[Karate] Q&A with Shihan Akio Minakami

Discussion in 'Karate' started by Fish Of Doom, Oct 18, 2013.

  1. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

  2. Madao13

    Madao13 Valued Member

    Thanks a lot. That was a good read!
     
  3. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    Awesome stuff, cheers dude! I'll have to read it later when I get the chance :)
     
  4. GaryWado

    GaryWado Tired

    Hmmm!

    No disrespect to our American cousins but maybe that's more up their back passage!

    Not a great deal of substance in that article.

    But that's just my view.
     
  5. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    Yeah, it wasn't the most detailed article I have read on the subject of karate. But still, an article is an article and viewpoints are viewpoints regardless. I'm surprised by his view on sports karate, actually.

    Thinking about it, do we have a thread where we can compile different articles by senior karate-ka like this? I was just thinking it'd be nice to have one collective pool of articles to browse through.
     
  6. GaryWado

    GaryWado Tired

    Why are you surprised?

    He is japanese and grew up in an era where "shiai" (be that judo, kendo or karate) was the main thing.

    It still is now.

    Gary
     
  7. Madao13

    Madao13 Valued Member

    What surprised me is the things he said about meridians and ki.
    I didn't expect that, but still it was a nice read..
     
  8. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    I know, but in previous articles of other karateka who have been training the vast majority of their long lives, the opinions tend to be rather less fond of modern competition/sports karate. The ones that did talk about it more favourably (such as Mikio Yahara) would talk about it as a life/death battle and wouldn't summarise it as "as long as it's fun".
     
  9. GaryWado

    GaryWado Tired

    Actually (and I say this as I know you train in a Wado dojo) Otsuka sensei was a proponent of them. In fact he (and the likes of Suzuki sensei) had a big part in pushing it to the forefront.

    Think schools, universities and the likes of Judo, kendo - and then karate (in Japan) needed to follow suit to survive.

    And - Otsuka was a hard core - hardnosed Koryu Bujutsu-ka!?

    Gary
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2013
  10. LemonSloth

    LemonSloth Laugh and grow fat!

    Good point. I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks then.
     
  11. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    there aren't a lot of organizations in karate as a whole where the chief technical officer stresses "natural movement" and constant change and tweaking, rather than dogmatic adherence to classical motion. people that stick to the latter, however, abound (i still want to swallow my own eyeballs at the thought of being made to do tsuki with a square-on posture and absolutely no waist motion or shoulder protraction, or at the soul-shattering insistence of a completely vertical and erect torso). minakami's sharing of that fact is substance enough, i would say.

    there's also the part where he doesn't sugarcoat what we do. he literally said "We all study how to kill a person as quickly and efficiently as possible". in my opinion that is something that is absolutely vital, ironically enough, to the development of the martial artist as a peaceful individual, because it's generally by coming to terms with what you're actually doing (training a system designed to hurt people) that you can then introspect and intellectually find the reasons because of which you DON'T hurt people, be they simple reasons or otherwise, and then honestly dedicate yourself to your karate in full. it's not the only way to encourage civic responsibility in the martial artist, but it is still a good and intellectually honest way to embark on that path of one's own volition, rather than just cruising along on whatever sensei says and never sparing a thought to the fact that if you train your art quote-unquote "correctly", you're literally giving yourself the ability to hurt others, which many people do while paying lip service to the whole peace and love thing (which is particularly amusing when they train with edged weapons. gutting someone with a kama is not particularly peaceful :p), which is also one probable reason for the "dilution" of many martial arts lineages into varying degrees of wimpiness.
     
  12. Bronze Statue

    Bronze Statue Valued Member

    I'm probably parading my utter ignorance of karate right now, but I've yet to ever see a karate dojo which didn't teach that. How is it more properly taught in karate then?
     
  13. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    with a natural body position where you can actually put some weight into the damn thing rather than voluntarily holding back half your kinetic chain to look more like a plank because sensei said so :p.
    more seriously, by not insisting on form over function (which is more my general beef with a lot of karate rather than specifically square-on lead hand punches). if you want to hit hard, move everything in the same direction. by this logic, it follows that even if you use minimal koshi action, if your fist is going one way, your shoulders and waist should also go roughly in the same direction, because they're what the power from your legs goes through to get to the fist. this results in a posture that is not perfectly square-on (even if still more front-facing than side-facing), which is good because a perfectly square-on stance usually makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless it's the end result of having rotated off a half-facing stance (usually for rear hand techniques).

    different styles use different methods though. shorin schools generally uses hip twist, goju uses less hip rotation but works with the sanchin posture (so kinda statically "falling" into the strike), shotokan varies somewhat from school to school (but generally allowing shoulder motion while keeping the torso more rigid, sort of like sanchin posture), matsumura seito basically has one-inch punching, from what i've seen, etc.
    as far as hayashi-ha ****o-ryu goes, minakami's own people show it pretty well:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJd80PhDU7w"]Heian Nidan - YouTube[/ame]

    as does inoue, who went his own way after hayashi's death and formed his own group:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRRrKPZTDvc"]Seminar INOUE YOSHIMI - Hip Joint Relaxation for Zenkutsu-dachi Stepping - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i6CUzGEoeg"]Seminar INOUE YOSHIMI - Teaching Scapula Tension/Relaxation for Power - YouTube[/ame]

    and some stuff from other styles that shows "natural movement", rather than artificially stiffened movements (warning: video spam):
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu5MIKZRVaw"]Kata KUSANKU (Shorinji-ryu) - Okinawa, Japan - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445vFDiJ0P8"]Kusanku - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSGblnB9UOU"]Kusanku - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFgBgBQ61SE"]Kanku Sho - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPYDNR3NLg"]Masao Kawasoe - Kanku Dai - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFQbY5ZMF3U"]Masanobu Shinjo Suparinpei - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJeOCRV0oF0"]8.SESAN KATA by MORIO HIGAONNA - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofqi_5kUDSM"]Masaji TAIRA sensei Shisochin kata - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVKCqCmkJPM"]Tsuguo Sakumoto sensei. 8 Dan Ryuei-ryu karate. Kata. - YouTube[/ame]
     
  14. John Titchen

    John Titchen Still Learning Supporter

    I have to admit that bit gave me a belly laugh. It's very rare in the martial arts and in particular in karate. Overall I thought the interview showed he was very open minded, but for the majority of karateka the idea that they are training to kill a person as quickly and efficiently as possible is pure fantasy.
     
  15. John Titchen

    John Titchen Still Learning Supporter

    Depending on the association, and the dojo, rigid stances and postures that 'lock' and limit power generation can either be the thing that everyone does or the thing that is done as a precaution for beginners to teach them stability and to get them to use their hips properly rather than relying on shoulder power generation or over extension of the arms.

    I would consider myself lucky that my original Chief Instructor in Shotokan had very soft relaxed movement. I've met large numbers of Karate Dan grades who are constantly fighting their own bodies with muscle tension because they haven't been taught to let go of this tension at an early enough stage in their development.

    In shameless self promotion (and yes I can see several things I'm doing that I'm not happy with as well as a number of things I'm doing that I'll argue with anyone over because I am deliberately doing them) and opening myself to flaming, here's me relaxing through Shotokan Karate and DART Karate movements.

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxihp3V9dwk"]PINAN FLOW SYSTEM - HEIAN SHODAN DRILLS 2 & 3 - YouTube[/ame]
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPXQgJV1KiE"]Initiative - YouTube[/ame]
     
  16. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    i would say that's for the majority of martial artists in general, not just karateka :p
    the context of the statement is what i care about more than the precise wording, though, for the reasons i mentioned above.
     

Share This Page