..."there was a part of me that was hoping (the Times Square bomber) was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country," said MSNBC host Contessa Brewer. Of course, she inadvertently revealed there was a part of her that strongly suspected otherwise.I really hesitate to identify anyone as stupid. I truly believe that there are very few truly stupid people in the world. On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze me how many people have allowed their unexamined ideologies to turn them into people almost impossible to distinguish from the truly stupid.
But that tiny voice of reason, Brewer and her peers seem to believe, is from the dark side. Brewer explains: "There are a lot of people who want to use terrorist intent" -- jihad! -- "to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way" -- people who believe in jihad! -- "or come from certain countries" -- that is, countries that practice Sharia and promote jihad! -- "or whose skin color is a certain way." This last bit, a non-applicable race card, works like a last-ditch sympathy-trigger. "I mean," she said, "they use it for justification for really outdated bigotry."
Welcome to your world, where self-defense is bigotry, and thus worse than death by fireball, axe or vaporizing over the Atlantic.
This is as ridiculous as it is obscene. There is no "bigotry" in understanding jihad as the engine of Islamic supremacism driven by the imperative to spread Islamic law (Sharia). Our leading lights shrink from this basic truth lest its clean logic wither the fuzzy, cultural-relativism-based universalism that orders our society.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Take the Time to Take a Peek
Well, first take a look at what the ever-estimable Mr. Buchanan has to say. But then spend some time with the incomparable Diana West:
Monday, May 10, 2010
Financial Crisis 101
Courtesy of Andrew Klavan. Actually, this was about as good an explanation of the situation as you can get in four minutes.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Beware Oklahoma Martial Arts Frauds
It is with some regret that I find that some people are still being taken in by tellers of lies and tall tales.
People, please understand: it is actually not all that uncommon in martial arts circles for people to tell lies. There is money in it. All someone has to do is convince people that he really does have rank from multiple organizations or arts, or has created his own art, or--one of my favorites so far--that his art was revealed to him in a dream by the ghost of a long-departed samurai, and people will actually pay to learn basics the likes of which can easily be picked up off basic instructional videotapes.
Or he might offer to instruct you via video and even promote you based solely on your performance of his techniques--on video! Yes, in some cases, it's true: you need neither actually attend classes nor actually do your belt tests in person. All you have to do is order the tapes, practice, and then have someone videotape your performance, and then send it in for evaluation. And pony up a fee, of course.
There are at least two notorious martial arts frauds in Oklahoma. I will not name names, as the modus operandi of at least one of them seems to be to respond to inquiries and criticisms with threats of lawsuits. Not that the fraud can't be verified, but last I heard, just fighting a lawsuit is an expensive proposition even when you win, so instead of just flat-out telling you who these people are, let me caution you: not every martial arts instructor in Oklahoma is telling you the truth about his qualifications and background. Be skeptical--very skeptical--about claims of extremely high rank in multiple systems. Take the simple step of googling his name and looking for criticism.
And lastly, don't exaggerate your ability to judge martial arts proficiency. Unless you have spent considerable time training in the martial arts, your ability to distinguish between a genuinely high-level martial artist and someone who is decently competent at a handful of basics may be worse than you think. In other words, the fact that your prospective instructor looks good to you may not amount to a hill of beans! Be careful before you waste time and money on a fraud.
AFTERTHOUGHT: I just looked, and much to my amazement/amusement, both these gentlemen have actually taken the risky step of putting up little videos on YouTube. No, I will not link, for the reasons stated above. But they are amazing, they really are. One of them showed a defense against a knife thrust, and this is what interested me: to the uninitiated, or to someone who was only familiar with sport karate, it had a surface appearance that looked very attractive. What the defense amounted to was a basic deflection, followed by rapid multiple hand slaps--ok, he did have a "knife" in one hand. It was done very fast, and if you didn't slow it down (I did), you might have missed the facts that:
A) They were just slaps, all slap and sting, no weight or power or zip behind them. For darn sure not palm strikes. Anything done with the non-knife hand was going to be little but annoying. And I'm none too sure about what was being done with the knife hand.
B) Not only did they appear to be largely undirected to specific targets, let alone vulnerable targets, it looked to me--heck, "look" isn't strong enough, they did--land on, in some cases, the sides of the attacker's upper arm. Understand: those weren't "checks" or "traps" or strikes to pressure points. The attacker just got slapped on the upper arm.
Oh, heck, go ahead and thlap me on the upper arm, you bwute! Yeah. That'd work.
C) Considering that the gentleman in question is touting his credentials as an instructor of an art that showcases trapping skills, it is interesting that, not only did the attacker's weapon remain completely uncontrolled, it actually wound up directly beneath the intructor's scrotum at one point. I am not certain that he noticed this himself, but it goes without saying, I should think, that you might want to avoid your attacker having his cutlery directly under the family jewels.
I will not criticize the total compliance of the "attacker." Demonstrations are demonstrations, after all, and as a rule, I don't expect the attacker to do more than go through the motions, since the instructor is usually attempting to illustrate possible responses rather than engage in high-intensity simulated close combat.
The upshot? It was precisely the sort of thing I would expect to look good to someone who was not actually all that familiar with the martial arts, but not at all like something I would be impressed with in the real world. You can deliver a barrage of relatively undirected slaps at an extremely high rate of speed. Try it yourself on a bag sometime. But that doesn't mean that they amount to a hill of beans.
Again, buyer beware. In this case, the buyer should be aware that, last I heard, this man charges something like sixty or seventy simoleons a month for one lesson a week.
And the other guy? He didn't look so hot either.
Maybe I'll recommend some martial arts videos...
People, please understand: it is actually not all that uncommon in martial arts circles for people to tell lies. There is money in it. All someone has to do is convince people that he really does have rank from multiple organizations or arts, or has created his own art, or--one of my favorites so far--that his art was revealed to him in a dream by the ghost of a long-departed samurai, and people will actually pay to learn basics the likes of which can easily be picked up off basic instructional videotapes.
Or he might offer to instruct you via video and even promote you based solely on your performance of his techniques--on video! Yes, in some cases, it's true: you need neither actually attend classes nor actually do your belt tests in person. All you have to do is order the tapes, practice, and then have someone videotape your performance, and then send it in for evaluation. And pony up a fee, of course.
There are at least two notorious martial arts frauds in Oklahoma. I will not name names, as the modus operandi of at least one of them seems to be to respond to inquiries and criticisms with threats of lawsuits. Not that the fraud can't be verified, but last I heard, just fighting a lawsuit is an expensive proposition even when you win, so instead of just flat-out telling you who these people are, let me caution you: not every martial arts instructor in Oklahoma is telling you the truth about his qualifications and background. Be skeptical--very skeptical--about claims of extremely high rank in multiple systems. Take the simple step of googling his name and looking for criticism.
And lastly, don't exaggerate your ability to judge martial arts proficiency. Unless you have spent considerable time training in the martial arts, your ability to distinguish between a genuinely high-level martial artist and someone who is decently competent at a handful of basics may be worse than you think. In other words, the fact that your prospective instructor looks good to you may not amount to a hill of beans! Be careful before you waste time and money on a fraud.
AFTERTHOUGHT: I just looked, and much to my amazement/amusement, both these gentlemen have actually taken the risky step of putting up little videos on YouTube. No, I will not link, for the reasons stated above. But they are amazing, they really are. One of them showed a defense against a knife thrust, and this is what interested me: to the uninitiated, or to someone who was only familiar with sport karate, it had a surface appearance that looked very attractive. What the defense amounted to was a basic deflection, followed by rapid multiple hand slaps--ok, he did have a "knife" in one hand. It was done very fast, and if you didn't slow it down (I did), you might have missed the facts that:
A) They were just slaps, all slap and sting, no weight or power or zip behind them. For darn sure not palm strikes. Anything done with the non-knife hand was going to be little but annoying. And I'm none too sure about what was being done with the knife hand.
B) Not only did they appear to be largely undirected to specific targets, let alone vulnerable targets, it looked to me--heck, "look" isn't strong enough, they did--land on, in some cases, the sides of the attacker's upper arm. Understand: those weren't "checks" or "traps" or strikes to pressure points. The attacker just got slapped on the upper arm.
Oh, heck, go ahead and thlap me on the upper arm, you bwute! Yeah. That'd work.
C) Considering that the gentleman in question is touting his credentials as an instructor of an art that showcases trapping skills, it is interesting that, not only did the attacker's weapon remain completely uncontrolled, it actually wound up directly beneath the intructor's scrotum at one point. I am not certain that he noticed this himself, but it goes without saying, I should think, that you might want to avoid your attacker having his cutlery directly under the family jewels.
I will not criticize the total compliance of the "attacker." Demonstrations are demonstrations, after all, and as a rule, I don't expect the attacker to do more than go through the motions, since the instructor is usually attempting to illustrate possible responses rather than engage in high-intensity simulated close combat.
The upshot? It was precisely the sort of thing I would expect to look good to someone who was not actually all that familiar with the martial arts, but not at all like something I would be impressed with in the real world. You can deliver a barrage of relatively undirected slaps at an extremely high rate of speed. Try it yourself on a bag sometime. But that doesn't mean that they amount to a hill of beans.
Again, buyer beware. In this case, the buyer should be aware that, last I heard, this man charges something like sixty or seventy simoleons a month for one lesson a week.
And the other guy? He didn't look so hot either.
Maybe I'll recommend some martial arts videos...
Monday, May 3, 2010
On the Infamous "Have You No Decency?" Remark
Every so often I will read some commentary involving or referring to Joe Welch's infamous riposte to Joe McCarthy--"Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"--and almost without exception, the commentary makes it clear that the writer knows only part of the story behind that remark. It was only a few weeks ago that I read another such bit of commentary. I thought, at the time, "You poor devil. You have only part of the story, and have no idea what an ignorant footstool you've made yourself out to be." And I thought, too, that it would be a good thing for the correct story to be "out there" in the blogosphere.
Anyone genuinely interested in the full story of Joe McCarthy has been perfectly free to pick up M. Stanton Evans' massively researched and painstakingly documented Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies for a couple of years now. Of course, most of the people who cite Mr. Welch's remark are not interested in the whole story; they are simply interested in making McCarthy look bad. They do not care that McCarthy has indisputably been proven correct: the federal government in the thirties, forties, and fifties did harbor quite a lot of communists. Nor do they care overmuch that communists persist to this day, that our wonderful president, Barack Obama, Peace Be Upon Him, has been known to appoint avowed communists such as Van Jones to positions of power and influence.
I have often thought that such people either have convinced themselves that communists are a thing of the past, something from the "old days," a specter, a phantom, a chimera which Republicans hope to use to scare up a few more votes, or even that communism itself has been hideously misrepresented. It was/is a simple reformist agrarian movement, they think. Nice spread-the-wealth folks. Can't possibly be as bad as those conservatives or Republicans.
I must disagree. Communism was, and is, a murderous, totalitarian ideology, and hard-core communists are, at heart, themselves murderers.
Now, I know--I know--that at this point, some poor soul is even now scrambling for his keyboard, eager to inform me that conservatives have no room to talk, that, after all, fascism is a murderous ideology, too, and fascism is a totalitarian ideology of the right. Sorry. It isn't true, and in trying to argue for it, you are only making yourself look more uninformed than you already did. Read this excerpt, and learn that fascism sprang from the bosom of socialism, is, in fact, simply a different variety of socialism, and learn that your devastating counter-argument is stillborn: fascism, too, is a creation of the left, not the right.
I hesitated somewhat before typing up this lengthy quote from the book. My fervent hope is that reading the material will cause at least a few people to take the step of actually ordering and reading the book, but nevertheless, this extended quote is perhaps somewhat longer than most authors would prefer. Should Mr. Evans (and I will not be satisfied with someone merely claiming to be Mr. Evans) ask me to take the post down, I will of course comply, but hopefully he will approve my intent and reap some additional sales. The remainder of this post is from the book and will give you a much fuller sense of the genesis of Mr. Welch's remark to Senator McCarthy. If I have missed any typos, I apologize, but they are perhaps inevitable in the copying of such a long section. Anything in bold is something I have emphasized. Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning that in the book, Mr. Evans includes a photocopy of the New York Times article to which he refers.
Having thus exhibited his instinct for the capillary, Welch would outdo himself in a third notable episode of this nature--the matter of Frederick Fisher. Fisher was a young attorney from Welch's Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr, brought down to Washington to help prepare the case for Stevens-Adams. In getting ready for the hearings, Welch had asked Fisher if there were anything in his background that could prove embarassing to the Army.
Well, yes, said Fisher, there was. He had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which was indeed a problem. As the Guild had the year before been branded by Attorney General Herbert Brownell as the "legal mouthpiece" of the Communist Party, and before that by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as the party's "legal bulwark," it was decided such past membership would be an incapacitating factor in hearings so heavily devoted to issues of subversion. Fisher was sent home to Boston.
Nevertheless, his name would show up in the hearings, as Welch was cross-examining Roy Cohn in what would be a famous confrontation. This began with the standard Welch technique of exaggerated buildup, to the effect that Cohn had been remiss in not communicating whatever he knew about Communists in the Army directly to Robert Stevens. This colloquy is worth quoting in extenso as an example of Welch in action and the degree to which the lovable codger could change his mien as needed.
WELCH: If you had gone over to the Pentagon and got inside the door and yelled to the first receptionist you saw, "We got some hot dope on some Communists in the Army," don't you think you could have landed at the top?
COHN: Sir, that is not the way I do things.
***
WELCH: And although you had this dope and a fresh and ambitious new Secretary of the Army, reachable by the expenditure of one taxicab fare, you never went during March, if you had it in March, did you, is that right?
COHN: Mr Welch--
WELCH: Just answer. You never went near him in March?
COHN: No, I--
WELCH: Or April? Did you?
COHN: Mr. Welch--
WELCH: Tell me, please.
COHN: I am trying, sir.
WELCH: Or April?
COHN: No, sir.
WELCH: Or May?
COHN: I never went near him, sir.
WELCH: Or June?
COHN: The answer is never.
WELCH: Right. Or July?
COHN: I communicated--
WELCH: Or July?
COHN: No, sir--
SENATOR MUNDT: I think we have covered July.
WELCH: I think it is really dramatic to see how these Communist hunters will sit on this document when they could have brought it to the attention of Bob Stevens in 20 minutes, and they let month after month go by without going to the head and saying, "Sic 'em Stevens."
***
COHN: May I answer the last statement?
WELCH: I only said you didn't say, "Sic 'em Stevens," and you didn't, did you?...You did not say "Sic 'em Stevens." Is that right?
COHN: Sir--
WELCH: Is that right?
COHN: Mr. Welch, if you want to know the way things work, I will tell you.
WELCH: I don't care how it works. I just want to know if it is right that you did not say, "Sic 'em Stevens."
COHN: No, sir, you are right.
WELCH: I am at long last right once, is that correct?
COHN: Mr. Welch, you can always get a laugh...
WELCH: Mr. Cohn, we are not talking about laughing matters. If there is a laugh, I suggest to you, sir, it is because it is so hard to get you to say that you didn't actually yell, "Sic 'em Stevens."
When McCarthy finally objected to this burlesque, the discussion wandered off to other topics. However, Welch was soon back in "Sic 'em Stevens" mode, arguing that Cohn was at fault for not having personally rushed to inform Stevens the instant that data on security problems at Monmouth surfaced. This recapped what had gone before, but with additional Welchian furbelows:
WELCH: ...you didn't tug at his lapel and say, "Mr. Secretary, I know something about Monmouth that won't let me sleep nights?" You didn't do it, did you?
COHN: I don't, as I testifed, Mr. Welch, I don't know whether I talked to Mr. Stevens about it then [in September 1953] or not...
WELCH: Don't you know that if you had really told him what your fears were, and substantiated them to any extent, he could have jumped in the next day with suspensions?
COHN: No, sir.
***
WELCH: Mr. Cohn, tell me once more: Every time you learn of a Communist or a spy anywhere, is it your policy to get them out as fast as possible?
COHN: Surely, we want them out as fast as possible, sir.
WELCH: And whenever you learn of one from now on, Mr. Cohn, I beg of you, will you tell somebody about them quick?
COHN: Mr. Welch, with great respect, I work for the committee here. They know how we go about handling situations of Communist infiltration and failure to act on FBI information about Communist infiltration...
WELCH: May I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a Communist spy, please hurry. Will you remember these words?
This hectoring of Cohn, be it noted, came from the small voice whose clients had been pressuring General Lawton to restore asserted security risks at Monmouth. Even more ironic, if possible, it was premised on the selfsame "purloined letter" Welch had dismissively treated as a "carbon copy of precisely nothing." Now he was contending that Cohn was grievously to blame for not hand-delivering this copy of "precisely nothing" to Robert Stevens by the fastest possible method.
After sitting through these Welch sermonettes about exposing every subversive or Communist suspect Cohn had ever heard of, and being extra quick about it, McCarthy at last broke in by raising the issue of Fred Fisher. Having brought Fisher to D.C. to help out with the hearings, McCarthy opined, Welch had little standing to lecture others about proper methods of Red-hunting. In a tone heavy with disdain, McCarthy stated:
...in view of Mr. Welch's request that information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher, whom he recommended incidentally to do work on this committee, he has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh years and years back, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party...We are now letting you know that this young man did belong to this organization for either 3 or 4 years, belonged to it long after he was out of law school...And subsequently:
Jim [Juliana], will you get the news story to the effect that this man belonged to this Communist front organization?This drew from Welch a much-celebrated answer, featured in all the usual write-ups and replayed innumerable times in video treatments of the hearings. It was the distilled essence of Joe Welch, worth studying in detail to get context and flavor. Along with certain other statements on Fred Fisher, Welch assailed McCarthy as follows:
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never fully grasped your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to Harvard Law School and came with my firm and is starting what looks like a brilliant career with us...Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad...I fear that he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentlemean, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. (Emphasis added.)When McCarthy then attempted to give some background on the National Lawyers Guild, plus a strong tu quoque about the harm done to the reputations of Frank Carr and other young McCarthy staffers by the charges Welch had signed his name to, the Army counsel again lamented the injury to Fisher:
Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?And, finally:
Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this with you further. You have been within six feet of me, and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out If there is a God in Heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it with you further. (emphasis added.)Subsequently, we're told, Welch broke into tears and the audience in the Senate chamber responded with sustained applause. Thus the incident most remembered from the hearings, and generally viewed as the moral Waterloo of Joe McCarthy. The reckless evildoer had exposed young Fred Fisher and his former membership in the National Lawyers Guild, thus scarring the innocent lad forever, and the good, decent Welch had protested this shameful outing of a youthful indiscretion.
All of which seems very moving, and is invariably so treated. It looks a little different, however, when we note that, well before this dramatic moment, Fred Fisher had already been outed, in conclusive fashion, as a former member of the National Lawyers Guild--by none other than Joe Welch. This had occurred in April, some six weeks before the McCarthy-Welch exchange, when Welch took it upon himself to confirm before the world that Fisher had indeed been a member of the Guild, and for this reason had been sent back to Boston. As the New York Times reported, in a story about the formal filing of Army allegations against Cohn-McCarthy:
The Army charges were signed by its new special counsel, Joseph N. Welch. Mr. Welch today [April 15] confirmed news reports that he had relieved from duty his original second assistant, Frederick G. Fisher, Jr., of his own Boston law office because of admitted previous membership in the National Lawyers Guild, which has been listed by Herbert Brownell, Jr. the Attorney General, as a Communist front organization. Mr. Welch said he had brought in another lawyer, John Kimball, Jr., from his Boston office to take Mr. Fisher's place. (Emphasis added.)Giving this news item further impact, the Times ran a sizable photograph of Fred Fisher, plus a caption noting he had been relieved of duty with the Army's legal forces. Having caused this story to appear in the nation's most prestigious daily and reputed paper of record, Joe Welch would seem to have done a pretty good job of outing the innocent lad from Boston. (it was undoubtedly this news story, or an equivalent, that McCarthy was asking Jim Juliana to bring him.) It thus develops that Welch himself had already done the very thing for which he so fervently denounced McCarthy. So the suspicion once more dawns...that something was unspeakably evil when, and only when, done by McCarthy, but perfectly proper when done by Welch and/or his clients.
Counterpoint? Find it here. And yes, if you're wondering, I did go back and change two words in my introduction, two words which may, in retrospect, have been over the top. That's the beauty of the "edit posts" function of blogger...
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Some Noonan Worth Reading
God knows I don't agree with Peggy Noonan about everything. The human being doesn't exist with whom I agree about everything. But I really got a kick out of her column on the Arizona illegal immigration situation, and would recommend reading it. In particular, I got a chuckle out of this:
But that border's gotta be closed first, y'know?
In the past four years, I have argued in this space that nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the common sense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law—say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces—and then go have a Coke. Not everything has to be settled right away. Only controlling the border has to be settled right away.This made me chuckle because, although I'm not wild about amnesty and think it is absolutely an abdication of the responsibilities of the federal government to the American people, I'm not unaware of the sausage-making aspect of how government actually works. I have often tried to puzzle out in my head exactly what sort of "deal" I would have to be offered before I would accept amnesty for most of the illegal aliens already residing in this country. Certainly, securing the border first would be one element of that hypothetical deal. Until the border is secured--actually secured, not merely promised to be secured--as far as I'm concerned, no promise can be trusted. But after that? I might be open to negotiation. Let's see what you got.
But that border's gotta be closed first, y'know?
Saturday, May 1, 2010
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!
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!
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