Tomorrow is the big day! Today I am not doing exercises, unless we do some during the karate Zoom class tonight. Sensei said our belts will not have IFK markings, but will have something to distinguish them as his style. So that’s interesting.
Karate as a sport started relatively recently. Masutatsu Ōyama founded his own dojo around 1956. He formally named his style Kyokushin in a ceremony in 1957. American football, in contrast, morphed from rugby around 1875, according to the History Channel’s on-line article on football. Shotokan’s founder, credited to Funakoshi by Wikipedia, lived from 1868 to 1957, to contrast with Oyama. For the first time this year, the Olympics included karate. Due to the pandemic, the Games have been rescheduled to the summer of 2021. While karate’s roots may be ancient, karate as a sport is relatively new. Kyokushin, itself, is as young as its founder.
Now that F and I are approaching our shodan tests, I see how fluid, and non-standardized these institutions are. Karate organizations are people, their approaches and interpretations of history. Even Oyama, in his book, sometimes argues with invisible colleagues over the merits of callouses or the practicality of certain skills. He occasionally laments the loss of more rare skills. He saw karate as changing, and changed it, himself.
So karate is international, with a long, illustrious history. Like Zen, small groups of individuals teach others one on one. Instructors and senpais transmit knowledge in a personal way, tailored to kohai. Yes there are standards, but these are subject to constant interpretation, evaluation, re-interpretation, re-discovery and refinements. There are tug-o-wars over authenticity, alongside both useful, and not-so-useful, innovations. Like any living art, it changes, growing up and out from where it started, but it still remains rooted in fertile soil.