowing any respect towards it. The difference being (between that tripe, and what I practice) is that I have an example to aspire towards. Granted, he isn't 70 year's old (he's freakin' 83 year's old!), but I would definitely feel more confident knowing what he knows, compared to anything that these MMA/ground-fighting/what-ever mook’s are selling.

Truthfully, most people that I know have hardly any interest in martial arts at all, so they basically don't listen to me ramble on about it, but once in a while, very rarely, someone will ask me why I insist that RyuTe is different from what they have come to know as "karate."

I always point first to myself (48 years old, about 200 pounds, of which only about 15 is excess, in tolerably decent shape, that is, resting pulse rate usually about 66 bpm, blood pressure good) and then to my instructor (62 years old, probably no more than 160 pounds, weak from the ongoing therapy to completely eliminate a cancer, on oxygen, only about 30 percent lung capacity) and note that, yes, he can make the techniques work on me. No hay problemo. You do not need to be Hoss Cartwright to make this system work.

If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will.

The 83-year-old to whom Openhand refers, if you didn't already know, is Taika Seiyu Oyata.

Openhand on Tuite

More than a few times lately--well, shoot, over the years--I've read comments and blogposts about tuite and kyusho from people that are--well, they're just interesting, I'll put it that way. People will tell you to rap someone in the temple with a backfist--a technique involving a striking surface about the size of a fifty-cent piece impacting a target about the size of a fifty-cent piece--whilst simultaneously deriding nerve strikes (I am not making this up. I read a piece by one of the highest-ranking Isshin Ryu masters in North America doing this very thing.) They'll tell you that tuite is too complex, too much of a "fancy technique," to work in combat, under stressful conditions.

God knows I don't claim to be an expert on either kyusho or tuite, but I am pretty sure that anyone telling you such things isn't all that good at either one. Tuite is not very complex, not really, at least what I have been shown. It is simply the practical application of anatomy and body mechanics in a defensive situation. You are drilling the motions, over and over and over, in kata. You do not, under stress, have to rummage through your memory to find appropriate techniques any more than you have to rummage through your memory for appropriate driving maneuvers when you are trying to avoid an accident. Just like striking techniques, tuite kind of "pops out" of you when appropriate, if you are doing the practice. And if you are seeking techniques that do not require that you practice them in order for them to be readily effective for you, I would suggest that you are kind of wasting your time practicing martial arts in the first place.

Tuite is darned effective, once it becomes natural to you. I keep going back to the example of my own instructor, but that's because he's the perfect illustration. Doggone it, the man's a fairly smallish, ill, weak, oxygen patient of sixty-two years age, and he can quickly and easily overpower either me or my son with tuite. It doesn't require muscle. It can slam you to the deck in a heartbeat.

All I'll say about nerve strikes here is that in my limited experience, as you become more familiar with them, the vulnerable areas become easier to find and hit. I have learned painfully from my son that eventually, it becomes darn hard to miss those nerves. Dadgummit, the booger hardly ever misses my nerves...

All of which is to suggest that if you are interested in the subject, you visit this post by Openhand. It's a short education in the subject.

Don't Just Assume Stupidity

I was explaining--what was I explaining? Kinda hard to put it into words, I guess--my general approach to life, the universe, and everything to a co-worker a week or so ago.

"My general thinking is that individual people and what they do may be stupid," I said, "but in general, the people as a group are wise, and you can usually count on this: if things have been done a certain way for a long, long time, there's a reason. I may not know what that reason is, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason. And it's true that sometimes it turns out there isn't a reason, or the reason has been lost to the passage of time, or the reason may have been relevant a thousand years ago, but isn't anymore. But for the most part, people as a body are not stupid, and you're well-advised to at least consider the old ways thoroughly before discarding them. There may be more to them than you think."

I wouldn't have remembered that conversation, probably, but a blogpost concerning a particular martial arts technique that one noted individual had dramatically changed for his system reminded me of it. Y'see, I'd given, as an example of my thinking, my personal experience with taekwon-do and RyuTe.

I made it almost all the way to shodan--first-degree black belt--in taekwon-do. That was a fairly long time ago, and there were still plenty of taekwon-do teachers around whose teaching was not exclusively geared to sporting competitions. Not that I didn't learn tournament sparring--I did--but I also learned the old ITF hyung that were based on the Okinawan kata, and, overall, I'd say I learned how to hit pretty hard, not just how to score points.

Those old hyung always puzzled me. Why, I wondered, were we being told to "chamber" both hands like so before executing a double punch (or whatever)? Why were there "salutes" in the hyung? I never really got answers to those questions, and many like them, but I never doubted for an instant that there were perfectly good reasons we did those things. I just didn't know what the reasons were.

To me, it came down to a relatively simple question: were the people who made those hyung, those kata, stupid? If I wasn't prepared to assume from the get-go that they were stupid or ignorant--and of course, I had been told that the forms originated with masters long ago--then I had to assume that those not-stupid, not-ignorant people had reasons for what they did.

When I wound up with the opportunity to study RyuTe (then traveling under the name "Ryukyu Kempo"), I found the reasons. The movements did indeed have meanings. Stacked hands, like in a "chamber," meant something. There were effective techniques connected with such motions and positions. The old masters weren't dolts. Every "block," every strike, every motion and position of the legs, forward and reverse, has meaning and applications.

The fact that I didn't know they were there when I was studying taekwon-do didn't mean they weren't there. The fact that it takes more than a handful of repetitions to get good at them doesn't mean they aren't quick and effective.

Every so often, I'm glad I didn't decide, before I began to understand techniques a little better (I will readily admit that I still have much to learn), to just discard or modify the old ways and go on to something different in the name of modernity. Without wishing to seem critical, it seems to me that rather a lot of people have done that, not just in martial arts, but as regards life in general. The "noted individual" to whom I obliquely referred a moment ago may well have been a case in point, in that the dramatic change he made had a certain surface-level logic to it, but when he made it, he discarded countless applications that can only be correctly performed when the technique is performed--you guessed it!--the old way. Whether he understood this and chose to make the change in the name of simplifying things for his American students, or whether he didn't understand it and just thought the old masters must not have quite "gotten it," I don't know.

I just know I do my best not to make that mistake, again, not just in martial arts, but as regards life in general. The old ways have survived for a reason. It might be worth your time to determine what that reason is before discarding them.

---

Just my two cents. No disrespect intended. Not naming names is deliberate, as the idea here is to illustrate a point, not to make anyone feel bad or anything.

---

The Weird Thing About Kata

It wasn't that many years ago that you could very easily find people in the martial arts world completely dismissing the practice of kata. A lot of people thought it was stupid.

I never thought kata was stupid, not even when I had no real clue what I was doing with it. You see, I took it for granted that the people who created and preserved the kata weren't idiots. I had enough common sense, just barely, to realize that there had to be a purpose to those things we called "chambers." Had to be. Only an idiot would take such a position without a darn good reason, so I figured there had to be a reason. I just didn't know what it was.

The other day, over at Okinawan Fighting Art: Isshin Ryu, Mr. James published, making reference in the process to something that Shotokan's Rob Redmond wrote, Elmar Schmeisser's rules for interpreting kata. There are, of course, other sets of rules for interpreting kata. There are the rules that Toguchi Seikichi said that Miyagi Chojun gave him (read this), which the authors of The Way of Kata expound in even more detail. Then there is the approach that Javier Martinez takes in Okinawan Karate, The Secret Art of Tuite. (This seems to be out of print. Amusingly, someone has priced the only used copy that Amazon lists at almost a thousand simoleons. It was an interesting book, but I guarantee you, it ain't worth that much. You could buy the whole set of Taika Seiyu Oyata's tapes for half that, and you could buy everything that Yang Jwing-Ming has written about chin na for less than a couple hundred, I'm sure.

On the other hand, I do own a copy that's in pretty good shape. I'll let it go for a comparative pittance--say, five hundred bucks. Anybody up for that?) Bruce Clayton seems to take another approach in Shotokan's Secret. The RyuTe Renmei, under Taika Seiyu Oyata's guidance and leadership, uses yet another approach. It will surprise no one that I am most impressed with RyuTe's approach. It consistently produces an effect known in the blogosphere as either headdesk or facepalm, that is, when you, if you come to RyuTe from a different system, as I did, and you see some of the RyuTe applications for all those movements you've wondered about for years, they are so intuitively obvious that you immediately want to slap yourself silly for not having seen it before.

But you know what's weird? It seems to me that all of the interpretive approaches I mentioned above (and I'm sure that I've left some out) yield at least some usable techniques. This is in spite of the fact that sometimes those methods seem dramatically different from one another. One method I've read insists that the movements of the kata be followed in order; that method produces at least some usable techniques. Another method considers the movements as though they are linked in modules. Here is what you do if the opponent grabs your wrist. Then, if he does this, you do that. And if that, then this. That method also produces at least some usable techniques. They all produce at least some usable techniques.

It seems to me that no matter what approach you take to interpreting the kata, if you do the creators and preservers of the kata this one favor, that of assuming that they weren't complete fools and really look hard for useful techniques, the kata will do you the favor of yielding up at least some of its secrets to you.

Mercy in the Melee: Another Answer to "What is Karate?"

My blogospheric friend, Dr. Pat Parker--cardiac rehab guy, martial artist, notorious Presbyterian, and jalapeno-grower extraordinaire--occasionally posts video clips and or commentary answering the question, "What is karate?" They are always informative and interesting and have inspired me to take a stab at answering the question in my own way.

What is karate? The simplest answer is that, as far as my reading is concerned (I don't pretend to be an expert, or to have actually been to Okinawa, or to speak the language, etc., etc., etc.), it is the unarmed portion of the warrior-class martial arts of the Ryukyu archipelago, though it is not really easy to totally separate it from the weapons arts of that area, and in my not-so-expert opinion, they really should be considered together.

On a technical level, karate is a multifaceted art, comprised of a blend of indigenous Okinawan technique influenced by the continuous importation and reimportation of Chinese martial arts. Okinawan ti and tegumi seem to have influenced it, and it soaked up what the famous Chinese families of Kuninda brought to Okinawa, and what visiting Chinese emissaries and merchants brought--Monk Fist and Tiger Fist and White Crane, and probably others. As far as I can tell--and God knows this isn't authoritative, it is just my opinion--some of its footwork and certain other elements may have been influenced by the sword handling of the Japanese.

It makes brilliant use of the mechanics of human perception, that is--by the closest analogy I can make--like stage magic, it takes advantage of the way people naturally perceive and react to movement, so that often, the person on the receiving end of a technique never really sees it coming. Nerve techniques are everywhere, in the strikes, locks, and throws. All of this was "cooked," if you will, into a state of extreme efficiency by the pressures of dealing with the Okinawan political situation in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Obviously, this body of knowledge is better preserved in some modern karate organizations than others. Some, including some of the largest and most famous, seemed, until recently, to have been completely unaware that their formal exercises, or kata, contained much in the way of joint locks, for example, let alone nerve techniques. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I am convinced that this body of knowledge is best preserved in RyuTe.

But that is not all there is to karate. Karate, certainly as it has been taught to me in RyuTe, and generally throughout Okinawa, to judge from what I have heard and read, is also characterized by a profound respect for the value of human life--not only the defender's life, not only the lives of those being defended, but also the attacker's life. It is true that karate has its share of potentially lethal and disabling techniques, but killing and crippling opponents is not its goal. Its goal is to protect life. Ultimately, it is an expression of mercy--mercy shown to your own family, in the act of going home alive and unharmed, that you may continue to contribut to their well-being and development; mercy toward the defenseless, whom you may end up protecting, that they may do likewise; and mercy to attackers, that they might live to see the error of their ways and to embrace a new way of living.

The goal in karate is to protect human life wherever possible. It is mercy in conflict, mercy in the arena, mercy in the melee.

That's what karate is.

Just How Much Do You Really Need to Know About Self-Defense? Or, Getting Bugged for No Good Reason

I got to thinking about just how much a person really needs to know about self-defense in a roundabout sort of way. See, I was out at Herman and Kate Kaiser Library (the staff there are wunderbar, and the facility is to die for), and I happened to see a whole bunch of little kids all dressed up in karate uniforms about the place. Naturally, I had to ask, so when the black-belted lady who was taking registrations or memberships or whatever was done with everyone in line, I asked if she had a minute to tell me something about the system's (I will not name the system; I am not trying to denigrate or embarrass anyone here) background and history.

She started to tell me what the system was, that it was an "Americanized" (her word) self-defense system that--so I gathered--was developed principally by her aunt, who was one of the first black belts in another state (which I won't name), herself, and unspecified others. I clarified, telling her that what I meant was, was the system influenced by Goju Ryu, by Shotokan, or Taekwon-do, or what? And she still didn't have much of an answer, telling me that the instructors basically brought whatever they liked best from whatever other systems they had studied. So I asked if they had a particular set of kata that they worked with, and she allowed as how some of the students worked on the heian, or pinan forms (she didn't say pinan), and that they also let the kids make up their own kata.

She might as well have just bluntly said that she didn't have a clue what kata was all about. I didn't let on that that's what I thought, though. Just thanked her for taking the time to answer my questions and left.

The whole thing kind of bugged me, but it put me to thinking: would it be so bad, really, if she, her aunt, and a handful of others had put together their own system out of bits and pieces of other systems? The reality is that one of the most popular martial arts in North America, Ed Parker's American Kenpo (along with the multitudinous variants of Parker's system) arose from just that sort of thing. Who knows?

Maybe that lady is the next Ed Parker.

And just how much do you need to know about self-defense, anyway? You will never learn enough to stop a bullet, especially one fired at you by someone who hates you enough to lay in wait for you and gun you down while you're not looking. And...

...look, many years ago, when I was still quite young, I had an acquaintance about a year or so younger. I think I am remembering this story correctly, but it's been a long time. At any rate, this fellow had apparently informed on some nefarious character, and he had been threatened. The ne'er-do-well had threatened to bust my acquaintance's head when he got out of jail, and my acquaintance was concerned, for he had never given a thought to fighting in his life.

He wasn't able to take up martial arts at the time, and I ended up giving him some very simple techniques. I showed him a low sidekick (I may also have shown him a low front kick, but I can't remember for sure) and told him to practice it on a tree he had in his back yard. I also showed him (and a very flawed rendition it no doubt was, as I only knew what I had read) the basic Wing Chun punch. Now, I had heard that Bruce Lee once said, "When in doubt, straight blast," by which he meant deliver one of those punches after another, as fast as you can, constantly moving forward. I knew from experience (limited as it was at that time) that most people don't cope well with that. They end up getting hit whilst trying futilely to block one punch after another, or backpedaling so fast that they trip over their own feet.

And then I left him.

I heard later that he had in fact been assaulted by the ne'er-do-well, and that he had had his glasses broken and gotten a black eye. His assailant, on the other hand, wound up with a broken nose and a broken rib, so I guess that my guy "won" by a score of two broken bones to one black eye, if you want to think of it that way.

Successful self-defense? Some would say so. And look how little knowledge it took...

I remember when I was in taekwon-do. When I left, I was about two or three months away from taking the test for first-degree black belt. The reality is that I didn't really know anything at that level that I didn't know at the yellow belt level, except for a greater number of hyung, which was pretty much worthless, as no one (as I found out later) had a clue how to make them work (that was a biiiiiiig factor in my switch to RyuTe, or Ryukyu Kempo, as it was then known: they knew how to make the forms work; I just knew how to make them look good). Same kicks, same punches, same everything. I was just better at it.

Sometimes I think the same is true of more martial arts systems than you might think. There are a certain number of basic techniques and concepts, and advancement consists of getting better and better at those.

It's fairly clear that a lot of systems run out of testable curriculum by the time you reach third- or fourth-degree black belt, and advancements beyond that level are for time-in-grade, service to the organization, and so forth.

All of the above meandering thought, I guess, amounts to this: I think RyuTe is the foremost life-protection system out there. I really do.

On the other hand, there are a limited number of places in this country (anywhere, really) where you can learn it. And if you can't learn RyuTe, I suppose that if you picked up a good sidekick and front kick from karate, a good reverse punch, a good knife hand, a good elbow strike; if you picked up the "straight blast" from Wing Chun; if you picked up, say, the six most fundamental throws of judo; if you picked up the half-dozen most basic locks from Aikido; if you picked up a basic knowledge of the weak points of the human body; if you got better and better at those over five or six years--

Well, I don't suppose you'd be doing too badly. And maybe that's what this lady and her aunt were in the middle of doing.

Whether it bugged me or not.

Addition to the Blogroll

Let me introduce "Mike" of The Old Way. If you're interested in RyuTe, check it out.

If You're Even Remotely Interested in Karate Punching...

...you need to read this post. Seriously.

I have never, outside of RyuTe, been shown how to punch this way. The only thing that has come even remotely close is Kiyoshi Arakaki's instructions in The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques. Everybody, everywhere, starts out with "make a tight fist."

Interestingly, Arakaki says that Nagamine Shoshin showed him how to punch very similarly to this (though not identically), but in Nagamine's book, he tells the student, "Make a tight fist."

And you don't think some teachers hold back crucial information?

A YouTube Tour of Seisan

I'm not entirely sure what my favorite kata is. There are days when it might be Naihanchi Sandan, and there are days--lots of days--when I think it might be Seisan. Something about it appeals to me. Part of it, I am sure, is its antiquity. The kata is old, very old. I'm not at all sure that anyone knows for sure just how old it is, and practicing it, I almost feel like I've got a pipeline to practitioners of several hundred years ago.

Only God knows how many versions of Seisan there are. In RyuTe, we practice a version called "Tomari Seisan," and the further one goes along in learning the kata, the more variations you learn and investigate, until you might not find it entirely unfair to say that there are several versions of Seisan in RyuTe alone. I thought, for the amusement of those interested in such things, that I might gather a few clips of differing versions together.

First up, "Tomari Seisan" as performed by a former RyuTe practitioner, now practicing under the umbrella of the "Ryukyu Kempo Alliance." I would, of course, have posted a clip of a current RyuTe practitioner performing the kata, but there don't seem to be any examples on YouTube. This is as close as I could get.


Here's the Okinawa Kenpo Seisan. Okinawa Kenpo and RyuTe share some common lineage.


This is the JKA (Japan Karate Association, or Shotokan) version, which they call "Hangetsu."


Chito Ryu interests me. The founder was a physician, and I have often wondered exactly how much impact his medical knowledge had on his karate. This is their version.


This is Morio Higaonna of Goju Ryu fame. I am told that Donn Draeger (Don't know who Draeger was? Shame on you...) once said that Higaonna was "the most dangerous man in Japan in a real fight." I don't know about that. Wouldn't Draeger have had to know every man in Japan to say that? But still, Higaonna is a most impressive Goju practitioner, and here is his Seisan.


This is Goju Kai, or the mainland Japanese Goju Ryu organization.


This is Shito Ryu's version.


And here's Wado Ryu's Seisan.


Isshin Ryu is something of a blend of Shorin Ryu and Goju Ryu. Here's their Seisan


Shorin Ryu Seisan


Shorinji Ryu Seisan


Seibukan Seisan. Seibukan is, I reckon, another variant of Shorin Ryu. There must be at least half a dozen.


Uechi Ryu Seisan

Some Thoughts on Taika Oyata, Seikichi Uehara, Tuite/Toide/ToriTe, and the Development of Kata

I just finished reading several threads on a traditional fighting arts forum, each of which at least tangentially concerned Taika Seiyu Oyata. There were several interesting things therein, not the least of which was that not one of the participants was actually a member of the RyuTe Renmei. Another was the respect everyone writing had for Taika. To my mind, this is extraordinary. Think of Wing Chun; last I heard, there were a minimum of three people each claiming to be Yip Man's "closed-door disciple." I recall seeing video of one particularly spectacular incident wherein a student from one faction attended a seminar taught by the leader of another faction, and actually jumped him!

Not so with Taika. Nobody, not from any system, as far as I know, doubts that he is the "real deal." At least, I haven't seen any such speculations publicly made. Taika's former students (some of them quite high ranking), as far as I know, say nothing negative about their former teacher. That, too, seems unusual in the martial arts world. It speaks highly of Taika and his system.

There were some other interesting thoughts being voiced. There seemed to be some speculation as to the history of tuite, both as taught in RyuTe and in Shian Toma's Seidokan, with some apparently leaning toward believing that both Taika and Shian Toma had been at least influenced by Seikichi Uehara, and Uehara, in turn, having possibly been influenced by Hakko Ryu jujutsu, which, in its own turn, was derived largely from Daito Ryu Aikijutsu, with the apparent upshot, in some people's minds, being that Taika's tuite was something of a descendant of Daito Ryu and apparently obviously right out of Uehara's Motobu Udun Ti, and therefore just like Shian Toma's tuite!

One person seemed to have doubts as to the immediate effectiveness of tuite techniques--he stated that he and his students "just" trained to stop people in their tracks, and I gather that he didn't think tuite would be an effective vehicle for such things.

Others seemed to be concerned with such things as whether Taika derived his tuite from the kata or whether he read it into the kata.

Well, I wasn't there during all the history that was being speculated on and can't speak from first-hand knowledge. Whether or not Seikichi Uehara ever studied Hakko Ryu, I don't know. I have read that he denied it more than once, and in the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, I would think that people would be good enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have read in several places that Taika was part of a "research group" that included Uehara and certain others, but for me to speculate as to who influenced whom would be going quite beyond anything I am ever likely to find out.

For what it's worth, here's a sample of the tuite taught in Shian Toma's organization:

and here's some demonstrated by Taika himself:

Same stuff? You be the judge. Doesn't seem quite the same to me. Points of similarity, yes. Identical, no.

At any rate, that whole thread got me to thinking about some of the things that I have heard and read about Taika and his arts, and I thought I'd air my thinking publicly for a few minutes. I am in no way speaking as an authority or an expert, so bear that in mind.

I think one of the first things that you have to know about Taika is that he is extremely intelligent. I have never read anything by anyone or heard anything from anyone that would indicate otherwise. Everyone who's met the man seems to come away convinced that he is exceptionally bright. One person wrote that when he first came to train under Taika, he was making his living as, if I recall correctly, a diesel mechanic. He had been trained as a kaiten pilot. My own instructor told me a story of where he'd been sitting in, a guest, apparently, at a Japanese language class. The teacher, a native speaker, was apparently treated to a rare display as Taika explained the background and meanings of a number of kanji--background and explanation that apparently are ordinarily the province of scholars. I have heard that Taika manufactured his own uniforms at one point. He is clearly a man of intelligence, drive, and determination.

And for sixty-plus years, he has channeled that intelligence, drive and determination into the Okinawan martial arts. Some of what he knows seems to have been derived from a combination of what his teachers showed him, deep thinking, practice, and experimentation. If it seems to some that some of what he teaches is to be found nowhere else, at least not in quite the same form, I can only suggest that not every system has a man of Taika Oyata's caliber at its head. He seems to be unique, a last link to a body of knowledge that came distressingly close to passing out of the world.

His first instructors, I have been told time and again, did not so much teach him kata as they taught him how to interpret kata, and about the weaknesses of the human body. From somewhat oblique remarks made here and there and from time to time, I have also begun to think that they taught him some psychology, not the therapeutic kind of psychology, but means of misdirection, distraction, and taking advantage of the way the human body receives and processes information. I remember one writer saying that when he sparred Taika, he seemed almost invisible, that he couldn't tell when Taika was gaining ground on him, and that his blows seemed to come from out of nowhere. I mentioned this story to my own instructor, and he showed me some of what the writer was talking about, but I do not believe I have seen it all yet. On another occasion, my instructor told me that Taika once said--to him or to someone else, I don't know--that "jitsu" (jutsu), though now generally translated more or less as "technique" or "method," once also carried the connotation or meaning of "tricks," like magic "tricks," or sleight-of-hand. Make of that what you will. I do know that Taika explicitly rules out any supernatural elements to what he teaches. No special "ki" or "chi" abilities necessary.

Taika learned his empty-hand kata from Shigeru Nakamura, as anyone can find out by surfing the 'net for a little while. But sometimes I wonder if what we here in the United States think of as "learning kata" really reflects what Taika has been all about. Looking at my videotapes, and looking at what I am being taught now, it is clear that they are a little bit different. Is Taika changing the kata? I don't think so. There are a few little things that convince me of this, all of which would require paragraphs of explanation that would bore anyone not interested in the subject to tears, so I'll skip those and just cut to the chase.

If you are interested in karate, you may, at some point, have read Gichin Funakoshi's autobiography (if you are not familiar with the subject, Funakoshi is the man most generally credited with bringing karate to the attention of the Japanese public). Do you remember the part where he said he deliberately simplified the kata so as to make them easier to teach and learn? You have to keep in mind that Funakoshi was trying to teach rather large numbers of people, quite the opposite of the practice in the old days, where practice groups were (I'm told; again, I was not there) quite small and intimate. In my opinion, it would simply not have been possible to teach the details of the kata--at least, not the way I am being taught them--to that many people at one time. I am about half-convinced that what look like "changes" in the way Taika has taught the same kata over the years are not so much changes as they are reflections of the fact that the pool of knowledge possessed by his senior students keeps growing so that they are ready to absorb and pass on new levels of learning.

Have you ever taught someone a kata? Or, if not, can you image learning one? What comes first? The simple sequence of movements, right? Then details of posture, of balance, of hand and foot placement, of proper stepping, of application, are taught later, at appropriate times in the student's development.

One of the first things my instructor told me was that I would be beginning to understand any given movement of a kata when I had at least one interpretation of that movement as tuite, one as a strike, and one as a block. Given an approach like that, can you see how going through the kata deliberately looking for the strikes would affect your understanding and performance of it? How doing it just looking for the blocks and deflections would affect it? Just looking for the tuite? Then looking for how the strikes and blocks worked together, then how they were sometimes the same thing? Would any of those interpretations and performances of kata necessarily be incorrect? No. They would just reflect differences in what the student was learning or working on at that time. Sometimes you might be looking for how to shift your weight. Sometimes you might be emphasizing footwork. You could go on for years. Is that drawing technique from the kata? Or reading technique into the kata? Wouldn't it look more like a spiral, as the drawing and the reading fed, in turn, one upon the other?

About the effectiveness of tuite: I do not, of course, claim to be an expert. But I have practiced enough, and been on the receiving end of enough tuite to have no doubt as to its effectiveness. As far as I can tell, all of those techniques, executed correctly, are fight-stoppers.

I recall that after one test, my instructor was reviewing the test with us, and when we got to one particular self-defense technique, he'd had me repeat the defense a couple of times, not so much because what I did was ineffective (though part of my success was due to size and strength), but because he hadn't taught what I did to me, and wondered if I'd picked it up years ago whilst in the Marine Corps Reserve. The answer was no, I'd simply done it wrong, but nevertheless, he said, "Well, consider this," and showed us a variation of what I'd done. We got to try it out on the senior student in the class. I was, as is not unusual in that class, gobsmacked. Once the techique was "set," there was no recovering for the poor attacker. He was going to go down, awkwardly and off-balance, with absolutely no chance in the nether regions to break his fall or slow his momentum in any way. Applied full power, it was apparent to me that the results would--at least!--involve a wrenched elbow and shoulder, and a high-velocity slam of the rib cage into the ground, probably with the head whipping around and bouncing, too.

All in less than a second. Whenever I hear or read about someone thinking that tuite takes too long, or doesn't have real fight-stopping capability, I can't help but wonder what they've been looking at. It doesn't seem like the tuite I'm being taught.

Just my opinions and thoughts, worth about what you paid for them!

If You're Interested in Okinawan Karate...

...you gotta follow this blog. I'm pretty sure it'll be an education in itself.

If You're Interested in Karate Kicking...

...read this. A quote I really enjoyed:

As a “rule”, the closer you are to an opponent, the safer you are (Simple experimentation will prove this out). By being closer, your more difficult to “hit”(hard), and the inclination is(or becomes) to grab you (when/if you do). This instinct (to “grab”) is one we (in RyuTe) exploit at every opportunity given to us...

Very succinct and oh-so-true...

If You're Interested in Karate Punching...

Read this.

"Pain Not Important"

Every so often, I'll read something about "pressure points," vis-a-vis martial arts, that makes me go, "Hmmmmm." I did that just tonight.

God knows I don't claim to be an expert. I refer anybody asking for expert blogospheric advice on things regarding RyuTe (the system of martial arts I practice) to Openhand, as he has been in the system far longer than I have, and I have absolutely no intention of appearing to have a level of expertise that I do not. On the other hand, RyuTe is noted for its use of "pressure point," or nerve point techniques, as well as tuite, and the way the two work together, so it's not like I don't have some opinions on the subject.

I'll be brief: my opinion is that you are wise not to make the mistake of thinking that the object of a pressure point technique is to result in pain compliance, that is, for the technique to work because it hurts the recipient so much. Many times it does hurt like the dickens, but that's hardly all there is to it. As Openhand notes here:

Atemi/kyusho (points) vary greatly in their use/application. There are a large number of them, that merely “contact”, is sufficient to elicit a necessary response (which doesn't always include “pain”).

More than once, we've been in class (I guess you can call a group of three to five people a "class") and found that exerting pressure on certain points produced little, or even no pain, but...

we

still

couldn't

resist.

A brief story my instructor told me may be illustrative. I don't claim to be quoting anybody here; this is as close as my middle-aged memory can make it.

We were working on a defense against a push, a defense which can be found in the opening movements of Naihanchi Shodan (again: those wishing for more detailed explanations can find much of value in Openhand's writings), and my instructor reminisced that fairly early on in his involvement with RyuTe, he and a number of other people were working that very technique in Taika Oyata's presence. My instructor was having trouble getting the technique to work on his partner, and at length his partner told him not to worry about it, that he could hardly feel anything in his wrist and forearms anyway, he had had the bones in those places broken so many times and suffered so much tissue damage. At about that time, Taika walks up, hears what's going on, and proceeds to lay my instructor's partner out with that very technique, the one that my instructor's partner had mistakenly thought required pain to be effective.

"Pain no important," said Taika, and had them keep on practicing. I assure you, my instructor has no trouble with the technique now.

As I said, I don't claim to be an expert, but my limited experience would suggest that if you have the impression that you need to produce pain with your "pressure point" techniques in order for them to be effective, you might want to think about expanding your thinking a little bit. My limited experience is that if the nerve technique is done correctly, it will work, whether or not any pain is produced.

Don't worry, my feelings won't be hurt if you don't agree.

But It's Not All That Linear...

---

As a preliminary remark, I don't pretend to be an expert. I am a student, an almost unnoticeable member of the RyuTe Renmei, which is Taika Seiyu Oyata's organization. I do not speak on behalf of him or the organization, so take this for what it's worth.

---

I picked up, at my local library, Dave Lowry's The Karate Way. In the introduction, he told this story:

Please consider the case of a martial artist of my acquaintance, a man who lived for more than two decades in Japan and trained in a classical combat art there. He is thoroughly conversant in Japanese culture and language; he eventually was given latitude in teaching authority that, in a conservative art such as his, is quite rare. After going back to his home country, teaching, and gaining several students, he returned to Japan and, almost by accident, he came to the dojo of another teacher of the same art who is senior to him. The sensei looked at the man's technique as he performed some of the most difficult and advanced parts of the art's curriculum. The man was hoping for some fine-tuning, some polishing of detail. Instead, the sensei looked him squarely in the eye and said, "You don't know how to hold a sword."

This is a watershed moment in the life of anyone devoted to something like a martial art, someone who has spent painstaking effort and decades in training and teaching. The ego goes into full-power drive. And it is not just the ego; there is a natural skepticism: "Look, I didn't just stumble into a dojo last month. I've been at this a long time. I have credentials, a license to teach. I am highly respected in the community of martial arts practitioners who are expert in these old systems. You don't reach that level without some skill if you are a complete idiot or entirely incompetent."

My acquaintance was at a crucial moment. It was a moment where you laugh in the face of the sensei, confident he is wrong, and go on about your business, or you nod politely, say "thank you," and make a graceful exit before going on about your business. Or you take a third choice. It is this third choice that is intitially most painful. It is the choice that, as an experienced climber, you suspect may be difficult and challenging but which, in this case at least, is the right one to take. You take a breath and say, "OK, show me how to hold it."

The man did just that. He has not regretted the decision.

This reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a few days. Every so often, I'll read a post about how "linear" and "power-oriented" karate is (or, to use the good Mr. D. Rat's phrase, "crash and bash") and anymore, I just want to cringe.

You see, before I started with RyuTe, I had studied Taekwon-do with teachers various and sundry around Tulsa and Stillwater, Oklahoma. Back when I studied it, you could scarcely tell the difference between Taekwon-do and Shotokan, so similar did they appear, except, of course, that TKD placed considerably more emphasis on kicks. Things have changed, but this is what it was like back then.

I was almost up to shodan--first-degree black belt--when I visited a "Ryukyu Kempo" class (that being the name Taika's art went under at that point in time)--and promptly threw TKD under the bus. Why? Because, basically, it was as though they looked me in the eye and said, "You don't know how to throw a punch." I mean, I thought I knew how to throw a punch. I had a brown belt in one TKD association, and a red belt w/black stripe in another. I was, like, six months or less from black belt. But instead of saying (figuratively), "I do too know how to throw a punch!" I chose to listen and learn. It was as though the mother of all light bulbs had turned on over my head. Here was the fearsome combat art that I had read about, had thought "karate" was, but that never seemed quite as fearsome wherever I studied. I could see--heck, anyone could see--how this stuff could put an attacker on the ground in a second or two. This was karate, the karate of legend, the stuff people talked about in hushed tones, back in the old days.

If you don't know Taika's story, here it is, in a nutshell: He'd been a member of the Japanese military in his teens, was slated to serve as a kaiten pilot (his death certificate had already been mailed to his parents) when World War II ended. Shortly after the war, whilst working for the Americans delivering food to isolated people, he ran into an old man wearing the old bushi topknot. I will not go into detail--you can easily find the story in more detail elsewhere--but the upshot is that this old man was one of the last living people to have practiced the old Okinawan martial arts before the Meiji Restoration. He was not a teacher, and neither was his best friend, who also, because of Taika's family background, took him on as a student.

Taika had them all to himself for the last several years of their lives.

Some people seem a little incredulous at Taika's story. It seems too much of a coincidence, too fantastic a story that the preservation of the real, old-time Okinawan martial arts should come down to such a very small handful of people (I am not trying to rule out people like Uehara Seikichi here), that most of the "karate" you see in the world these days just isn't that much like the old stuff. But I don't think you'll have many doubts if you ever get to experience a RyuTe class. Like I say, it's intuitively obvious that this is the right way, the way the technique is supposed to be performed. It's simple, it's relaxed, it's effective, it's--well, it's not at all like "karate," but exactly what you hoped and dreamed karate would be like.

Here, take a look at these clips again. Certainly, they are not all there is to RyuTe, but there is enough there that you can see that while there are linear techniques and powerful strikes, linear crash and bash just isn't all there is to it. Anymore, it just makes my skin crawl to hear karate described in such terms, because that's not what it's supposed to be like.

---

I originally wrote that Taika had been trained as a kamikaze pilot, but I was graciously corrected by a more senior member of the RyuTe Renmei. I linked to the Wikipedia entry on kaiten because I was pretty sure that most people would be quite unfamiliar with them.

---