Karate's Public Image

[Steel Tiger]

The other day on the news I saw the announcement of a civic program initiated by the police in South Australia. They put together a youth Boxing tournament for boys (perhaps girls too I'm not sure) aged 12 to 15. A doctor has come out in criticism of the tournament saying that Boxing is designed to beat people about the head until they are unconcious and he would have preferred it be a Karate tournament.

Is this doctor voicing a misconception of Karate or have the various point-fighting systems for tournaments brought people to think of Karate as non-offensive?

 

[tshadowchaser]

you may be correct in thinking that many people now see Karate as only a point fighting system with padding.
Old time Karate tournaments and fights not only did damage to the head but to much of the rest of the body

 

[terryl965]

Yes Karate and Olympic TKD and along with Judo is just become the stepping stone for most people. If they ever really saw what this Art could do without the sport influence that have really become the main stage here then most people would look at it differently.

 

[Steel Tiger]

you may be correct in thinking that many people now see Karate as only a point fighting system with padding.
Old time Karate tournaments and fights not only did damage to the head but to much of the rest of the body

Yes Karate and Olympic TKD and along with Judo is just become the stepping stone for most people. If they ever really saw what this Art could do without the sport influence that have really become the main stage here then most people would look at it differently.

Both of you and I can see into the art and know how devastating it can be. Do you think that the sport aspects of Karate, and TKD for that matter, are 'dumbing down' the art. These arts were originally developed as ways to kill, or at least seriously injure, people whereas Boxing has always been a sport, a brutal one true, but a sport nontheless. Are they losing their souls to sport and the lure of gold medals or is this just a perception?

 

[terryl965]

Both of you and I can see into the art and know how devastating it can be. Do you think that the sport aspects of Karate, and TKD for that matter, are 'dumbing down' the art. These arts were originally developed as ways to kill, or at least seriously injure, people whereas Boxing has always been a sport, a brutal one true, but a sport nontheless. Are they losing their souls to sport and the lure of gold medals or is this just a perception?

Yes the sport aspect of both styles are taken away the true meaning of what they are able to do. People see these as if it is only a game like soccer and Baseball. What the future holds for these Arts are truly a guessing match, when they allowed the arts to be water down by non qualify instructors and people that really have no ideal what the significant of the art is and to apply the technique the right way it gave way to sport in this and every country.

 

[Kacey]

I don't know which misperception is stronger for this man - that "Boxing is designed to beat people about the head until they are unconscious", or that such things never happen in Karate. On the other hand, while people do get knocked out in Karate and other MA tournaments, there is an emphasis on focus and control, while in Boxing, a knockout is a desired outcome.

 

[Steel Tiger]

I don't know which misperception is stronger for this man - that "Boxing is designed to beat people about the head until they are unconscious", or that such things never happen in Karate. On the other hand, while people do get knocked out in Karate and other MA tournaments, there is an emphasis on focus and control, while in Boxing, a knockout is a desired outcome.

I think you may have touched on the doctor's actual complaint, the desired outcome in Boxing. But when I heard his interview I was struck by his implication that Karate was inherently less dangerous and it made me wonder if this was a commonly held belief among the uninitiated.

 

[mjd]

I hate to say it but karate has become in the public eye a soft sport, point sparring, kids are not allowed to make contact, it is a image that has been tatooed by the mass marketing karate orgs out their trying to make the big bucks. Most of the large groups or clubs have after school programs that is more for watching kids then teaching the arts.

The rest have to live with the image the big orgs give us, it's life, but do you really care?, if you love what you do the answer is no.

 

[exile]

I hate to say it but karate has become in the public eye a soft sport, point sparring, kids are not allowed to make contact, it is a image that has been tatooed by the mass marketing karate orgs out their trying to make the big bucks. Most of the large groups or clubs have after school programs that is more for watching kids then teaching the arts.

This is I believe a completely accurate assessment of what has been happening to karate under the pressure of its tournament competition aspect. And don't forget, folks, this isn't a new development. Funakoshi spent a good many paragraphs in various books of his railing against the sport conception of kumite. And consider the following from one of the masters of the modern bunkai-jutsu movement (kata interpretation for combat-realistic street defense):

In the 1950s and the early 1960s with the introduction of competition with rules the emphasis again began to change and through the 1970s to the 1990s sport karate was very much at the centre of our thinking. The purist karateka may claim that they never practised sport karate and that they always maintained their tradition. Although many of us would like to think that, the evidence is against us. So all-pervasive is the competition ethic, and so deeply is it ingrained in practice methodology, that it is difficult to distinguish it from what we aspire to, namely the practice of the art of karate.

The competition thought-process manifest itself most obviously in use of combat range or engagement distance (maai). Most contemporary karateka are comfortable at long range (also called competition range). All modern Kumite practices are designed to operate at this long range, and by continual exposure to it the karateka finds his comfort zone. Changing back to short range upsets the average karateka's level of comfort and puts him in unfamiliar territory.

(Bill Burgar, Five Years, One Kata, Martial Arts Publishing Ltd., UK, 2003, p. 34) Substituting taekwondo for karate here would not change the truth value of Burgar's statement one bit, and anyone who wonders about that implicit comparison with boxing, at karate's expense (so far as its reputation for street effectiveness is concerned) has only to look at the career of TKD, whose street credibility has become negligible—with reason!—even as it has become the dominant international competitive MA, based on its Olympic status. Judo, alas, went before both TKD and karate and blazed the trail, so to speak. So the reputation of karate, like that of the once much-feared TKD, has taken a definite turn southward, so far as its combat effectiveness is concerned, for very similar reasons.

The rest have to live with the image the big orgs give us, it's life, but do you really care?, if you love what you do the answer is no.

So very true! What difference does it really make, any more than what other people think of our favorite restaurant? If we really love the place, we couldn't care less who finds the food there too spicey, or expensive, or whatever. In fact, the fewer people competing with us for seats, the better, eh? As long as there are just enough customers to keep the place in business, do we really care what anyone else says or thinks?

 

[Steel Tiger]

So very true! What difference does it really make, any more than what other people think of our favorite restaurant? If we really love the place, we couldn't care less who finds the food there too spicey, or expensive, or whatever. In fact, the fewer people competing with us for seats, the better, eh? As long as there are just enough customers to keep the place in business, do we really care what anyone else says or thinks?

We always say things like this, but we really do care what people think of our arts. There is an element of ego involved, we want people to think well of what we do, but there is another issue. If the art we practice develops a very poor reputation then people are not going to want to study it and it will fade into obscuring, and perhaps from existence alltogether.

 

[exile]

We always say things like this, but we really do care what people think of our arts. There is an element of ego involved, we want people to think well of what we do, but there is another issue. If the art we practice develops a very poor reputation then people are not going to want to study it and it will fade into obscuring, and perhaps from existence alltogether.

This is just the problem of there being not enough customers in the restaurant to keep it going (or too many of the remaining customers wanting inferior cuisine, so the overall quality of the place goes downhill). My own feeling is, karate is in better shape than TKD so far as reestablishing its claim to being the premier `street' art. There's a whole movement afoot in the UK and elsewhere (your own Patrick McCarthy has played a leading role in this) to rebuild karate around a kata/bunkai-based curriculum, with emphasis on its fighting applications rather than the dueling model—adept vs. adept under sanitised conditions—which seems to have crept into all of the karate-based MAs to the detriment of the combat side. In the KMAs, that movement is still in its infancy and has much more of an uphill fight, so I have to say, I'm a bit envious of karate in that respect.

The real danger, I think, is not the extinction of the art but the ultimate loss of any real choice in how one trains, what sort of art one is able to choose to train in. Very, very few dojangs teach the Korean arts from combat-based perspective; there isn't even a generally used Korean term cognate with `bunkai'—the whole concept is foreign to most TKD schools, though TSD is better in that respect, I gather. I don't care all that much what outsiders think of TKD, but I am very troubled by the lack of choice in TKD curricula and instruction. My own school is good in that respect, but the culture of TKD has become progressively way less martial over the decades, in spite of the severe combat effectiveness inherent in the art, and a monoclonal environment is never good for practitioners. At least with karate, there's a lot less central control by vast international organizations intent on dictating matters of syllabus and training focus...

 

[Steel Tiger]

This is just the problem of there being not enough customers in the restaurant to keep it going (or too many of the remaining customers wanting inferior cuisine, so the overall quality of the place goes downhill). My own feeling is, karate is in better shape than TKD so far as reestablishing its claim to being the premier `street' art. There's a whole movement afoot in the UK and elsewhere (your own Patrick McCarthy has played a leading role in this) to rebuild karate around a kata/bunkai-based curriculum, with emphasis on its fighting applications rather than the dueling model—adept vs. adept under sanitised conditions—which seems to have crept into all of the karate-based MAs to the detriment of the combat side. In the KMAs, that movement is still in its infancy and has much more of an uphill fight, so I have to say, I'm a bit envious of karate in that respect.

The real danger, I think, is not the extinction of the art but the ultimate loss of any real choice in how one trains, what sort of art one is able to choose to train in. Very, very few dojangs teach the Korean arts from combat-based perspective; there isn't even a generally used Korean term cognate with `bunkai'—the whole concept is foreign to most TKD schools, though TSD is better in that respect, I gather. I don't care all that much what outsiders think of TKD, but I am very troubled by the lack of choice in TKD curricula and instruction. My own school is good in that respect, but the culture of TKD has become progressively way less martial over the decades, in spite of the severe combat effectiveness inherent in the art, and a monoclonal environment is never good for practitioners. At least with karate, there's a lot less central control by vast international organizations intent on dictating matters of syllabus and training focus...

I can see what you mean. I suppose the great variety of Karate styles alongside the concerted effort to 'bring back' the bunkai give it a certain resilience. Coming from a CMA background I can really feel for you TKD guys. It seems there are as many styles of gongfu as there are Chinese so it is strong and weak all at the same time. TKD has only a single voice it seems and its screaming for Olympic glory.

It may be that guys like Abernathy and McCarthy can rescue Karate's somewhat fallen image.

 

[chinto]

Both of you and I can see into the art and know how devastating it can be. Do you think that the sport aspects of Karate, and TKD for that matter, are 'dumbing down' the art. These arts were originally developed as ways to kill, or at least seriously injure, people whereas Boxing has always been a sport, a brutal one true, but a sport nontheless. Are they losing their souls to sport and the lure of gold medals or is this just a perception?

yes and no. first boxing came from 'pugilisum' a style of striking from europe that had other things in it then it does now in its sport form. In short boxing was developed as an unarmed combat system to criple and kill in europe.

Karate was also developed as a strikeing, and grapling and trowing system with locks and all the other things you would want in a system of unarmed combat used to survive leathal attackes by armed and unarmed attackers.

neither were really developed to be sports. I personaly really hope that unlike boxing Karate would not end up "dumbed down" into just a prize fighting sport, but would maintain its original intent and system which is very very efficent and effective in self defence.

 

[chinto]

I hate to say it but karate has become in the public eye a soft sport, point sparring, kids are not allowed to make contact, it is a image that has been tatooed by the mass marketing karate orgs out their trying to make the big bucks. Most of the large groups or clubs have after school programs that is more for watching kids then teaching the arts.

The rest have to live with the image the big orgs give us, it's life, but do you really care?, if you love what you do the answer is no.

Sad but often true, meany of the comercial dojos for karate and other styles such as TKD that are often lumped into the same 'karate' title by much of the public are more baby sitting services then any thing else. they teach only a very very 'dumbed down' curiculam, especialy to kids, and that is what people think all karate is. We know that properly tought and unchanged from the old ways Karate is a very efficent and effective system of self defence that assumes that you will die if you do not win. enough said on that score, but much of the public has no clue about it at all.

 

[Steel Tiger]

yes and no. first boxing came from 'pugilisum' a style of striking from europe that had other things in it then it does now in its sport form. In short boxing was developed as an unarmed combat system to criple and kill in europe.

Karate was also developed as a strikeing, and grapling and trowing system with locks and all the other things you would want in a system of unarmed combat used to survive leathal attackes by armed and unarmed attackers.

neither were really developed to be sports. I personaly really hope that unlike boxing Karate would not end up "dumbed down" into just a prize fighting sport, but would maintain its original intent and system which is very very efficent and effective in self defence.

I have to disagree with you about the origins of boxing. It was a sport practiced by the ancient Greeks long before the Latin word pugnis ("fist") came into existence. The Greeks practiced it as a sport as combat to them was between armed men.

Regardless of this, I agree that it would be bad for Karate to be "dumbed down" into prize fighting.

 

[thetruth]

I don't think the doctor was having a crack at karate. The dangers of boxing are well publicised. Long term impact to the head through boxing has been shown to cause brain damage. Every few months I see an article about a boxer in hospital after a fight with a brain hemorrhage or who has died in the ring and then there's the likes of Muhammad Ali. I'm sure that those who box choose to do so but there are safer sports to involve your kids in such as the sport side of karate. Now I know that the sport aspect was never a part of real karate but its a part of some styles now and if it is good for kid why not have kids do it? There is no need to get precious about the fact that people don't know how dangerous karate can be yada yada. The kids wouldn't be learning that portion off the bat anyway.

Also just a thought on Patrick McCarthy. I have been to a number of his seminars (5 or 6 I would say) as he was a friend of my old instructor. He has a lot of historic knowledge but as far as bunkai and application his knowledge is limited as far as the bunkai from past masters goes etc. We were doing some bo drills one day with him when he showed us an extremely dubious move. I questioned my own instructor over it who later asked Patrick, who admitted he had made it up to fill a gap in the drill he didn't have. He lost me right then and there. He also still talks about the habitual acts of physical violence etc. Nothing has changed and he is still repeating the things he was saying 10 years ago with nothing new to add. If anyone is to take karate forward and united it is not him.

Cheers
Sam:asian:

 

[exile]

I can see what you mean. I suppose the great variety of Karate styles alongside the concerted effort to 'bring back' the bunkai give it a certain resilience. Coming from a CMA background I can really feel for you TKD guys. It seems there are as many styles of gongfu as there are Chinese so it is strong and weak all at the same time. TKD has only a single voice it seems and its screaming for Olympic glory.

Yes, multiple styles and the failure of large-scale organizations to impose top-down control are what have kept the CMAs and O/JMAs healthy, IMO. As long as mutations and variations are possible, the art will keep its stylistic ecological diversty. The pressure of big-money competition creates the equivalent of automatic factory farming where everything that might be adaptive or innovative is instantly weeded out—or in the case of TKD, marginalized and defined as eccentric. I really believe that in the next several years a rift will develop between combat-oriented and tournament oriented TKD which will lead to a major division between the two, comparable to that between judo and jujutsu.

It may be that guys like Abernathy and McCarthy can rescue Karate's somewhat fallen image.

And there are other guys out there doing the same thing. I do see these chaps as the tap-root of the rebirth of karate as a jutsu, a fighting discipline. We have a few in the KMAs, but we need many more!

Now I know that the sport aspect was never a part of real karate but its a part of some styles now and if it is good for kid why not have kids do it? There is no need to get precious about the fact that people don't know how dangerous karate can be yada yada. The kids wouldn't be learning that portion off the bat anyway.

Well, the Brits have a saying: `Begin as you mean to go on.' If you start with a standard kihon approach and emphasize the distant fighting range which is the standard dimension for kumite, then, as the passage from Burgar I quoted earlier suggests, you are in effect socializing the new practitioner into an approach to karate which is pretty much going to go inevitably in the sport competitive direction, and if you try to introduce the CQ range a few years later, with associated techs, you will probably find it much harder to get students to learn practical street defense karate than if you started from a kata bunkai based curriculum. In our TKD school, I try to get kids to apply some of the basic CQ techs inherent in the hyungs—traps/locks, with stances interpreted as projections of weight into a tech, `blocking' movement as strikes to the head or throws, and so on—from the very first forms we teach them.

Also just a thought on Patrick McCarthy. I have been to a number of his seminars (5 or 6 I would say) as he was a friend of my old instructor. He has a lot of historic knowledge but as far as bunkai and application his knowledge is limited as far as the bunkai from past masters goes etc.

But it's also true that a lot of those old bunkai have been lost, so a certain amount of reverse engineering is necessary to see what the practical application could have been. He probably brings to bear as much knowledge as he can of past applications, but there's not much one can do to recover most of that knowledge, unfortunately.

We were doing some bo drills one day with him when he showed us an extremely dubious move. I questioned my own instructor over it who later asked Patrick, who admitted he had made it up to fill a gap in the drill he didn't have. He lost me right then and there. He also still talks about the habitual acts of physical violence etc. Nothing has changed and he is still repeating the things he was saying 10 years ago with nothing new to add. If anyone is to take karate forward and united it is not him.

Well, he's getting on, a bit, I think; you can't run forever, and he is, if I'm right, the oldest or one of the very oldest of that bunkai-based training crowd. Certainly the work he did on HAOV has been very important and a new generation of fighter, people like Burgar and Geoff Thompson and others in the `reality-based TMAs' have picked up on that work and shown in detail how well bunkai from classic kata address those HAOVs. That work still, so far as I can see, has yet to become familiar and mainstream enough to represent a major alternative to the sport-sparring kumite approach to karate. PMcC certainly deserves credit for his part in reviving that view of karate, even if he isn't in the avant-garde at this point...

 

[Grenadier]

That doctor has probably only known about Karate based on point tournament matches. Even then, I don't think he has witnessed a USA-NKF or WKF-style match, where the competitors do hit hard and fast (albeit with gloves).

I wonder if he would change his mind, if he saw one of Oyama's knockdown tournaments?

 

[Steel Tiger]

That doctor has probably only known about Karate based on point tournament matches. Even then, I don't think he has witnessed a USA-NKF or WKF-style match, where the competitors do hit hard and fast (albeit with gloves).

I wonder if he would change his mind, if he saw one of Oyama's knockdown tournaments?

I think you are exactly right. It is very likely that his opinion would change if he saw a knockdown tournament. What is most likely is that he would recommend young teens practice no martials at all.

 

[Em MacIntosh]

I like that people think it's soft. Let them. It is up to us to continue to practice that which is bad-*** self defense and keep it alive. The McDojo's make the real schools that much more real. A diamond in the rough, so to speak. As long as we keep it real, it's still real. Karate's too popular anyway, IMO.