We might. I called the Okinawan Cultural Center here and spoke to a lady who said she will look into it. We have a large Okinawan population here, with a cultural center, stores and also at least one restaurant ...
Love to hear if she comes up with anything. My understanding is that crime stats simply weren't kept for that era, circa 1850 - 1910 when when first Matsumura and then Higashionna were in their prime, matured, and took disciples.
Anyway, the lady at the Okinawan Center said that in her opinion, Okinawa's people are very mild, and violent crime wasn't a major concern of the people. We spoke about how fifty years ago and even in certain neighborhoods today, no one locks their doors, even when they leave and no one is home or at night. She said that the only concern would be from outsiders like US military on Okinawa today. I am sure there were some ill tempered people from Okinawa, especially when drinking is involved. Also, those who traveled outside of Okinawa 100 years ago may have experience discrimination such that they would need to learn self protection methods. But it seems like over kill to me to engage in all this hard core training, including but not limited to makiwara training, just so you can defend yourself from a drunk neighbor or some rascal kids.
It's not like they had TV to watch.
My thought is that the older karate masters trained hard primarily because of their work ethic and overriding interest in karate, but also because frankly they didn't have the same distractions we have today: tv, travel, whatever.
I'm also only guessing, but picture yourself as someone a century or more ago, living on a few small islands that have been invaded over and over again over the centuries. Why wouldn't there be more of a warrior ethos present where it was thought important to be capable of defending yourself? You're from the islands... What about all these tough Polynesian guys we hear about?
I also think the art itself played a role. I think the training was serious back then. You weren't likely to get into karate as a 2 hour a week hobby like it is frequently the case now. Men like Matsumura and his student Itosu finely honed their fighting skills since they were court officials. Matsumura in particular was the Ryukyu king's chief bodyguard. Arguably the bulk of the various karate ryu flow from them lineage-wise, and presumably any particular attention to intent and effectiveness of the art would likewise have passed down. I think the same argument could be applied to the later Naha style which descended from Fukien Crane, and there's no indication that Crane was trained casually as a matter of course back then either. It was supposed to be serious stuff.
I think your experiences or the experiences of your students go mainly to the idea that it really is not that difficult to defend one self in an encounter, and because of that, it cannot serve as the life long focus for martial arts training. There has to be more than just that low level goal driving you. Take yourself. Is your main motivation for studying the martial arts to development deadly self defense skills for yourself and your students above all else, that their lives and your life as well as the life of your family and their family utterly depend upon what you teach them? Or are people there primarily for other reasons?
I think if everyone were honest they would say that self defense was not the main focus of their training, although perhaps in the very beginning, it was.
Oh, I think it depends on the situation and the person if we're talking about how easy it is to defend ourselves. One of the students I was thinking about is into law enforcement and he gets to use what we study in class at least once or twice a week (yeah, we're a major crime area, LOL).
I would agree that SD is probably not the primary reason people sign up for karate/TKD classes now these days. Certainly not at my schools. On my survey form, most check off exercise, SD, & fun activity in some combination though. I should probably reword the survey if I really wanted a real answer on why they join, but I suspect exercise is probably the top real reason for adults, and fun (or get the kids out of my hair for an hour) is the real answer for the children.
But when I ran my hardcore Goju class out of my home, I can say a much greater percentage of people were there because they wanted to learn fighting skills. And I in fact started MA as a kid because I got into some scraps and I wanted (or Dad wanted) for me to get an edge. I still get a good share of kids in who are bullied at school. In the past we used to teach them how to punch the bully in the nose - now we focus on conflict management and getting to a safe place.
That opens up a whole different can of worms, learning secret hidden applications from forms that one does not practice.
It's not so unlikely if one is a trained martial artist already. If someone showed me a good application from a totally foreign style to me, I could probably find a way to internalize it within the framework I understand already, given sufficient time. It wouldn't be the original rendition likely, but that wouldn't be my overriding concern.
