As I recall no Kwan founder was higher than a 4th degree and mosr where only BB's.
Shotokan rank of Kwan Founders
- Thread starter Makalakumu
- Start date
OP
- Thread Starter
- #22
Someone mentioned up thread that 4th was the highest dan ranking you could get at the time because Funakoshi Gichin considered himself to be 5th dan. Is there a citation for that?
I'm skeptical of what Choi says, so far as Rhee is concerned; he was a big booster of SMR, who really, more than anyone else, gave his career its initial velocity. What Madis says is that
In 1947, the head of Korea's national police, Yun Cae, approached Lee with an offer from the ROK President Rhee Syngman... If Lee could convince his entire 5,000 member institute (kwan) to join Rhee's political party, he would be appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. Lee refused. According to Lee, 'I was concerned that the government's motive for enrolling 5,000 martial artists in the president's party was not to promote justice, so I politely refused (Lee, 1997, 48[=Lee's 1997 Taekwondo Times interview, volume 17, pp.44–51).
Immediately, Lee was accused of being pro-Japanese and the leader of an assassin group. This is ironic because, according to the noted Korean scholar Lee Jeong-kyu, 'during the 12 years of Syngman Rhee's admistration... 83% of 115 cabinet ministers were Japanese agents or collaborators under Japanese colonial rule (Lee Jeong-kyu. 2002[= a paper in the journal Educational Policy Analysis Archives; more details supplied on request]
After his release in 1950, Lee continued to feel threatened, so he relocated to Japan [source cited is a 1999 interview with LKW in the periodical TKD and Korean Martial Arts; details supplied on request]
Immediately, Lee was accused of being pro-Japanese and the leader of an assassin group. This is ironic because, according to the noted Korean scholar Lee Jeong-kyu, 'during the 12 years of Syngman Rhee's admistration... 83% of 115 cabinet ministers were Japanese agents or collaborators under Japanese colonial rule (Lee Jeong-kyu. 2002[= a paper in the journal Educational Policy Analysis Archives; more details supplied on request]
After his release in 1950, Lee continued to feel threatened, so he relocated to Japan [source cited is a 1999 interview with LKW in the periodical TKD and Korean Martial Arts; details supplied on request]
I don't think this is one of those 'and-we'll-probably-never-know'-intoned-in-a-solemn-voice kinds of situations. The technique involved was vintage Syngman Rhee, and I've never read in any source that anyone in the TKD community believed Lee to have been a collaborator. But Rhee is known to have recruited operatives from among those favored during the Occupation (just as a good number of postwar German intelligence operatives, on both sides of the Cold War, had been agents in Himmler's secret service network).
rmclain
Black Belt
Yoon Byung-in was recognized as 4th Dan by Toyama Kanken at the Shudokan when Toyama was a 5th Dan.
R. McLain
OP
- Thread Starter
- #25
Hmmm, sounds like Rhee tried to recruit Lee and the CDK to be part of a "brown shirt" brigade and Lee refused. Thus, he suffers political persecution. That's an interesting take.
Please take note of this from the source I posted...
First of all, I was unaware that you could obtain a Professorship in TKD at a Korean University. Secondly, based on the source that you posted, it would appear to paint these two nationalist propaganda tools or at the very least, apologists? With that in mind, who is Eric Madis and what kind of ax does he have to grind?
Figuring out what happened to Lee Won Kuk is very important because when he went through this trial many of the people in the CDK broke off and began to really expand their own organizations. Hwang Kee among them. It would be very interesting if it could be shown that Lee's trial really was the result of political persecution.
Miles
Senior Master
Funakoshi, per Tsutomu Oshima, based his gradings on the five levels of spiritual maturity common in many Oriental religions. (Harry Cook "Shotokan, A Precise History." (P168). There is a footnote which references a book entitled "Zen Buddhism: A History of India and China" by Heinrich Dumoulin, MacMillan Publishing, 1994.
I mentioned that 4th dan was the highest rank one could get under GM Funakoshi at the time GM Lee received his rank (which I believe was before 1944 when the Chung Do Kwan opened).
However, Mitsusuke Harada was only 28yrs old when he received his 5th dan from Funakoshi (he was a 1st dan teaching karate in Brazil at the time). Harada, quoted by author Clive Layton, in "Karate Master, the Life and Times of Mitsusuke Harada", claims that Masters Oshima and Hironishi never graded beyond godan (i.e. 5th) and Egami not beyond yondan (i.e. 4th dan). Interestingly, Egami was offered a 5th dan by the JKA which he refused. (P96 & 97).
Miles
Senior Master
My senior Glenn U. said that GM Ro was a 3rd dan under GM Funakoshi. Glenn interviewed GM Lee, Won Kuk years before his death and posted this info on the TKD Net. Unfortunately, that was 3-4 computers ago and I don't have his great posts.
Miles
Senior Master
According to Harry Cook's "Shotokan, A Precise History" (P71):
"Obviously inspired by the example of judo, Funakoshi adopted the same method of grading student used in judo and awarded the first black belt grades in karate on 24 April 1924 to Tokuda, Hironori Ohtsuka, Akiba, Shimizu, Hirose, Shinkin Gima, and Shinyo Kasuya. Shinkin Gima remembers that "about a year after Funakoshi sensei came to Tokyo, I was graded Shodan, 1st degree black belt and my cousin Tokuda Ante was graded nidan, 2nd degree black belt."
Remember, Funakoshi arrived in Japan in 1922. He apparently did not have any qualms about awarding dan rank after 1 yr to folks who trained a few hours daily.
GM Lee trained with Funakoshi, Yoshitaka (GM Funakoshi's 3rd son and the only one who showed interest in karate) during the evening. He trained for at least 11 years before returning to Korea.
Madis is a MA historian, musician and owner/chief instructor of Seattle Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan. His sources are 100% public and attributed. I'm not sure I understand what is behind your question, what kind of ax does he have to grind? That presupposes that he actually does have an axe to grind. He published a chapter in an editor-refereed volume:
Eric Madis, 'The evolution of Taekwondo from Japanese Karate'. In Martial Arts in the Modern World, ed. by Thomas Green and Joseph R. Svinth, Prager Publishing, 2002.
Thomas Green is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Joseph Svith is Editor of Electronic Journals of Martial Arts.
I have to say, m., I find your question somewhat oddly put. Normally, when someone asserts something, my question is not what his or her ax to grind is, but what his sources are.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #30
It was poor word choice on my part. I certainly didn't want to imply that Mr. Madis was just confirming his own bias. I am more interested in finding out if Lee really was a victim of political persecution. If he was, were others approached by the Rhee administration and did they agree. If he wasn't, then were other people persecuted for their Japanese ties regardles of political affiliation?
The reason why this question is important to my own research is because the Moo Duk Kwan, in its early days, spread throughout Korea because of Hwang Kee's ties to the railroad. If there was an open storeroom at a station, a Moo Duk Kwan school existed there. This was one of the main reasons the school grew to prominance.
Hwang was a student of Lee for about a year or two. When Lee was in exile, him and a bunch of his other students went off and grew their own organizations. Was government persecution or anti-japanese sentiment the impetus for this? Did some of these other organizations "make nice" with Rhee in order to be allowed to exist?
The reason why this question is important to my own research is because the Moo Duk Kwan, in its early days, spread throughout Korea because of Hwang Kee's ties to the railroad. If there was an open storeroom at a station, a Moo Duk Kwan school existed there. This was one of the main reasons the school grew to prominance.
Hwang was a student of Lee for about a year or two. When Lee was in exile, him and a bunch of his other students went off and grew their own organizations. Was government persecution or anti-japanese sentiment the impetus for this? Did some of these other organizations "make nice" with Rhee in order to be allowed to exist?
Here's an underappreciated point. The Ryukyuans felt (and many still feel) that the Japanese did the same thing to them as they did to the Koreans, just over a longer period of time. Koreans and Okinawans of the time might have felt themselves kindred spirits in many ways. Funakoshi Gichin was born when the Ryukyus were still (nominally) independent; the official annexation came when he was very young, but he would have believed he was born in an independent kingdom that was taken over against its will by the stronger Japanese nation.
OK, gotcha.
My guess is, pro-Japanese sentiment was probably a convenient charge in that era (in the same way that spying for the West was the standard charge in the Stalinist show-trials of the 1930s, and Communist party membership or sympathies in the US during the Red Scare of the early 1920s and McCarthy/HUAC era hearings of the 1950s). By the same token, as I mentioned, there were plenty of veterans of the Nazi intelligence services who were part of Die Spinne; the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany's postwar version of the CIA, was headed by ex-Nazi intelligence officer Reihard Gehlen, and on and on ad nauseum; yet people were routinely charged with offenses under 'de-Nazification' laws in the Adenauer years, when it suited the German authorities to do so—a cruel joke, given the rampant activity of Nazi holdovers in the Adenauer government (see http://wapedia.mobi/en/Die_Spinne for more than you can probably stomach about how all this worked in postwar Germany, on both the East and West sides of the line).
Right, Dakin Burdick notes this also in his papers on TKD history, and comments somewhere that the railroad-based dojang network made HK look very strongly positioned in the KMA horserace that followed the end of the Occupation.
Well, my take on this is—hard to say for sure, of course—that if you want to know who was playing ball with Rhee, look at who was playing ball with Gen. Choi in the 1960s. We know that there were certain Kwans that the Korean sports ministry had targetted for belt retesting—but not the Oh Do Kwan (surprise, surprise), the Jidokwan, I think, and one other, I believe. But all the others were supposed to 'retest', a pretty difficult spot to be in, given the enormous influence that Gen. Choi had over the outcome.
BTW, Madis has some thoughts about dan ranking amongst the Kwan founders. He comments that
Although Lee [LWK] has not specified his Shotokan rank, several clues allow an estimation of second or third dan... Noted Shotokan instructor and historian Kase Taiji states that, in 1944, only three students (Hayashi, Hironashi, and Uemura) held fourth dan rank. Kase remembers only one Korean with second dan rank, who later returned to Korea... Subsequently Lee was the acknowledged senior student of Shotokan in Korea.
(p. 192).
(p. 192).
OP
- Thread Starter
- #33
Thank you for speculating with me. Also, thanks much for this citation. I knew that I had read that the highest rank exported to Korea was 2nd dan.
Miles
Senior Master
Exile, what is your source for this information? The Ohdokwan and Chung Do Kwan had a good relationship with each other during this period and Gen Choi is quoted in the "Modern History of TKD" as saying the Ohdokwan recognized CDK ranks since they trained together often (and no doubt Col Nam Tae Hi and GM Han Cha Kyo, 2 CDK seniors who were part of the early ODK).
But, GM Edward Sell in his book, "Forces of TKD" mentions that his instructors had to be retested and came back to Osan AFB looking bruised but stating they received good grades for their sparring.
punisher73
Senior Master
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2004
- Messages
- 3,959
- Reaction score
- 1,058
I am 99.9% positive that General Choi of the ITF claimed to have achieved 2 Dan in Shotokan.I would have to dig out the encyclopedia to be sure though.
He was, I know of a person who studied TKD in Korea while he was in the military. He has a first edition copy of Gen. Choi's book and he states that he was 2nd Dan (also of interest he admits to not knowing the bunkai of the kata which was taken out of later editions).
As to why no one has proof of their rank. It is probably because if you are claiming that TKD is completely korean and you then produce a shotokan certificate and people look to that MA it is obvious where it really came from.
miguksaram
Master of Arts
I believe he was only 3rd dan. I have to dig up my files on that. But you are correct that Funakoshi was a 5th dan so a 3rd dan back then was a petty high up rank.
I'll have to look this up again, but I think the memory trace that I based my statement on comes from one of Dakin Burdick's papers, either the JAMA paper or the online update to that article:
Burdick, Dakin. 1997. 'People and events of Taekwondo's formative years. Journal of Asian Martial Arts'.
Burdick, Dakin. 2000. 'People and events of Taekwondo's formative years'. [expanded version of the 1997 JAMA article], available at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html
But the Robert Mclain interview with Gm. Kim Soo may be the source here. I distinctly recall, as I say, that the Jidokwan was exempt from the retest requirement, and there was one otherand that could well be the CDK. There's little doubt in my mind that the retest requirement was primarily aimed at the MDK, because at that point, it was Hwang Hee's dissent that was the most persistent stumbling block to Choi's vision of a unitary KMA (of his conception and design, of course).
I have to be out of town for several days starting this afternoon (assuming that planes are still taking off and landing, lol) but will try to run down the exact source early next week.
Yes—and, probably, a detailed biography of Funakoshi would examine his actions and behavior in developing Karate in light of a certain ambivalence caused by, on the one hand, his resentment at the 'overlordship' oppressiveness the Japanese displayed (from the time of the Satsuma 'invasion' on, really) toward his homeland, and on the other hand, his desire to use his situation on Japan to advance his conception of karate and further his own career.
FieldDiscipline
2nd Black Belt
.
BTW, note the following interesting historical footnote on Gm. Won Kuk Lee:
The whole entry is worth reading...
In 1976, at the request of Gen. William Westmoreland, Grandmaster and his wife emigrated to the United States. Gen. Westmoreland had been a student of Grandmaster's during the 1960's when he commanded the U.S. Forces in Vietnam and Grandmaster served as the Tae Kwon Do instructor for the U.S. military.
The whole entry is worth reading...
