Gasshuku - A word appears from nowhere

[Bill Mattocks]

Recently, an annual combination tournament and joint training session with a group I am associated with advertised the meeting as a 'Gasshuku and Shiai'.

I am familiar with the term 'shiai' as another word for 'tournament'. However, I was not familiar with the term 'gasshuku'.

So I looked around online, and it seems to have become a very popular term lately in the USA and perhaps elsewhere outside of Japan. Everybody is referring to their annual get-together for their martial arts group as a 'gasshuku'.

I did some quick searching and found that with a couple of exceptions, the term does not appear in most news stories or martial arts publications until around 1970, and only a few times. It really seems to have taken off in 2010 or so, and it is gaining popularity.

From what I can gather, a 'gasshuku' is a Japanese term that literally means "staying together" as a group to build relationships. It was primarily and historically used in Japan for school children, and was not specifically applied to martial artists.

Boot-camp bukatsu no place for the fainthearted | The Japan Times

"Even today when Japanese society and schools have become so much more jiyu (liberal) than 20 years ago, the bukatsu experience remains pretty much the same. The ichinensei (freshmen) are expected to fetch and carry, clean the bushitsu (club locker room) and, during gasshuku (concentrated camp training that’s done away from school in some rural area), wash the senpai’s uniforms, keep the mugicha (barley tea) cold, and many other chores that come on top of all the training and practicing."​

http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/wp-content/arts-files/jsc/jsc-history-booklet.pdf

This is the first example of the term I found in a Google News search:

Nationale Meisterschaften im Goju Ryu Karate - Sport - Allgemeine Zeitung

It is a reference (in German, I believe) to a gasshuku that a leader of a Namibian Goju Ryu group has been invited to attend.

Here is another reference from 2008:

FightingArts.com - Traditional winter training in Japan: The Kashima jodo gasshuku

"Traditional winter training in Japan: The Kashima jodo gasshuku
By Deborah Klens-Bigman, Ph.D."​

Searching old Black Belt Magazine articles online, I found a reference in 1984, again to a Goju Ryu group:

Black Belt

So this is all kind of new to me. A term I had not heard before, which seems to be a traditional Japanese term usually applied to school children, and now applied to annual martial arts training gatherings, often in combination with a 'shiai' or tournament.

Fascinating!

 

[jobo]

I'm fascinated by why people are fascinated with the use of Japanese words in martial arts. When there are perfectly good English alternatives. In order to follow the lesson I have had to learn about a dozen words in Japanese,(and a good few more I cant be bother learning) I cant see what possible benefit this is. Unless there is a real world need to tell a Japanese bar tender how many beers I want and its not more than three

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I'm fascinated by why people are fascinated with the use of Japanese words in martial arts. When there are perfectly good English alternatives. In order to follow the lesson I have had to learn about a dozen words in Japanese, I cant see what possible benefit this is. Unless there is a real world need to tell a Japanese bar tender how many beers I want and its not more than ten

No benefit, at all, if your training is entirely in English. A lot of training that came over from Japan, however, has retained Japanese terminology initially largely for a practical reason. Someone would learn the art in Japan, usually (not always) in Japanese. When they came back, the Japanese terms were the "names" they knew, so they didn't change them. It was just easier to teach the definition than to try to communicate the same concept with an English term (which often couldn't be done accurately with a single word). This carried on over generations of students and instructors.

Of course, some enjoy the use of the different terms. In some cases, it's a purely intellectual pursuit (like this OP), and need not have any direct application to MA training. I do that quite a bit with words outside my MA training - I enjoy learning bits and pieces of linguistics. In other cases, it's an attempt to understand the original Japanese concept, which can get lost in translation to/explanation in English, and which is also often harder to understand outside the Japanese cultural context.

In the end, when we are talking about actual training, whatever words folks use in common are fine, so long as they all understand them the same way.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

No benefit, at all, if your training is entirely in English. A lot of training that came over from Japan, however, has retained Japanese terminology initially largely for a practical reason. Someone would learn the art in Japan, usually (not always) in Japanese. When they came back, the Japanese terms were the "names" they knew, so they didn't change them. It was just easier to teach the definition than to try to communicate the same concept with an English term (which often couldn't be done accurately with a single word). This carried on over generations of students and instructors.

Of course, some enjoy the use of the different terms. In some cases, it's a purely intellectual pursuit (like this OP), and need not have any direct application to MA training. I do that quite a bit with words outside my MA training - I enjoy learning bits and pieces of linguistics. In other cases, it's an attempt to understand the original Japanese concept, which can get lost in translation to/explanation in English, and which is also often harder to understand outside the Japanese cultural context.

In the end, when we are talking about actual training, whatever words folks use in common are fine, so long as they all understand them the same way.

Yes, in my case it is mere intellectual curiosity. It is not that I either object to or embrace the use of the term. I am just not used to seeing it, and since it appears to have become quite fashionable, I thought I'd look into it and mention it for anyone else that might care as well.

 

[punisher73]

Gasshuku

Got me interested as well, since we don't use much in the way of "japanese terms".

Reading some online definitions, it sounds more like "shugyo" in their use of hard, dedicated training. For others, it just means some type of get together.

It would be interesting to find out if it was the Okinawan karate masters who started to bring the term into more common usage in their spread of karate or if it was a word someone grabbed onto and just started using.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Yes, in my case it is mere intellectual curiosity. It is not that I either object to or embrace the use of the term. I am just not used to seeing it, and since it appears to have become quite fashionable, I thought I'd look into it and mention it for anyone else that might care as well.

I'm like that, too, Bill. Sometimes, I just wanna know.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Gasshuku

Got me interested as well, since we don't use much in the way of "japanese terms".

Reading some online definitions, it sounds more like "shugyo" in their use of hard, dedicated training. For others, it just means some type of get together.

It would be interesting to find out if it was the Okinawan karate masters who started to bring the term into more common usage in their spread of karate or if it was a word someone grabbed onto and just started using.

In the OP, I actually read it as like the English word, "retreat", as in a gathering away from the normal place of whatever you're doing.

 

[Tez3]

Using words which are understood by the majority of people is always useful. In martial arts using English words can sometimes be confusing when trying to describe an action to a non English speaker so a Japanese word used by all is helpful. In international gatherings/competitions it's useful to have the same word for stop, start, point etc that everyone can understand. If those words are in the language of the country your style originated from then it's a nice nod to the founders.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Gasshuku

Got me interested as well, since we don't use much in the way of "japanese terms".

Reading some online definitions, it sounds more like "shugyo" in their use of hard, dedicated training. For others, it just means some type of get together.

It would be interesting to find out if it was the Okinawan karate masters who started to bring the term into more common usage in their spread of karate or if it was a word someone grabbed onto and just started using.

It appears to be linked to Okinawan (rather than Japanese) Goju-Ryu groups in the USA in terms of early users of the term. But I don't know if that has any special meaning with regard to how 'gasshuku' came into common parlance in the US. It appears for the first time in Black Belt magazine in 1983, referring to a Gasshuku for Goju-Ryu karateka (IOGKF). Seems to be mostly in the Northwest US after that, before spreading to California and then everywhere.

But this is just meatball research online. Nothing definite here.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I'm like that, too, Bill. Sometimes, I just wanna know.

Well, when my group used 'Gasshuku and Shiai" in a recent event bulletin, I was surprised; I thought it had always been called an Annual Seminar and Tournament.

I knew what the word 'shiai' meant, but 'gasshuku' was catching me by surprise.

 

[Tez3]

Well, when my group used 'Gasshuku and Shiai" in a recent event bulletin, I was surprised; I thought it had always been called an Annual Seminar and Tournament.

I knew what the word 'shiai' meant, but 'gasshuku' was catching me by surprise.

Have you been yet, was it different from before, what with it having a 'posh' name?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Have you been yet, was it different from before, what with it having a 'posh' name?

I don't have the time or money to go traipsing around the country attending such things, I'm afraid. I know many people do, I don't.

 

[jobo]

Using words which are understood by the majority of people is always useful. In martial arts using English words can sometimes be confusing when trying to describe an action to a non English speaker so a Japanese word used by all is helpful. In international gatherings/competitions it's useful to have the same word for stop, start, point etc that everyone can understand. If those words are in the language of the country your style originated from then it's a nice nod to the founders.

mean while Japanese like most are being slowly angloisesed
. I was watching the Chinese. F1 with the commentary in mandarin and every sixth word was English, overtake, braking zone, flat spot. It was in its own way fascinating to watch the take over

 

[jobo]

Using words which are understood by the majority of people is always useful. In martial arts using English words can sometimes be confusing when trying to describe an action to a non English speaker so a Japanese word used by all is helpful. In international gatherings/competitions it's useful to have the same word for stop, start, point etc that everyone can understand. If those words are in the language of the country your style originated from then it's a nice nod to the founders.

mean while Japanese like most are being slowly anglosased
. I was watching the Chinese. F1 with the commontary

 

[Tez3]

mean while Japanese like most are being slowly anglosased

Sounds very painful.