SahBumNimRush
Master of Arts
195, where in the states did your KJN settle, if you don't mind me asking. Thanks for the info above, very informative!
Tang Soo Do Root Identification
- Thread starter dancingalone
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Muwubu16858
Green Belt
Don't forget GM Yun Kwai Byeong was also ranked 4th Dan Shihan by Kanken Toyama as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanken_Tōyama
He is under In ? Hei, fifth row down. His original name was Yun Ui Byeong.
In ? Hei (Yun Uoi Byon)ShihanTokyo Kanbukan (Korean Martial Hall) Director
rmclain
Black Belt
Muwubu16858
Green Belt
So Rim Jang Kwon was picked up in China by GM Hwang, not learned from Kim ki-whang. I'm sure He knew other jang kwon forms, as several seniors in korea did, but GM Hwang's was his own he learned from his chinese source.
While the Korean borns who studied Karate did so in Japan, they learned from Okinawan born instructors who immigrated to Japan, as opposed to Japan born instructors. I would say that the Karate that they learned was more Okinawan than Japanese, at least the technical aspects. For example, the Karate learned and taught by GM LEE Won Kuk is different than the Karate being taught by the Shotokan now.
There was no major effort to erase any connection to Japanese karate because of bias. That is just simply false. The pioneers were quite open about where they learned their Karate. And the Shotokan karate learned prior and during WWII is different than what is now taught.
By the way, I have your book, and you quote directly from me from posts I wrote on taekwondo net.
GM HWANG Kee was a student of GM HYUN Jong Myung, not GM Lee. GM Hyun worked with GM Hwang at Seoul Station and they worked out together. GM Hwang had prior martial arts experience from Manchuria and so he was very interested the martial arts. I wrote a post about this on taekwondo net, which you included in your book.
GM Hwang's rank in the Chung Do Kwan records (which still exist and are kept at the Chung Do Kwan headquarters offices in Seoul) is 6th Guep, White Belt. It is I believe the equivilent to what we would consider today as a green belt. Back then, there were only three belt colors, white (8th-5th Guep), red (4th-1st guep) and black.
GM LEE Won Kuk said that he saw GM RO Byung Jick training at the Shotokan and wearing a black belt towards the end. He trained mostly in the day with FUNAKOSHI Gichin Sensei while GM Lee worked during the day and practiced at night with FUNAKOSHI Yoshitaka Sensei.
GM Lee did train with the makiwara and I believe the iron geta. I brought up the topic of weapons and he started making movements with his arms like he was using a bo. So he did learn weapons or at least had an understanding of weapons. There are also pictures of Funakoshi Sensei and his Japan students holding bo.
But after reading your posts, I would say that perhaps GM Lee did learn Japanese Karate, or at least some sort of hybrid or transitional Japan style. The uniform, the rank system, the class format, the military or samurai overtones in class, the mentality of perfection, all are part of the Japan Karate experience. I think that pre WWII karate and post WWII karate were different things. One cannot assume, for example, that watching a Shotokan class today is like watching a class at the Shotokan in 1935.
What Dakin Burdick did was read Corrocan and Farkas' book and then plagerize that, which he posted on the internet when there was no good information available. I believe he has since taken down his article.
I don't know if there is any written records. I would say that no one has bothered to look. The records may have also been destroyed when the Shotokan burned down during WW II. I can say that GM LEE Won Kuk told me personally that he studied mainly under the son, Yoshitaka Sensei, more so than the father, especially during the last years he was in Japan. He liked the son's style more so than the father's, because they were about the same age.
Montecarlodrag
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I'm not following you.
In the first quote you say GM Hwang Kee wasn't a student of GM Lee.
Then in the second quote, you say GM Hwang Kee was a student in Chung Do Kwan
Aren't these two statements contrary?
In my opinion, the translation was poorly done and does not accurately reflect GM Lee's position on a lot of things. I don't know if it was the limitations of the interviewer (who I know) or whether what was stated was modified for the intended target audience (Taekwondo Times readers). Unfortunately, that interview, published in Taekwondo Times (that should tell you something right there), gets quoted and misinterpreted by those who mix what was written with their own ideas and "research"(google searches).
For example, the part that you quoted:
>Of course, in the days of occupation, it was forbidden by the
>Japanese to teach or study any martial arts including Tang Soo Do,
>a Korean style.
What GM LEE Won Kuk told me was that if you wanted to teach martial arts in Korea during the occupation, you had to ask permission to do so. There was for example, Judo which was already being taught in Korea in several places. GM Lee asked permission to teach Tang Soo Do (a term he created) but they did not know what Tang Soo Do was at the time so they declined his request.
>When I went to university in Japan seventy years ago Tang Soo Do
>training was very popular there. I was very interested in it. While
>attending the university, I practiced Tang Soo Do and came to realize
>that this type of skill was very important to have. I became aware that
>our Korean national history and legacy of martial arts were being kept
>from us. I felt very bad about this. Outside Korea, I was allowed to study
>Japanese and Chinese martial arts.
GM Lee stated to me that while in Japan, he studied Karate (not tang Soo Do), which was an Okinawan martial art, not Japanese. He felt that Karate was Okinawan because his teachers, FUNAKOSHI GIchin Sensei and his son FUNAKOSHI Yoshitaka Sensei, were Okinawan. He did acknowledge the changes that were being made in Japan, such as the standardized uniform, the rank system, the modification of the names to Japanese names instead of the older Okinawan language based names, and also the changes to the characters for Karate itself. He objected or disapproved of some of the changes, such as the reversal in order of Pinan 1 and 2, and certain modifications or "mistakes" that Gichin Sensei taught. He never considered what he learned in Japan to be Korean, or a Korean martial art, and he never called it Tang Soo Do while in Japan. In fact, he spoke quite frankly about learning Karate in Japan. When he moved back to Korea and began teaching, he pretty much kept it as close as possible to what he learned in Japan. However, if you look at the JKA materials or teachings of today and think that is what GM Lee learned and taught, you will misunderstand what actually happened. The post WWII JKA style is different than the pre WWII Yoshitaka Sensei based style that GM Lee primarily learned and favored. The JKA rejected the teachings of Yoshitaka Sensei (GM Lee's primary teacher) and went with their own method, as best as they could remember after a five or ten year break. Many of the JKA seniors, such as Nakayama Sensei, was absent during WWII and lived outside of Japan. Nakayama Sensei for example, was gone for I believe 8 years and lived in Manchuria and/or mainland China, where he studied Chinese martial arts.
Well, this is what we have as far as documentation is concerned. It would be nice to see some documentation to the contrary. What I can say from the research that I've gathered, as far as Hwang Kee is concerned, there was a distinct effort to obfuscate the Japanese origins of Tang Soo Do. This effort extended to publishing materials that claimed that the Pyung Ahn Forms were actually Chinese in origin and not Okinawan or Japanese. Later, GM Kee set the record straight on the matter. Also, there is the matter of persecution by the ROK government of individuals who were deemed too Japanese. Therefore, based off of this interview, the documented history of persecution, and the history of Korean martial arts being modified to fit a nationalist perspective, it's not that big of a jump to conclude that GM Lee really meant what he said in the interview.
Perhaps, GM Lee held a number of views privately that he would not share publicly?
Tang Soo Do is actually the old reading the characters for Kara-te, so GM Lee did not invent this term. At the time that GM Lee studied in Japan, the Empty Hand version of the name was being used widely. Why did GM Lee opt to use the old characters rather then the new characters? If there was no bias against Japanese, why not simply use the characters that everyone knows instead of causing confusion?
It is very possible that GM Lee held these as his personal views, but could not present them publicly. It is documented in The Modern History of Tae Kwon Do, that GM Lee was charged for acts deemed pro-Japanese and stood a special civic trial. Is this incorrect? Is this unrelated to martial arts?
Noting all of this, how can you still defend the statement that the Koreans did not try to de-Japanify their martial arts?
No, that is the documentation that YOU have. Others are not limited or bound by such things.
Maybe some did try to "obfuscate" the Okinawan origins of Tang Soo Do, but it wasn't GM LEE Won Kuk, or for that matter the Chung Do Kwan.
Are you certain that the Pinan kata is not Chinese in origin?
You're kidding right? GM Kee? You just lost me.
Yeah, put all kinds of misinformation out of context, and you can paint whatever picture you want.
Sure, there were a lot of things that he said in confidence to me. Hiding the origins of Tang Soo Do was not one of them.
Wrong. The term Toudejutsu was the old name used in Okinawa for the art. This is pronounced Karatejutsu in Japanese and Tang Soo Sool in Korean. Everyone knows about the change of the first character from Tou (Tang in Korean) to Kara (Kong in Korean) but what people forget is that they also changed the last character from Jutsu to Do at the same time. So the name went from Toudejutsu (Tang Sool Soo) to Karatedo (Kong Soo Do). Tang Soo Do was never used in Japan, at least not by the Shotokan group. FUNAKOSHI Gichin Sensei or maybe it was Nakayama Sensei spoke about this in one of their books. You might not find it if you only do google searches though.
First of all, everyone didn't know the name Karatedo or Kong Soo Do in Korea at the time. Maybe you know it now, but that doesn't mean everyone knew it back then.
As for why the name Tang Soo Do, I already told you the answer, and you would have maybe picked it up if you weren't so blinded by this "Let's get rid of the Japanese" thing. But the reason why he chose the name Tang Soo Do was because GM Lee preferred the Okinawan methodology, and as a tribute to that, went back to the name toude, or Tang Soo. But he also recognized the value in the modern parts as well, the so called "sport" aspects such as a standardized uniform, a ranking system, the formalized training format, and all the parts that was added in to make Toudejutsu a modern Japanese art in the image of Judo and Kendo. So he added the Do as a recognition of that. So Tang Soo Do, at the time the name was created, by GM LEE Won Kuk, was a tribute to the Okinawan method as well as the Japanese Do contributions.
First of all, my Korean born students and I translated that book. Secondly, the cover, which is in english, writes it "A Modern History of Taekwondo", with Taekwondo spelled as one word. Last but not least, does it say that GM Lee was convicted? I don't know about you, but where I come from, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Because I spoke to GM Lee and he did not "de-Japanify" his martial arts, and neither for that matter did the pioneers. In the Modern History book for example, does it "de-Japanify" Taekwondo, or does it start off in the very beginning sections by talking about how the Kwan founders learned in Japan?
One more thing that might be of interest to you. GM LEE Won Kuk was fluent in japanese and I believe he was more comfortable speaking in Japanese than in Korean. His son, who I still keep in touch with, often writes me letters in Japanese rather than Korean. And GM Lee's grandson lives and works in Japan.
But that's all the questions I feel like answering for you. I'm not your teacher and frankly don't wish to be. It's hard to have a meaningful discussion with someone who claims a Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan background on one hand and then calls the Moo Duk Kwan founder "GM Kee".
This is where this conversation can no longer proceed. Without any documentation and verification of your claims, how are people going to be able to have any faith in what you are saying? Why should anyone take the word of an anonymous person on a message board?
Perhaps you should write a book and document what you are saying so that people can weigh your claims against other documented sources. Market the book and put out the truth as you see it.
I am only anonymous to you.
But let's compare documentation. You said this:
Here is what NAKAYAMA Masatoshi Sensei stated in the book, Conversations with the Master: Masatoshi Nakayama, page 32:
"Well, the characters for karate had become rather well known by the 1930's, but they were still read "Chinese hand". In 1935, Master Funakoshi wrote Karate-do Kyohan and proposed that the characters be changed to "empty hand".... But more importantly, he also proposed that karate-jutsu, the technique of karate, be changed to karate-do, karate as a way of life. This caused tremendous uproar among some of the older, more traditional Okinawan masters of the time, and they took a strong stand against him in the newspapers. They demanded to why he wanted to remove karate from its Okinawan and Chinese roots. His reply to them was very interesting. He said, in effect, that since karate had spread to the Japanese mainland and been accepted by the intelligentsia in Japan, it had ceased to be a local, Okinawan martial art. He said it had grown to universal proportions and acceptance, and should therefore be elevated to equal status with kendo, Japan's oldest martial art, and judo, which was very popular."
Where is your documentation that the term Toude-Do was used in Japan and that the term Tou was not changed at the same time as the term Jutsu?
Of course, you could always argue that Nakayama Sensei is merely claiming to be repeating what Funakoshi Sensei said, without documentation, which is what you accuse me of. But that still would not be the same as documentation for your claim that GM Lee did not come up with the term Tang Soo Do.
