Benefits of historical knowledge

B,

You got it. It's basically contextual and gives you reasons for something to exist and perhaps change if you are so inclined.

Think of it this way. When you were young would you have preferred your father to say, "Becuase I told you so."

Or, what if he said, "Don't dig there since there is a gas line underneath the barn that you don't want to rupture."

In the first case, you get what's always been presented without explanation or context. In the latter, you understand why and how come. Which would you prefer?

good question. what butterfly said.

let me try to add an example - something to sink teeth into.

kata is a good example I think. you can train kata the way you are shown - how the principles can be isolated into drills and later blended into freeform spar - and you feel good about it - it works for you, and your sensei is all you need to help you along. perfectly valid, you need not look further.
As a supplimentary and 'outside the dojo' study, some choose to wonder where things may have come from. That search leads to an awareness that things change thru time. In regard to kata, it leads to then wondering, well, why do things change? since kata is interpretive, people thru time have and have taught their interpretation. ok, then you wonder why do interpretations differ over time? necessity usually breeds function, so thats a good premise to go on. what were the necessities during the post-WW2 period of karate/kata ? well, looking at what things were popular we see a sharp trend of MA's becomming used for sport/competition. historically compare two arts: one that was heavily engaged in the competition trend and one that was not.

now historically compare their economy of movement. did one change in a different direction than the other? If one Art was looking at kata in terms of point-sparring, and another Art was looking at it as close-quarter combat - the trend in interpretation starts making sense.

Then you take that awareness and apply it to your own training....when training solo, you start asking yourself questions like, even though I was taught for this stance to be long and low, is it still appropriate for my interpreation? maybe somewhere in my lineage someone who passed this on was affected somewhat by some cross-pollinated changes that were going on during the point-spar trend.

Brian, in the case of your Art (Goju-kai), in a historical sense, I'd try to be aware of things that may have changed from circular to linear....and be sceptical if it doesn't fit with what you are trying to use it for. If it doesn't seem quite right, take the history into account and don't be afraid of changing to a 'messy-er' looking answer. You could be asking 'what likely effect did Japanese budo arts have on my flavor of Goju?'
circular to linear. I think is the key historical question for karate coming out of Japan.


feet don't always have to be 45 degrees. there is such a thing as half sanchin, half natural stance - that doesn't have a technical term.

which is another historical note which actually changes the way you think about stuff....before the curriculums, canned techniques, drills, technical terms and exact angles that were determined for karate...there was the unwritten instruction of 'just go like this'.


so now, armed with that senseability of history, someone would be less afraid to change what they were told must never change....your search back gave you the tools needed to accept change. so instead of interpreting kata with a 'it must never change' mindset, you are free (and within reason) to escape the artifical 'boxing-in' which karate experienced when first packaged and delivered to outside of Okinawa as canned arts.

The pursuit of history knowledge just adds to awareness...which is never a bad thing. but it is supplimentary and knowledge of it does not substitute for training.

I'm not a history person, but I'm glad that there are people out there who are passionate about it. History doesn't help me fight better or get in better shape. Occaisionally, I want to know the what or why. This is particularly true of kata, although there are other occaisional practice questions that are more here and now. I may suspect relationships that would be clues to why something is done a certain way. I usually post these questions.

In return, if people ask about things where I have strong interest, I will answer those questions. That is what the forum is for.

History = who begat who (or is it 'whom'?).

Morning Ed,

Another small aspect of history is that it is written by the survivors. Not trite for karate either. The history is what is saved from a success point of view. Forms or versions of forms that didn't impress the next generation to save were discarded.

So what was saved were the winners in the classical history paradigm, it is the victors that write history.

Add then that the Okinawan's really did a great job keeping their systems non-verbal, leaving no binding historical documents around for the future making oral history the strongest record really helps scope what you have.

Oral histories
We have as has been said the oral histories, tales of old masters if you like, these get told and eventually written down by people researching, such as we see in the works of Nagamine, Bishop, Kim and McCarthy.

Wider audiences
The works of authors such as Nagamine, Kim, Bishop and others only provide a partial view. Hence the point that history is written by the winners, here the more popular tales about these old masters are the ones told and published to wider audiences.

Problems with what is available
There is another point that the writing and telling of history, here historical tales, frequently merges fact with myth. There are however issues with what is actually factual in the original stories told and for all those which are published and made widely available there are equally as many which are not so widely available. Some of these not so widely available tales have the same or similiar mythological aspects about the characters, it helps to recognise fact from myth.

Problems of time and need for context
The order of time is not necessarily chronological in the same way that the European history is. So there is a necessity to look at the context in which these tales along with the dates of birth and death of various people and ask the qurestion 'What the likely probability is of what is described as having ever taken place?


Kata as a live historical text (In a Hermeneutic sense).
Kata provides a genealogy of transmission of information, of who taught who, what and when. We can then look at patterns of Kata transmitted by the same person to different people and compare their common influences and ways of performing specific aspects of the Kata.

Regards

Chris Norman

History is always a good topic while drinking beer following an especially good training session.



You don't even need to make a concerted effort...a historical issue will magically pop-up & all the experts will have their say.

Everybody who can identify w/ this, raise your hand...