Well, my position on some of these topics being discussed in this thread is no secret, and most of you know how I feel. The same old arguments, opinions, and lack of verifiable "proof" to back claims seems to keep everyone guessing, and relying on sparse details to form their own beliefs, or mimic those that they have heard from others.
LF---
there are some important points you raise that need addressing. I want to begin by questioning the use of scare quotes here around the work
proof. Historians recognize that when a claim is made about an historical event, or a series of historical events that one is trying to give an explanation for, a certain standard of documentation is called for. This is what professional historians spend years learning to achieve—it's the core of their training in graduate school—and while it doesn't have the same status as a proof in mathematics or logic, it
does have about the same status as a proof in a hard science like physics: if you have enough of certain kinds of documentation, there burden of proof is on those who challenge your interpretation. As you go down the scale, with less and less of that documentation, the burden of proof starts shifting back to you; at the very end, if all you have are unverifiable reports and assertions and minimal contemporary evidence, you've still got the burden of proof for your assertion. Scare quotes aren't necessary: if you have enough evidence, you have what historians regard as proof, period; if you don't have that evidence, you may have suggestions and hypotheses, but not proof. Asking for hard documentation is no more unreasonable in the history of martial arts than it is in the history of anything else. In the days when Erik van Daniken went around raving about various monuments all over the world having been built by aliens, he brushed aside the lack of any evidence at all for that claim by referring derisively to those who insist on `proof'—in scare quotes—but it was obvious to pretty much everyone that he was trying to eliminate the criterion of sufficient evidence in getting acceptance for his ideas, because he had nothing that would
count as evidence. I don't think it helps anyone's argument to appear to be suggesting that those who dispute that argument are asking for anything unreasonable when they insist on documentary evidence bearing on the argument—as I say, that's common practice in the normal practice of history.
I have made my opinion fairly clear before that there are three distinct eras of Taekwondo's history.
First is that time period of Korea's development, from the 1st century B.C. until the Japanese occupation in 1910. Most historians believe that the term "Taekwondo" was not used during this time period to describe the unarmed combat that was used in the old Chosen peninsula, however, if there is any doubt that a unique native unarmed combat existed, you only need to observe the fact that the Korean people are still here to know this.
Sorry, but I don't see how this follows. The fact that the Korean people are still here tells us they could fight, and fight well enough to survive. It does
not tell us, however, that a `unique native unarmed combat' [system?] existed. The Basque people survived the overrunning of their peninsula by elements of the original Indo-european population. Are we allowed to infer the existence of a `unique Basque unarmed combat system' from this face? The Jewish peoples, the Romani peoples and many others survived centuries, or millenia of violent persecution and, in some cases, violent and sustained efforts to exterminate them. Are we justified in inferring the existence of a `unique Jewish/Romani/... combat system' simply because the Jews, Gypsies and .... survive to this day?
Obviously, all of the aforementioned peoples could fight. But the point you're making hinges critically on the notionn
unique—specific to them, that is, systematic and developed, part of their own cultura identity. And that is a deduction that
in no way follows the simple fact of their survival.
They were not soldiers, warriors, or armed militia by trade, and survival from the 1st through the 19th century depended greatly on their Martial Art skills.
Again, if by `Martial Art skills' you mean, fighting skills, no argument; but the fact that none of the people I've mentioned were `soldiers, warriors, or armed militia by trade' in no way allows you to deduce the existence of a specific structured unarmed fighting system unique to their respective cultures.
The second era of Taekwondo's history is that time period during the occupation when most of the aforementioned "Kwan founders" were born, grew up, and started learning about the Martial Art in the first place. Naturally, there was not much option during this time period but to become a student of "Japanese Martial Art," and gain any certification of "Dan" rank from a Japanese system. These students of Shotokan, and other variations were undoubtedly 100% influenced by Japanese and Okinawan Martial Karate, judo, jujutsu, etc. The operative word here is "influenced." This condition of being "forced" to learn Japanese culture did not change Korean history, nor did it make the future creation of Taekwondo of Japanese origins. However, the influence on these people, and their own personal skills is undisputable
I'm sorry, but I don't follow the last part of this. Every one of the early kwan founders studied MAs in Japan and came back with a set of skills and combat strategies and tactics, embedded in the forms—because kata were the foundation of karate teaching at that time—and used these forms as the technical basis of their own methods: the Pinan/Heian kata, Naihanchi, Bassai and many others were taken over
literally, with acknowledgement to the Okinawain sources (as when Hwang Kee of the Moo Duk Kwan identified Anko Itosu as the source for the MDK's poomsae). This isn't just influence; it's a huge importantion of technical content.
Korean Martial Art did not begin in 1910, and did not stop developing in 1945.
As per the above, we have no hard evidence of just when a specifically Korean martial art began. So to say that Korean MA didn't begin in 1910 begs the question: to make that claim, you have to have a reason to believe it began at some earlier date, and if your only evidence is the reasoning you presented above, then your conclusion is unsupported—we have no documentation for a systematic Korean unarmed combat system from any earlier time, and the continued survival of the Korean people in no way allows the safe inference of a specifically Korean MA. As far as the further development of KMA after 1945, it's fairly obvious that it
did develop. What Terry's post is about is the desirablilty of those developments. Like him, I think that a lot of that development was
undesirable, from the point of view of combat effectiveness.
I do not judge the content of an entire Martial Art by the "forms" they use, nor the terminology exchanged, nor the documentation of its participants' ranks. For example, I might have a diploma from a ballet school, but if I prefer to dance to rock and roll, and that is what I teach, then the paper certificate only shows what else I know. Forms are only tools for training and practicing skills. Skills that existed long before the Japanese influence. Japan has their native Martial Art, China has their's, and Korea has its own. Each will eventually be influenced by the other.
The forms are a lot more than just training and practice skills. As Iain Abernethy has documented, they were originally regarded by the founders of the Okinawan MAs as actual fighting systems on their own. They contain the technical content of those arts, and training in those arts consisted of intensive study and experimentation with applications within the confines of one or two of those forms. Funakoshi spent nine years exclusively studying and training in the applications of the the Naihanchi kata. That's how his students and the students of the other Okinawan expatriate masters in Japan learned their MAs. And part of what they learned, therefore, was that the forms embody the fighting system. The fact that their own hyungs reflect almost literally the Japanese kata they learned means that they had made the fighting systems embodied in the kata the basis of the arts they themselves taught.
Much of the rest of your post deserves to be answered in detail, but the main points can be summarized as follows: General Choi talked about tae kyon a lot, he referred to it as ancient, therefore it must have been an important part of his training and must indeed be ancient. Historians of KMA have combed all available records and found very little specific information on just what tae kyon consisted of, how widely it was practiced and what its condition was by the 1930s. But as for the agenda underlying Gen Choi's statements, consider the following, from
Combat magazine, cited in Stuart Anslow's new book on the ITF tuls:
(Interview from the 1970s) `Without karate, there would have been no Taekwondo.'
(Interview from the 1980s) `Karate was simply a reference tool that helped'.
(Interview from the 1990s) `Karate had only a minor or no impact on Taekwondo'
This is a reliable witness?? Contradictions in testimony like the above, in a court of law, would get a case thrown out of court so fast it would be a blur! General Choi hated the occupying Japanese, and he wasn't alone in that respect amongs the kwan founders. Many of the latter, however, and their senior students, were much more candid about the central place of the Okinawan/Japanese arts in their systems; S. Henry Cho, in his 1968 masterpiece
Taekwon Do: Secrets of Korean Karate, states unequivocally that `the modern karate of Korea [his characterization of TKD throughout his book],
with very little influence from tae kyun, was born with the turn of the 20th century...' [emphasis added].
One last point:
This does not mean that these things did not happen because you can not find a specific standard of historical documentation, and I would not go so far as to discount it because of this lack of evidence. Folklore might be more accurate, in some cases, than the lies told by those who won wars, and dominate other cultures.
On the basis of this reasoning, you have equal reason to believe any number of things that there is no documentation for. It is virtually impossible to prove that X didn't happen. But it's equally impossible to prove that Y didn't happen, or Z, or... So what counts in not what you can't disprove, but what you have some evidence for, that sets X apart from Y, Z, ... and gives it a priviledged status among hypotheses. That's why historians—and natural scientist— demand certain standards of evidence before granting a certain degree of plausibility to a given hypothesis. And folklore, over and over again, has been shown to be unreliable as a matter of historicala record; there's a whole subliterature in history devoted to the often bizarre relation between folk belief and verifiable sequences of events.
In any case, the founding relation between Okinawan/Japanese MAs and TKD hardly constitute `lies told by those who won wars, and dominate other cultures.' It is attested by the writing of kwan founders and their students, and in the living testimony of the hyungs, the technical core of TKD, constructed almost completely, in both ITF (see Anslow's book) and WTF (see Simon O'Neil's forthcoming book) on the basis of the kata of Okinawan/Japanese systems of karate. Of course there has been cultural imperialism and oppression and all sorts of genocidal horrors throughout history—but that doesn't alter the fact that all available evidence supports the centrality of karate as the foundation for the modern KMA of TKD.
