Failure

Warning: This one may be a bit soap boxish, but that is what a blog is.  And no, I am not without my own failures.  As I revue thousands of hours of videos and thousands of documents, I continually find events I’ve failed to remember.  Things I’ve forgotten.  Et cetera.  I’m not perfect, but I strive to learn from the things Taika shared and hold things that Taika preached as very important to me.  With that in mind, here is my blog on failures.

Failure to Listen

One of the biggest problems with training with Taika I saw over the years was failure to listen to what he was saying.  Whether it was about the martial arts, history, life in general or just some random topic.  He had the ability to overwhelm you during any training session which is why some of us chose to keep notebooks next to us during the majority of training years.   I have numerous volumes annotated and filled with sketches.  On some topics however, people have chosen to completely ignore him.  Alas, here are but a few examples that really crawl under my skin.

Makiwara

I know, I know.  I have blogged about this before.  But recently, a former student had a ventation proclamation calling all of us non-makiwara users wimps and other such names.  He made bold claims about makiwara making people tough and other such nonsense and if we were not using it, it was just because we were measly little cowards and weaklings.  I don’t use the makiwara because Taika proved to me that it was not necessary back in the mid 1990’s.  In fact, for those that don’t believe me, feel free to read one of his books, RyuTe® no Michi which was published back in 1998.  Or in fact, as some of this Makiwara Worshipers have allegedly read it, maybe try to study it.  He had worked on the book for years, and I have the original Japanese notebooks that evolved into it.  He spoke freely of what a poor tool this was as well as wrote about it.

So why did he use it as a young martial artist?  Taika would say quite freely that in his early days, a lot of what he did was about proving how tough you were on the island.  At one point, teaching the art became a job which provided him with income.  The market share of students that were providing his income were the military, predominantly United States servicemen.  Looking tough and feeling tough was ‘the in thing’.  Plus, he would say in his early years he had a bit of an attitude.  So large callused knuckles was a way to show how tough you were.  They were a badge to show off.

Later, when he came to America, he stated that he used it as a tool to weed out the less diligent, and whenever he had someone that was hard headed.  So if you are bragging about how Taika had you continuously work on the Makiwara, particularly after, say the mid-eighties, then that should tell you something about what Taika thought about your character at that time. 

I won’t continue on too much about better tools, but think about it.  A Makiwara doesn’t give like a human.  There are much better tools that give like a human and even feel relatively close to a human.  Think about any one of Taika’s fingertip knockouts, how much strength did he really need?  He didn’t have huge callouses built up on his fingertips.  Any guitarist will have probably ten times the callouses on their fingers and they don’t know how to knock someone out.  Taika didn’t require big callouses to do so and swore that it was more about angles of attack that power. 

Technology has made better tools.  You don’t see US servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting with samurai swords or blunderbusses.  If that makes sense, why doesn’t this?

So am I a wuss for not using makiwara and following Taika’s instructions that are a good 25 years old.  Ask my students.  I continually have bruises where I let my students and peers in KC Shihan Dai beat on me as we research topics left us by Taika.  I continually do things that hurt, over and over again, in the name of training and research.  I don’t use a makiwara, not because it is painful, but because I choose to follow the teachings of my instructor.  There are better training tools.  My choice has absolutely nothing to do with pain.  Pain is an inevitable part of training that I embrace in an endeavor to increase my knowledge, stupidity however…

Bogu and Kicks

Again, a topic I have ranted on before.  Why don’t I do kick to the head and why don’t I bogu?  Because Taika found these things in the last years of his life to be counter to his philosophies on training.  AND I truly believe his logic.  High kicks screw with your balance.  His philosophy of kicking below the belt doesn’t work when the rules of a tournament require you to kick in complete contrast to Taika’s teaching…..above the belt.  Oh, and good luck performing Tuite or Kyusho or even Atemi with a huge set of gloves on your hands.  But hey, I must just be scared to get hit?  Oh wait, I covered that.  I stand there and let me students and peers hit me over and over again in most every spot you could imagine in the name of learning.  But go ahead, call me a coward.  Bogu does not further my knowledge, I have done it and had fun back in the day.  But I choose to listen to Taika’s teachings and not waste my time when my training time is so precious.

Birth Year

Taika was fifteen years old at the end of the war and that is pretty young.  An age that would be difficult for people to believe of someone that was uneducated in certain topics, to of done the things he did.  In the United States, no 15 year old boy would be tossed into the war and trained to ride a suicide torpedo or anything else for that matter.  Americans would have trouble believing such a story.  Taika spoke openly about changing his birthday around, during his younger years, trying to explain away his age.  In his final years on this earth, he confessed that he was actually born in 1930.  He said this openly and repeatedly in his Kansas City class as well as at other gatherings and yet some people still didn’t believe him.  He told us these things and some of us took him at his word, but when he died many people would not believe it.  In fact, some people got down right snotty about it.  Knowing that some people wouldn’t believe Taika’s word, I got proof from his sister.  Prior to her death she verified for Mrs. Oyata and the Association that Taika was indeed born in 1930.  Taika’s sister, who knew him her entire life, verified that Taika wasn’t mad, out of his mind, crazy.  He indeed was born in 1930.  This was published on the RyuTe.com history page.  And yet, some people refuse to snap out of their coma, and even are getting snippy about it.  They fail to believe. 

Bo Length

In a class there was a big discussion about 5’ or 6’ bo for a certain kata.  Taika arrived and one of the students performed the kata (so there was no doubt in Taika’s mind which kata was being discussed).  He said that this kata was supposed to be done with the 5’ bo and that he just allowed everyone to use the 6’ bo on it for decades because everyone had a 6’ bo, nobody owned a 5’ bo.  That same person then started to argue with Taika that he was wrong and Taika got quite angry.  “I say 5’ bo!”  He got really angry that he was not believed.  After class, that student and another continued talking about how Taika must be confused.  Later, after he died this same kata was taught at a National Conference in Kansas City.  I made a bunch of cheap 5’ bo for the conference for people to learn it (so they wouldn’t’ have to pay for airport fees) and got no end of grief over it and still to this day people don’t believe me or Taika.  The two people that argued with him during class and argued after class still don’t believe what they were told and added to the confusion at the National Conference.  They fail to believe.

Dojo Kun and Kokore vs RyuTe® Motto

Taika didn’t make the Dojo Kun.  He didn’t make the Dojo Kokoroe (Principles).  Those were Nakamura’s.  Some of his early students who trained with him during the days in Okinawa were the ones that brought those scrolls back to the United States setup the sales and propagation of them into the art, not Taika.  Taika did sell copies of them in their original form, to make money.  Later he cut off the original kanji that said Karate Do and added the kanji for RyuTe.  But later in his life he came up with the RyuTe® Motto, “To strive to attain true moral goodness and express it through ones every action.”  THIS was his.  THIS was what he wanted us to memorize and enact in our lives.  NOT Nakamura’s legacy.  Again, some fail to believe this as it was published in Tasshi Logue’s book. 

During the last couple of years of Taika’s life, Tony Skeen and I were working on a project with Taika to reprint the Dojo Kokoroe.  Believe it or not, there were several errors in the one that had been reprinted since the 60’s that Nakamura had penned.  Yes, I said it.  Nakamura had made mistakes.  He had even crossed out kanji on that print and put in other kanji above kind of like we’d spell something wrong and ‘x’ out the wrong letter putting another letter above it.  Not exactly a pretty product when you look close.  AND it had no reference to RyuTe®.  It referenced Nakamura’s organization and the style of Karate Do.  So Tony would brush a principle and I would scan it into Adobe so make the graphics into mathematical equations.  But that is a topic for later.  In short, I’d bring these large prints to Taika to discuss the positioning and ensure all kanji were correct.  This is when he talked to me with Lisa and Marvin around about how it was ok to do this (the Principles Project) and sell these, but this was NOT his.  This was Nakamura’s.  Ok for history, but NOT his view, his life, his work.

Live Taika’s Motto, Not Nakamura’s.

I’m sure I could go on and on forever but let me skip to the one that is really chapping my arse.

Family

One of the really wonderful things about Taika’s art over the years was the price tag.  Look at how many years we paid a mere $50 for our annual membership.  Look at the low price of seminars, particularly the ones that were outside Kansas City, the smaller ones.  Yes, a shodan test could be expensive for students that had to pay airfare, hotel, conference and testing fees; but a student should have had years to put money in the piggy bank.  That is if their instructor was preparing them in advance for this, and if their instructor wasn’t pushing them through to test in just a couple of years or less.  Taika never had a retirement fund.  He didn’t have a pension plan to take care of his family when he was gone.  His thought was he’d always be fair to his students in pricing, and they in turn would take care of him in his retirement years and his family thereafter. 

For years I would hear some dojo owners whine about how much money they had to pay for each student.  Really?  $15 or $20 a year for a student (Depending on the point in history).  Divide that by twelve and add it to your student’s yearly fees.  It is next to nothing.  A student wouldn’t bat an eye at an extra $1.25 in their dojo fees in one year.  Particularly the ones of them charging hundreds of dollars a month. 

Taika never retired.  How many of you want to work in your 80’s?  He still trained every day, even when he was sick.  He still did seminars.  He still taught.  His students kept demanding more of him and regrettably many cheated him financially.  Luckily, those people showed their true colors and have left.  But Taika’s retirement and pension plans were his extended family, us.  And what has happened to this plan.  Many people feel that supporting Taika was one thing, but the family is different.  The thing to remember is, Taika supported us for decades.  We were his extended family.  Robin, Masaki, Masami and RyuTe® in general are his family.  We should be supporting them by continuing to support the association.  THIS was the pledge that so many made to him in so many conversations.  This to me is one of the greatest failures.

So many people went to seminars and trained with Taika.  But so many people failed to listen to him.  Failed to listen to his words.  Failed to listen to his philosophies.  Failed him mentally and physically.  They took what they wanted, and stored what snippets they wanted in their brains.  They failed to move past his early teachings.  They failed to move along, to bigger and better things.  They failed themselves.  And now they are failing his family.

Please do some hard thinking, look at your failures, and try to overcome them.