Yesterday, we covered Okinawan Karate. Japanese Karate to a certain extent was derived from the first few years of Funakoshi’s students, who transformed it into their own styles. Every Japanese form of Karate traces their lineage back to Funakoshi.
This includes three Korean forms – Tae Kwan Do, Tang Soo Do, and KyokushinKai. KyokushinKai is Korean only in the sense that the grandmaster of it was Mas Oyama, the fierce Korean man who learned Shotokan, and adapted it to a more combat oriented style. I’ve learned an offshoot of Kyokushinkai called Soryukan, which claims Mas Oyama as the originator of that.
That’s a controversial claim, because the actual Soryukan in Japan does not list Mas Oyama as ever having practiced their style. And the Soryukan I learned was taught to Sensei Wilkins directly from Mas Oyama – and it’s definitely Sorykan. The emphasis on the 45 degree stance, the crossed forearms all are Soryukan. But the emphasis on doing pushups on a gravel path, legs kicked constantly to get you into the right stance, slaps hits and pushes to get your torso in the right spot – all that is traditional Kyokushinkai. So, apparently there’s a phase in Oyama’s life where he taught very few people his karate. Sensei Wilkins did have a picture in his house of him and Mas Oyama, so I believe the story. Alas, Oyama has passed on, the Soryukan has no record of his involvement, and Mr. Wilkins has probably passed on as well – so an intriguing piece of Karate history is lost forever.
Korean teaching emphasizes kicking over punching. Japanese emphasizes punching over kicking. Why? Because the Japanese forms still hold the traditional emphasis on last resort. Kicking tends to be a stronger technique if you’re engaged in a long fight. But a punch or strike tends to be lethal.
Many of the so-called kill points are on the neck and head of the human body, and a few in the chest. Younger Karate practitioners can do head high kicks, but as you get older, your ability to kick someone in the face with a roundhouse kick is limited. Tendons begin to shrink. While Kanezawa in his seventies can still do head high kicks (and my sensei Mr. Okazaki can as well), it takes much longer stretching out each day to get that kind of flexibility.
So, it pleases the crowd to see someone do head high kicks, but in a real fight, most kicks will be done waist high and lower. This means the targets for self defense are mostly hit with the hands.
I will say this – a spinning crescent kick generates enough torque to shatter a spinal column, or severely fracture a skull. Tests have shown it can (in some practitioners) have the same impact as being hit by a car. In shotokan, the crescent kick is done rarely, and always to the chest in Kata. I figured out how to do double crescent kicks, and the speed of them lifts you several feet off the floor.
The most powerful kick in the world is the Shotokan Karate roundhouse kick. It differs from all other styles, in that the contact surface is the ball of the foot. You can break the support pillar of a car with that kick. Prove it? I’ve done it. A full contact roundhouse kick from a shotokan black belt into someone’s sternum would have devastating impact. If I remember the stats correctly, itls like the impact of falling 20 feet onto a hard surface. Can someone correct me on this? I haven’t heard the stats on this since the 90’s.
Japanese Karate features blocks that twist the forearm. If you hit someone hard enough with a block, it can actually deaden the arm momentarily. The punch delivers a great deal of torque. A writer from England studied Shotokan in Japan in the 60’s, and he used a reverse punch once in real life, and knocked the other man backwards several feet. Question for practitioners of other Japanese styles – do you have the reverse punch and hanmi position, or is Shotokan the only one?
Hidy Ochiai, a Shotokan black belt, found revolutionary new applications for common shotokan moves, such as the downward block (Gedan Barai) against wrist grab, and the high rising block (Jodan Age Uke) against the underside of the jaw when bear-hugged. And one very high ranking Shotokan black belt has created a video series where he demonstrates alternate applications of Shotokan that has generated a lot of controversy.
A common saying in Japan is “in japan, the belt is the belt. In Korea, subtract three degrees. In America, subtract five.” So many so-called black belts in America are considered blue belts by Japanese.
Tomorrow we move on to other Japanese martial arts.
