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Graziano
Graziano's picture
Does still exist the original okinawan karate?

Hello to everyone ! Many group claim to teach shorin ryu, o shuri te, and they study fighting techiniches similitaries to modern kickboxing, on the figting, and kata applications similitaries to japanese karate. Some official style like masubayashi ryu of shogin nagamine on reality are modern style born on 1947. I know who shotokan shito and wado ryu come from shuri-te and goju ryu come from naha-te  but  what are the original okinawan style ?Does still exist the original okinawan karate?

Anf
Anf's picture

How would you define original okinawan karate?

I'm given to understand that okinawa was home to many different styles, none of which actually called karate (as the name karate is relatively recent).

Okinawa also experienced lots of cultural exchange, being a regular trader with many neighbouring countries and on several trade routes so inevitably styles from elsewhere would influence the indigenous styles and vice versa. It is widely acknowledged that Chinese styles influenced okinawan for example. Would those Chinese style be the original okinawan karate? Or do we define a specific line in history? How about say 1900? Can we define 'original okinawan karate' as being the fighting systems popular in okinawa in the year 1900? If so, which ones specifically?

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Hi Graziano,

In my opinion no, no one is training orginal traditional Okinawan karate. Thorugh the time there was as many modification as many masters.

Each master add something and modify it, that's how karate evolved and still is evolving. 

There are groups which train orginal Okinawan karate as some style were created on Okinawa, so they are "orginal" I would use originated from Okinawa, but people like to point out that it is orginal karate to make them feel more knolegable, or do better sort of karate..

We even don't know for sure how the Orginal tradition of Te, Ti or Tode looked like, so no one can say I do the orginal karate. 

Kind regards 

Les

Wastelander
Wastelander's picture

There is no such thing as "original karate." In order to have an "original," you would, by definition, have to have a single originating point from which all karate was born, and that's not how these things happen. Furthermore, you can't very well have an "original" version of a thing that is constantly evolving, because like the sorites paradox, it is impossible to determine when it has changed enough to be considered something else. Even if you COULD isolate the "original" version of karate, why would you go that far back, and undo all the work that has been done to develop it?

That said, perhaps by "original," you simply mean the classical martial arts of Okinawa that were being practiced and developed prior to its introduction into the Okinawan school system (which I consider to be a watershed moment that separates the "classical karate" era from the "pre-modern karate" era, while WW2 denotes the separation between the "pre-modern" and "modern" era). If that's the case, then there is still a good bit of that around, preserved in bits and pieces throughout most Okinawan styles, to varying degrees, as well as some of the written works we have from the pre-modern era. There are also arts like Motobu Udundi and KishimotoDi, which have remained isolated almost completely from the modernization of karate, as well as arts like Kojo-Ryu, Matsumura Seito Shorin-Ryu, and Ryukyu Kempo, which have adapted some, but less than most. Then you reach the traditional Okinawan styles, like the three other branches of Shorin-Ryu, or Goju-Ryu, or Uechi-Ryu, which have modernized, but still maintain plenty of components of the older arts. After that, you start to get into the more sport-focused evolutions of karate. Exploring all of these, and connecting the methods and concepts that relate and compliment each other, can give you a sense of what karate would have been like back then, without the hassle of building a time machine, but it's still not perfect.

In the end, it doesn't matter if we are doing "the original karate." All that matters is that we are practicing karate in a way that suits our needs, and that we enjoy. For most of us here, that pretty much just means it has to be functional.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Wastelander wrote:
Furthermore, you can't very well have an "original" version of a thing that is constantly evolving, because like the sorites paradox …

The “Ship of Theseus” also captures the problems with the idea of karate remaining “original”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

For a quick summation of the idea, those in the UK may recall the episode of “Only Fools and Horses” where Trigger is given an award for saving the council money by using the same broom for 20 years:

 

Karate is always moving from person to person. Karate can’t ever be original because it has no objective existence outside of the people practicing it.

Karate is something people do; it is not a thing in and of itself. Therefore, even it we accept the notion of there being an “original karate” that was “immaculately conceived” (i.e. drew on nothing before it), the instant someone else practises it, it becomes a copy of the original.

Wastelander wrote:
In the end, it doesn't matter if we are doing "the original karate." All that matters is that we are practicing karate in a way that suits our needs, and that we enjoy. For most of us here, that pretty much just means it has to be functional.

Absolutely. Once the objective measure of functionality is downplayed (as has happened with much of karate), people use subjective measures such as “purity” and being “original”. Paradoxically, trying to be “pure” and “original” ensures you are neither because you remove the original aim of combative functionality and suppress any development in that regard. I think Ed Parker hit the nail on the head when he said, “Pure karate is when pure fist meets pure face”.

All the best,

Iain

Wastelander
Wastelander's picture

You're absolutely right--the Ship of Theseus is a more accurate representation of the idea, and I completely forgot about it. The sorites paradox is a more abstract version of the same thing, but the more specific one is probably more helpful, and the video is great

Anf
Anf's picture

I had to read up on the ship of theseus. I'd never heard of it before although I was familiar with Triggers broom.

The conundrum is simple. No thought exercise needed. Yes the thing that's had all its parts replaced is still the same thing.

I say this partly in jest. Also partly in the literal physical sense in that I'm still the original me despite, according to the boffins, that every cell and fibre gets replaced on a cycle of just a few years.

But also something I realised while out on my mountain bike in the woods. The birds were singing as the always do and akways have. Something dawned on me. Its always been the sane bird song chorus. The individual birds doing the singing each only live a few years, yet collectively they sing the same song.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Wastelander wrote:
The sorites paradox is a more abstract version of the same thing, but the more specific one is probably more helpful, and the video is great

I actually liked the one you suggested because the heap is still a heap even as grains are taken away. Likewise, karate is still karate as things also get taken away (the shift from being holistic to striking only). The Ship of Theseus works for the idea of replication vs originality, but the sorites paradox is perhaps a better metaphor for karate as it has evolved.

Anf wrote:
The conundrum is simple. No thought exercise needed. Yes the thing that's had all its parts replaced is still the same thing.

I say this partly in jest. Also partly in the literal physical sense in that I'm still the original me despite, according to the boffins, that every cell and fibre gets replaced on a cycle of just a few years.

This could get deep :-) I think this is one of the questions where the value is in pondering it because a definitive answer is difficult to find.

I’m with Heraclitus when he said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”.

My personal view is that the child that went by the name of “Iain Abernethy” no longer exits. Biology, experience and the passing of time means that everything that child was is no longer here and has been supplanted by what is now “me” (for this moment). I like to think of myself as a wave on the ocean. You can identify and point to the wave, but the water that makes up that wave is forever changing. My partner thinks my thinking on this is “weird” and hence it’s often a topic of discussion on our many long car rides together :-)

I think these are philosophical matters that minds far greater than mine have been grappling with for eons. If there has been no firm conclusion, it could well be because no firm conclusion exists? I personally like the notion of being everchanging (the wave) and everlasting (the ocean of which the wave is part), so I’ll run with that. When we talk about how we as individuals may persist beyond death, then we are into the realm of religion and that’s way beyond my paygrade and the remit of this forum. However, everything that I consist of in the here and now has been around since the beginning of time and will be here until the end. It’s always been part of this universe. The “shape” of things is in permanent flux, but what makes up those shapes is permanent (Law of Conservation of Energy and Einstein’s Mass–Energy Equivalence).

Anf wrote:
The birds were singing as the always do and always have. Something dawned on me. It’s always been the same bird song chorus. The individual birds doing the singing each only live a few years, yet collectively they sing the same song.

That’s a beautiful image you conjure up! To take it back to karate, we are the birds and karate is our song. Karate can’t exist independent of the human beings who practise it. Karate is ethereal in nature. I therefore think we need to be mindful of that when we talk of it as “thing”.

I’m bowing out now in case this thread gets deeper :-)

All the best,

Iain

Anf
Anf's picture
Iain Abernethy wrote:

I like to think of myself as a wave on the ocean. You can identify and point to the wave, but the water that makes up that wave is forever changing. My partner thinks my thinking on this is “weird” and hence it’s often a topic of discussion on our many long car rides together :-)

I love the wave anology. And coincidentally its one I'd also thought of myself. The wave analogy is cool because the wave is simultaneously a thing in its own right, a part of a much bigger thing (the sea), part of a bigger thing still (the whole system of earth as directly influenced by external forces like sun and moon) and just a concept, as in who defines the existence of a wave as opposed to a mere collection and organisation of molecules, which in turn are atoms, and subatomic particles etc.

I will also bail here for fear of getting way out of my depth. But I will throw in this, the simultaneous existence and nonexistence of the wave is just an example of... The duality of reality.

Steve Gombosi
Steve Gombosi's picture

Arts evolve over time. Nobody living has seen the ti of Matsumura or Sakugawa. Okinawan fighting arts have been repeatedly influenced by "foreign" arts: various systems from China, Japanese arts, etc. Individual teachers have altered the way they performed various kata over the course of their lives - take a look at the way Kyan's various students ended up performing the Tomari Chinto, for example. They're all obviously doing the same kata, but the details are significantly different.

When I lived in Tokyo in the 90s, I trained with one of Nagamine-sensei's pre-war students (Miyagi Seimei). After class he'd frequently talk to us about how techniques have changed over the years (e.g., "this is seiken in the kata, but you should think of it as a one_knuckle fist to the eye"). I've only been training Matsubayashi-ryu a little over 45 years, but even I've seen some fairly significant changes in what's considered "standard form" in that time.

Oh, and it's Shoshin Nagamine, not Shogin. While he first used the name Matsubayashi-ryu in 1947, he really started teaching in the mid-1930s. The notion of a named ryuha is Japanese and didn't really catch on in Okinawa until the 20th Century.

So "does the original Okinawan karate still exist?" My answer is "yes", but because the art is a living thing it's almost certainly not absolutely identical to what was practiced 300 years ago (just as you are not identical to the person you were 20 years ago even though you have the same identity).