Emily 2nd kyu shares her thoughts after
reading Funakoshi’s book: ‘Karate-Do: My Way of Life.’
Gichin Funakoshi is known as the ‘father of modern karate’. He was instrumental in spreading karate across Japan and throughout the world and wrote many significant texts. Karate-Do Kyohan: The Master Text was the first comprehensive guide to kata, kumite and the history of karate for a modern audience. It is still widely referred to,including by our own club. Funakoshi’s autobiography Karate-Do: My Way of Life is a surprisingly slim volume given these achievements and written in a highly accessible way. It covers a lot of material for such a compact book, and I’d highly recommend it.
As I was reading My Way of Life, a number of key points stood out, these made me stop and think. Your interpretations may well be different, but here I have attempted to distil them into my own take-home messages. 1) It was hard for me to imagine Funakoshi as anything other than a karate master, but he actually started life as a ‘sickly baby and a frail child’. He didn’t immediately take to karate after starting it, but soon a virtuous cycle began flowing. Studying karate and practicing regularly made his body and mind stronger. This made him more vigorous in his training, which made him even stronger and so on.
My take-home message from this: Slow beginnings are insignificant if you persevere. Every journey is different.
2) Much of karate’s history is lost to the vagaries of time. Had it not been for Funakoshi we’d have so much less to go on, but many elements of kata, particularly the applications, are retrofitted – added in after as potential explanations. Even the word ‘karate’ itself has ambiguity. In Japanese it could mean ‘empty hand’ or ‘Chinese hand’, referring to karate’s lack of weapons or its origins in Chinese boxing respectively. Funakoshi debated these two interpretations as he planned his texts. He eventually favoured ‘empty hand’, but acknowledges this is primarily ‘conjecture’, and recognises the merits of both. This is a very different attitude to simply saying: ‘We don’t know!’ and I’ve seen it in action at Zenshin too. Practicing a succession of possible applications of a single kata movement demonstrates anything but ignorance. Instead it evokes flexibility and readiness for a range of real-world situations. To me this seems far more useful than telling yourself there’s only one way to be right! Take home: Ambiguity is necessary for flexibility. Embrace it.
3) Funakoshi describes a man who claimed he could teach a nukite so strong that ‘a man may penetrate his adversary’s rib cage, take hold of the bones, and tear them out of the body’. If video games had been invented at the time, perhaps Funakoshi would have suggested this chap had played a bit too much Mortal Kombat! As it was, he spoke scornfully of braggarts and charlatans like this a number of times. By contrast, Funakoshi remains incredibly modest about his own work and abilities. Speaking of his entire life’s work bringing karate to the masses, he says: ‘As for my own role, I feel it has been no more than that of an introducer… one who was blessed by both time and chance to appear at the opportune moment.’
Take-home: Be humble, don’t show off… and don’t go around telling people that you can make them perform impossible feats of mutilation!
4) Even in the early days, Funakoshi was adamant that karate was for everyone – boy, girl, woman and man. His whole family trained at karate, and he was particularly proud of his wife’s abilities. Despite this, he recognises there are certain mind -sets that do not mix well with his concept of karate. He considers people, who signed up to his dojo purely because they’re spoiling for a fight, noting: ‘It is quite impossible for any young person whose objective is so foolish to continue very long at karate’. However, ‘those with a higher ideal… will find that the harder they train, the more fascinating the art becomes’.
Before joining Zenshin, I had a brief stint with a rather different karate group where emphasis was actively placed on combat. I reckon I know which Funakoshi would have been more approving of!
Take-home: The attitude of seeking to better oneself has a far higher bearing on success in karate than age, build or gender.
5) Funakoshi writes: ‘Any place can be a dojo’. He cites
prudence and humility as virtues of karate and these certainly aren’t limited
to the training hall. Via a number of anecdotes we are further reminded that we
lose nothing from politeness, civility and acceptance. In one example, he tells
us of his daily visits to a Japanese public bath where clients are greeted upon
arriving and leaving by an attendant. He used to pass silently by this member
of staff, but one day realised he was not practising as he preached in his
karate sessions. He started to smile and returned the attendant’s greetings,
which subsequently ‘grew warmer and more personal’. Such a small change easily
improved the daily lives of both participants. As for the relevance of this to
karate, Funakoshi believed: ‘The mind of the true karate-ka should be imbued
with such concern before he turns his attention to his body and the refinement
of his technique’.
Take-home: Don’t let the
karate finish just because you’ve left the dojo. Be excellent…
