Call the point

In another lifetime, I used to referee sparring matches at karate tournaments.

This was before my pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Okinawa in my case), when I came to believe that turning our sacred art into a game was a sacrilege.

Still, one thing I kept from that experience was simple but worth hanging on to: call the point.

At the time, that meant that whatever I thought of the personality, style, instructor or uniform of the fighter I was judging, I needed to watch as objectively as possible and call the point if a legitimate technique hit a legitimate target.

It was a matter of fair play, and one which our world is sorely lacking.

For that reason, I make an effort to "call the point" when people I usually disagree with do the right thing or make a valid point.

So, in that spirit, I want to call a point in favor of (now former) Republican Kentucky governor Matt Bevin, who announced today that he would concede the election to his opponent Andy Beshear.

It goes without saying that I opposed Bevin's attacks on Medicaid and public education and pretty much everything else. But he probably could have dragged out the recount and pulled all kinds of strings to annul the results.,

He didn't. So, not that anyone cares what I think about Kentucky, I award him with an ippon (Japanese for full point).

Another basic rule of fair play I took from those days is this: when your opponent is no longer a threat to you or those you love, it's OK chill out.

Thoughts on geeking out

Geeking out has been defined, at least by way of Google, as freaking out over something that others think is geeky. I don't think everyone geeks out over something, but I feel kind of sorry for those who don't.

I admit to being a promiscuous geeker, meaning that I geek out on several things, ranging from martial arts to ancient Greece to critical theory, among other things.

I've noticed that people who geek out often like to geek out about movies about the object of their geeking. For example, when I was on the local volunteer fire department, our guys would laugh at the inaccuracy of firefighter movies...but they were glued to the screen and probably teared up at the appropriate moments (not that they'd ever admit that to anyone).

I'm in that boat when it comes to karate, and particularly movies and TV shows like The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai, the contemporary version of the story. While the karate techniques in this are only marginally like the real thing, the spirit of Mr. Miyagi is pretty close to the spirit of Okinawan karate, which in my opinion covers a multitude of sins. And the solo forms or katas shown are based on real ones, although they were generally mangled.

In this age of Brazilian jiu jitsu, Muay Thai and mixed martial arts, karate is as retro as analog watches, vinyl records and cell phones that are just phones. Still, it's my thing.

The movie and show are comically inaccurate as far as what it's really like for some of these reasons:

*First of all, the flashy techniques. Anyone who is dumb enough to try the crane technique (pictured above) really doesn't deserve to have intact ribs. And, while balance is good, spinning hook kicks on trees has limited application.

*Second, the training methods are hilariously unspecific. I seem to recall that the late great Bruce Lee said, "If you want to develop your punch, punch!" Instead, these movies emphasize waxing cars and painting fences and hanging clothes. You get good at what you practice. Exactly that.

*Third, it's amazing how many people become expert fighters if not black belts in a few lessons. It took most of the people I know several years. It's almost like downloading martial arts styles on The Matrix movies. If it was easy, it would be cheating.

*Fourth, I've done this stuff off and on for much longer than the median age of contemporary humans (without ever getting really good at it). I cannot recall a sensei or a senior show me a cool technique. Mostly they make you drill on the same dull, extremely non-flashy boring stuff you were first shown early on. You also have three really close friends: tiredness, boredom and pain.

Having said all that, I was glued to Cobra Kai like a fly on....whatever flies enjoy close proximity to. I can hardly wait for the next season.

Meantime, sweep the leg! And geek proudly.

To paraphrase book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament, "Whatever your mind finds to geek on, geek on it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom or geeking in the realm of the dead."

Quite a day

In case you felt any hoodoo about today, there are plenty of reasons for it. First, this is St. Crispin's Day, which means it's the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt in 1415, which is celebrated in Shakespeare's Henry V. The best known part of this is the rousing speech by the king wherein he spurred on his outnumber soldiers to victory:

"he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”

You can watch Kenneth Branagh's version of it here.

It's also Karate Day. On this date in 1936, the leading masters of Okinawan karate, including one who taught the one the one who taught me, met in Naha to discuss changing the name of the martial art from one that could be translated as "Chinese hands" to karate do or "the way of the empty hand," which better reflected it spiritual component.

Around the world some people are celebrating that by practicing 100 repetitions of a karate kata,which are formal exercises of prearranged series of techniques performed solo. For an example, click here to see a performance of seisan, the signature kata of a style I practice.

100 repetitions of a kata is way harder than it sounds--I'd rather run 15 miles on hills. I plan to do a few today, but it won't be 100.

Today many Okinawans will "pray that Okinawa’s traditional karate will continuously contribute to world peace and happiness." I find the long tradition of Okinawan karate masters linking the art to world peace without embarrassment or irony to be endearing. And they might be on to something.

So, Crispin or karate, enjoy the day!

(Note St. Crispin and his companion Crispinian are the patron saints of shoemakers and cobblers. They were said to have been beheaded on this date during the persecution of the Roman emperor Diocletian around the year 285. They probably didn't enjoy the day.)

Pushing through it

Readers of this blog will recall that El Cabrero, aside from being someone who would never refer to himself in third person, is into endurance sports and martial arts, even though he is not very good at either. But one thing they can teach is the importance of hanging on even in difficult situations. 

Like the one that prevails in WV these days...

Recently, I came across this quote by one of my favorite philosophers and psychologists, the great American pragmatist William James:

The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not tapped is most familiar to us in the phenomenon of ‘second wind.’ Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked ‘enough,’ and desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of which our usual life is cast.

But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth ‘wind’ may supervene.

Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.

This reminds me of something Shorin Ryu karate master Minoru Higa said after an exhausting training session in Naha, Okinawa. During his session, we performed thousands of repetitions of basic techniques in a very short time. Then, through a translator, he explained that if one trains beyond the point of fatigue, extraneous thoughts and wasted motion fall away and correct technique is achieved.

In other words, just deal.

Okinawan requiem

This past weekend, the Spousal Unit and I attended a performance of Mozart's Requiem by the local symphony. It reminded me of how much I like the idea of performing rituals for and/or in honor of the dead. I imagine this can be done in lots of ways, but one in particular is strong in my memory.

Three years ago, as regular readers of this blog know, I went to the Holy Land, aka Okinawa, for an intensive seminar with the greatest living masters of traditional karate in the land of its birth. Over a dozen people attended from around the US, Canada,  Brazil and Europe. Between training sessions, we drank, babbled and bonded.

On the final weekend, three of us went to the beautiful Peace Memorial Park, where some of the heaviest fighting in the Battle of Okinawa took place in 1945. By the time it was over, more that 100,000 Okinawan civilians, including some the greatest karate masters, had died. We walked all over the park, which is pretty huge and full of beautiful shrines and monuments bearing the names of those who died. The contrast between what must have been unimaginable noise, chaos and carnage and the quiet and peaceful park was stark.

By way of background, Okinawa was the first and longest lasting of imperial Japan's conquests. Once an independent kingdom, it was forcibly annexed to Japan in the late 19th century. Okinawans were conscripted into that country's colonial and military adventures and suffered horribly. In the Battle of Okinawa, many were massacred or used as human shields by Japanese soldiers or died as collateral damage of the US attack. Today, Okinawa remains a prefecture of Japan, the poorest in that nation, and also bears the heaviest US military footprint.

The three of us were deeply moved by what had taken place here and decided that it demanded a ritual of us. Since we all followed different schools of karate with roots in Okinawa, we chose to perform our own versions of the karate kata Kusanku.

Katas are the solo formal exercises of karate, a predetermined series of defensive and offensive movements that contain vast amounts of information, strategy, and applications. Properly executed, they are both strenuous to perform and beautiful to watch, combining fast and slow, hard and soft, expansion and contraction. Katas are done with the whole force of the martial artist, mind, body, breath and intentionality.

The Kusanku kata by tradition was taught by a Chinese military envoy in the 1700s to the karateka of Shuri, then the capitol city. It is one of the longest and most complex kata in karate, with over 60 movements, including blocks, strikes, kicks, joint techniques and leaps. My friend Jon, from Portugal by way of Denmark and the UK, performed the Shito-Ryu version. Rich, from northeast Ohio, performed a version from a Korean influenced style. I did Kanku Dai, the Shotokan version. You can see it performed by a master here (I didn't do it that well, needless to say).

In all styles, the kata begins with a bow. Then the hands are raised above the head with fingers and thumbs touching and the karateka gazes  at the gap between the hands. Then, as if ripping apart a veil, the hands forcefully come open and the action begins.

Strange as it may sound, it was solemn, like a prayer. I think in the future that if someone close to me dies, which I hope won't happen, I'll keep that custom and perform a kata in their memory. I think I'd like it too if, when I die, someone would take a moment and, as skillfully and forcefully as possible, perform an old kata, one passed unbroken through an Okinawan lineage and one that he or she has  struggled with for years and has sunk deep into muscle memory.

I can't think of a greater honor.

Shodan

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a personal announcement: my daughter earned her shodan (first degree black belt) in karate this weekend. It occurred to me that I got mine the same year she was born.

She's been around it her whole life but for some reason got seriously into it a few years back. A lot of people approach it as a sport or fitness activity, but I recommended she approach it in a traditional way, as a serious fighting art and classical budo or martial way. She did, applying fiercely the admonition of Shotokan karate master Gichin Funakoshi, who had this to say about practice:

Be deadly serious in your training. Your opponent must always be present in your mind, whether you sit or stand or walk or raise your arms. Should you in combat strike a karate blow, you must have no doubt whatsoever that the one blow decides everything. If you have made an error, you will be the one who falls. You must always be prepared for such an eventuality.

She brought that serious attitude to her form or kata practice, prearranged solo exercises in which one executes techniques in multiple directions against imagined opponents. She also proved to be quite a predator in kumite or sparring. In practice, she would only spar with toughest and best she could find, duking it out with black belt men who outweighed her by half or more.

When she did compete, she generally dominated the ring, often kicking her opponents out of it. She once said that I seemed prouder of her when she did that than when she got her doctorate. For the record, that isn't necessarily true. But it might be.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Paul Krugman on the ruling class hissy fit over the Occupy Wall Street movement.

THE POLITICS OF OCCUPATION. Here's Robert Reich on the Wall Street protesters and the Democratic party.

THEY'VE GOT BEN AND JERRY'S anyway.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Empty handed

My years spent (some might say wasted) in practicing karate have left me with certain prejudices in favor of minimalism. I think it's cooler to accomplish things with relatively empty hands than with a whole bunch of gear.

Of course, I realize that we (along with crows, monkeys and several other animals) are tool users and we couldn't survive in the manner to which we've become accustomed without them. Still, I think there's more honor in limping through a distance run than tooling around all day in a four wheeler.

Relying on external aids isn't the same as doing something yourself. You can bulk up with steroids or have visions with hallucinogenic drugs, but that's the chemicals, not you. Anyone can go fast in a motor vehicle or do a lot of damage with firearms, but that's only due to the machines used. It's one thing to paddle a mile on a lake in a canoe, but something else to be able to swim it, however slowly.

That's one thing I like about Beowulf. In his approaching conflict with the man eating monster Grendel, he vows to use no weapon at all. This turns out to be a good thing, since we later learn that no weapon would work against him. As he puts in in Seamus Heaney's translation:

"When it comes to fighting, I count myself
as dangerous any day as Grendel.
So it won't be a cutting edge I'll wield
to mow him down, easily as I might.
He has no idea of the arts of war,
of shield or sword-play, although he does possess
a wild strength. No weapons, therefore
for either this night: unarmed he shall face me
if face me he dares. And my the Divine Lord
in His wisdom grant the glory of victory
to whichever side He sees fit."

As Odysseus put it in Homer's epic of homecoming,

There is no greater glory for a man as long as he lives than that which he wins with his own hands and feet.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET struggle is going to heat up as the House and Senate joust over competing visions.

THE POLITICS OF PLAYING CHICKEN is discussed here.

THE MISSING PIECE in the debate is the revenue side.

DEGREES ALONE won't get us to a more equitable society, according to this column by Krugman. It will also take union organizing.

URGENT ZOMBIE ANT UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Okinawa dreamin'

Looking at a calendar and counting with my fingers, I noticed that six months have passed since I traveled to Okinawa to study real karate in the land of its birth. This was something I'd dreamed of doing for longer than quite a few people have been on the planet.

The trip did not disappoint. It was truly a peak experience to study with some of the greatest living masters of dento or traditional karate. The trip was organized as a seminar, so we had the opportunity to practice with a real range of teachers. We were taught by masters of several styles and traditions, including more than one version of the Uechi-Ryu, Goju-Ryu and Shorin-Ryu styles.

Karate has become very distorted as it spread around the world. In the US, it has degraded to the point of a sport engaged in by people obsessed with getting the next promotion or collecting more plastic. I learned in the last year, though, that the process of mutation began before those post-World War II years when Americans were first exposed to it--it started when karate was introduced to the main Japanese islands in the late teens and early twenties of the 20th century.

When the Okinawan karate master Gichin Funakoshi, someone I have long admired, began to teach in Japan, he began to change the art to fit the new environment. Traditional katas were renamed and changed; traditional training practices and advanced techniques were de-emphasized and gradually dropped. He taught quite a bit in university settings, which had highly competitive cultures. Worse, he attempted to "Japanize" karate at a time when Japanese nationalism, fascism and imperialism were at their height.

Ironically, what many people think of as the culture of karate, as in a highly regimented militaristic regimen, is really more the culture of 1930s Japanese fascism than that of the real Okinawan art. The resulting art was highly athletic, but very different from the original. Most Okinawan masters are too polite to say it, but they think that most of what passes for karate today is suitable only for children.

It was great to see, and finally to start to practice, the real thing.

THE COST OF WAR. The Washington Post has an interactive feature on the kinds of traumatic brain injuries often suffered by US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GOING (FATIGUE) GREEN. The US military is moving towards renewable energy in an effort to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. (Suggestion: fewer wars might help.)

UNLAMENTED. The TARP aka Wall Street bailout program expired yesterday. It turned out not to be as costly in the end as people, including me, thought, and it may have really helped prevent a financial collapse, but that doesn't seem to have won it any love.

SLEAZY MONEY. Here's a look at the big money from shadowy groups that is being pumped into the 2010 elections.

ANIMAL FRIEND VIDEO FEST here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

So much for the pyramids

Thoreau was unimpressed.

I'm not sure if I'd enjoy hanging out with Henry David Thoreau, given the chance. He seems to have been a bit of a crank. But I love reading him. It is an under appreciated fact that many of the classics of American literature are not only good reading but are laugh out loud funny.

Lately, I've been re-reading Walden, a work I revisit every few years. It really is a rich and funny book and some of his barbs strike home.

Here's one that speaks to my condition on the farm these days:

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men; the former are so much the freer.

That sounds like a man who knows a thing or two about goats.

The book is also full or random zingers, like this one on the wonders of ancient Egypt:

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

(For the record, El Cabrero thinks pyramids are kind of cool.)

Don't be too surprised if old Henry shows up here again soon. There are plenty of nuggets where those came from.

WALL STREET "WISDOM." Here's economist Dean Baker's latest rant about Wall Street and the deficit hawks. I think it's a pretty good one.

THE POLITICS OF DISGUST are discussed here.

Q & A. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Those who have been following his static with the Episcopal diocese of WV may want to check it out.

SENIOR BLUES. Three in 10 older West Virginians have trouble making ends meet.

MY HOLY LAND. Regular readers of this blog will find this familiar, but here's an article I wrote for the Gazette about my Okinawa trip. Some of it got cut but you'll have that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The short end of the historical stick

These pictures were taken at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park at the southern end of the island. This was the site of some of the heaviest fighting during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII.

Some places have been dealt unlucky hands by history. That's one thing El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia has in common with Okinawa. In different ways, both places got the short end of the stick.




Okinawa's bad luck jag began in 1609, when the Satsuma clan of Japan invaded and established hegemony, imposing a tributary relationship. Okinawa was already paying tribute to China. The Japanese didn't eliminate the Sho monarchy but they limited its autonomy. The Japanese also banned weapons and attempted to suppress martial arts, which pushed karate further underground.



In 1872, shortly after the Meiji Restoration of imperial power in Japan, Okinawa was annexed to that country and the monarchy was abolished. Efforts were made to suppress indigenous culture and "Japanize" the residents.



The next decades would be a time of increasing Japanese militarism and imperialism, and Okinawans were conscripted into these projects, up to and including the Second World War. Residents suffered horribly during the Battle of Okinawa--known locally as "the typhoon of steel"-- near the end of the war.



Civilian casualties were probably well over 100,000. I saw estimates of 200,000 while there. The Japanese army committed atrocities against Okinawans, using them as human shields, forcing them to commit suicide, engaging in massacres, etc. Many also were "collateral damage" to the US bombardment and invasion.



Even though the war wasn't exactly their idea, Okinawans bore the heaviest post-war burden of any Japanese territory. The US directly administered it from 1945 to 1972 and built massive military bases, displacing local landowners. Crimes such as rapes committed against Okinawan civilians by some military personnel continue to be a sore spot.



Given all that it's a wonder to me 1. that Okinawans are so nice; and 2. that they are probably the longest lived people on earth, with quite a few alive and well and active up to 100 years of age and sometimes beyond. This is particularly surprising given all that people from that age group there had to live through.



I've been interweaving Okinawan history with that of karate this week, and here's another thread. One Okinawan who was not thrilled with being conscripted into the Japanese army was the young Kabun Uechi, 1877-1948, who went to China in 1897 where he studied a kung fu style called Pangai Noon. He excelled as a student and even taught in China before returning to Okinawa around 13 years later. His style came to be known as Uechi Ryu karate. One reason I wanted to go to Okinawa was to see this style first hand and learn its most basic katas, Sanchin and Kanshiwa.

This is an extremely effective and fierce style (though fortunately practiced by nice people as far as I could tell). The level of physical conditioning--including the ability to absorb punishment--was amazing. Sanchin kata practice routinely includes "testing" in which a partner punches and kicks all over the body student to see if they maintained proper tension. These aren't love taps either. They also practice kote kitae or forearm condition, in which practioners basically pound on each others forearms to toughen them.

The hands and forearms of advanced practitioners look exactly like the weapons they are. It is also characterized by strikes that use the knuckle of the thumb, the extended knuckle of the forefinger, and the fingers as well as kicks that use the toes as points of impact. Uechi ryu stylists in action remind me of big tigers pouncing on their prey.

FROM COAL TATTOO, Ken Ward's uber-blog, three items caught my eye yesterday. First, there's coverage of the latest from Massey Energy and the board's defense of CEO Don Blankenship. Second, whatever you think about carbon capture and storage (and whether it will work), a report suggests it could create a lot of jobs in the next 20 years.

TALE OF TWO MINES. Here's one from the NY Times comparing the culture of Massey Energy to another mine with similar gas issues when it comes to mine safety and rule violations.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's another one on the "culture of fear" and intimidation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A walk through the garden

Fukushuen Garden in Naha celebrates the ties between Okinawa and southern China. I'll drink to that.

Today I'm passing on some Okinawa pictures and background this week, along with the usual links and comments below. As I mentioned yesterday, Okinawa, now a prefecture of Japan, was once an independent monarchy. It's political center was the palace at Shuri, also featured yesterday. Nearby was the port city of Naha, which has since absorbed Shuri.



Port cities have the reputation of being wild and woolly and Naha was no exception. Okinawa enjoyed wide trade and diplomatic contacts and all kinds of interesting people and rough characters passed through.




Ties were especially close to southern China, which had an Okinawan community as well as extensive travel back and forth. Those ties are celebrated at the Fukushuen Garden in central Naha.




Those ties also influenced the karate traditions that developed in Naha as distinct from the Shuri te or Shorin ryu styles associated with the palace culture discussed yesterday. A leading example of Naha te is the Goju ryu or hard/soft style. Higashionna Kanryo, circa 1853-1916, is regarded as one of its forerunners. Higashionna traveled to Fuzhou in the Fukien Province of China and studied several styles of Chinese martial arts. He is pictured below.



One of his most prominent students was Miyagi Chojun, 1888-1953, who also went to Fukien Province in 1915 to study Chinese styles. Miyagi gave Goju its name and established the system. If the Shuri/Shorin karate tradition is rapid and whiplike, Naha/Goju karate training emphasizes strength development, dynamic tension, breathing and develops the ability to absorb as well as dish out powerful techniques. In practice, the style lives up to its name with its combination of "soft" and hard techniques.



The real Miyagi, pictured above, probably inspired the naming of the teacher in the Karate Kid movies. Some Goju techniques actually look like tasks Mr. Miyagi assigned Daniel-San in the film (wax on/wax off, paint the fence, etc.)


TWO FROM THE TIMES. These items caught my eye this morning. First, Japan is starting to admit that it has a poverty problem. Second, here's a look at how local food is starting to replace tobacco in a North Carolina town.

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT MINE SAFETY. Here's an op-ed on the subject by a friend of mine.

EARTH DAY. Here's one person's list of things to do about it.

GET UP, STAND UP. There's a connection between body motion and memory. Upward movement seems to be related to happy memories.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Shuri Castle (and lots of other stuff)

Karate training at Shuri Castle, Okinawa, circa 1930s.


Reconstructed castle today.

A friend has requested more Okinawa pictures, so here goes. As I've mentioned before, my main goal in making the trip was to train in traditional karate but I did have some time to make some side trips.



One site played a major role both in Okinawan history and in the history of karate. For several centuries, Okinawa was an independent kingdom with the seat of government in Shuri, close to the port city of Naha which kind of absorbed it.



According to tradition, many masters of Shorin ryu karate (Shorin is Japanese for Shaolin) were associated with the court and some may have been bodyguards for the royal family. Bodyguarding was a bit complex in Okinawa since most people were forbidden to carry arms, which is where the karate came in. Things got even tougher in the 1600s when the Satsuma clan from Japan invaded. The monarchy wasn't eliminated, but its power was curtailed and Okinawa was forced to pay tribute. It was probably around that time that karate became a clandestine activity, one often practiced at night in secret locations.



The original castle, alas, was destroyed in WWII but has since been rebuilt. It's full of gardens, walls, ponds, statues, monuments and walkways.



A word about the style itself. Shorin-ryu is a name for several related karate styles that are associated with Shuri. It is characterized by fast, whiplike movements that generate power from the body's center of gravity, known as hara in Japanese and tandein in Chinese. I was lucky enough to spend some time with several prominent Shorin-ryu masters and to learn the correct traditional forms of several karate forms or katas, which are pre-arranged series of movements that contain the essence of a style.



In particular, I was able to learn the traditional form of three Naihanchi katas, which were the favorite of Motobu Choki (1870-1944), pictured above. These are symmetrical katas performed moving back and forth in the horse stance without turning the body, as if one is literally up against a wall or the edge of a cliff. Motobu, by the way, was something of a brawler in the day, and he believed Naihanchi had everything a karateka needed to know.

Any how, here's to Shuri and Shorin.

MORE ON THE MINE DISASTER AND SUCH here.

AND MORE OF THE SAME from the other side of the country here.

AND MORE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF UNIONS here.

A LOUSY LINK. Literally.

MIGHT AS WELL THROW IN something about space aliens.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Back in Paradise

Well, I survived my trip to Okinawa. Although I didn't get along too well with the local food and came to equate economy class overseas travel with Bush-era "rough interrogation" methods, it was all I hoped it would be and more. The dark side of the journey was the shadow of the Massey mine disaster that occurred shortly after I got there.

But even the awaiting bad news couldn't completely overpower the sheer beauty of April in West Virginia. During the time I was away, the redbuds, lilac and wisteria bloomed like madness. I loved the hard karate training in the Budokan and in the private dojo in Naha but love the holler I live in and the various creatures that inhabit it, human and otherwise, more.

To live in West Virginia and to work on social justice issues (sorry, Mr. Beck) is always to be engaged in some kind of the strife that the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus regarded as "the father of all things." But it also is to be surrounded by natural splendor and social richness.

So here's to the beauty and the fight. Game on!

Okinawa farewell

It's my last night in Naha and a misty rain has set in over the city. I've been here 10 nights, not counting an airline eternity before and one awaiting tomorrow. As chance would have it, the trip's timing wasn't the best. The Massey Upper Big Branch Mine disaster happened shortly after I arrived, leaving me feeling torn.

Yet the trip has delivered all I hoped. I came to drink from the fountain of real karate. I've dreamed of this for most of my life and trained hard for it the last couple of months as it became a reality.

I wanted to sample the authentic styles of Goju, Shorin, Uechi and Isshin ryu. I wanted to see and learn katas uncontaminated by American meatball martial arts. I wanted to learn the proper forms of the tanren or forging katas of Shuri and Naha te, naihanchi and sanchin respectively, all of which happened. I even had the chance to train a couple of times in the private dojo of Hanshi Minoru Higa with only a handful of other students.

I also had the privilge of participating in this karate seminar with many thoughtful people as devoted to the art as I am. Most of us stayed a little beyond the end of the seminar. Now people leave one by one or in small groups. Just like in real life.

These 10 or so days have been an eon in some ways, a milestone I'll never forget. It's been a kind of homecoming as this was where my path in life began long before I was born. I hope to come back someday, but some of it is coming home with me.

Wayne's World moment

Goju ryu karate master Morio Higaonna. I'm so not worthy.

One of my favorite parts of the original Wayne's World movie was when Wayne and Garth got back stage passes at an Alice Cooper concert. At first, they waved their passes around, showing them off to one and all. But when they actually made it backstage with Alice, they couldn't handle it and fell to the ground saying "We're not worthy!"

I kind of felt that way Friday, the last official day of the karate seminar in Naha (luckily I didn't hurl). The morning's instructor was traditional Goju master Morio Higaonna Sensei, whose status in the karate world is above rock star and somewhere just below deity.

Now in his 70s (like most of the teachers this week), Higaonna is still extremely powerful and his technique is something to behold. It's hard to take one's eyes off his hands, which have been conditioned by decades of makiwara (striking board) and other training to the point where they are truly lethal weapons.

The good news is that he is actually very gentle, humble and self-effacing. He has an amazing presence and is a truly spiritual person. He also made a few Karate Kid jokes--there really are techniques that look like wax on/wax off.

We were expecting to be drilled to exhaustion, but he took it fairly easy on us, working on body movement or tai sabaki and fighting applications from kata. At the end he spoke about karate as a peaceful discipline, quoting the old Okinawa proverb karate ni sente nashi--in karate there is no first attack.

As an example, he told of the dark post-war days when many people were driven to desperation and attempted to rob others. Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Goju, made it a point to always carry a little money and always gave it to anyone who demanded it without a fight. Note: he could have whacked them without really trying.

Another sensei put it like this: in other styles of martial art, people train to win. In Okinawa, we train so as not to be conquered.

A golden moment

Today I won't dwell on bad news but rather remember a magic moment that reflects a little of the kindness and hospitality of the Okinawa people.

One day last week as our afternoon training session ended at the prefectural budokan (martial arts training faculty), we were hanging out in the adjacent park and beginning to think about returning to the hotel when a group of schoolgirls came by on their way to naginata training.

A naginata back in the day was a weapon, kind of like a staff with a blade on it. Women often trained in it to protect the home when the men were away. Today, naginata-do is practiced as a budo, or martial way of spiritual and physical cultivation. The metal blade has given way to wicker and bamboo.

They tried their English on us as we greeted them back in Japanese. I suppose they are used to Western karate pilgrims. We pointed to their naginatas and used our hands to ask for a demonstration in the park.

It didn't take a whole lot of persuading. They demonstrated several two-person kata or training exercise, giggled and bowed. We bowed, applauded and giggled as well and then we waved goodbye.

Just another day in Naha ...

The point eyond fatigue

Minoru Higa Sensei and the students attending the karate seminar in Naha, Okinawa. Higa is fourth from the right on the second row. El Cabrero is in there somewhere.

As I try to follow events at the Massey mine disaster from the far side of the world, it looks like rescue efforts have stalled for now and things don't look good for finding survivors.

Several news reports have focused on Massey's safety record (or lack thereof), including the Charleston Gazette and the New York Times. WV Governor Joe Manchin has promised "very, very stern" action if an investigation determines that company negligence was involved. You go, Joe!

Several op-eds and columns have been written about the disaster. I'd like to give a shout to two. The first is by WV writer Denise Giardina, author of Storming Heaven and other novels and a long outspoken critic of coal company abuses. The second is by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

My thoughts continue to be with all those affected by this tragedy and I hope that both the rescue efforts and the wheels of justice move swiftly

Meanwhile, back at the Budokan in Naha, Okinawa, Thursday's training session was particularly exacting. The morning session was taught by Isamu Arakaki Sensei from the Shorin-Ryu tradition and emphasized proper technique, while the afternoon session was like an lesson in applied Zen.

The teacher was Minoru Higa Sensei, also of the Shorin-Ryu tradition, who has the deserved reputation of being one of the most demanding teachers on the island. It involved thousands of repetitions of basic techniques. It didn't take long to reach the point of fatigue and proceed well past that point.

As he explained through a translator, if one trains beyond the point of exhaustion, extraneous thoughts and wasted motion fall away and proper technique emerges. It reminded me of a saying of the Japanese Zen master Dogen, who write that "To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things."

After two hours of his regimen, we were burning, but I asked for and received permission to train at his private dojo tonight for more of the same.

This morning's schedule includes a session with Isshin-Ryu master Uechi Tusyoshi Sensei and the Main Event, a two hour morning session with Morio Higaonna Sensei of the Goju-Ryu style, who has the reputation for probably the most grueling training methods of all.

Let's roll. On all fronts.

Lifelines

A white crane at the park outside the Okinawa Prefectural Budokan. Karate is said to be influenced in part from a southern Chinese White Crane style.

"So fair and foul a day I have not seen" is a line from Macbeth, if memory serves. This is a strange time for me. On the one hand, I am fulfilling the dream of a lifetime by coming to Okinawa to study karate in the land of its birth. I have finished three days of training and the trip has already met and exceeded all I had hoped.

On the other hand, I had barely finished the first day of training when I learned of the mining disaster in my state at a mine owned by a company that embodies all the things I have fought against for many years. To be away from West Virginia and West Virginians is hard at times like this, which, sad to say, aren't all that infrequent if you've lived a while.

I know that even if I was there, there would be little I could do right now other than mourn and vent with other members of my tribe. This is the time for rescue and recovery workers, for religious leaders and counselors to do their work, and for a community to grieve. Later, not much later, there will be other work to do, and plenty of it.

So now? Train. To someone who is not a martial artist (and to many martial artists for whom it is only a sport), the connection between karate and the fight for social justice may seem to be two different things. In reality, they should be one.

Looking back, it was through the study of karate that my sense of social justice and even politics derived. Karate ni sente nashi--in karate there is no first attack--is the motto of Okinawan karate. And these words of Gichin Funakoshi have burned themselves into my core:

True karate do is this: that in daily life one's mind are body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.

It's a spring morning in Naha. I plan on heading early to the Budokan today. My body feels like its cooking itself but I want to train hard today and I want it to hurt.

And so far this trip, I've gotten what I wanted.

Live (for the moment) from the Budokan

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a civilized society is one that maintains a spacious and elegant martial arts training facility at the public expense. It's nice to be in such a place for once.

Today was day one of a five day seminar on traditional Okinawan karate do in the Holy Land itself. The items on today's menu were some of the main reasons I left home, kindred and even the iPhone (!) To travel to the far side of the world: an introduction to authentic Naha te karate, a strand of the tradition not taught in proximity to Goat Rope Farm.

The two main styles of Naha te are Goju Ryu and Uechi Ryu. Since we're doing Uechi all day tomorrow as well, I'll save that one for later. Goju literally means hard / soft as in yin yang. It's an elegant and sophisticated fighting system much influenced by southern Chinese styles.

Our teacher for the morning session was Yoshio Kuba Sensei, who took us through a session that began with junbi undo or warm up exercises that literally started with the toes and worked methodically through the rest of the body. Then came kihon or basic movements similar to but different from the other Okinawan tradition of Shuri te that I'm more familiar with. In Goju, an apparently simple move can have several layers of meaning.

Next came a study of katas, which are pre-arranged series of fighting movements which form the essence of karate, followed by bunkai, which form the basis of karate. A well executed kata solo exercise is beautiful to watch but is also loaded with meanings and practical applications. We worked with the kata Sepai, which is one of my favorites. Kuba Sensei explained some of the traditional applications hidden within the movements.

One of my goals for the trip was to study authentic versions of the kata Sanchin, which means something like "three battles." It is a tanren or forging (as in metal) kata, which in Goju is performed with dynamic tension and special breathing . The movements are deceptively simple but hard to get right. Kuba Sensei gave us a tour through it today. More on that later.

Day Two is about to start. Once more unto the breech ...

In praise of bowing

Nice kitty. This one hangs out at Shuri Castle.

One of the things I really like about Okinawa so far is that people actually bow to each other here. Bowing has a bad name in the US, probably because of the connotations of expressions like bow and scrape, but to me it doesn't mean anything of the kind.

In karate we bow all the time, on entering and leaving the dojo, to instructors, opponents and training partners, before and after every sparring match and class. Gichin Funakoshi, widely considered to be the founder of modern karate do, said that karate begins and ends with rei, which means both bowing and courtesy. I've always liked the idea of bowing to one's opponent before and after every fight.

It' really a gesture of mutual recognition and respect, one that doesn't necessarily preclude going at it pretty hard. It's nice to be some place where it's a part of everyday life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED BUT POLITE