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Trouble – Meiwaku

One day while I was still living in Japan, I was flipping the TV when I stumbled upon a news program. The reporter was interviewing parents at an elementary school entrance ceremony and asked one...

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Fukuchi Seko Memorial Demonstration – Part 3

Below you can find some more videos from the Fukuchi Seko memorial demonstration held in 1984.  These videos focus on several expert performances of Goju-ryu Suparempei by Shinjo Masanobu (Shobukan),...

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Donn Draeger on Learning a Martial Art

Many Karateka outside of Okinawa and Japan do not believe in the customs found in traditional Karate dojo. Yet ironically these traditions are an integral part of the culture from which Karate sprang...

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Just Don’t Call It Budo

   In 1964, United States judge Potter Stewart ruled on an obscenity case. In his ruling he wrote, “hard-core pornography” was hard to define, but that “I know it when I see it….” Since then his phrase...

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The Karate Police

There was an article published on the “News on Japan” website that caught my eye recently. It was about the Japanese government, “launching a new certification program in an effort to crack down on...

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Toyama Kanken – Cryptic

Some early writings on Karate-do written in Japanese were cryptic. In fact, this is at times an understatement. Whether this had to do with the non-written tradition of Karatedo or the parochial nature...

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Tonfa – Bet you’ve never heard of the ‘Giccho’

The origins of some of the weapons used in Ryukyu Kobudo are unclear to say the least, and the tonfa is no exception.  I won’t go into detail about some of the theories of how the tonfa originated as...

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How to be a Middling Karateka

Yes, I’m a vain and arrogant person when it comes to Karate-do- I speak Japanese, I’ve translated books, I run a dojo (…well, I used to). Indeed, I’m the exact opposite of how budo is supposed to shape...

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The Influence of China & Japan on the Okinawa Sai

This blog entry on the Okinawa sai is partly based on an article originally published in an annual issue of the now defunct Gekkan Karate-do magazine (I promise I’ll dig up the exact reference later)....

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The Master

There is no shortage of Karate ‘masters’ these days. They’re quite literally everywhere: in your neighborhood, city or country; online media, blogs, and forums. Although I should correct myself as the...

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Fukuchi Seiko Memorial Demonstration – Part 4

I’d fallen behind posting these other videos from the 1984 Fukuchi Seiko memorial demonstration. If you want to share the videos I would appreciate it if you will use this blog link instead of posting...

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Kata – Don’t Get too Bogged Down

Kata is often referred to as the heart of Karate-do and Kobudo. Many teachers will go so far as to say that if there is no kata, then there is no Karate-do or Kobudo. For me. kata is like constructing...

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I did it my way!

More and more I come across individual teachers, usually young, who have opted to create their own style of Karate-do of which the technical level and aesthetic content (remember Yo-no-Bi) is usually...

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Bechurin & Sanseru – Ideas from Sato Kinbei

Sato Kinbei was an iconic martial arts teacher in Japan who was proficient not only in his native traditions but also those of China. I never met the man, but did learn a little about him through...

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So you want to move to Japan

When I lived in Japan, I would get e-mails from people from time to time saying how envious they were that I was living and training in Japan. To be perfectly frank, there was nothing to be envious of....

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A Strong Punch

I’ve never been a fan of oi-tsuki (追い突き) – the lunge punch so ubiquitous that it is synonymous with Karatedo in the public’s eyes. One of the main reasons for my dislike of this punch is that it is not...

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Yamane-ryu & Other Kobudo Systems

The other day I was chatting with one of my students after Kobudo practice and we got on the topic of Yamane (Yamani)-ryu. This of course got me thinking about not only Yamane-ryu, but also the other...

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Uyoku – Part 1

An important, but little discussed topic in modern Karate-do history is the political and social climate of pre-WWII Japan. There was obviously a climate of extreme nationalism in Japan during the...

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Uyoku – Part 2 – Miyagi Chojun’s visit to Shanghai

In my last post I talked about Karate-do teachers during the 1930s and 1940s who traveled to occupied countries to demonstrate Karate-do. Whether these teachers were part of the right-wing that had...

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Ground Boxing

Long ago before there was so much material available on the internet about martial arts compared to now, I ordered a book called Fukien Ground Boxing by Cai Chu-Xan. It was, at the time, the only...

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