After I posted my last blog message, I received an email that stated the following “I disagree with your blog post regarding styles, there are still pure styles of karate out there and you should not infer otherwise”
Now if you read my previous blog post (You Study Too Much), I don’t think you will see where I said anything about the purity of a style, however, since we are on the subject, let’s talk about it.
Since this is mainly a Gojuryu based blog, let us start with gojuryu Karate. If one looks at the history of gojuryu karate-do, we find that Kanryo Higaonna travelled to China and trained under the mysterious Ryu Ryu Ko (Please see my Ryu Ryu Ko post for more), he then returned to Okinawa and later began to instruct students. Now Gojuryu history tells us that his senior student was Chojun Miyagi and that Miyagi learned eight kata from him that formed the basis of what later became gojuryu karate-do. However modern researchers have put forth an explanation that Higaonna only taught four kata.
if we look at history, we see that Higaonna had several students and that most only learned one or two kata. Juhatsu Kyoda, founder of Toonryu, has passed down to his students that he learned four kata from Higaonna. Miyagi stated that he learned eight. So who is right? We may never know. Perhaps they both are right, perhaps Higaonna’s teachings centered around the four kata, most students, did not learn that many, because he choose not to teach them, perhaps he felt that his seniors Kyoda and Miyagi, excelled and he taught them further. We must then take into consideration that Higaonna lived with Miyagi, for the last years of his life, perhaps Higaonna imparted the remaining four kata to him during that time, fearing that they might be lost if he did not, or maybe he thought Miyagi was his successor and choose to teach him more than the others. Regardless of which way you choose to lean in your belief, none of us will ever know for fact which is correct.
Now let us further compound the situation by looking further at Gojuryu. Miyagi had several prominent students, that went on to found dojo of their own such as, Eiichi Miyazato of the Jundokan, Meitoku Yagi of the Meibukan, Seiko Higa of the shodokan and Seikichi Toguchi of the shoreikan. Now if you look at these instructors and their dojo, you will find that all of them teach Gojuryu differently. Why is that? Who is teaching the correct version of Gojuryu? I would say all of them, none of them. It depends on what you perceive is right and wrong! I say that each of the founders of the various Gojuryu kai-ha, are teaching what they learned from Miyagi to the best of their ability, that coupled with their own experiences over the many years since Miyagi passed away, will explain the differences in the particular branches of Gojuryu.
It is my belief that karate is an individual thing, say that you and your friend start under the same teacher and both spend twenty years training with him. I surmise that if that teacher taught you both exactly the same, with same detail, that at the end of the twenty years, if he called you up and had you both run the same kata, that those kata would be slightly different. I believe that this is because each person develops differently, each person has his (or her) own realizations and develops their own theory on what they have been taught. Now consider that you and your friend go off and open dojo of your own, that you both claim you are teaching the exact version that your teacher taught you, I would bet that if you got together after five years, your karate would be considerably different from each other. I believe that this is because each person puts their own signature on their karate.
Take for instance the Komakai dojo, it was originally the Jundokan of Indiana, founded by Larry Pickel after his return from Okinawa. After he stopped teaching, the dojo was further developed by Glenn Keeney and turned into a dominating force of the American tournament circuit. Now there are only a few of us left that trained under Mr. Keeney, and even fewer that trained for 20 or more years. Last year, we all tried to get together and work out, it did not turn out so well (in my opinion) because the majority would say, oh that’s wrong, sensei taught me this way, or sensei taught me that way. Everyone left disgruntled, so much so that some of them no longer talk with others. My father is Mr. Keeney’s senior student and out of those of us that are left, had trained with him the longest. My father has went out of his way to make sure that everything in his dojo is taught exactly the way he was taught it by his only karate teacher, Mr. Keeney. Now over the years I have trained and tested in front of Mr. Keeney, I have even went to him privately and had him check my kata and he has approved them, yet others say the same thing, so who is right? How can this be? Simply because no two people are alike, people have different strengths and weaknesses, people move differently. We are not robots.
Personally I do not teach the kata as they were taught to me by Mr. Keeney. Back in 1990, I was told, go out and learn, so I did, I went and trained with several people, but I developed a relationship with the Jundokan of Kentucky dojo and its chief instructor, Lloyd Johnson. From Mr. Johnson I learned a slightly different way to do the kata, that followed with training with several other Gojuryu sensei, such as Bomani, Chinen, Higaonna, Yasuda, Hichiya, Iha and even Miyazato Sensei himself, lead me back to the beginning of my lineage and I train and teach in the kata as handed down by Miyazato. However, even if you look at the seniors that I just mentioned, you will see that they all perform the kata differently from each other.
So now that I have rambled on, I will say that I believe that each individual, while they may aspire to teach exactly what their teacher taught, will undoubtedly have slight alterations in their karate. I am not saying that they will not stay within the frame work of their dojo or style, but that inevitably as much as one person is different from another, so will one karate-ka be different from another, there are many roads up the mountain, but each of us will climb it differntly. Each person ultimately has a style of their own.
Please feel free to post your comment at the bottom of the blog; I would love to hear your opinion.
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