Traditional Karate and Martial Arts

This one may well fall under the rant category or even the humor category so proceed with caution. I see a lot of people out there advertising Traditional Martial Arts or Traditional Karate. First off, my opinion of Traditional Martial Arts is that the word Martial is the key focus.  Taika didn't want his art referred to as Martial.  He chose "Life Protection Arts" because the word martial has the meaning of war.  He was teaching students to protect their lives and the lives of others.  Not fight a war.  Though kobudo (weapons) training was a historical part of his art, his focus on this dwindled over the years because you just might get a few looks carrying that 8' naginata onto the subway.  In his final years he trained with three weapons regularly; His Glock 9mm, his cane and a break apart Jo/Tan bo.  If you are going to teach a traditional martial art, please by all means suit up in the armor of the old days, give your students long polearms, swords or even flintlocks (they had them as early as 1270 A.D.) and teach them all of those skills.  Don't put them in padded foam helmets and chest pieces and tell them they can't strike all the vulnerable spots (below the belt, back, groin, back of the head), put them in a confined ring with rules and time limits without weapons and shout BEGIN!  In Japanese of course.... Martial Arts is a phrase that refers to warrior arts.  If you take your students to the gun range, then that is more accurate. As far as Traditional Karate, I will make this brief.  Though the name migrated from Tote or Tode or Todi or just Te or Di over the years, if you want to be Traditional you have two choices; Knock up some woman and teach the oldest male heir (this may take numerous tries and practice does make perfect). -or- Join the military and get good enough to teach them. Again this is a slightly silly unrealistic somewhat intentionally funny though consequentially maybe possibly run on sentence rant for my amusement.  I was bored on a Saturday waiting on students to arrive... Oh, and people were giving me grief for not blogging very often.  Lee "Di" Richards