Who "Owns" the Material?

[Tony Dismukes]

This may not make much sense to someone that doesn't actually practice a koryu art, but historical preservation of techniques is not the base idea behind them, and secrecy is a good part of why they are still in existence. The koryu began originally as family or clan traditions. These were kept very secret because everyone else was the enemy, and you didn't want the enemy to understand the basis of what you were doing. The koryu also began as political entities, with their own ideas and ways of doing things. These were mostly kept secret also as a way of distinguishing those that were in the know. A lot of this flavor is still preserved in the koryu. Not so much in the larger and more public koryu such as MJER or MSR iaido, but in the smaller, more traditional arts. Secrecy is simply a large part of the teachings, and the inner workings are never passed out to anyone that the head of the school thinks will not have the best interests of the ryu at heart.

Preservation of the ryu itself as a distinct entity is paramount, not necessarily any particular technique or form. Properly preserving the ryu for another 400 years means that the inner workings of the ryu need to be kept secret. This is because putting the inner knowledge out in the public domain would overly dilute that knowledge with myriad little changes, and you'd end up with many, many branches of the ryu that bear only a superficial resemblance to the original. While this would be perfectly fine with both MA historians, and the martial artists that would like to learn more about a particular art, it would mean the end of the ryu as it has been pased down for hundreds of years, and that is what we are charged with preserving.

Yeah, I get where the secrecy originally came from and the current motivation. I have my doubts that keeping secrets will actually increase the likelihood of the ryu's teachings surviving unchanged through the centuries. With the secrecy-based system, any changes, distortions, misunderstandings or omissions of the curriculum that occur from one generation to the next are invisible and will never be corrected. If koryu practitioners operated more like professional historians, they could compare the teachings of branch A of a ryu to Branch B or compare oral traditions to written documentation and probably come closer to estimating the original teachings. That's just my guess, though.

 

[Chris Parker]

Hi Tony,

That's the distinction I was making. If koryu content is protected by Japanese copyright law, then someone who watched an HNIR demonstration, then turned around and taught the demonstrated techniques to someone else under a different name (not claiming it as HNIR) would be subject to legal sanctions. Does that happen in Japan? I'm not familiar with Japanese law, but it would be interesting to hear about such a court case.

Yes, there have been court cases around these details, in a number of cases that I know of.

Despite the efforts of the Disney corporation, copyrights can not be indefinitely renewed. For example, under Japanese law copyright is limited to the life of the creator + 50 years. Perhaps koryu traditions get extra protection beyond that in Japan, but that extra protection would not be legal in the U.S.

Well, there's really no such thing as "international copyright", so anything in one country won't necessarily be present in another (there are a couple of treaties that cover aspects of such protection, but that's about it), however concepts such as "Trade Secret" do come into it. And as far as Japanese copyright, Koryu are an interesting case... they are considered to be the property of the designated head of that system. None of the laws specifically cover all that that entails, but it incorporates the ideas of trademark (for the names, particular equipment, etc) and copyright (for the "body" of the system, the kata and training methods, as well as a fair bit of the non-technical curriculum).

A good description is found on Koryu.com (http://www.koryu.com/library/dlowry4.html):

Have you ever thought about who actually "owns" a martial art? There are copyright laws that enjoin you from using the tide Japan Karate Association, true. But you cannot be punished through our legal system by teaching all the kata and other methods of the JKA, even if you learned them by watching some videos and never had the blessing of the JKA at all. The same is true for various schools of aikido or any of the Japanese budo.

A classical martial ryu, though, was actually owned, in a sense. It was the property, literally, of its originator or of his descendants. The founder, or iemoto, designated his successor, who became the next headmaster or "owner" of the system. The line of succession was usually a familial one, father to eldest son. On occasion adoption might have been necessary to carry on the lineage. Other ryu were passed down to a trusted disciple outside the family. The salient point for our purposes of understanding this iemoto system is that the responsibility, the privilege of teaching or transmitting a koryu was and still is rather tightly controlled. It is entirely different from a modern budo like karate-do, where anyone at any time is free to begin teaching.

As such, time limitations don't really apply, as the change of ownership is similar to the the "first application" of the protection, as it is then the protection of "X-Ryu under Y Sensei", as opposed to "X-Ryu under Z Sensei".

I'll stand by my analogy. Claiming to be taught by Eddie Van Halen when I actually wasn't is like claiming to be taught by Lyoto Machida when I actually wasn't. It would be a lie and I think we can all agree that would be a bad thing. On the other hand if I tried performing a crappy version of Eddie's string-tapping technique, that would be akin to performing a crappy version of a karate kata - I'd only be embarrassing myself.

Nah, I'm still not seeing it as the same thing... doing a bad version of something is very different from making a claim of teaching something that you haven't been taught, or have any authority to claim. To give an example, I've seen plenty of bad versions of the kata of a particular Ryu-ha, often by people not associated with the head of the Ryu itself... but what they're showing is their progress as students of a particular line. Honestly, that's not a problem (as there is a legitimate connection, albeit a fair way back). Then, there was a demonstration of the same kata by a different group... and their demonstration showed a major group of misunderstandings about the kata (and, by extension, the Ryu it came from), and I asked about where they got their training from... the answer I got was that they were legitimate (they weren't), they were taught by a senior member of the Ryu (they weren't), and were teaching the kata as part of their teachings. They couldn't understand why I was telling them that what they were doing was severely disrespectful (to say the least) to the Ryu they were stating that they were respecting. The end result was them removing the clip from you-tube, and deleting a number of threads on facebook that showed the complaints against them. To my mind, it's a start, they still have a way to go before I'm in any way comfortable with stating that they have understood the reality of the situation.

Yeah, here's where we have a fundamental difference in philosophy. The world is full of information which is more valuable and was harder won than the contents of any koryu, yet is not held as secret. (Think physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc) You can "earn" that information by doing the work necessary to comprehend it and it is open to anyone who is willing to do that work. The world would not be a better place if you had to jump through hoops and get special permission from the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Isaac Newton before you were allowed to open a physics textbook.

Well, the value of the information is a matter of perspective, but frankly, the idea that things like physics are "harder won" than the information contained in many Koryu I'd fundamentally disagree with. Additionally, the second half of all of this is really completely unrelated to the Koryu as they are completely different types of information.

Even within the martial arts world, I don't buy that keeping a technique or method secret makes it more valuable. The entire curriculum of judo is public, but you still have to "earn" it by doing the work necessary to master it. Competitive BJJ-ers may invent "secret" techniques to give them an edge in competition, but the moment they start using those techniques other players will watch and steal them. (I rather suspect the same thing was true of koryu techniques back in the days where those methods were actually used in combat.)

Judo ain't Koryu, my friend... in a major way because of that openness... or at least, the openness is indicative of why it's not Koryu. And with the end there (the suspicion of how it was 'back in the day'), I'd suggest that a lot more than just a few 'secret techniques' were hidden from rivals. Again, we could look at systems such as Shinto Muso Ryu Jojutsu, who, despite having a large syllabus, would only ever show one kata publically... or any of a plethora of other systems who never show their actual kata publically, such as Fusen Ryu (any clip you've seen of them are only variations, not their actual methods).

Openness of the sort I have described has allowed these fields of knowledge to grow and progress and allowed society to benefit from that knowledge. Of course, I'm aware that "growth and progress" are not necessarily koryu values. However even if you practice koryu as a way to preserve an historical cultural tradition, I'm not convinced that secrecy will provide the best results. Imagine the state of historical research in general if historians each maintained their own family tradition of passing on knowledge, with certain details held secret from researchers from different families. There's a reason real historians don't work that way.

It's not really secrecy for secrecy's sake, though. It's protecting the methods and body of knowledge that the Ryu holds. A more thorough reading of the article I linked earlier will explain a number of aspects of how that preservation is maintained, mainly in it's not being so open. And one might suggest that, if it's worked well for 4 centuries or longer, in some cases, there's little reason to change.

That makes them fools, but they're not breaking any laws. Folks like that are only worth a head shake and a smile, and it's worth educating anyone that happens to ask about them, but they're hardly worth any anger or outrage as the original poster mentioned. That's getting a bit extreme in my opinion since what they are doing has no effect on anyone actually practicing HNIR.

Actually, they were threatened with legal action from the legal owners of the techniques, so I'm not so sure about no laws being broken... I suppose it depends on where you are (legally and geographically). But again, the idea that it has no effect on anyone practicing HNIR, well, to my mind that's the same as saying that a plagiarized book doesn't effect the author of the original. Well, yes it does. If it didn't, there wouldn't need to be the protection of such intellectual property.

This may not make much sense to someone that doesn't actually practice a koryu art, but historical preservation of techniques is not the base idea behind them, and secrecy is a good part of why they are still in existence. The koryu began originally as family or clan traditions. These were kept very secret because everyone else was the enemy, and you didn't want the enemy to understand the basis of what you were doing. The koryu also began as political entities, with their own ideas and ways of doing things. These were mostly kept secret also as a way of distinguishing those that were in the know. A lot of this flavor is still preserved in the koryu. Not so much in the larger and more public koryu such as MJER or MSR iaido, but in the smaller, more traditional arts. Secrecy is simply a large part of the teachings, and the inner workings are never passed out to anyone that the head of the school thinks will not have the best interests of the ryu at heart.

Agreed... although there is still plenty "behind the actions" in MSR, for the record....

Preservation of the ryu itself as a distinct entity is paramount, not necessarily any particular technique or form. Properly preserving the ryu for another 400 years means that the inner workings of the ryu need to be kept secret. This is because putting the inner knowledge out in the public domain would overly dilute that knowledge with myriad little changes, and you'd end up with many, many branches of the ryu that bear only a superficial resemblance to the original. While this would be perfectly fine with both MA historians, and the martial artists that would like to learn more about a particular art, it would mean the end of the ryu as it has been pased down for hundreds of years, and that is what we are charged with preserving.

And again, agreed.

Yeah, I get where the secrecy originally came from and the current motivation. I have my doubts that keeping secrets will actually increase the likelihood of the ryu's teachings surviving unchanged through the centuries. With the secrecy-based system, any changes, distortions, misunderstandings or omissions of the curriculum that occur from one generation to the next are invisible and will never be corrected. If koryu practitioners operated more like professional historians, they could compare the teachings of branch A of a ryu to Branch B or compare oral traditions to written documentation and probably come closer to estimating the original teachings. That's just my guess, though.

Hmm. I'd personally make a distinction between "secret" and "esoteric". Because, when you get down to it, that's what the information really is, in a strict sense. Esoteric refers to information that is attained only after prior requirements are met. Those requirements can be membership in the school, it might be a particular level within the school, or it might just be as simple as understanding it when you have enough prior education to understand it. For example, to look at something like Katori Shinto Ryu's methods, say, their Iai, they have some kata which involve starting from a seated position, and leaping straight up while drawing the sword and striking. Now, why does it leap? What's the timing aspect? What's it in response to? What's the specific targeting? What's the context of the action? All this information is considered esoteric, as it's only information that is attained from the indoctrinated members and teacher of the Ryu, even though the physical action is openly displayed (not secret).

 

[Makalakumu]

Interesting thread. I think it strikes at the philosophic heart of a larger issue concerning intellectual property. Can a person own thoughts, ideas, body movements? If the government can enforce intellectual property claims in other industries, why can't they enforce them in Martial Arts? I've seen some ugly cases of IP in Soo Bahk Do. The Federation will sue you for practicing their material and using the names even if you had at once belonged to the federation and learned them legitimately in the first place. You will not be allowed to strike out on your own.