Ken/mpo-Karate-Kajukenbo

[BlackCatBonz]

well the legend that Daruma taught the monks a form of exercise, is just that, a legend......like a lot of stories in MA. but stylistic differences are sure to develop in anything that is taught.......we know that for sure. not many people are taught one thing and then stick with that one thing forever.
okinawan karate is not just from the evolution of one simple style of chuan fa, naha, shuri, and tomari all had their own distinct styles of chuanfa, this was due to the influx of chinese people that lived in okinawa.......i think they were referred to as the 39 families when it was under chinese rule(robert r. probably knows loads about this.).
ok.....i got to okinawa too fast.
to see where the arts changed and how they flourished, you have to look at the different provinces of china and see the arts similarities and differences according to region....this can be a long look depending on if you care or not. the chinese (as far as i have read) are very different about the way they keep records than the japanese. but as a start, i would look at the history of mantis, white crane, baguazhang, wing chun, shaolin long fist, choy li fut, hung gar, hsing-i etc...... and see where it goes from there. i think this would make it an interesting thread.

shawn

 

[The Kai]

Goju Ryu is reportedly from White Crane Kung Fu

While Uechi Ryu is decended From Pagi noon


Some styles of kung fu were reportedly to defend against the much more prevaliant Shoalin long fist(wing chun and mantis style).
The geographic differences in China are largly gone due the cleaning sweep of Chairman Mao-the different styles were homogenized into Wu Shu
Todd

 

[BlackCatBonz]

my point was to look into the history of the styles, not as they are now.......and how they influenced the okinawan styles. as far as i know and have been taught, mantis and wing chun are not long fist styles.......the hallmark of both systems is the ability to fight in close.
but look into the actual history of the martial arts, the how and why's.

shawn

 

[The Kai]

mantis and wing chun were set up to counter shaolin by creating a close range systemI think the other thing to think about is that the shoalin temple is a creation more of movies and TV than history.
I am not a Chinese martial arts person, so my history on these arts is a tad skechy

Lets see southern styles of kung fu more hand orientaed to to the fact the people lived closer together and within cities

Northern kung fu more kicks, thier hands would be bundled up making punchs less effective and open spaces for larger motions

Todd

 

[GAB]

IMHO - Most "temple" martial arts were actually disspossed generals of a losing battle that gave up thier worldy possesions, and name to continue to live. That is way the Triads call back to the temples as thier birth. The fighting monks were in many cases a "retired" general living within the temple walls.

Then the arts migrated south traveling thru the korean penisula, where they briefly flourished, founding such institutions as the Hwrang.
Todd

Hi Kai, The arts did go to the korean penisula, and yes there was a mixing of the arts with the enslavement of or maybe debter (similar to western culture) would be better. Time and era was very important to the migration of the arts. Back and forth, China-Korea-Japan-Okinawa

Different thought on religion Buddha vs Confucious vs Shinto. China, Korea and Japan.

What fit in was what would go best with the religious beliefs.

Shawn, thanks for the information and the direction.

Unhappy Generals(retired or thrown out or over thrown or running away with a group of men) Can you imagine these temples with out women, (enslavement).

Children were populationing the whole area and the orphan population had to go somewhere. Selling off or stealing. Very much a time of Highwaymen maurading gangs, and the need to learn protection for self and family. Groups develop different styles of defense.

Mongol's invasion Martial law and martial arts rise up. Lots of fighting and unrest. And we have not left China...

No Buddha, is Christ a figment of imagination also?

Buddha, Confucious and I Ching, the Tao...hundreds of years before Christ.
Some say thousands of years...Yin and Yang, Hexagrams..code long before western civilization came up with it..Golden age of China...Book.. Eastern Wisdom by Michael Jordan, (not the ball player)

New finding that the Jomon culture is thousands of years before the Mesopotamia cultures, due to pottery found that dates back earlier...

Anyone else?

Regards, Gary

 

[The Kai]

The people oin the temples were not in inslavement since they made a choice to enter the temple and could leave when they wanted.

Also I don't think a vow or period of celibacy is enslavement, or imprisonment by any means,

Where do we want to go with this thread?
Todd

 

[GAB]

Hi,

How about the arts that were in Vietnam, Thailand, the early Khmer Empire in Cambodia, is an interesting read.

Interesting is the Chinese seem to have had the greatest influence, they were the greatest civilization for so long...The idea is not who was the first or the last but the longest.
The religion (or lack) had a lot to do with the mentality. India went passive and China because of outside attacks were very fierce in defending or being conquered and then assimulating them due to there way of being quite civilized (compared to others at the time) they also consumed others.
I think if you took a calander (12 mos) and figured India then China the oldest, look at it like each month is a certain amount of time, say 500 years.

What you would have is Korea at 7 others added in after that. America (if you wanted to say Hawaii) the last 6 or 7 days of the month of December.

I threw this in to show how long it was before it went anywhere else, FMA being quite different.
Obviously, this is very simple and not specific. If others would like to add feel free...

Regards, Gary

 

[The Kai]

I guess you would have to wonder about how much "cross training" happened back in the old days. Was travel from village to village common? How long would it take someone to travel 100 miles? Couls you afford to leave the farm for any lenght of time.

China was quite influential on language, culture so it is not hard to imagine they inluenced the martial arts
Todd

 

[GAB]

I guess you would have to wonder about how much "cross training" happened back in the old days. Was travel from village to village common? How long would it take someone to travel 100 miles? Couls you afford to leave the farm for any lenght of time.

China was quite influential on language, culture so it is not hard to imagine they inluenced the martial arts
Todd

Hi Kai,

Thanks for adding this, I have not been to this thread in quite sometime, out of one month, I was gone for three weeks.
Had a nice Thanksgiving, how about you?

You know that is really a good point, the family type relationship, you are stuck on the farm or rice paddy.
Then you have the shiftless yellow robed begger monks, who if they were not good at defending themselves would have been history.

So they have something others want, a young man sees a monk take out a couple of highwaymen, then become's his serf (different I know but essentially the same) or the monk is his mentor etc.

Probably better then working all day following the ox, or momma san pulling the plow.

Kind of like the story in England Robin Hood and the Friar, they find a few others and create their own story.

So after centuries of this type of secluded (underground Type of culture if you will) we get closer to the revealing little by little and soon it starts to get bigger and bigger. Western civilization starts to explore the flat word (only at the Vatican).
Stories start getting back to Rome and the Jesuits hit the trail in a similar fashion only they are traveling quite a bit further, they are not just going a few hundred miles but thousands and closing the gap between nations not yet seen or heard of.

Basic theme Religion, or searching for enlightenment is the main point here.
Eastern and Western culture clashes again. Only this time it is not Alexander the Great and his Armies 300 BC, it is the Catholic Church and their foot soliders.
Along with a few Sailors and Adventurous others in a ship the size of a Greyhound Bus (hard to believe).

Now you think about the Island's of the Phillipines (Filipino), Portuguese Sailors and Spain together along with the Catholic Church go to the Islands and then also they are going to Mexico (new spain) and taking one culture from one place to another and back again. Also the Freemasons are on the March.

If you have never been to Mexico city and seen the Anthropologia Musuem, In the (Grasshopper park) Chapultepic (sp) Park, you are missing a great ride into history.
About the establishment of the "New Spain" into the Americas. Martial Arts from the Filipines is here.%-}
Much earlier then into Hawaii with Japanese and Chinese stuff.

Ceicei this was for you. FMA has been in America for many many centuries,
talk about a clandestine type of teaching. :jedi1:

OK. Back to Okinawa, because at the same time Okinawa was being invaded by foreigners was about the same time as New Spain and the Filipines make their entry in to the new world.

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

Regards, Gary

 

[Karazenpo]

my point was to look into the history of the styles, not as they are now.......and how they influenced the okinawan styles. as far as i know and have been taught, mantis and wing chun are not long fist styles.......the hallmark of both systems is the ability to fight in close.
but look into the actual history of the martial arts, the how and why's.

shawn

Hi Shawn, there is a traditional mantis long fist style. I studied it. Master Chan Poi's Northern Wah Lum Tam Tui Praying Mantis Kung Fu, boy, that was a mouthful, lol. Good system, I could recognize the Chinese elements of the kenpo/kempo arts within it. Sometimes he's listed as Pui Chan, same guy though. He was in Boston but relocated to Florida years ago, helluva of martial artist! Isn't there a form in Tracy's Kenpo called Tam Tui? (searching/seeking foot)

 

[RavenDarkfellow]

I'd just like to touch on the previous points of the origin and relationships of martial arts. I consider myself equally a martial arts scholar and martial artist. In fact, at this point, I'm more of a scholar than a practitioner (mostly because I have limited access to martial arts training).

I hate to say it, and I'm sure I'm going to be flogged for this one, but the fact is very few martial arts actually have any idea of when/where they were actually founded. Most martial artists (especially the originators) either didn't know their lineage, or made it up, or even changed it to make it sound better. This is especially true of the older and Chinese martial arts. Nobody can seem to keep their records straight, so what I do is collect all the information I can about each art, conflicting or not, and assume that part of all of it is true.

From what I've gathered, nearly everyone seems to concur that Bodhidarmha (a.k.a. Daruma, and at least two other names) was the originator of the martial arts. The legend goes that he went to the Shaolin temple to teach the monks about Buddhism, but they were too physically weak to keep up with his meditations. So he developed a conditioning regimine which he called "eight hands", which helped to whip the monks into shape.

From this, they added more techniques in, more and different conditioning excersices, etc., until they finally had created an entirely new art which eventually became Shaolin Gung Fu.

From there, everything branches out into hundreds of different versions, and even the arts which branched off have branches, and so on, and so forth. Even within the orriginal legend, there are various versions of how it happened and why. The version I've written above is the most common (that I've found) and even the versions which differ tend to share most of the important elements.

For a couple of examples to support my claim that nobody can keep the history of their arts straight:

(These will be extremely abbreviated and simplified.)

Hung Gar Kung Fu v. 1 - Mr. Hung learns a form of Kung Fu that he becomes proficient in. He's out gardening one day when he finds a crane picking at his garden. He tries to shoo the crane away, but it evades his attacks while strategically keeping him at bay by pecking at him from it's lithe, graceful motions. He captures this crane and studies it, adding concepts from its movement and behaviour to his current knowledge, and creates Hung Gar.

v. 2 - Same as above, but he doesn't capture the crane, it wounds him, and while he recovers he contemplates its movements. He then developes the techniques on his own.

v. 3 - He learns a form of Kung Fu he becomes proficient in. He then seeks knowledge from his wife who knows crane style (or in other versions Wing Chun, or in other versions, something secret and mysterious), adds it to his own knowledge, and creates Hung Gar.

Aikido v.1 - Developed in feudal Japan, entirely independent of any other martial art, by the Bushi (Samuri), nobles, and their families. Different versions of Aikido were used throughout Feudal history (after the ban of weapons within cities) as a war-time art.

v. 2 - Developed sometime in the 1800's (I'm thinking 1840's) by an "enlightened" political-religious zealot as a non-lethal means of meditation and conditioning, from the existing art of Jiu-jitsu.

v. 3 - Much like version one, except that it was then molded down into a less lethal form, with less joint locks and breaks, into the art of Judo. (This is also sorta' an inconsistency in the Judo origin.)

v. 4 - Developed in ancient japan from Chin Na after some monks immigrated from China to teach Buddhism.

Karate (Any except just "Te") v. 1 - Developed from the Okinawan art of "Te", which was created independently to fight off the oppressive armies of Japan. The Japanese saw the Okinawan's art, and decided they must have their own styles, which became "Karate".

v. 2 Developed from the Kempo which was migrating over from China (Kempo having the general connotation of Chinese martial arts that migrated over to Okinawa and Japan), Karate orriginated entirely from these arts.

v. 3 I'm hazy on this one as I only read it once, but it has something to do with one single person seeing the Kempo, and deciding to take the hard, linear movements from it, and employ it as a brutal, devastating, war-time art.

Those are just a few examples, and like I said, they're quite abbreviated. I don't have access to the sources just now, nor do I have the time to post the full versions of each one.

So having that said, there's really no point in arguing or paying much attention to the lineage and history of each martial art, unless you just like knowing the trivia, or you feel you need to know -something- about the past of your art. Just don't get too dependent on the information, or offended when somebody corrects you/ gives an entirely different version or account of what you thought you knew.

 

[Gentle Fist]

That was the popular answer a decade or two ago, but I think they are finding more and more that shows fighting styles that are centuries older than Ancient Rome.

Professor Shuras would surely know.

 

[James Kovacich]

Hi Ceicei,

It is in China and we are heading to Okinawa and Japan, How long will that take, we have gotten there very quickly so I slowed it down...

Regardes, Gary

Well if we follow this line, they never made it to Okinawa or Japan. :uhyeah:

Ng Mui - Five Ancestors Shaolin Boxing
Yim Wing Chun - Founder - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Bok Cho (Yims husband) -Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Wong Wah Bo - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Yee Tye - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Jan - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Bik - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Chan Wah Shun - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Yip Man - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Bruce Lee - Wing Chun Gung-Fu - Founder - Jun Fan Gung-Fu / Jeet Kune Do

 

[GAB]

Well if we follow this line, they never made it to Okinawa or Japan. :uhyeah:

Ng Mui - Five Ancestors Shaolin Boxing
Yim Wing Chun - Founder - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Bok Cho (Yims husband) -Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Wong Wah Bo - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Yee Tye - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Jan - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Leung Bik - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Chan Wah Shun - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Yip Man - Wing Chun Gung-Fu
Bruce Lee - Wing Chun Gung-Fu - Founder - Jun Fan Gung-Fu / Jeet Kune Do

Hi,

How about the fact that quite a bit of the ones you mentioned have ended up in the arts that the topic is about. Plus you see some of it is in FMA also.

What came first the chicken or the egg???The egg, because it is associated with the reptiles also.

I have read where one of the oldest arts are from the Phillipines by way of Africia (because of the Negrito).

The more you read about different Martial Arts, the more you realize they are similar with a twist.

Regards, Gary

 

[James Kovacich]

Hi,

How about the fact that quite a bit of the ones you mentioned have ended up in the arts that the topic is about. Plus you see some of it is in FMA also.

What came first the chicken or the egg???The egg, because it is associated with the reptiles also.

I have read where one of the oldest arts are from the Phillipines by way of Africia (because of the Negrito).

The more you read about different Martial Arts, the more you realize they are similar with a twist.

Regards, Gary

I think that if we were to be able to go all the way back we may find that they all would be tied together in some
way.

 

[BlackCatBonz]

as for karate making its way to okinawa, i believe the story goes a little like this.
in 1391 the ming court (as okinawa was under pseudo-chinese rule) sent 36 families from fukien province to chuzan in okinawa. these people were ship builders, artisans, tradesmen, etc. with these chinese emigrants also came chuan fa. as the okinawans started to learn from the chinese, these arts began to spread throughout the 3 kingdoms in okinawa. so naturally.....from these places evolved forms of karate distinct to their regions Naha-te, Shuri-te, Tomari-te. it just so happens that these "36 families" settled in a district of Naha that they called Kume, which became a very prestigious community.
so like.....there you have it.

 

[GAB]

Hi Shawn,

I have read that also in the Bubishi, Translated by Patrick McCarthy.

Okinawa is where Karate came from as most of us know, The person responsible for it was Gichin Funakoshi. He was an Okinawan and the rest is history.

The thing I find interesting is at the time Okinawa, was under Japan's rule and had been for years.

America must have felt it was under Japans rule for they gave it back to them after the war. Interesting. I am sure it is still an angry situation to the Okinawan's.

Regards, Gary

 

[Simon Curran]

Well when this thread was originally started the idea was that people should offer opinions, instead of trying to blind with facts/ legends, so I will offer my opinion.
I am a natural cynic, so here goes.
I believe that martial arts are as old as mankind itself, I am sure that at some time we have all come across someone who is not necessarily a martial artist, just naturally tough.
My theory is these tough guys teach what they know to others, who add a little of their own, and so on ad infinitum.
With regards to legends of one person being at the centre and starting it all, this is basically the same as what I am saying, however I do not believe that just one person in the world, whether divine or otherwise (I am also an atheist) could ever be the be all and end all of fighting ability.
Like I already said, I personally have seen people who could fight and those who could not, regardless of their training or lack thereof.
At the end of the day it all comes down to a persons understanding of the limitations of the human body, both offensively and defensively, we all have nerves/bones/organs which can be attacked, we all have hands/feet/forehead/teeth etc with which we can attack.
In regards to teachings of breathing exercises etc. that is just a matter of physiology, without breath we can't exist, and the better our body's oxygen uptake, the better we function, but in terms of people meditating themselves to a higher plane of conciousness, I have two things to say;
a) don't pick those mushrooms
b) hyperventilation induces dizziness which could be construed as an altered state.
Like I said in the start, this is just my personal opinion, and I am sure that a lot of others will disagree, but basically martial arts are all about violence, it has always existed, and some have a better ability to use violence as a tool than others.

 

[masherdong]

Sorry I dont understand this thread.