How Much Tradition is in Your karate?
Back in December, Ron Amram wrote a wonderful article titled “Traditional Martial Arts – What is ‘Tradition’?” If you haven’t read it yet, click the link and do so now (or after you read this). His article got me thinking about what tradition is in my martial art, Karate. So I thought I’d write a follow-up piece on tradition in the martial arts and how I answer that question.
“So, how traditional is your karate?”
That’s a pretty common question, actually. I get that from parents of new white belt students as well as seeing it from those… “keyboard samurai“ who thrive on challenging everything and everyone they come across online.
I think it’s fair to say that if I practiced a brand new martial art that had been created and codified just last week, I wouldn’t be able to call that a “traditional“ art. At the other end of the scale, if I were to practice a form of Shaolin kung fu at the temple in Dengfeng County, then the word “tradition“ would certainly apply. For most of us, myself included, we are somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. I study a form of Karate called Goju-Shorei, founded in the US in the mid-1950s.
But can a martial art system that is only approaching it’s 70th birthday be considered as having a tradition? Not only can it have tradition, I believe it’s just as traditional as an art going back much further.
History versus Tradition
But let’s not confuse the words “history“ and “tradition”. History refers to nothing more than the measurement of the passage of time. Tradition, on the other hand, is about the continuity of existence.
A prominent theologian, Jaroslav Pelikan, wrote a book on the importance of tradition, “The Vindication of Tradition.” In it, he writes “tradition is the living faith of the dead and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
And that’s the mistake I think too many people in the martial arts make – a focus on being a traditionalist and only accepting ideas and concepts that have a recorded and accepted lineage. What’s more important to the traditionalist is the historical perspective of the art. The lineage is a one-way line going back to some earlier time when the art was perceived as “complete“. This is a rather inflexible approach because the legitimacy of everything in the system must be measured by whether or not it was part of the system a century ago (or longer).
Think of it as stasis-versus-evolution.
So whereas the traditionalist concentrates on the art’s history, the tradition gets pushed aside. If traditionalism is a one-way path back into history, tradition is a two-way path where the art has been allowed to evolve and meet the needs of the society/student at any given point in the lineage.
It’s also important to note that evolution is not the same as change. Evolution is a continual and constant series of changes built on the current system but you can always trace the art at any point in time back down the lineage to the early Masters.
Yes the lineage is critical too, in establishing if an art is traditional or merely historical. For me, this is how I measure whether the martial art is traditional or not. In my school of Goju-Shorei, I’ve been able to trace our lineage all the way back to Ankō Itosu Sensei. I can’t tell you all of the changes there have been in the last 120 or so years, but there have certainly been some – pieces added, removed, altered… But, regardless of those changes, there remains an unbroken lineage; a “chain of custody“ the entire way back.
It’s like the old joke:
A guy goes to a garage sale where he sees an old axe with a price tag of $2000. He says to the homeowner, “that can’t be the right price?“
The homeowner assures him that it is correct. “You see, that axe belonged to the George Washington… THE George Washington.“
“Really?“ Asked the guy incredulously.
“Yes,“ says the homeowner. “Of course, it’s had three new heads and five new handles since.“
So is that ax the one that belonged to the George Washington? Historically, of course not. But there is a lineage to the ax and the ax is definitely a direct descendant.
And so it goes with martial arts; I study the same karate as Ankō Itosu. Of course, it’s been on two different continents and had six different masters since.
And, for a somewhat opposing view, check out “What is Traditional Karate” by Iain Abernathy.
How traditional do you consider the art you study? Let me know in the comments section at the bottom, or the contact form just below.
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