More Thoughts on Taekwon-do, RyuTe, Ed Parker, American Kenpo an' Stuff

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Beware: this post rambles. You have been warned.

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I suppose, for the sake of people not familiar with this blog--that would be the overwhelming majority of people in the world--people that are just "driving by," so to speak, maybe looking for information on American Kenpo, I ought to briefly recap my experience in martial arts, just so you'll have an idea of where I'm coming from.

I first started martial arts with a class at age of fourteen, something called "Polynesian-Chinese Karate." I knew nothing at the time, had absolutely no idea that this was an offspring of Hawaii's melting pot of martial arts (from what I understand, it's more or less a meld of kenpo and Hawaiian lua, if you wanted to know). It didn't matter that I knew nothing. I was only there for a couple of classes, and the only memory I have is of a sparring session, wherein the other kid complained to the instructor, "He hits hard!"

Then I wound up in a local taekwon-do school, I suppose you could say by default. You see, although Japanese Goju-Ryu was huge in Northeastern Oklahoma at the time, and by huge, I mean it had been pretty much the only game in town for quite a while--OK, you're wondering: Lou Angel brought it to town, having learned it under Peter Urban. Lou later traveled to Japan and studied directly under Gogen Yamaguchi, and was awarded higher dan ranks whilst he was there. Lou taught in Tulsa for quite a while, promoted a pretty fair number of black belts, a number of whom still teach--or their students teach--around the area today. Some of these guys were fairly well known back in the day, like Billy Briscoe, widely reputed as having "the fastest hands in the West."

Another guy that came up in Lou's organization was Gary Boyd, who was my teacher's first teacher. Gary was a special case. According to my teacher, he never tested for black belt. It seems that Gary's job afforded him the opportunity for considerable travel, and it was his custom to visit dojos wherever he went and ask to train. He collected kata, and he loved free-sparring (at which he must have been, given the stuff I've seen from my own teacher, darn near brilliant). At any rate, as a brown belt, he wound up in Gosei Yamaguchi's dojo--yes, Gogen Yamaguchi's son--and beat all the black belts present in free sparring, whereupon Yamaguchi Sensei handed him a black belt, saying, "Nobody beats my black belts but a black belt, so here--you're a black belt!"

Some story, eh? You would think it inevitable that a would-be karate student in Oklahoma would wind up in Goju-Ryu, but as it happens, shortly before I started training in martial arts, the Goju community in Northeast Oklahoma was absolutely rocked by a series of events that led to Lou Angel leaving the state, never, as far as I know, to return. I have heard the story and will not go into it. Others who know it better can tell it on their blogs if they feel so inclined.

I knew nothing of what was going on, but I did know, and so did my mom (she was a single parent at the time), that the hot place to go for karate training in Tulsa at the time was a school run by a Korean immigrant who later touted himself as one of the world's top taekwon-do "coaches"--and he did indeed coach at least one competitor who, if I recall correctly, medalled in the Olympics. He was also the first teacher of a man who later achieved world-wide fame in the kickboxing ring (I am not exaggerating--world-wide fame) and several other people who did quite well over about a four-state area in tournament fighting competitions.

Taekwon-do as it was taught then, and as taught by this man, was different from much of what I have seen from taekwon-do people over the last fifteen years or so. Most of what I have seen over the last fifteen years or so has been nothing but beat-crap-out-of-each-other-with-wildly-unrealistic-for-the-street-kicks stuff, so completely removed from its karate roots (Okay, I know some taekwon-do guy out there is climbing out of his skin at that comment, so let me digress: No, taekwon-do is not the modern-day version of a centuries-old Korean warrior art. It is the result of a fusion between Japanese karate and some indigenous Korean kicks. Live with it.) as to be completely unrecognizable. Taekwon-do back then was (and still is, in some organizations) very hard to distinguish from Shotokan karate. Even the forms--kata, hyung, poomse, whatever you want to call them--were just modifications of the Shotokan kata.

I got up to blue belt--the rank just below brown--with this man, and if nothing else, I learned how to hit pretty darn hard and improved my coordination, which, at the commencement of my training was absolute crap, quite a bit. Then, for reasons I just honestly don't recall in detail, I dropped out. I started and stopped a couple of times over the next few years, spending time with one of my first TKD teacher's students, then with the karate club at the university I was attending (where I made it to brown belt) and then with a gentleman from Korea who also ran a donut shop. I was working at Arby's at the time, and couldn't afford diddly, so I managed a special deal with this guy. When I wasn't working, during the daylight hours, I would just come and sit and answer the phone. In return--free lessons!

The school wasn't very old. I soon made it to first gup (ikkyu in Japanese) and I was the senior student. And it was just about that time that I really began to understand that something wasn't quite right with taekwon-do.

There I was, within spitting distance of getting my black belt, and one day, when my instructor and I were alone, I was sparring with him, and I suddenly realized that I was manhandling him--that he might outpoint me, but if I really chose to press it, it would have been him getting hurt, not me. Now, it is true that I was no midget (about five-ten and about 180 pounds at the time) and he was a little Korean guy, but he was a sixth-degree black belt and I couldn't help but think that if, not even being a black belt, I could "handle" a sixth-degree black belt, then maybe taekwon-do was never going to be, for me, the ferocious fighting art that I had always heard that karate was. You see, I had had my suspicions for a long time. I had read Richard Kim's book, Funakoshi's autobiography, and several other books, and I knew that karate was supposed to be bad, that genuine experts were supposed to be able to achieve remarkable effects, but the reality is that I had never seen any such things and had been training and waiting a long time so as to reach a skill level where karate's "badness," if you will, would show up.

It's not that I believed taekwon-do was useless, mind you. I had used it--simple reverse punches to the solar plexus--several times to put a stop to attempted bullying in high school. I was quite capable of manhandling the other students in my instructor's school. And I had this abiding conviction that there was something there, for I found it impossible to believe that people would preserve kata for so very long if there was nothing to them. I had heard the instructions about "chambers" and "blocks," and, knowing no better, accepted them, but with a grain of salt.

I mean, some of that stuff was just impossible to believe. You're going to "chamber" for a block on the right side of your body by first withdrawing both hands to the left side? Seriously? But I didn't believe the old masters were stupid, either.

I knew there had to be more.

Well, eventually, I quit Arby's and joined the Marine Corps Reserve. During our last week in boot camp, we were allowed to visit the PX, and on the cover of BLACK BELT magazine, which I bought, was a man named Seiyu Oyata. The article was about the hidden meanings of kata, and you can imagine that I was interested. At last, here was someone saying that my suspicions were right--the kata motions weren't useless, but they weren't what I had been taught, either.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got back home and, through sheer dumb luck, found that someone was actually teaching Taika Oyata's system (known then as "Ryukyu Kempo," now as "RyuTe") in my city. This was amazing. I joined the class and was there regularly for some few months, happy as a clam.

Then I got married, and, as those of you who are married know, things get complicated. I dropped out of the class and didn't return for a long time. So long, in fact, that I had an almost-grown son. Life had grown somewhat more manageable, and he had an interest, and at first I thought, "Well, we'll take a look at the Shotokan class at First Baptist, it's probably the best we can do, we'll order some of Taika Oyata's tapes and see if we can't apply some of what we see to what we do in Shotokan." But then I thought, "Well, who knows? Maybe my old teacher is still teaching."

At first I couldn't find him. He certainly wasn't teaching publicly. I finally found a stray blogospheric reference to him, and then--duh!--decided to look him up in the phone book. He had since become a very sick man, but he remembered me, and after talking with me and my son, agreed to take us on as private students in his home. We have been with him now for some little time, and it has been amazing. He's about to turn 63, and is an oxygen patient, not very big, not strong at all, and he can make the techniques work on me and my son. He is living proof that real Okinawan karate works, that it's skill and knowledge that rule, not size and strength. He validates everything he says by his ability to make the techniques work on healthier, younger, larger, stronger people.

So, there I am. Not as "brief" as I initially intended it to be, but I warned you that the post rambled!

Now, about American Kenpo. Obviously I do not practice the system and am never likely to, but it has intrigued me for a while, as have other "American" martial arts, like Danzan-Ryu jujutsu, Budoshin jujutsu, Small-Circle jujutsu, Vee-jitsu, Kombido, Kajukenbo, and so forth. I mean, I can see how these things arise...

...pardon me while I digress for a moment. I have to tell a story about a local kenpo teacher, one I heard from my own teacher.

You'll recall that I said Japanese Goju-Ryu was once the game in town around here, only to lose first place to taekwon-do. However, there was a kenpo school here for a while, a franchised one, and the teacher was a man of considerable ability who remains quite well known around these parts, although, as far as I know, his teaching is limited to a handful of students in the Tahlequah area.

My teacher told me that this man once attended the local state fair and got drunk whilst he was there. The local sheriff's department was providing security and made their intentions to take him in known, and he said fine; he wasn't going to resist, he would go with them, but not to touch him--he couldn't stand to be touched. Now, I know that makes no sense at all, but you have to bear in mind that the man was drunk. Well, the deputies had already put out a call for backup, for the man was known to them, and as deputy number four arrived on the scene, overhearing the conversation, it climaxed with deputies one, two, and three trying to take the kenpo teacher down from behind in order to cuff him. In a trice, the kenpo teacher had downed all three deputies and turned to the fourth one, who, not being a fool, announced that he wouldn't touch the kenpo teacher, just, please, sir, would you take these and cuff yourself?

In court, the first three deputies naturally wanted the kenpo teacher to serve time for resisting arrest, battery, and so forth, but when deputy number four took the stand, he confirmed everything the kenpo teacher had said and the judge tossed those charges, apparently on the grounds that deputies one, two, and three were idiots! The kenpo teacher was found guilty of being drunk and disorderly and that, apparently, was it.

My teacher had a job in city government at the time and deputy number four, in addition to his duties as a deputy, was one of my teacher's employees, and that is how he heard the story. Hope you enjoyed it.

As I was saying, I can see how these things arise, especially given my experience with taekwon-do. I mean, you get some training in something, you can tell something's there, but you can also tell you haven't quite got the whole picture. So you start seeking out knowledge from other sources, hoping to fill in the gaps in your "picture." How many people have you known who have achieved black belts in karate, and then judo, and then aikido? A lot of people are satisfied to leave it right there, apparently content with the idea that karate really is mostly block-punch-kick and you have to get grappling from elsewhere. Some of the arts I mentioned above really don't amount to much more than collections of techniques drawn from karate and judo and, maybe, arnis. I don't blame the founders of those arts. What would you do if you came home from military service with a black belt in Shotokan and your neighbor came home with a black belt in judo, and you went to the same church? Or something like that?

But American Kenpo seems different to me, and I think it is different principally because of Ed Parker.

Now, there is more than one theory of how American Kenpo came to be. It may very well be that some people came here to read this post just to see what this no-name blogger had to say about its history. I am not going to get into an argument about American Kenpo's history with anyone, so if you disagree with me, that is fine, you are not the first and you will not be the last. I may well be wrong and if I am, I will still go home and sleep well.

Having said that, for those of you who haven't heard it, the story in many kenpo circles is that James Mitose was born in Hawaii and was then sent back as a lad to Japan for training in his ancestral religion and martial art, that art being a variety of kenpo. He then came back to Hawaii and taught a number of students.

Mitose eventually left Hawaii. My understanding is that he was eventually arrested on the mainland, charged with being an accomplice to murder, and died in prison. That much seems to be fairly certain. However, I don't believe that story about James Mitose bringing an ancestral Japanese martial art to Hawaii at all. You can poke about the web for people making arguments for it and arguments against it, and in my opinion, those making arguments against it have much the better of the argument.

What I think happened is this: Mitose picked up a smattering of martial arts from only-God-knows where and combined it with what he had seen of Okinawan karate. If memory serves, both Choki Motobu and Chojun Miyagi made visits to Hawaii within Mitose's lifetime. I think (though I cannot prove) that Mitose took what he had learned and turned it into a temporary means of making a living. You may wonder how he was able to do this, probably not being what we think of as a genuine karate master, and all I can tell you is that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! Back when I was in taekwon-do and defending myself with a simple reverse punch, the people on the receiving end of that punch, simple as it was, certainly thought that I knew what I was talking about.

I don't think Mitose had to be a real "master" for people to be impressed with him.

One of Mitose's students was William K.S. Chow, who had apparently learned some kung fu--what kind? Heck if I know--from his father. "Thunderbolt" Chow took what he had learned from Mitose and blended it with his father's kung fu and passed the result on to, among others, Ed Parker. If nothing else, it was rough stuff and the people behind it had a vital--vital--interest in being able to stay alive on the street.

Parker took the art to the mainland and, as far as I can tell, kept "cooking" it. You can see a real progression in Parker's kenpo from his first books to his last. Although I am convinced that he added to what he learned from Chow (I have read at least one source that strongly suggested he spent some time training in Hung Gar kung fu), it does not appear to me that he just added techniques willy-nilly to his system. It appears to me that he really attempted to understand what was going on anatomically and in terms of kinesiology, and he made a serious effort to systematize what he had learned and come up with. Parker, as far as I can tell, accepted and absorbed what he had an opportunity to learn, but he didn't blindly accept it. He kept asking himself, "Why does it work? Can it be improved? Can I prove that it works in real life? Is it the best way to do it?" His life vis-a-vis martial arts appears to have been a continual process of absorbing, refining, and improving whatever he could find, from whatever sources were willing to part with it. It intrigues me because it seems a peculiarly American approach to martial arts, and because it seems to me that it is the same approach that the Okinawan masters of karate took . If Ed Parker's American Kenpo isn't the equal of classical Okinawan karate (specifically RyuTe), it's not his fault. The Okinawan masters carried out their research over the course of centuries, and through Taika Seiyu Oyata, it is still going on. Ed Parker had only his own lifetime and during it, he created an art that while, again, not the equal of classical Okinawan karate, is sure as **** better than most of the "karoddy" (to borrow a term from Openhand) that you find around this country today.

At least when it's taught well. That is an issue. Not every kenpo instructor out there is a good one.

Oh, well. Just some meandering thoughts from a middle-aged man without any particular claim to expertise. Hope I didn't bore you too much.

Just Some Interesting Google Results for Oklahoma Martial Arts

Some time back, on a lark, I googled Oklahoma Shorei-kan (Shorei-kan being the name of Seikichi Toguchi's organization, and me just happening to be wondering about it) just to see if anything came up. Much to my surprise, there were hits in addition to Haggerty's Karate in Oklahoma City, which I already knew about. Here they are, if you're interested in Okinawan Goju Ryu, as opposed to Japanese Goju Ryu, which, thanks to Lou Angel's long-ago dominance in this state, is by far the most well-known flavor.

The difference between Okinawan Goju Ryu and Japanese Goju Ryu? Practitioners of these arts will no doubt differ with me, but if I had to pin down the differences, I'd say that the most notable one is that Japanese Goju Ryu doesn't make anywhere near the use of hojo undo that Okinawan Goju Ryu does. Other than that, they seem like substantially the same art to me, at least on the surface. But that's just my opinion. I don't practice either one. At any rate, here they are:

Stillwater Goju Ryu in Stillwater, Oklahoma

Shorei-Kan Goju-Ryu Karate in Enid, Oklahoma

There are multiple links to various Japanese Goju Ryu sites in my sidebar, if you're interested.

Would you believe that you can find Shorin Ryu, too? There's a club, mostly Baptist, from what I gather, in Oklahoma City.

Much to my shock, there appears to be a genuine American Kenpo school or club here in Tulsa. There used to be more of a kenpo presence here in Tulsa. A long time ago, we had a "Tracy's Karate" (Jim and Al Tracy were some of Ed Parker's most noted students) franchise here, and I am sure that there are a few of the black belts from that old school still practicing in their garages or something. Also, Roger Greene, if I'm not mistaken, teaches somewhere near Tahlequah. But if you're interested in Ed Parker's American Kenpo, that's what The Tulsa Academy of American Kenpo Karate claims to teach. They also claim to teach it with something of a "zen" perspective--whatever that means. In my experience, with most folks, it doesn't mean much! But you may want to probe the subject in more detail before enrolling.

As I've said elsewhere, I have a lot of respect for American Kenpo, if taught decently. Whatever you might think of its origins, and they are in hot, hot dispute, American Kenpo as Ed Parker left it seems to have become a pretty decent self-defense oriented system. If RyuTe instruction were not available to me (Thank God it is!), I would certainly consider American Kenpo.

I must also say one other thing about American Kenpo: there are a lot of charlatans, including one here in Tulsa, claiming high ranks in kenpo, or to have created their own systems (sometimes multiple systems!), out there. Be very suspicious when looking into kenpo. That's all I'm sayin'.

Speaking of RyuTe, there are, in fact, two instructors under whom you can learn RyuTe in Oklahoma. One of them, mine, is not in the best of health, and he has already told me that unless someone already in the association moves into the area, or someone who manages to demonstrate to him that he is likely to remain in the system and take it seriously asks to be taught, he is not likely to take any more students. The other gentleman is, as far as I know, taking students. If you're interested, you can probably contact him through the organization's website.

There are more martial arts-related links in my sidebar. Some of those organizations are in Oklahoma. Please be aware, also, that there are more than a few people teaching "martial arts" in Oklahoma that are so absolutely full of bovine by-products that it boggles the mind.

A Short and Ugly Historical Explanation of Karate, Taekwon-Do, and Kenpo

If you've poked around this blog at all, you already know that I am concerned that people be able to defend their lives in a world that is, I think, going to get more violent before it becomes less so. And you may have already noticed that I think martial arts are part of the solution to that problem. And you may be one of those readers who is already practicing a martial art you like, or you may be someone thinking, "Okay, I get the picture: martial arts can help me stay alive and help me stay fit at the same time. Now, what do I do?"

Over the years, you're probably going to find multiple answers to that question on this blog, each highlighting something a bit different. But this post is intended to give you some idea of the background and utility of each of the three martial arts you are most likely to have available to you (in my judgement, anyway): karate, taekwon-do, and kenpo.

I am certain--dead certain--that some of my readers will take exception to the idea that their martial art may not be common enough in this country to warrant inclusion in this post. And I'm not perfect; maybe I'm wrong. But I'm approaching it from the perspective of someone who's been in big cities, been in small towns, and lived in a middle-sized city.

A middle-sized city in an overwhelmingly rural state, actually--and as I look at the electoral map over the last couple of elections, I can't help but notice that the people on my side, the people I most want to help, also live in mostly rural states, and often in the countryside or small towns. Many of us call this "Red State America." And the bald-faced reality is that unless you live in one of the bigger cities in those rural states, it is most likely that you will find instruction in karate, taekwon-do, or kenpo (varying by the part of the country somewhat) before you find instruction in any kind of kung fu, aikido, jujutsu (Brazilian or otherwise), bando, silat, etc. That's what's largely available, and here--in short and ugly form--is how they came to be, and what to expect from them.

If you want to know how I came to find this information out, I don't want to disappoint you, but it's hard to get the whole picture from just one or two sources--especially since some of the writers, frankly, lie or pass on unsubstantiated information. I have read so much material on this subject that it would probably make most people choke. But if you want to do some investigation of your own, I'd suggest you start with Taika Seiyu Oyata's RyuTe-no-Michi, Patrick McCarthy's The Bible of Karate: Bubishi, and Mark Bishop's Okinawan Karate: Teachers, Styles, and Secret Techniques. I'm not going to footnote or reference as I go through this. It's a blog-post, not a scholarly article, and this is one of those subjects where, if you don't believe I'm right, you and I can both go home, relax, and get a good night's sleep. Some are sure to think I've oversimplified things.

Ah, well. I've done my best to explain things in a short space. Take it for what it's worth, please--that is, about what you paid for it. I admit that I do not speak from authority, just from what I've seen and read. You may decide I'm a fool. If so, please politely enlighten me via the comments section.

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Several times a week, I pass a MMA--"mixed martial arts" school on the way home. I have no doubt that the people who train there are serious students, and no doubt that they are fit, capable fighters, people whom I would not like meeting in a dark alley.

I also have no doubt that I will keep practicing the old Okinawan karate that I love, and no doubt that for self-defense purposes--at least my self-defense purposes, it is a superior system. One of the reasons I say this is that the old Okinawan karate--in my case, brought into the modern era via Taika Seiyu Oyata and RyuTe will work just fine for me as I age. It's success has little to do with how much muscle I apply--in fact, having to apply muscle in RyuTe techniques strongly indicates that you are doing something wrong.

Mixed Martial Arts, judging from what I read and from what I've seen on the TV screen, has pretty much abandoned self-defense as its goal. No doubt MMA practitioners will dispute this, but everything I've seen has far more to do with what works in the ring than with what works against assaults on your person by someone larger and stronger than you are (and why would you train to defend against attacks by smaller, weaker opponents?) and getting yourself home alive, unharmed, and not in legal jeopardy.

For that, karate is very effective. But for those who don't quite understand why I would say that, for those who know "karate" only as the stuff that little kids do on America's Funniest Home Videos with the pillow-like pads on their hands and feet, here's a little history, a little something to explain how karate has changed from one of, if not the, most effective life-protection arts on the planet to something of a martial sport that doesn't dwell all that heavily on self-defense.

The first thing you need to understand is the concept of the "closed-door disciple." This is important because it explains much of the state of modern martial arts.

In the old days, back in China and Japan and Okinawa (and some other places, too), a teacher of martial arts might take on a number of students. However, it was not at all uncommon for the teacher to teach everything he knew only to a very small number of pupils, sometimes only to one. This might be his son, it might not. Such pupils were closed-door disciples--they were taught the complete art behind closed doors. The rest of the students were taught a slightly altered or watered-down version of the art.

However, the teacher, not being a complete fool, did not make this practice common knowledge. The upshot is that the headship of a style tended to remain in family hands, with the current head of the system being seemingly unbeatable.

Now, there's one obvious problem: people would come and study with the sifu, learn for years, and eventually be granted teaching credentials (or maybe just claim them), and go on to teach others, and yet they would not know the whole system. Those students would then teach others, and so on. Eventually, a point was reached where hardly anybody knew the meaning and application of those weird-looking movements, and people sometimes now make the absurd mistake of believing that the movements have no meaning. If I wanted to, I could stop right there, for that is the state of so much kung fu and karate (we'll get to taekwon-do and kenpo in a bit) around that world that it staggers the imagination.

Now: years and years ago, there was a country, a little country, just planted smack-dab between southern China and Japan. A natural stopping point for trade vessels. It was free only sometimes; more often than not, it was under the domination of another country. As a matter of fact, for a fairly substantial period of time, it was actually under the domination of two other countries: China, which had formally taken it on as a tributary country, and Japan, specifically the Satsuma clan. It was a very weird situation. The Satsuma dominated the country, but because they didn't really want open conflict with China, insisted that their domination remain secret. The Chinese knew what was going on, but as long as they got their annual tribute, maintained a polite silence about it. Talk about a pressure cooker! And add to that the fact that Japan forbade the inhabitants of the country to possess weapons. That country is Okinawa, the birthplace of karate.

It wasn't always known as karate. For centuries, Okinawa's indigenous fighting art was known simply as te, or hand. There were a number of sub-systems and family systems, many of them secret. There is little doubt that there are still secret family systems that have not been revealed to this day. Over the years, the three countries--China, Japan, and Okinawa--traded, and Okinawa picked up martial knowledge from Southern China, as sailors and travelers from both countries exchanged knowledge and techniques.

Many Okinawan styles--Uechi-ryu is a great example--still show a great deal of resemblance to some styles of kung fu.

The Okinawans were also influenced by the Japanese. Okinawan fighting stances are typically squarer than their Chinese counterparts, possibly--probably, in my opinion--reflecting the influence of Japanese swordsmanship--notably the Jigen-ryu of the Satsuma clan--and unarmed combat technique, specifically jujutsu.Then there was tegumi, or Okinawan sumo. It is not much like Japanese sumo. There is more to it, more close-quarter grappling and throwing and the like. It also influenced te.

The resulting art--what emerged as te, principally as practiced by the warrior elites around Shuri castle, absorbed Chinese and Japanese influences--is a uniquely dangerous, eclectic art that revolves in almost every aspect around the knowledge of the body's vulnerable points and makes brilliant use of human psychology, and of physics and body mechanics to generate power. Almost every technique in every kata (formal exercise) is designed to attack one or more of these vulnerable points. Some are attacked by striking, some by close-quarter grappling techniques. However, without the knowledge of where those points are and how to use them, the kata look like nothing more than a series of blocks and strikes. And you know, the system isn't totally ineffective, even on that level. A thoroughly trained practitioner can make those blocks and strikes work, often enough that karate has acquired the reputation it now has. However, that block-and-strike level doesn't even begin to approach the effectiveness of the total art. Properly understood (and I am certainly not claiming to be an expert), the Okinawan kata contain very few blocks. Things that look like blocks are often grappling techniques, or strikes. Sometimes a movement is intended to represent something that the attacker is doing to you; sometimes, a movement that touches your own body can indicate something to be done to an opponent. In one of the naihanchi kata, the practitioner executes an odd-looking move, lightly and rapidly kicking himself on the opposite leg, in a very particular spot. Usually, this is taught as the returning wave kick, and interpreted as a means of kicking away an oncoming attack. It could be. It also will work as a foot sweep. But the application that first really got my attention is one where the practitioner kicks himself to engrave upon his brain the location of the spot where he is supposed to kick the other fellow. The kick--to that particular spot--combined with the attacks on two other pressure points contained in the same overall movement, will knock a person down as though he were a pole-axed ox. There are many places like that in the kata, places that don't look as though they make sense.

By now, you've figured out that the closed-door disciples got the pressure-point knowledge, the grappling knowledge, the proper body mechanics, the psychological tactics and that a lot of the students--some would say "most"--didn't. To learn any one of the whole systems, at least enough to gain teaching credentials, takes about ten years of steady application. And if you haven't been shown the secret material, you might spend all that time thinking you were learning "karate," when you were really just dancing in its shadow. Remember that the next time some eighteen-year-old kid tells you he's "mastered" three or four styles.

Now, bring this situation into the early twentieth century. Te is now often referred to by the names kempo (which is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for chuan fa, or fist art) or kara-te. With the characters originally used, kara-te meant "China Hand." However, Gichin Funakoshi, the Okinawan master who introduced karate to a very nationalistic mainland Japan and is widely regarded as the father of Japanese karate, realized that "China Hand" simply wouldn't fly in that atmosphere and he is generally credited with changing the characters to read--though the pronunciation is the same--empty hand.

Funakoshi was, over a period of time, very successful in introducing karate to Japan, principally through its university system. Among other things, he was a born diplomat and made friends among the influential. Notably, he was very well acquainted with the hugely popular and influential Jigoro Kano, founder of Judo.

Do you think Funakoshi revealed the whole art to all those people? To the country that'd occupied his own for centuries? My initial thought was, not on your life. He appears to have left out most of the pressure-point knowledge, most of the close-quarter grappling, and some have suggested that he even altered the fist and the method of striking with it. He even said in his autobiography that the karate practiced in the fifties (when he wrote his autobiography) was a far cry from the karate he'd grown up practicing on Okinawa, and that he'd deliberately simplified the kata to make them easier for people to learn. That was apparently necessarily at least partly because Funakoshi was trying to teach large numbers of people all at once, whereas on Okinawa before that time, teachers would typically teach only a handful of students at any given time. It now appears to me that it is just possible that no matter what Funakoshi may have wanted to reveal, there wasn't time to teach it effectively. The man taught a great many students and had to simplify the curriculum in order to effectively spread karate around the Japanese mainland. If you look at his Karate-do Kyohan, there is a significant section that is pretty much copied from the Bubishi and it deals with at least thirty-six vital points, though specific kata applications don't seem to have been made. Perhaps Funakoshi left some of this devastating combat technique "hidden in plain sight," available in text form for those who cared to seek it out.

At any rate, amazingly, even with the drastic modifications mentioned above, the art is still often very effective! Of course, that may be partly because another modification took place, possibly apart from Funakoshi's intentions: his style, Shotokan, began to emphasize the development of power in the execution of techniques. What else could his students do? If you don't have the pressure point knowledge, you had better be able to hit hard. And hit hard is something modern-day Shotokan practitioners can do, without a doubt. I have often thought that Shotokan is all about generating power in techniques. It seems to me that Shotokan power often comes at the cost of a certain amount of "telegraphing" of one's techniques, but nevertheless, they do hit hard! And if a practitioner somehow comes into possession of the pressure-point knowledge, then Shotokan becomes all about shockingly powerful strikes to vital points. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Even though it's not the system I practice, I have something of a soft spot for Shotokan. But I digress. And of course, there were other teachers that popularized karate in Japan: Yamaguchi, Mabuni, Motobu come quickly to mind. But none of them had the impact that Funakoshi did.

At any rate, then those university students and influential friends went on to teach others, and so on. Then came World War II, and the occupation of Japan.

It's largely been forgotten that the traditional Japanese martial arts--kendo, kenjutsu, jujutsu, judo, and the like, were not allowed to be practiced during the first few years of the occupation. It was felt that their martial nature had encouraged the Japanese people in their nationalism. Karate, however, was allowed. I have been told that this was because Funakoshi told his students to perform the kata before the occupying authorities very slowly, so that their martial nature was not clearly revealed, but I do not know if this is true. The upshot is that for a few years, karate had the martial arts stage in Japan almost all to itself, so to speak.

So along came the GI's, and some of them wanted to learn karate. From the university students who'd been taught the watered-down (but still pretty effective) version. Do you suppose that they learned everything the university students learned? Personally, I would bet "not." But they learned enough that when they came back to the states, karate earned a reputation as being pretty rough stuff--even though by this time, what they knew was watered down by two levels at minimum. And for the most part, that is what you are learning when you learn karate in most of the world, including the United States. It can be darned effective, especially if you know something about the human body's vulnerabilities.

*****

Now, let's flash back a bit. Remember the university students? Not all of them were from Japan. At least one of them was from Korea, a fellow named Choi Hong Hi, referred to afterwards as General Choi. General Choi learned karate--Funakoshi's karate, Shotokan karate, while in college in Japan, up to the second degree black-belt level. That is not formal teaching-level rank. After the war, he took karate and its kata back to Korea, where he and others like him combined it with an indigenous fighting technique that emphasized kicking, tae kyon. Later, he introduced the result to the nation as taekwon do. Back then, it was often referred to as Korean karate. You can still find old books by that name. It's interesting to note that in those old books, it is virtually impossible to distinguish taekwon do from Shotokan karate. The kata were either taken directly from karate or directly influenced by it--but the important thing to note is that the critical knowledge, pressure-point knowledge, the close-quarter grappling, was mostly missing. As far as I can tell, Choi never learned it. I doubt that he ever had an opportunity to learn it. (For a very useful and informative interview that confirms my principal point here--that old-time taekwon-do was very similar to Shotokan karate, go here. The interviewee, one Colin Wee, an Australian taekwon-do teacher, might not agree with every jot or tittle of this post, but I think he wouldn't be too surprised at the main direction I'm taking.)

As the popularity of taekwon do expanded and Choi tried to make inroads for it in North Korea, his International TaeKwon-Do Federation gained a rival: the World Tae Kwon Do Federation. The WTF introduced new formal exercises--new kata--which, not having even the tenous connection to the old system that the ITF's kata did, contained even less usable knowledge. Taekwon do became so consumed with the sporting aspect of the art--which was about all that was left, once the pressure-point knowledge was lost--that by the mid-eighties, I read an article with side-by-side interviews of General Choi and the head of the WTF (Un Yong Kim, if memory serves), in which both stated, in almost identical words, that their goal was to offer taekwon do to the world as a universal sport.

The martial aspect of taekwon-do is almost totally gone, consumed by the sport. It could hardly be otherwise, given its history.

I know an awful lot of you have been told that taekwon do is an ancient martial art, or based on thousands-of-years-old martial arts similar to Kuk Sool Won or Hwarang-Do. I know you've been told that it's "super karate" (there used to be a school in Tulsa that used that very phrase in its advertising). I'm sorry to disappoint you, especially if you've spent a lot of time and effort to send the little ones to TKD classes, and especially if you thought they were learning something about fighting. The reality is that it is only about sixty years old, and is basically an amalgam of Korean foot-fighting techniques and a watered-down version of Okinawan te.

You also need to understand that there is big money to be made in taekwon-do. It is infamous for such things as the Airport Promotion, where a "master" boards the plane in Korea as a third-degree black belt and gets off the plane in the states as a seventh-degree black belt. You can't tell by looking at the rank certificate, not unless you read Korean, and sometimes not even then. People do this because, not unnaturally, parents want their kids to learn from a "master." People get away with it because unknowledgeable parents desperately want to believe that their little ones are learning to defend themselves in a dangerous world, so they uncritically swallow what they are told and what they see, even though what they see generally doesn't look like any real fight they've ever seen or been in.

But on the other hand, it just might be--very likely is, in much of the country--all you've got available to you. Only God knows how many church-basement, or rec-center martial arts programs are run by some first or second-degree taekwon-do black belt. If you live in Pasture Fritter, Montana, that may just be your only choice. If it is, keep in mind that you can at least learn how to punch and kick darn hard in those classes, and that there are lots and lots of books and videos available these days. My suggestion is that you concentrate on learning--very, very carefully--as much about the vulnerabilities of the human body as you can. If you can hit an opponent very, very hard on someplace vulnerable, you're a whole lot better off than if you never got any training at all.

*****

Lastly, there's kenpo. You may notice that it's spelled differently from "Ryukyu Kempo," which was mentioned above. Technically, in Japanese, I believe they are the same word, but in this country, when you spell it with an "n," you are almost always talking about something related in one way or another to Ed Parker's American Kenpo. It is much more prevalent in some parts of the country than in others. At one time, it was very popular in Northeastern Oklahoma, as was Japanese Goju Ryu karate, but it has kind of faded away from prominence and now, if you find a teacher, he is most likely teaching out of his garage or something. Not that that's a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it may just be closely akin to private lessons!

So what is it, and where did it come from? In the case of kenpo, even to ask those questions is to immediately find one's self embroiled in controversy. I have read a substantial amount of material making the case that kenpo is an American variant of a centuries-old Japanese martial art, and material making the case that it is the result of one very talented individual more or less creating his own martial art from bits and pieces of various martial arts then being taught in Hawaii.

The one thing that just about everyone agrees on is that kenpo, as far as this country is concerned, started with James Mitose. Wherever his knowledge came from--and I am simply not going to get into that discussion--it was impressive enough that he garnered some talented students, several of whom went on to be teachers in their own right.

And this is the thing about kenpo that makes it interesting: Mitose's students didn't just take what he taught them and leave it. No, they mixed it up with other stuff. Most notably, one student, William K.S. Chow, combined it with such kung fu as he had learned from his father. Chow, in turn, taught (among others) Ed Parker, who eventually came to the mainland and opened what was one of the first "karate" schools (it was often called "kenpo karate" in those days; still is, sometimes) in the continental United States.

And Parker didn't leave what Chow taught him alone, either. He continually worked on it and refined it. Only God knows how many subsets and subsystems of kenpo there are now. If you try to work out a "family tree," it can seem like every kenpo student has felt free to alter the art to suit his own tastes. But in general, I think it may fairly be said that kenpo in this country is a strong self-defense art that focuses principally on hyper-fast strikes (which might sometimes seem to sacrifice bone-breaking power for the sake of that speed) to vulnerable points of the human body. I have never seen anything to indicate that the knowledge of those vulnerable points is as extensive in kenpo as it was in the Old Okinawan karate, but on the other hand, it seems to me that it is generally substantially greater than you are likely to find in most taekwon-do clubs. Kenpo usually makes a very decent, sometimes an excellent, art of self-defense.

If you can find a good teacher. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the everybody-feels-free-to-modify-it culture of kenpo is that there are way too many people who've promoted themselves (they would deny this) to high ranks so as to found their own systems, and some of them are much better than others. When looking at kenpo, the rule is caveat emptor, but I certainly wouldn't turn up my nose at it if I found a good teacher.

*****

You might also find that in your small town, the only martial arts instruction available is actually a combination martial art. There are an amazing number of these being taught in church basements all across this country. And as likely as not, one of the parent arts will be some variety of karate, or taekwon-do, or kenpo.

Whatever you find, work hard at it.