Disappearing History...

[exile]

In 50 years, no one will know who the Kwan leaders were, just like no one now knows who did what to contribute to Korean martial arts from 200 years ago.
As I said before, Koreans see their martial arts history as as integrated whole, not compartmentalized into specific systems created by specific people a la Japanese karate. As such, who did what is not important, and one person cannot take credit for the art as a whole. This is something, I believe, many people have a hard time with. They want to give specific people credit for specific things, and Korean martial arts don't work like that.
Along these same lines, Taekwondo 100 years from now will undoubtably be different. In what ways I don't know. The people who made it different (they may be unborn, they may be typing this right now) will not matter so much as the end product.

Well, there is the business about, you know... writing, and the fact that whereas for most of their history people didn't write things down about their arts, for whatever reason, these days most people are literate and few are trying to keep secrets. The work of professional MA historians is not going to disappear in 100 years; we have written histories from ancient Greece, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance and the beginning of the modern era, all sitting nicely on our library shelves. And people consult them and rexamine them and quote them. All of the research that's been done, published, put on microfiche and electronic archives is just going to disappear... just, pfff, like that? Oh yes...:lfao:

So the history is disappearing because Taekwondo is bigger than its individual parts, not because of Kwan leaders from 50 years ago.

Let's call things by their right names, YM. TKD history is disappearing because of a propaganda effort by a bunch of Korean government bureaucrats making a deliberate effort to deny a crucial part of their martial arts history, in order to promote nationalist glory and their own profits. 'Taekwondo is bigger than its individual part?' Well, what isn't?? That's supposed to explain anything?? Name me a social institution that isn't bigger than its individual parts—does that mean that the history England, or the Civil Rights movement, or Christianity is disappearing? When you have fundamental new discoveries made about these every year, and more and more work keeps coming out? Let's get real, OK? TKD history is in danger of disappearing for the same reasons the bloody history of the Soviet Union in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist era was in danger of disappearing: because it was actively suppressed by apparatchiks with an interest in promoting a groteque myth about the Soviet state. The leadership of Japan has for years tried to suppress the history of Japanese crimes against its Asian neighbors during the first half of the 20th century for much the same reasons.

Sonorous-sounding phrases with no explanatory force are poor substitute for calling a spade a spade. There is one reason only why TKD history is in jeopardy: because it suits the purpose of ROK sporteaucrats to lie about it. End of story.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

In 50 years, no one will know who the Kwan leaders were, just like no one now knows who did what to contribute to Korean martial arts from 200 years ago.
As I said before, Koreans see their martial arts history as as integrated whole, not compartmentalized into specific systems created by specific people a la Japanese karate. As such, who did what is not important, and one person cannot take credit for the art as a whole. This is something, I believe, many people have a hard time with. They want to give specific people credit for specific things, and Korean martial arts don't work like that.
Along these same lines, Taekwondo 100 years from now will undoubtably be different. In what ways I don't know. The people who made it different (they may be unborn, they may be typing this right now) will not matter so much as the end product.
So the history is disappearing because Taekwondo is bigger than its individual parts, not because of Kwan leaders from 50 years ago.

This is a very weak arguement. You're essentially saying that since people will forget about it anyway, then it is perfectly fine to fabricate a fake history to make Taekwondo appear to be cohesive with ancient Korean martial arts. That is a very, very slippery slope indeed. And it doesn't even address the issues of researching techniques and their origins, which has been brought up on this thread by more than one person.

And comparing it to how the Japanese record their martial history is just a red herring. It is one thing for the history to simply disappear due to lack of comparative interest. It is quite another for history less than a century old to be actively rewritten, particularly when some of those involved in that history are still living.

Maybe you are happy to be lied to. Or maybe you just don't care. But there is no argument that you can put forth that will justify what is being done with the history of one of the worlds most popular martial arts.

And perhaps that is the big issue. It is no longer an MA owned by Korea. Korea gave it to the world. If taekwondo were soley a Korean activity, it would still be a crime to lie about its history and to erase the record. But this is our martial art, not just the government of SK's or the KKW's. We do have a duty to preserve its history.

Daniel

 

[exile]

Maybe you are happy to be lied to. Or maybe you just don't care. But there is no argument that you can put forth that will justify what is being done with the history of one of the worlds most popular martial arts.

And perhaps that is the big issue. It is no longer an MA owned by Korea. Korea gave it to the world. If taekwondo were soley a Korean activity, it would still be a crime to lie about its history and to erase the record. But this is our martial art, not just the government of SK's or the KKW's. We do have a duty to preserve its history.

Daniel

Beautifully put, and the exactly right point. IOU rep.

 

[CDKJudoka]

History disappears all the time as Daniel and Exile stated. Take a look at Pankration. It was a Martial Art that was "lost" for so long, they had to pull from other MAs to fill the gaps. I think that with the way TKD has proliferated around the world, the history will never truly disappear, but the way it may be interpreted will, since there are so many cultures that it has touched, and have touched it. There are enough people out there who know the history that whatever the KKW does to "change" the history will pretty much just nullified by the people in the MA community that will pass it on.

 

[dancingalone]

There are enough people out there who know the history that whatever the KKW does to "change" the history will pretty much just nullified by the people in the MA community that will pass it on.

Is there no one from the KKW camp who believes the facts should just stand for themselves without inappropriate 'coloring' and 'shading'? Surely, a rational person would recognize that playing with the facts only costs you in credibility and standing from your peers and potential customers?

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Is there no one from the KKW camp who believes the facts should just stand for themselves without inappropriate 'coloring' and 'shading'? Surely, a rational person would recognize that playing with the facts only costs you in credibility and standing from your peers and potential customers?

I'm a KKW yudanja. I even have membership in USAT. Do I count?

Daniel

 

[CDKJudoka]

Is there no one from the KKW camp who believes the facts should just stand for themselves without inappropriate 'coloring' and 'shading'? Surely, a rational person would recognize that playing with the facts only costs you in credibility and standing from your peers and potential customers?

I'm not in the KKW camp. Never was. I trained ITF before I got into CDK, and we are independent.

 

[dancingalone]

I'm a KKW yudanja. I even have membership in USAT. Do I count?

Daniel

Sorry, Daniel. Not until you sew on at least 5 more stripes.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

I'll hit the craft store on the way home.

Daniel

 

[exile]

Sorry, Daniel. Not until you sew on at least 5 more stripes.

:lfao: Great line... but maybe a bit risky, d.a., come to think of it. It might give someone a mistaken idea about the next tactic to try in this discussion...

And in connection with the point that Spookey raised, and the substitution of bogus propaganda and feel-good mystification for real documented history, I can't help noting the laughable irony of the comment that

They want to give specific people credit for specific things, and Korean martial arts don't work like that.

What the true, documented history of TKD shows, as was pointed out very nicely above, is almost exactly the opposite. From the very beginning, the particular Korean martial art we're talking about has been pushed and shoved around by 'specific people' anxious to use it for their own personal advancement, glory or what have you—and the results show. The following are well-supported by publically available historical records:

• Early on, the Korean military decided that a standardized adaptation of the Kwan-taught Tang Soo Do/Kong Soo Do curriculum, largely Shotokan karate (though Shudokan was also part of the mix) was to be taught to the ROK infantry and especially its elite commando units specifically for combat purposes. This initiative was driven largely by Syngman Rhee, who had assumed dictatorial powers even prior to the Korean War. Rhee applied enormous, brutal pressure to the Kwans (including virtually imprisoning Lee Kuk-Won) to become an instrumentality of the military dictatorship andcome up with a uniform, field-effective H2H combative system, a situation which gave then Col. Choi his opening—as a military man and a Kwan leader—to assume what was in effect executive control of the development of TKD. The whole early development of TKD was driven by the personalities of Rhee and Choi...
• ...leading to the rift within TKD down the middle of the Moo Duk Kwan, the fracturing of the striking KMAs into TKD and TSD, the persecution of Hwang Kee (including his house partly burning down amidst very suspicious circumstances) and his eventual self-exile...
• ... followed, ironically, by a similar fate for Gen. Choi as a result of his ill-advised trip North, playing into his many enemies' hands, chief among them the nasty dictator Gen. Park, who had deposed the nasty dictator Rhee. Just as had happened with Hwang Kee, Gen. Choi went into exile, establishing a distinctive TKD style which minimized the sport competitive element glorified by the TKDeaucrats of the WTF/KKW who superseded him.

As a result of all these rebellions (by individuals) and suppressions (by individuals and their gangs), we wound up with three seriously different varieties of the striking KMAs, with very different attitudes and emphases: TSD, exiled, with its explicit self-identification as Korean karate and a corresponding emphasis on Japanese kata and bunkai; the ITF, exiled, with its Chang Hon tuls, sine wave movement and other aspects imposed personally by the General, with its relatively low emphasis on tournament competition, and WTF/KKW TKD, firmly in the saddle in Korea, with its virtually total commitment to the sportification of a once feared combative system, with corruption scandals and bribery disgraces largely (I suspect, anyway) as a result of its contamination by the IOC, surely one of the most corrupt, disgraceful sports organizations of all time, and all that cash that Olympic activities seem to be awash in.

Does this picture, every detail of which can be documented in minute detail (see Eric Madis, 'The evolution of Taekwondo from Japanese Karate'. In Martial Arts in the Modern World, ed. by Thomas Green, Prager Publishing, which I mentioned earlier, for a brilliant bird's-eye-view of the evidence for this picture) have anything at all to do with the bolded passage in the text I quoted above? Could anyone say that it does and keep a straight face? Actions by individuals are swamped by the collective will of the majority of KMAists, we're supposed to believe? Then why were the Palgwe's dropped as the KKW colored belt sequence two years after being adopted by their technical committee? The will of Korean MAists, you say?? Like hell it was—read the gory details here; the gist of what happened, from Master Mclain's post, is that

They were replaced only two years after their inception in 1972 by the 8 Taek Guek forms because of a Korean Master that attended the KTA Palgue clinics in 1972 and learned these forms during their introduction. He returned to the US and published the first English book on these forms as an attempt to help the KTA and show the world what was created. He even dedicated the book to Kim Um-Yong, KTA President.

This same Korean Master also published an article on the 1967 version of Koryo hyung in the Karate Illustrated Magazine in 1973. Because this Master didn't join the KTA(WTF) and instead preserved the old karate and chuan-fa forms from his old kwan, many KTA officials were angry that he was the first to publish and thought he was trying to steal the forms. So, they (KTA/WTF) changed the Gup-level requirements from Palgue 1-8 to the new 1974 forms Tau Guek 1-8 and created a new version of Koryo.

The first book on Paglue forms in "Palgue 1-2-3 of TaeKwondo Hyung," by Kim Soo. Ohara Publications, 1973.

For years he (Grandmaster Kim Soo) didn't know why they changed the forms, but he was later told by one of his junior friends - who was secretary general of the WTF.

Major actions by individuals are not the basis of the development of the KMAs, eh? :lfao:

And please, let's not have any whinging about how negative all this is, and how I and others who actually do have some respect for what really did happen are just looking for things to gripe about. This is what happened, and the evidence is in the historical record. That's the first thing. The Korean TKD directorate would just as soon no one knew this stuff. That's the second thing. If anyone sees negativity here, don't complain to us—we're just the messenger. Savvy?

 

[MBuzzy]

In 50 years, no one will know who the Kwan leaders were, just like no one now knows who did what to contribute to Korean martial arts from 200 years ago.

Wow....that is a pretty dim view of our world. I really can't see us going back into the dark ages. You realize that we now in the Information age. We are storing, cataloging and analyzing more data and information now than ever. The world is information oriented. We now live in a world where history and information is no longer simply "lost." We can keep it forever, there doesn't have to be a trade-off. I am wondering where this opinion comes from?

As I said before, Koreans see their martial arts history as as integrated whole, not compartmentalized into specific systems created by specific people a la Japanese karate. As such, who did what is not important, and one person cannot take credit for the art as a whole. This is something, I believe, many people have a hard time with. They want to give specific people credit for specific things, and Korean martial arts don't work like that.

While I do agree with the statement that these arts - especially the ones that have evolved considerably do not owe everything to their founders - they do owe something. NOTHING gets to where it is without its founder.

I wonder where this idea and opinion on Koreans is coming from? You made a comment directed at how Koreans view their history....but where did this come from? Is this from personal experience or from word of mouth?

I only ask because first of all, I am involved in a traditional Korean Martial Art that is VERY VERY respectful and reverent to its founder. In fact, EVERY Soo Bahk Do school has a photo of the founder AND his son in the Dojang. This is true of other Korean Martial arts who do pay homage to their founders.

Second, I lived in Korea for a year and traveled extensively and I got a completely opposite impression of Koreans and their view of history. They really don't seem to view things any differently than we do....except that they are MUCH more reverent and respectful of history, their elders and their ancestors. How many Americans still visit the graves of ancesters even from a generation ago? Most Koreans visit the grave sites of their ancestors for many generations back. I visited one burial mound that contained the remains of Koreans from before America existed....and those family member still visited....

 

[rmclain]

Knowing the lineage and history can be self-defense against many nuts in the Korean martial arts making false claims - businessmen who have little to no martial arts experience that simply want to make money from an ignorant prospective or current student.

Knowing the history won't make you a better technician at martial arts, but it can protect you and your family from enrolling with one of the nuts listed above. There were quite a few of these with the wave of Korean TKD instructors that flooded America. Not everyone that has slanted eyes is a martial artist or instructor.

R. McLain

 

[Miles]

So far as I know, not one of the Kwan founders studied in Okinawa; rather, they studied with Okinwan expats in Japan, where the Okinawan material had already been substantially changed, and diluted.

My apologies to Exile for the delayed response. I found this passage in Cook's "Shotokan, A Precise History" in the chapter entitled " The Rebirth of Shotokan" (P171):
"By the time of Gichin Funakoshi's death it is clear that the type of karate promoted by the JKA was regarded as purely Japanese in feel and content.

The Okinawan roots had been left far behind and, in the opinion of at least some of the JKA seniors, Okinawan karate was not perceived to contain anything of value. They were confident that the original Okinawan methods introduced by Funakoshi had been considerably improved upon by his Japanese followers, and there was nothing to be gained by investigating Okinawan karate systems. Masatomo Takagi, with a confidence verging on arrogance, observed in 1960 that "We (the JKA) studied Okinawan karate, but found that it lacked.....theory."

On page 167 of the same book, the author states that in the 1958 edition of "Karate Do Kyohan" Funakoshi, "comments unfavorably on the decline on the level of technique during the immediate post-war years. Funakoshi was aware that the physical practice of karate is subject to change, and he was not too concerned about changes in technique or using Japanese terms for the kaa in place of the older Okinawan names, thes are the natural changes and therefore acceptable.. He wrote in 1943:"since Karate is ever-advancing it is no longer possible to speak of the karate of today and the karate of a decade ago in the same breath. Accordingly, even fewer realize that karate in Tokyo today (i.e. 1943) is almost completely different in form from what was earlier practiced in Okinawa."

I don't think Funakoshi diluted anything from what he learned on Okinawa. I think it is clear that after his death in 1957, the JKA seniors consciously changed what they (and several of the Kwan founders) had learned from Funakoshi.

Again, sorry for the delayed response.

 

[exile]

My apologies to Exile for the delayed response. I found this passage in Cook's "Shotokan, A Precise History" in the chapter entitled " The Rebirth of Shotokan" (P171):
"By the time of Gichin Funakoshi's death it is clear that the type of karate promoted by the JKA was regarded as purely Japanese in feel and content.

The Okinawan roots had been left far behind and, in the opinion of at least some of the JKA seniors, Okinawan karate was not perceived to contain anything of value. They were confident that the original Okinawan methods introduced by Funakoshi had been considerably improved upon by his Japanese followers, and there was nothing to be gained by investigating Okinawan karate systems. Masatomo Takagi, with a confidence verging on arrogance, observed in 1960 that "We (the JKA) studied Okinawan karate, but found that it lacked.....theory."

On page 167 of the same book, the author states that in the 1958 edition of "Karate Do Kyohan" Funakoshi, "comments unfavorably on the decline on the level of technique during the immediate post-war years. Funakoshi was aware that the physical practice of karate is subject to change, and he was not too concerned about changes in technique or using Japanese terms for the kaa in place of the older Okinawan names, thes are the natural changes and therefore acceptable.. He wrote in 1943:"since Karate is ever-advancing it is no longer possible to speak of the karate of today and the karate of a decade ago in the same breath. Accordingly, even fewer realize that karate in Tokyo today (i.e. 1943) is almost completely different in form from what was earlier practiced in Okinawa."

I don't think Funakoshi diluted anything from what he learned on Okinawa. I think it is clear that after his death in 1957, the JKA seniors consciously changed what they (and several of the Kwan founders) had learned from Funakoshi.

Again, sorry for the delayed response.

No problem, Miles, I have that happen to me all the time... all this damned pesky stuff people insist on calling 'Real Life' getting in the way!

As far as GF's relation to Okinawan praxis is concerned: I wouldn't disagree for a second that those after Funakoshi diluted the material he taught considerably. But that doesn't mean that GF himself was faithful either to the content or the curriculum of what he himself had learned in Okinawa. Consider the following, from Gennosuke Higake's excellent book Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi—that, as he was told by Shozan Kubota, one of the last of Gichin Funakoshi's senior students (4th Dan from GF, 1944), discussing what he calls the `secret pact' between GF and the other Okinawan expat instructors, on the one hand, and the senior Karateka then alive in Okinawa, to the effect that the former would not teach the true bunkai for the kata they taught. As he writes (pp.65–66), Sensei Kubota told him that

When Master Gichin Funakoshi introduced Okinawan karate to the mainland, there was a `secret pact' made amongst the practitioners of Okinawan karate. Karate was primarily spread at universities, and the explanation, which Sensei Kubota learned, was about the same as today.

It was, however, completely different than what he was taught at night by Master Funakoshi at his house. When asked, `Why did he teach something different than in the day time?', his answer was that `Master Funakoshi was actually not suppose to teach it.'

In other words... when he taught his ordinary students [`yomatonchu' (the slang for Japanese mainlanders)], he taught them katas, which they would not be able to use.

Sensei Kubota also learned from Master Kenwa Mabuni. Master Mabuni also divided the teaching into `the original form' and `the other form'.... There is a well-known saying in karate that goes, `Even if you teach the kata, don't teach the actual techniques'. I believe this phrase expresses well the contents of the `secret pact'.​

It's clear from the discussion in Higaki's book that what was involved was not something formal, but more of a gentleman's agreement: yes, you can go to Japan and set up shop, but you are not to show them what we showed you. There were a number of reasons for this, and clearly—as one might expect—GF slipped up a bit with his virtuoso students, like Shozan Kubota. But the point is that the Okinawan expats were prepared to go only so far in sharing their knowledge. And really, Miles, how could it be otherwise? If you're doing mass instruction with people who are learning it for radically different reasons than it was originally developed for, as vs. very small classes with a few very long-time students whom you know well and are willing to teach dangerous techs to for actual combat (not what the Japanese education authorities were interested in)... how could you possibly teach them the same stuff? How could you give them the same kind of individual attention, work on the same kind of one-on-one techs, all the stuff that people did in the much smaller, semi-improvised context of the Okinawan dojo? Willy-nilly, it's got to be very different, simply because the conditions are so different. Throw in the extreme ambivalence of the Okinawans towards their racially condescending hosts (something that Higaki goes into serious detail about) and loyalty to old teachers... and what Higaki reports about Shozan Kubota and the other Japanese students of the Okinawan expats makes absolutely perfect, inevitable sense.

 

[Miles]

Exile, I will have to expand my library.

Thanks for the discussion!

 

[arnisador]

The conspiracy implicit in the 'dilution' theory is plausible to me, particularly since I strongly favour the Okinwan systems over their Japanese relations, but I also wonder if it's like when people say an animal has evolved to a 'higher' form, as though that was the teleological goal, rather than emphasizing it has evolved to a different form that is better suited to some purpose. Maybe it was purposefully diluted--which assumes that there really are secrets in the arts, something I largely doubt--or maybe, as I suspect is more likely, Funakoshi Gichin was willing to modify it to fit the Japanese "one strike, one kill"/"more power" mindset and preference for larger motions and stances, and that he elected not to fight them when they said some of his techniques and training methods were archaic or tedious or overly intricate.

 

[tellner]

Ah, so el plato gringo isn't just for Europeans.

 

[chrispillertkd]

... followed, ironically, by a similar fate for Gen. Choi as a result of his ill-advised trip North, playing into his many enemies' hands, chief among them the nasty dictator Gen. Park, who had deposed the nasty dictator Rhee. Just as had happened with Hwang Kee, Gen. Choi went into exile, establishing a distinctive TKD style which minimized the sport competitive element glorified by the TKDeaucrats of the WTF/KKW who superseded him.

Exile, thanks for an excellent post which makes some very good points. I just want to point out, however, that the above statement about Gen. Choi is not correct. He went into exile in 1972 not as a result of visiting the DPRK but rather because he was rather outspoken in his criticisms of President Park, Chung Hee (a man he court martialed and sentenced to death when they were in the military together).

Gen. Choi did not visit North Korea until 1979 or 1980 to visit his older brother. In 1981 he led a demonstration team to the DPRK and in 1982 he sent then-Master Park, Jung Tae to North Korea to lead a 7 month long instructors course.

Just a few historical details for a thread devoted to Taekwon-Do history

Pax,

Chris

 

[exile]

Exile, I will have to expand my library.

Thanks for the discussion!

You're more than welcome, and thanks to you, for the same! Higaki's book is really good, very interesting both for its own 'take' on the Heian/Pinan katas (and some outstanding photos of early karate masters in serious combat-style sparring) and for the fact that, so far as I know, it's the first of the new-wave realistic detailed bunkai analyses to be offered by a Japanese karateka. Mostly those people are from the UK, with a few in the US and Australia. So his book is of more than usual interest.

The conspiracy implicit in the 'dilution' theory is plausible to me, particularly since I strongly favour the Okinwan systems over their Japanese relations, but I also wonder if it's like when people say an animal has evolved to a 'higher' form, as though that was the teleological goal, rather than emphasizing it has evolved to a different form that is better suited to some purpose. Maybe it was purposefully diluted--which assumes that there really are secrets in the arts, something I largely doubt--or maybe, as I suspect is more likely, Funakoshi Gichin was willing to modify it to fit the Japanese "one strike, one kill"/"more power" mindset and preference for larger motions and stances, and that he elected not to fight them when they said some of his techniques and training methods were archaic or tedious or overly intricate.

This could well be exactly right: GF really, over his lifetime, blew with the prevailing wind. In spite of his Okinawan origins and ambivalence about the Japanese, he played to Japanese militarism before the war (certain of his statements are actually pretty horrifying in this respect), to the American occupiers' sensibilities afterward, and basically did what he needed to do to continue doing what he wanted to do. He probably did modify his Okinawan training in a way that would make it more digestible, or intelligible, to his Japanese students; and I agree, the considerable cultural differences between the mainland Japanese and the people of the Ryukus would have been something he would have taken into account in his teaching, given that accomodating his hosts was something he did consistently from the time he resettled in Japan...

 

[Makalakumu]

When writing his autobiography, Karate Do, My Way of Life, Gichin Funakoshi recounts the losses everyone suffered because of Japanese militarism and you get the impression that he felt remorse in training so many young men to die.