Originally posted by Battousai
What do people who study a "Do" martial art want to get out of their time?
What do people who study ballet want to get out of their time? What do people who practice (Western) fencing want to get out of their time? Compare these to iaido in the first place and kendo in the second.
(Mind you, I am not saying that
do arts are necessarily ineffectual.)
From my own experience, personal exercise can be like filling up your "spiritual gas tank". Yet I fail to see how someone could study a "Do" art and somehow become more spiritual from it, as opposed to studying a "Jutsu" art.
Spiritual may be a strong word. In many
do arts the idea is to strive for self-perfection and hence build character (self-discipline, perseverance, patience, calmness)--e.g. seeking the perfect draw in iaido. Why do people paint pictures? What do they get out of it?
From my cursory viewing of the "Do" arts, it seems that they are just nicer to the bad guy, maybe I'm being sterotypical but it seems like they don't want to inflict damage upon their attacker, they don't want to seriously maim the serial rapist.
This seems a failry unlikely scenario--a large class of people opposed to the injury of serial sex offenders. There may be some true pacifists out there practicing aikido for philosophical reasons but I think that there is much more to the
do arts than that.
Bear in mind that practicing the
justu arts in a traditional, do-or-die manner often meant conditioning the knuckles to the point of inducing arthritis and throwing punches and kicks in a way more likely to bring about joint injuries to the practitioner--Gichin Funakoshi made some changes to stop this. Is it really self-defense if you end up arthritic and forced to use a cane to walk? What does self-defense mean? One encounter, or a whole lifetime? The changes in karate were meant to make it safer to practice. How do you trade off safe to yourself against less lethal to your attacker? You may never be attacked--is it worth crippling yourself? Or is there possibly a happy medium, where you have an effective system that doesn't damage the practitioner?
In lawless days it may have made sense to sacrifice your own health for stronger techniques--knees and elbows locked out on kicks and strikes, knuckles calloused to the point where you can no longer fully open the fist, etc. Nowadays it's not clear that that's the optimal strategy, especially when your opponent may well have a gun. Really, if self-defense is the goal, isn't pistolry superior to knifemanship, and knifemanship superior to empty hand martial arts? Would any martial artist here like to go empty-handed against a Sayoc Kali practitioner who would have several knives on him or her and would start by throwing one at you then come fast and furious with the rest? Why not train with the knife?
I don't find anything spiritual about being nicer to people who are trying to violate you, kill you, or endanger your family. The "Jutsu" arts practiced by mature people seem much more spiritual to me, because the "Jutsu" arts teach how to destroy, maim and mutilate, and in situations like attemped rape, murder and such, this is justice, more so then putting these offenders in psychiatric re-habilitation.
This is an extreme caricature of practitioners of a wide class of martial arts, a vigilante notion of justice, and ahistorical as well--apart possibly from aikido I don't believe that any arts were changed to make them "nicer". This is not what happened with jujutsu-->judo, karate-jutsu-->karate-do, kenjutsu-->kendo, etc.
Look at naginata-jutsu: It would have died out had it not been made into a sport (
naginato-do). Look at judo, the precursor to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Gracies
say that judo the sport is superior to jujutsu the art because in judo you can practice your techniques
at full power anbd speed against a resisting opponent and hence develop combat skills. (Compare the sports of boxing and Thai kickboxing and their effectiveness vs.
jutsu arts.) What is the advantage of practicing the art of kenjutsu today over the popular martial sport of kendo, which I believe will be an Olympic demonstration sport? Is there a strong need for jojutsu over jodo?
The self-perfection part is emphasized more in some
do arts than others. Iaido and kyudo make it paramount in many schools; in karate-do it refers to a philosophy but self-defense techniques are still taught. The difference is that the techniques are safer, possibly easier, and that there is more of an emphasis on not harming people when it isn't needed, but the phrase "One punch, one life" is still commonly heard along with "The fist is the soul of karate", and killing and maiming techniques are still taught.
This is just my opinion, but I fail to see the point of studying the martial arts in a non-martial fashion.
That's fine if that's your only interest in them; fencers, (kick)boxers, wrestlers, archers, sumotori (sumo wrestlers), judoka, kendoka, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu players (remember, they use the gi and many techniques that depend on it), rifle team members, biathletes, and so on might disagree. If you include the many karateka practicing the martial art, not sport, of karate-do, they'd likely say they
are practicing a martial art, but one that has been modified with the times and the dangers that one now faces and the changes in how much time one can devote to practicing (down from many hours per day).
My viewpoint is that martial arts should be martial, they should concentrate on the total destruction of the human body.
Leaving aside the needs of e.g. police officers, is it clear that that's the best self-defense strategy? Ever try to lay a hand on a good aikidoka or Tai Chi player? It's hard. Why destroy his body if you can simply keep him from touching yours?
The whole appeal of the Do arts seem to be like that of some sort of New Age movement.
With all due respect, I think you are very misinformed, and are most likely generalizing from your understanding of aikido or a similar art. Modern
do arts are changed but not so as to not hurt the opponent--it's either to preserve the art as a sport or as an art form, or to make it more safer and/or more popular. You might argue that the latter changes make it less deadly but it isn't the opponent's health that is the reason for the concern.
