Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

50 страница из 62

It was Clyde Kimura, from Kauai, who spoke with a kind of final authority on the subject. The toughest individuals he had ever encountered, he said, were kendoka. “The old ones,” he said. “A kendo man who’s in his mid-sixties; been training about 50 years,” Kimura said firmly, “he can take an incredible amount of abuse.”

I have often reflected on Kimura-san’s words. Interesting, isn’t it, that his concept of toughness was not in how much one can dish out, but how much one can take?

Many of the karate masters from the old days made a great deal of the importance of uke-waza. The word is usually translated as “blocking techniques.” Actually, it means “techniques of ‘receiving.’” Recently, the senior JKA instructor in Great Britain, Keinosuke Enoeda, criticized the stagnant and limited techniques he saw in karate competition. An improvement, he advised, would be to “practice hard to acquire a profound knowledge of the unique uke-waza of karate.” Enoeda sensei’s advice will sound strange to the average karate exponent, especially to those tournament enthusiasts who are always advocating just the opposite strategy for winning karate contests. They focus their practice on more varied and dramatic strikes. But Enoeda went on to explain his reasoning. “Once you are confident in ukeru [receiving] you can anticipate any attack. It is important to attack properly with full confidence and vigor however hard you are pushed. Using this offensive ukeru, you can undermine your opponent and gain a winning chance.”