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.
