My 'Talk' with the Karate Sensei

Sensei: “Welcome. You wanted this meeting, so what did you want to talk about?”

Me: “Traditional Shotokan Karate: I think you have an identity crisis.”

Sensei: “Why?”

Me: “Focus first on the 'Traditional'. You don't like competitive sports karate. You think it distorts the art, moves it away from combat effectiveness.”

Sensei (gruffly): “That's right. It's all about dancing up and down, high-kicking, lightness of touch and fast, instant withdrawal for point scoring. And so they lose true lethality.”

Me: “Your own classes are quite kinetic though. Plenty of technique (kihon), and kata. But looking at the class, the students seem overwhelmed by the number of techniques and kata they have to learn. And they don't do much sparring (kumite).”

Sensei: “That's because it takes at least two to three years to get technique into automatic muscle memory so that sparring practice is useful.”

Me: “Yet surely a disinterested observer would conclude that sports such as boxing and MMA, which make sparring central, are more effective on the street. You get what you train for. And you get to be effective within the first year.”

Sensei: “Karate isn't just fighting skills: it comes with a cultural tradition of personal development, honour, self-discipline and spirituality.”

Me: “That is mostly anchored in the kata, 26 in all, which could take a lifetime to learn well - and that's not at all a criticism. Yet the combat application of kata, the bunkai, isn't well integrated with sparring and seems ill-understood, even controversial?”

Sensei: “Yet the essence of karate is to be found in the kata.”

Me: “It seems to me that if you want to be an effective street fighter then boxing or MMA are the ways to go. Motobu Choki pointed out that kata are almost irrelevant. The martial values of self-control, self-discipline and honour are present in all the formalised fighting traditions.

“If, on the other hand, you want the health benefits of balance, flexibility, suppleness, mental calmness and spirituality, then the T’ai Chi Ch’uan form, which is equivalent to kata, has exactly those objectives.

“Surely Traditional Shotokan Karate is simply trapped between these two poles, neither one thing or the other?”

Sensei: “The two aspects you point out are indeed dimensions within karate. Different masters emphasise one more than the other perhaps, depending upon their interests and inclinations. 

“Yet there is no shallow route to deep understanding of the art. Once their energy goes, people have to retire from the practice of boxing and MMA. T’ai Chi Ch’uan can lose its grounding in brutal combat effectiveness, veering off into the arbitrariness and superficiality of choreography: 'mere dance'. 

“The lifelong study of karate in all its complexity - it's a deep immersion into an ancient warrior culture: one which is absent and even deprecated in modern life.”

Me: “Agreed. But your class really falls between two stools. Many students are middle class and not very aggressive: your focus on power, speed and martial spirit falls upon stony ground. Yet the level of physical engagement in kihon, kata and kumite (when performed with speed and power which is always the end objective) makes the class too strenuous and damaging for seniors like me.

“Perhaps you should have two classes: one focused on the external form of the art, forceful kihon and kumite with kata backing it up; the other inclining to the internal art, centred around mindful, low-adrenalin study of the kata?”

Sensei: “Had we but world enough and time! It won't have escaped your notice that ninety five percent of people who attend karate class want to develop effective combat capability. Those who lose the physicality to train migrate across to T'ai Chi, as do those who are primarily interested in health or spiritual matters.

“So I believe you'll find what you need in T'ai Chi. I regret that I can't run a health and spiritual class founded on karate technique and kata; I simply can't afford the opportunity cost.” 

A psychotherapist intervenes.

Psychotherapist: “Nigel, you are just driven and you aren't even aware of it. You are bereft unless you can latch onto a goal, then focus all your efforts on attaining it. You are too old for karate! Get over it - let it go!

“You know the T'ai Chi form, you know the T'ai Chi sword form. Practise them when you want to, otherwise don't bother. You don't need a schedule, you don't need a plan to continually 'get better', there is nothing to achieve.

“Relax, and enjoy the people in your life. In fact, grow up!”

Me: “Thank you Sensei and wise counsellor. I see now that you are both wholly in the right.”