Post War (C)

[emattson]

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By Graham Noble

One of the interesting things about jyu kumite and competition in in karate is that, irrespective of the school, the fighting style usually bears little relationship to the karate of the traditional kata. This too is the case with Uechi Ryu. Competition fighting, of course, has a style of its own, always adapted to personal taste, but in Uechi Ryu the stance and body position, attacking style, defence, and movement used in free sparring and competition are quite dfferent from the classical kata, especially Sanchin, which simply locks you in a fixed position for blocking and striking and makes you a sitting target for the opponent. But the different technique of jyu kumite is quite understandable: your body moves the way it has to, and that instinctive bodily reaction is actually on a much deeper level than training in Sanchin, or any other kata.

George Mattson (“The Way of Uechi Ryu Karate”, 2010) told a story about an American serviceman on Okinawa who had done some boxing and wanted to check out karate. After a lesson learning Sanchin at the Uechi dojo he thought he would try it out for real and picked a fight at a local bar. He took up the Sanchin position – and got knocked out by the first punch thrown by his opponent. He immediately dropped out of any more karate training, and Mattson used that as an example of a shallow approach to karate practice, explaining that to understand and use Sanchin needs years of training . . . Perhaps that’s true, or perhaps the boxer, who presumably would have had a lot more experience of contact fighting (in the ring) than any of the Uechi teachers, may have seen a fundamental weakness in Sanchin and thought that any further training in the kata would hardly be worthwhile.

Still, despite its success in tournaments, the traditional forms remained central to Uechi Ryu. As Mark Bishop wrote, (“Zen Odyssey”), Kanei Uechi “rather paradoxically supported competition karate, or at least did not openly object to it in that he thought it had brought about the popularisation of karate in general. . . . Whatever the drawbacks though, he thought that ‘the traditional ways were still unbeatable.’“ Uechi could have been like other Okinawan masters who restricted the practice of jyu kumite, but his decision to allow his students to spar and enter competitions, was benign and rather wise, since the tournament sucesses that followed vindicated the style. And another interesting thing is that the traditional style didn’t seem to have been weakened by this: the two things, the traditional form and the competition/free fighting, seemed to run alongside each other quite comfortably.

The senior Uechi teachers, like most other senior Okinawan karate sensei, have the idea that competition is just a phase and that moreover it isn’t a real fight, and doesn’t use the more dangerous techniques of the art. According to this old Okinawan view, the real karate is contained in the traditional kata. So in the life-long karate journey there is a place to go after your competition career has ended: the traditional karate training and teaching.

Kiyohide Shinjo for example, the many-times tournament champion, continued to train and develop his karate on traditional lines after he retired from competition and became one of the most prominent and energetic teachers of Uechi Ryu. He told “Karate Bushido” magazine (March 2005) that “The true secret” was “Sanchin, kata, makiwara, physical conditioning and the free spirit.” There is quite a lot of footage of Shinjo, one of the best examples being on a DVD covering the three major styles of Okinawan karate, (Shorin Ryu, Goju Ryu and Uechi Ryu) in which he shows kata, kumite and breaking. In the prearranged kumite techniques he uses foot movement, parries or slaps away the attacks and counters with both the hand (fist and open hand) and foot. Although he keeps his kicks at low (countering to the legs) and middle level, he is assured in his kicking. The DVD also shows him training on the makiwara (not just the fist but with the open hand, thumb etc), practising grabbing techniques on a piece of cloth attached to a frame, and so on. He is also shown demonstrating some of his signature breaking techniques: snapping a baseball bat held by an assistant with an inside forearm strike, breaking boards with the fingertips, bent wrist and toes, and going through three baseball bats with a low kick.

It doesn’t appear to have been overly stressed at the time, but tameshiwara was a feature of Uechi Ryu demonstrations from the post war period – just like other Okinawan karate schools. Originally these seem to have been fairly standard: the few earlier post-war photos we have of tameshiwara in Uechi Ryu show the use of the fist or knife hand to break tiles or wood, common breaking demonstrations of the time. Footage of demonstrations from the 1970s similarly show rather orthodox breaking techniques: tiles with the fist and elbow, wood with the knife hand, elbow and front kick, (it looks like the ball of the foot is used). Breaking 2x2 lengths of wood over different parts of the body - the thigh and outstretched arm and shin - was also quite common. There wasn’t much breaking with the fingers shown, for example, though this may have taken place. Still, George Mattson, in his 2010 book “The Way of Uechi-Ryu Karate” wrote that “In the late 1960s, after Okinawa had become a prefectorate of Japan, Japan was eager to show the world its newly acquired karate roots. Japan asked the Okinawan Karate Federation to demonstrate their karate systems for a movie that was being made, entitled Japanese Karate.

“The Okinawans were eager to demonstrate elements of their styles that (Gichin) Funakoshi had failed to show Mainland Japan. I was present when the Uechi Association met to discuss the movie. The Okinawan teachers selected masters who would perform for the film. Interestingly, what they wanted to showcase was the extreme elements of their respective styles. The masters began discussing their favourite spectacular techniques: specifically, who was the best at various breaking demonstrations. Though all were masters in their traditional styles that were rife with excellent techniques, movements and practices, they all felt it necessary to highlight the extreme nature of their personal training and accomplishments.”

There had probably always been stories of the feats of Uechi Ryu masters. A “Black Belt” article of June 1983 mentioned that “During his younger years, Kanei Uechi himself could thrust his spearhand into a banana tree, while Seiyu Shinjo, another student of Kanbum, would reputedly kick through the tree, up to his ankle,” but those stories are very hard to believe. There is 1950s footage of Kanei Uechi punching the makiwara and kicking the bag, and he doesn’t hit the makiwara all that hard and he kicks the bag rather tentatively, prods it really, rather than really kicking it. It seems to me too that he is using the ball of the foot, not the toes, to kick or push the bag back.

Nevertheless, from the 1970s some Uechi practitioners began to push the envelope on breaking and conditioning, maybe to try and replicate the legendary techniques of the past. In the article he wrote for “Fighting Arts” magazine on “Living and Training in Okinawa”, the British Uechi practitioner Dave Scott described his time training at the dojo of Kanei Uechi, (1974). He also mentioned other dojos such as that of Kosaku Yonamine, one of several dojos which stressed body conditioning. Dave mentioned that as a test, 2x2 lengths of wood would be broken over students’ shins, and that Yonamine could “often be seen walking around the class tapping his shins with a baseball bat.”

An article in the French “Karate” magazine (August 1984) showed Yonamine having a length of wood broken over his toes, rather than his shin. That seemed pretty impressive, and it set a new benchmark for Uechi breaking. Demonstrations of Uechi Ryu now include breaking wood with the toes, fingers, bent wrist and thumb (the unique boshiken formation); breaking wood over the toes, and breaking baseball bats in various ways: with the forearm or low kick, or over the body, thigh, shin, or extended arm. A “Gekkan Karate Do” article on Uechi Ryu teacher Yasuo Shimoji (May 2006) showed him having baseball bats broken over his toes, forearm and fist. Shimoji also breaks baseball bats (held by an assistant) with the forearm and like Kiyohide Shinjo breaks boards with his fingers and bent wrist. In another issue of the magazine (December 2007) he also breaks a baseball bat with the inside of his hand, in a kind of clawing strike. As one magazine writer commented, it seemed like “Master Shimoji is capable of breaking any object with any part of his body.” There is footage of Shimoji on You Tube demonstrating the baseball bat break over his toes, unsuccessfully this time. His assistant strikes down three times, on both the left and right feet, without the bat breaking. On the third attempt he misses Shimoji’s toes and strikes him full force on the ankle. It all must have hurt, but Shimoji just raises his eyebrows a little each time, and then finally has the bat broken over his shin on a fourth attempt.

It’s not clear how practical those techniques would be in a real fight, but nonetheless, they come over as an impressive demonstration of the power of traditional Okinawan karate. Perhaps you could interpret this renewed emphasis on breaking and physical conditioning and the development of the destructive power of the fingers and toes as a kind of counter-balance to the growth of sport karate and an attempt to re-establish the reputation of Okinawan karate as a deadly art. Pierre-Yves Benoliel, the editor of “Karate Bushido” (France) wrote in the January 1993 issue of the magazine that “At the time of my first visit to Okinawa in 1984 I had been particularly impressed by this school, (Uechi Ryu) and notably by their demonstrations of breaking.” After watching the training at Kyohide Shinjo’s dojo, and Shinjo’s demonstration of breaking a baseball bat with his forearm and wood with his toes, Benoliel wrote “It is only there that I got a sense of the old karate: a method of self-defence made to kill with a single blow, if need be. The work on the makiwara, the muscle building, and the hardening of the body (forearms, tibias, and the extremities of the fingers) are essential elements of the training.” The conditioning and the extreme breaking, then, are represented as a critical part of the true Okinawan karate, setting it apart from the Japanese and other styles, and especially the modern sporting form.

The specialised breaking techniques are impressive, and no doubt they come from a genuine wish to rediscover a “true” karate, but there is an irony here too. When karate first spread outside Japan and Okinawa, some, largely self-taught, Western karate enthusiasts worked on hardening the hands and feet and breaking wood and bricks, and to them this seemed to be what karate was all about. However, when the Eastern experts came, in both their instruction and in articles and books, they taught that this was incorrect, that breaking demonstrations were just a small part of the art and that all this smashing of objects was a misrepresentation of karate.

Wado Ryu’s Tatsuo Suzuki, for example (“Karate and Oriental Arts” magazine, July 1966) wrote that a man could have a punch strong enough to smash three or four pieces of board one inch thick but if his opponent had a good body swerve or good blocking technique then his strong punch couldn’t reach the target and would effectively be useless. Suzuki commented that “When speaking to me about karate, many people ask me how many pieces of wood or tiles etc I can break and are not interested in anything else. The people who ask me these questions don’t understand anything about karate otherwise they would realise that Tameshiwari is just for show and used only in demonstrations.” Suzuki also wrote that “One karate instructor both demonstrates and writes in his book a great deal about woodbreaking, tile breaking, brick breaking and breaking the necks of bottles but this is just showmanship. To place such an emphasis upon tameshiwari and call it karate. It is in fact a travesty of karate.”

That was a reference to Mas Oyama, head of the Kyokushinkai school, who had pretty much built his reputation on feats of breaking. Yet Oyama too sometimes felt it necessary to downplay the importance of tameshiwari. “Among those who practice Karate,” he wrote in “What is Karate?” (1959), “are those who consider themselves first-rate Karate men because they have calloused fists, developed by striking the makiwara. They are proud of their hardened fists and venture to instruct others in karate. I have found such men to my sorrow, particularly in America. Foreigners who attempt to master Karate should understand the mental as well as the physical aspects of karate.

“Karate is an art. It is more than growing callouses on the fists and memorising the postures. We must be able to put it to practical use as well. I want to emphasize that breaking or bending objects is not the real art of Karate.”

And also, in his 1962 “Modern Kung Fu Karate”, James Y. Lee commented that “For some unknown reason the American public seems mesmerised by brick-breaking feats. Actually this won't improve one's fighting ability one iota." As Lee’s close friend and teacher Bruce Lee said some years later, “Boards don’t hit back.”

Still, James Y. Lee’s book was actually sub-titled “Break Brick in 100 Days”: that was its major selling point, l imagine, and probably no-one really wanted to hear that stuff about it not improving your fighting ability one iota - they just wanted to break a brick. That was a big deal in those simple days, and in fact to many people it seemed the very essence of karate. James Y. Lee's books contained copies of letters from satisfied readers, ordinary guys who had trained hard in their homes and gained great satisfaction from their new-found ability to break a brick. For example:

“Dear Mr. Lee:

“. . . Approximately 45 minutes of this (training routine) usually gets my hand and arm in shape for the brick breaking part of my program. I break approximately 12 to 15 bricks a day. Three (3) for chopping, three (3) for slapping, and three (3) for my elbow. Then I use 5 or 6 more for chopping again.

“. . . I hope some day I will get a chance to meet you and thank you in person for all the help your books have been to me. I have read and studied them so much I can almost see it in my sleep. . . . I gladly give you permission to use any photos or pictures of mine at any time. I just hope in some small way I can help you as much as you have helped me. I wish you the very best of luck with your books. Keep up the good work. Sincerely, Earl L Hensley, Chicago. (April 20, 1963)”

James Y. Lee included a photo of Earl Hensley breaking a brick with his elbow, with the caption: “First man I have known to split bricks via the ‘Iron Elbow’. . . . Only one word need apply to this great feat, ‘Terrific’.”

But as karate grew in popularity in the West, the practice of breaking and the use of the makiwara and other old conditioning methods diminished in importance and came to be seen by many practitioners as primitive and out of date. And in fact although tameshiwari demonstrations never lost their popularity, the Okinawan pioneers who brought karate into the modern era had also advised against an overemphasis on breaking. Chojun Miyagi, for example (“Karate Do Gaisetsu”, 1934) wrote that “The purpose of karate is often misunderstood by many people who watch exhibitions of board and brick breaking. This is not Karate-do.” And in his 1943 “Karate Nyumon” Gichin Funakoshi commented that “Board and tile breaking are really nothing more than experiments. As such, they are not really essential to karate, nor are they by any stretch of the imagination secret techniques.”

But the history is also this: in his paper “Notes on Loochoo”, read before the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1872, Ernest Satow noted that the Ryukyuans’ “skill in boxing is such that a well-trained fighter can smash a large earthern water-jar, or kill a man with a single blow of the fist.” For source material Satow had apparently used an 1850 work by a Shiuko Tomioka, written on the last occasion that a Ryukyuan embassy had visited Edo (Tokyo): “Chuzan-koku Shiririaku” (A short account of the Luchuan Embassy), and so we have a reference to Ryukyu “kempo” and breaking going back almost 170 years.

Andreas Quast (“Karate 1.0”) found an even older mention of the Ryukyu fighting art and breaking in a book of 1801, “Satsuya Kiko Zen”. The (unknown) author of this work quoted something he had heard from a Satsuma man called Mihara Kumajiro, who had had been employed in the service of the Satsuma Resident Commissioner in Naha: “The training of Ryukyuans in kenjutsu and jujutsu is a lukewarm affair. Only in the thrusting with the hand they are quite excellent. The form of execution is as follows: the clenched fist is used to break through or to pierce through with the open hand, and this is called Tekkumi and it is an art of thrusting with the hand. A person had been summoned to the bureau of the Satsuma Resident Commissioner in Naha, and broke through a stack of seven roof shingles (tiles) until the sixth one, which equals punching open the face of a human being. Experts thrust with extended fingers.”

From the earliest records that we have, then, breaking hard objects with the fist was regarded as a characteristic feature of karate, and that destructive power was equated with the ability to kill, or cause serious injury. The current emphasis on specialised breaking and body-hardening by some Okinawan karateka thus demonstrates an amazing 200 year-plus continuity of tradition. I imagine that modern Okinawan experts could say that they have the full body of the art behind them: the basics, kata, conditioning and kumites, and when you add specially trained hands and feet to that foundation then you have a complete art. Still . . . .

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