Читать книгу Complete Shotokan Karate. History, Philosophy, and Practice онлайн

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Misconceptions of foreign cultures are by no means unusual. Japanese have perceived Westerners incorrectly, and Westerners in turn have failed to understand the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. This problem, common throughout the history of man, is in large part attributable to a fascination for the unusual. Recently, those aspects of Japanese culture that have had the greatest appeal to Westerners have been those with the most exotic practices and philosophies. Karate, aikido, and Zen, for example, have proved of interest, not so much because of their intrinsic worth as for their value as curios. In many cases, the Westerners attracted to such exotic interests have in all likelihood been atypical representatives of their own cultures.

The beginnings of the distortions of the Japanese martial arts ethos came in the aftermath of World War II. At that time, many Americans were stationed in the Far East and came into contact with teachers of various combative systems. For many, the exposure was limited, and the brevity of their relationships left only a superficial impression of the true traditions of those arts. In other cases, individuals trained for a time with Japanese instructors who prostituted their art by selling black belt grades in order to make money. Some of these Americans left Japan with only a scant knowledge of the arts they were supposed to spread, and the resultant misunderstandings fostered by them are legion. Men with a year's training returned to the United States holding several grades of black belt rank with the permission of their Japanese instructors to represent them. Although the skill of these men was limited and their understanding of the philosophy of the art nonexistent, they were pressured by their former teachers and new students to teach a way of life that they had not mastered. In return for their allegiance, they were allowed to issue black belt grades sanctioned by the instructor in Japan or Okinawa, providing him with profitable registration and diploma fees. The new American "master" now had a vested interest, and even if philosophically his actions could not be condoned, they could certainly be justified from a monetary standpoint. In some cases the American instructor deluded himself, thereby giving rise to the worst kind of misrepresentation. As a true believer in his own philosophy of the martial arts, he was able to appear sincere and lead others down the same benighted path to misunderstanding. The student who encountered such an instructor could not help but be impressed by his manner, if not his technique. After all, the movements demonstrated by the American instructor were, if nothing else, exotic. His Japanese vocabulary, albeit limited, contained phrases and words that were designed to inspire the imagination and excite interest. Vast numbers of Americans searching for the unusual settled upon karate as a fulfilling endeavor, capable of providing the combination of physical and mental discipline that they sought.