The Video Magazine # 12 began quite a lot of speculation regarding how the Uechi-ryu Kanbun Uechi brought back with him, differs from what his son taught and we are now practicing. I remember being shocked at seeing what appeared at the time, to be a drastically different system. What do you think of the style, as performed at Kanbun's first dojo?
Now, I haven't seen the tape in queston, but lately I've been looking at a lot of old films of various
Okinawan and Japanese karate styles from the 1950's. The one thing that strikes me most
forcefully is that ALMOST NOBODY does things the the way they did forty years ago! The
rhythms and flow are different, the techniques have changed, some techiques have appeared and
disappeared.
Another tape shows a current Okinawan master saying that most styles, even Okinawan, have
changed their techniques to reflect Western/scientific ideas of the biomechanics of punching, thus
changing both the trajectory and and the way of doing punches. In this case he is talking about
Shorin Ryu derived styles, and how the punches used to be 'whip-like' rather 'than piston-like', for
example.
This shows that the idea of preserving any human endeavour in a kind of time-warp is a romantic,
but highly unrealistic notion. We can try as hard as we want, but it'll never happen. Life is change,
even for karate styles.
--
yours,
maurice,
mori@interlog.com
Toronto, Ontario
(c)1997 maurice richard libby --all rights reserved
I've had a little more time to think about what I mean when I talk about Kanei being so "emminently
watchable" and "one of the last vestiges of the flowing art of 'Chinese Hand' ".
So much of what people have done with our style has been reductionist in nature. This is important
as knowing all the common elements gives one the ability to know all the possible combinations just
as knowing all the Chinese character roots makes it so much easier to read all the thousands of
Chinese characters. However it's the synthesis of the elements that makes the complex art, and the
synthesis is not usually an additive process.
Most people are capable of synthesizing a few elements to make a single complex technique. I
often spend long periods of time with even my most advanced students breaking up the sanchin
wauke into individual components, practicing the components, and then putting them back together
again. It's a great way to get the junk out of one's form. However in the process of going from the
approximately 12 elements to the sequence of wauke/bushiken techniques that one does in
Kanshiwa, one creates a whole that has little resemblance to the individual parts. But this is where
most people stop.
What is missing from most martial artists is the connection of the techniques. There too a
combination of several techniques appropriately combined will yield something that doesn't quite
look like what you started with. I remember some discussions I had with Jim Thompson when he
visited me in Charlottesville in the '80s. His decade or so with Uechi Kanei had given him some of
Kanei's gift of synthesis. I would see him do a flowing sequence exactly as I had seen Kanei
performing it, and it looking like nothing I had learned. When I asked Jim to slow down, he would
then show me something in pieces that was familiar and mundane. Then when he thought I wasn't
looking, he would do the unfamiliar movement all over again. He wasn't messing with my mind, he
was just creating a sequence that was a synergistic combination of techniques. It had the
appearance of a work of art. It also made the kind of physical sense that kinesthesiology would
ascribe to. It is the very thing that they TRY to teach in aikido, but few ever achieve.
What is so "emminently watchable" in Uechi Kanei is this whole that is nothing like the parts; it is
like the flow of water where water droplets are nowhere to be found. The advantages he achieves
by moving "like a Chinese" are so great that some of the picky idiosynchrasies in his movement are
of little consequence. But then again maybe some of these are intentionally consequential in ways
that I have not thought. It's that combination of thoughts that captures me so much when I watch
him.
Bill Glasheen
George
I too was intrigued by what Glen Humphress observed in your '65 visit to the Japanese pangainoon
dojo.
It is tempting to attribute the technique one observes to some intentional process. When one
considers the first principles information (this was the dojo left over from the original extra-Chinese
exposure to Kanbun's art) then one naturally wants to believe it is a fair and/or frozen
representation of the art Kanbun taught. In doing this, one is making a number of assumptions.
First, one assumes that these individuals are doing EXACTLY what Kanbun originally taught.
Secondly, one is assuming that anything else is not, and is either an evolotion of or degradation from
the information Kanbun first taught. Thirdly, there may be a subtle implicit assumption that perhaps
even Kanbun changed what he was teaching over time. Perhaps these are all true; perhaps they are
not.
There are some specifics worth mentioning. Notice first that the Wakayama students do not
perform stance or thrusts in sanchin the way we do now. Stances are wider, thrusts are done in
nonlinear trajectories, postures are sometimes very curved in the spine. Could this be what Kanbun
first taught? Could Kanbun and others have subsequently refined and/or changed the methods after
observing goju karate? Could Kanbun have been in the beginning stages of synthesizing a style? Or
could it be that the dojo members were not dilligent in their practice over time?
Another thing to note is techniques that are absent in the Wakayama dojo vs present in Uechiryu as
we know it. What of the reduced number of strikes in kotekitae? Where did the blocks after groin
strikes go in the seisan kata? Is this the real karate at that time and someone later embellished? Or
did the Wakayama crowd lose some of the information? All the same questions come to mind.
I noted in the film that Ryuko Tomoyose subsequently gets up and does some kata technique. He is
"clean" and familiar. He is also the son of Ryuyu. I would love to be a fly on the wall listening to
what he is saying in that meeting. I think George owes us a conversation with his former instructor
to get Tomoyose Ryuko's sense of the meeting.
Never mind; I take several things from my observations. Unless I am missing some hidden
application of strikes that are not orthogonal to the striking surface, I would prefer the striking
trajectories that I am familiar with. I also like the "additional" techniques that I know in my kata and
kotekitae. So my view is either that the style has evolved for the better, or this dojo deteriorated
badly from the concept that Kanbun originally had for it. My sense is the latter scenario is the
predominant and more probable one.
In that light, I have actually seen "worse".
Bill Glasheen
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