Chris, I removed portions of your quote to have the part I would like to discuss.
I have had this happen to me. People say your art sucks, because I have seen *Insert Name Here*, and they could not *Insert comment here*, and yet then through mutual contacts or friends they work out with me and then realize what I do is different from what they have seen or even been taught in some cases.
It does cause problems. It does cause hurt feelings and trust issues.
So, how do non Japanese Traditional Systems handle this? I mean they promote ranks, and do not have the terms (* if truly understood by your explanation *) that mean a license to a certain understanding and expectations with said license. If other cultures do not understand this or openly choose to disregard this, then how should this be handled?
Curious to your ideas.
Thanks
Hey Rich,
It gets a little dicey looking at the different approaches from different systems around the world, but in essence, the same licencing idea is used. Most arts have an official, or at least semi-official (recognized standard) "teaching" rank. Within a school, or organization, that rank confers the permission to pass on the information. The reasoning is that at that point you have enough understanding and skill to pass the systems' methods on without there being mistakes. Think of the difference between a karate practitioner with less than a month under their belt teaching a roundhouse kick, or a third dan instructor teaching it. Odds are the month-long practitioner will make mistakes, miss (sometimes vital) parts or details, and not be able to perform it to anywhere near the standard of the "instructor level" practitioner... this is an example of a licencing for passing a system on, just without the official stamp, as it were.
The problem being found is when people leave these more "modern" systems, regardless of rank achieved in established forms of the art. I've seen a range of "systems" created by people who have a year or two in one art, six months in another, and seem to have watched some videos on a couple more... and think they "get it". Hell, an example right now in the forums is that of Al Case, a person who claims to have originally learnt karate from a book, thinks a Korean off-shoot of students of a student of a student of Japanese karate and another teacher (Manchurian) of Chuan Fa, means that his karate is more "purely true" karate than the Okinawan and Japanese systems, demonstrates very limited understanding of Aikido and Chinese arts (which are apparently his major focus... hmm), and has created his own approach to his teaching of martial arts (that he calls "Matrixing"), thinking what he's showing is new, better, or in any way powerful compared to the way martial arts are taught normally (another thing he completely misses the point on)... Now, Al presents things like the Pinan katas, with his take on what they are about... personally, if someone came to me showing his form of karate (and I was still in my karate days), thinking that was what I was presenting, I'd be rather offended. Same with his Aikido. It all comes across as a pale imitation, and I think that comes from his lack of real education in the matter, all of which comes down to a habit of taking only a surface approach to his studies, and not having the depth of actual teaching level instruction himself (the licencing concept).
Now, if someone achieves a teaching rank, whatever that is in the organization they are a part of, then they have the authority to pass on their understanding of what they learnt (unless it's revoked, obviously, but that's almost unheard of in modern systems). If a teaching rank in a form of karate is third dan, for instance, and someone achieves third, or fourth, or higher, then leaves to start their own independent karate school, as they are deviating from the teachings of the original group, they can teach their form of the kata learnt there, as the authority has been given. If they aren't at a level where the kata is understood, but have been given the rank, well, that comes down to the ranking body being at fault (to my mind).
So what is the solution to the people showing highly lacking forms of a particular art? Honestly, there's not much that can be done, as there is a rather desperate lack of understanding of what each art really is, and how it is passed on. As such, charletains can continue to show things under a name that they simply don't have a right to, as there is nothing being done to stop them (Koryu are a different story in that sense, though... depending on the particular Ryu and how they want to deal with such issues). The best defense we have is education. I was sent a PM from a member here today asking about a particular individual, and their legitimacy. My answer was that they are completely fraudulent, as the system they are claiming has no real connection to any authentic or legitimate (historically) system in line with it's claims, the name the (Western) instructor goes by showed no knowledge of Japanese naming systems (choosing a common surname, and a word that isn't even a name to make his "new" one), and all the references to this art showed it to be a madeup invented one. If an understanding of the issues wasn't already attained, though, the claims can come across as plausible... so it's really only by providing information (such as on forums like this) that such things can be combated. Otherwise we get people who will train with people like dougmukashi, as he claims to have been training constantly since 1986, so he must know what he's doing, and be good, yeah? A quick search here might show the answer to that...
My comments are from a karate perspective. Karate is not an ancient art. Basically it is only a bit over 100 years old. Te (or Tode) or Tegumi are older but they did not have the kata we have now. Various Okinawans journeyed to China and learned Kung Fu and various forms of Kung Fu kata. Whether it was Bushi Matsumura, Kanryo Higaonna or Kanbon Uechi, they all brought back various kata when they returned to Okinawa. No one will ever know what they initially learned. Names across the various styles are the same or similar but the performance and the techniques within the kata are different. Did the early Masters change the kata to suit their own understanding or were they taught different kata to suit their different body types?
Hey Russ,
Yeah, I get where your perspective is coming from, my friend. And honestly, in regards to your question at the end there, I'd say both, as well as changing them to suit individual personalities... but I'm not sure that that changes much in the idea of ownership. At that point, the students (the men who would later be called the "masters") were in the process of taking ownership, as it were.
Regardless, they taught these kata to their students and their students in turn taught their students. Gogen Yamaguchi claimed to be appointed successor to Chojun Miyagi but the Goju Kai kata is different to the Okinawan Goju kata. Different students have left their initial organisation and set up their own styles. They have kept their traditional kata and maybe modified it or even added kata from other styles.
Yeah, we've discussed Yamaguchi's relationship to Miyagi before... In this case, we have someone who was taught a particular method, got to a level where he had internalized (made his own) what he was taught, and felt that his experience gave him a different perspective (whether based on his physical abilities, his take on the meanings behind the kata, or other), which lead to his alterations of the methods of Goju Kai versus Goju Ryu. Then again, Goju Kai, although it came from Goju Ryu, doesn't claim to be Goju Ryu itself... so it's only claiming to be Goju Kai's methods being taught.
But, which ever way you look at it, it's hard to say who has 'ownership' of the kata. I would argue that anyone who performs it owns it. You make the kata yours.
Sure, but only from a certain level. What that is will change depending on the system, really. But when it all comes down to it, "who has ownership" is simple... the system itself has ownership. And the person who heads the system or line, if there is one, would be the individual who has the claim to legal ownership... and those under that head, who have been given rank or permission to teach it, have been given a form of ownership themselves.
The idea of "you make the kata yours" is something I completely agree with and emphatically disagree with, though. I completely agree that you should strive to "make it yours" in the sense of taking it's lessons to yourself in a way that you can apply them with the greatest amount of efficacy and power, adapting in ways that are necessary for yourself. I disagree in that the kata is designed not so much for a student to alter in their own image, but to provide the student with the art itself. In short, you learn a martial art to learn it's approach to combative encounters (and more), the way it handles things, not so you can just find "what works for you". If that was the case, there'd be no need for learning a martial art, because it's just fighting. So for all the talk of "the art doesn't fight for you, you do", that's fundamentally wrong. It denies the very reason for training in the art in the first place.
When it comes down to it, you are learning what the art can teach you. You are learning what is being passed down from your seniors. You are quite simply taking what they possess... which shows you where ownership comes into it. The methods (kata, or anything else) belong to the system.
Now let's look at the composition of any particular kata. Fundamentally kata consists of anything from 10 techniques (or less in other MAs) to over 100 techniques, in a given sequence. Without further understanding of application, kata is just the performance of those techniques. To an uneducated observer, kata is just a collection of techniques. Hence my comment.
Ah, but that's to the "uneducated observer".... that's not what kata are. And that was my point. Kata are only ever "just a collection of techniques" to the uneducated. Kata are never "just a collection of techniques" and still kata.
This pretty much describes karate kata taught from the time it went into the schools in Okinawa until the 1980s. We had no idea of the application of kata in those years. We worked on applications to suit individual techniques but we had no concept of the kata as a fighting system. I wonder if even the Masters had full knowledge of the kata they brought back from China. If they did, it doesn't seem to have been passed on. Thanks to people like George Dillman, Iain Abernethy, Earle Montaigue and, more recently, Masaji Taira, we can start to interpret kata for ourselves.
Personally, I think the disconnect occurred as karate was brought to Japan, for a number of reasons. If there wasn't any understanding of the applications taken from China to Okinawa, then the art simply wouldn't have survived, it would have been people simply making up what they thought things were meant to be, then relying on such ideas in actual usage... which is a short recipe for a quick downfall. I'm also less than convinced of some of the modern "interpretations", especially those of people such as Dillman, for a range of reasons. When it all comes down to it, I'm not fond of the idea of personal interpretations... there's just too much danger of losing the actual lessons, replacing them with ill-conceived, or ill-fitting and incongruent ideas. And honestly, I think a lot of the interpretations unnecessarily complicate matters, but that's me.
If we look at the OP we might well be talking of a kata that has only been handed down within the family. Sure, they would be entitled to be upset if their kata was taught to someone outside the family circle who in turn betrayed the trust and taught it to others. But unless the application was taught with the kata, the kata is useless. This leads to my comment on the 'routines'. If these routines are just training tools then, once again, you might be upset to find others using them without permission but that's life. Some people have no scruples. The time to be really upset would be if the true application (or 'routine') had been taught to someone who in turn betrayed that trust.
Sure. But without that "application", it's not the kata. It's an imitation, or repetition, of actions without context. And the teacher, having not actually taught the kata itself, has retained ownership of it. Of course, I'd be concerned about someone being given a teaching rank/licence if they haven't been taught anything beyond movements... I don't know, maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but I tend to think that learning an art involves, well, learning the art. Not just the movements. As a result, I'd think that people, not having been taught the meaning of the actions, wouldn't be in a position to be ranked to teach the system. Hopefully.
I have no knowledge of Ninjutsu. I don't know if you guys have kata with the original applications but we certainly don't in Karate. But, if I cross trained Ninjutsu, and paid for the privilege, I would feel entitled to teach anything I learned to my students.
(Slightly snobby comment following) Ah, mate, we have kata. In fact, almost everything we do is kata. But we have actual Japanese kata, not the Chinese/Okinawan hybrid you guys think kata is.... it's so cute you guys think that what you do is kata... ha!
A little more seriously, though, if you cross-trained in a Ninjutsu school, and had a rank of, say, 7th Kyu (maybe a year or so in, with me), then taught what you'd learnt, would you think that you'd really be in a position to teach it? You wouldn't be of teaching rank, and your experience would be quite limited, to the point where I'd suggest that you'd have an interpretation of what you think it is you've been training, but not really the reality of what it is (at that point). So why would you be entitled to teach it? I mean, by that token, I could teach a huge number of arts...
But the OP goes further in saying the material is put out on a DVD. It is the student of the master who is upset because another student learnt similar material from that DVD. And, the material was not taken from that master but from a colleague. And the material was not the same as the guy's master is teaching. Pleeese!!! All I could say to the guy is "get over it". If we look at the ownership issue, as previously discussed, the material might have been technically 'owned' by the master or his family, but what right has the student to complain?
Hmm.... tell you what, here's a link to a conversation I was involved in which is remarkably similar to the OP's description:
http://www.budoseek.net/vbulletin/s...from-the-Soke-(Split-from-Toshido-Bujinkan-th
A number of the issues in this construct are discussed there, from a couple of different points of view.
My head is starting to hurt!
Ha, yeah.... talking with a student last night, they mentioned that they read everything I write.... and referring to them as "essays"... so part of this is to make him sit through it! Really, they shouldn't tell me things like this, it just gives me things to play with.... ha!
I don't know what the laws on the subject are like in Japan, but I suspect you really mean "trademark" rather than "copyright". Of course, in the U.S. and probably in most of the world there are no such laws guaranteeing ownership of a martial tradition. (You could file for a trademark on the name of your organization, but that would be subject to normal trademark law, not koryu traditions.)
Hey Tony,
No, I meant "copyright". The "trademarks", if you will, would be the name of the Ryu, perhaps particular weaponry (designs, or specialist items, whether real or training forms), the kata and methods (as shown in my examples) would come under the idea of copyright. Think of a Ryu like a book in this sense.
In terms of ethical philosophy, there are different cultural norms regarding the "ownership" of the knowledge contained in cultural traditions. In the west, functional knowledge in how to train a skill such as a martial art would not be considered protected by personal ownership. An individual creative composition would be protected by copyright, but that is time-limited. After a certain number of years, it automatically enters the public domain. (Likewise for technical innovations that are protected by patent.) From my outlook, this is a good thing. A creator gets a certain time period to profit from their creation, and then the benefit passes on to society at large.
Honestly, I'd disagree with that (that the martial arts methods of training wouldn't be protected), as many methods of various types are protected. Arthur Murray Dance Studios have a particular method which is theirs, acting schools have their own method (such as the Stanislavski method, the Strasburg method etc), and so on. In terms of the copyright being time-related, it can also be renewed... which is what happens when the art gets passed to the next generation.
In the absence of laws protecting the content of a koryu tradition, I'd say that said content is more of a trade secret than a copyrighted tradition. If the people involved want to keep it a secret, that's on them to keep it that way. Anyone who learns the material and hasn't made a comittment to keep it secret is free to pass it on as they wish.
Except that there are laws protecting them, and have been utilised and upheld in a number of cases in Japan, a trade secret is also a legally protected idea, and in joining a Koryu (in the vast majority of cases) you do make a commitment to protect the information. There's a big difference between putting on public demonstrations, or even teaching members of the public, and putting something in the public domain devoid of such protections.
I do wonder if the people involved in traditions with such attachment to secrecy have thought deeply about the reasons for holding on so tightly to said secrets. Historically, there were understandable reasons for it. In an era where the martial skills involved might be used for life-or-death battles, it would make sense to keep potential enemies from knowing your techniques. In more peaceful times, holding back the rights to teaching the art might protect the income of an instructor who made a living from his students. Neither reason really makes sense for koryu practitioners today. All that's left is "tradition". We do it that way because we've always done it that way! If that makes you happy, then great! Just don't expect folks outside the tradition to buy into the values involved.
To put it simply, because of the cost in gaining the information in the first place. It is highly valued, and to have others not earn that information, but instead to steal it, is rather unseemly, to say the least. The mentality is a protectionist one. And really, for those of us in the Koryu world, saying that expecting those outside to not buy into our values really misses the point... it's like putting out a plagiarised book, then saying that, if the original author complains, that you're just not buying into their values. Same with Russ' comments about "tell them to 'get over it' " earlier.
(For those who feel that it makes your art look bad when you see someone outside your lineage doing one of "your" kata in a way that looks bad to you - get over it. For any art you can name - martial, musical, or visual - there will be people doing a terrible job of it. Do you think Eddie Van Halen gets bent out of shape when he sees a crappy amateur like myself playing a song and thinks "oh my goodness, that guy makes us real guitar players look bad"? I don't think so.)
Honestly, Tony, it's a bit of a different set of circumstances... for one thing, the guitarist isn't claiming to be taught by Eddie Van Halen, he's not saying he wrote Eddie's riffs and licks, he's not presenting it as the way that Eddie should be doing things, and it's pretty obvious the difference between an amateur player and Eddie. Then again, if someone claimed to be the guitarist for Van Halen, or to have written Eddie's parts, that'd be closer.
You shouldn't be, given how I framed my response. Take for example, jujidome. I've seen this technique performed in at least three different koryu sword arts. Lets say that somebody practices Niten Ichi ryu to a high level, then decides he wants to start his own school based on his own experiences and ideas. One of his kata uses jujidome. What can the complaint be if he doesn't claim to be teaching Niten Ichi ryu? Other than the fact that it's kind of silly to try starting a new Japanese sword art when there are so many actual arts still in existence. Now if this same fellow taught 5 two sword kata and called them Hyoho Niten Ichi ryu Nito Seiho, then he would be encroaching on intellectual property because the names and kata are attributed to HNIR. However, the actual techniques in the kata can be found in other sources.
And hey Paul,
Except that jujidome is not specifically HNIR, except for the form that HNIR teaches... but that's like saying that you can plagiarise a book, because no-one owns the individual words. Jujidome isn't the thing that's protected, the kata are. And if our hypothetical student isn't claiming to teach HNIR, or HNIR kata, then there's no issue. He calls is Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu Nito Seiho, yeah, he'll have some problems. The best he could do is claim a branch of HNIR... but if what he's doing is completely removed, aside from some superficial similarities, then it's not a branch.
But, for the record, the exact technical methods (how to perform a cut, how to assume the particular kamae) may have similiarities with other systems, but from my experience, they are not found anywhere else.
As long as they don't claim they are practicing a legitimate koryu under the current head of that school, I don't really care what they do. People in general aren't real smart, and there are lots of folks that want what they think things should be, rather than what they are. None of those folks are going to end up practicing a real koryu sword art because they'd much rather do their imitation thing. As long as they aren't lying about what they do, all they're good for is a chuckle.
Okay, then, how do you class the Hoshin groups I posted? They claim to have invented the obviously HNIR waza they're presenting, so they're lying... but they're not claiming to teach it as a legitimate Koryu, as they say they made it up themselves recently.
