Caveat: This post is mine and mine alone. I the author of this blog assure you, the reader, that any of the opinions expressed here are my own and are a result of the way in which my meandering mind interprets a particular situation and or concept. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of other martial arts and/or conflict/violence professionals or authors of source materials. It should be quite obvious that the sources I used herein have not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this post. (Everything I think and write is true, within the limits of my knowledge and understanding.)
Came across two terms with characters/ideograms that, in my minds eye, relate better to the westernized martial arts - SPORT. The first is: Kakugi [格技] martial arts which involve fighting without weapons; combat sport; one-on-one fighting sport. The definition is about fighting without weapons that could be interpreted as karate but when you finish the definition you see it is definitely about sport. Granted, it is a bit of a misnomer because you can’t have “combat” and “sport” in the same statement because combat is one thing while sport is a totally different animal.
When you add one character/ideogram to the term above then you get, Kakugijou [格技場] (martial arts) training place; dojo, and although it doesn’t specify “sport” the fact that the additional character is added to the term that does have sport in it you can safely assume that it is a sport oriented training place of sport martial arts - also a misnomer because truthfully the term “martial” and “sport” should not be used in the same sentence.
Kyoso Jutsu [競争術] Kakugijou [格技場] would be more apropos, i.e., competitive art training place; dojo. It is interesting to me that such terms are now available or at least found for the first time. It seems to be a recognition that modern practices of disciplines previously referred to as martial arts, budo, etc., are not being referred to as sport or competitive arts, means or technique systems especially since most today are geared toward a competitive sport rather than either a combative system, a fighting system or even a self-defense system.
At least, now, there are appropriate terms to designate the distinctions between such systems as practiced not only here in the West, i.e., United States, but also Europe and now Asia, i.e., specifically toward karate in Okinawa.
Then you might ask, why do folks insist on referring to thier disciplines as budo, martial, fighting or combatives? In my mind, it is very simple, it is about sounding cool and feeding the ego toward mollifying our instincts of tribal hunters to compensate for the urges we all still endure in a society that tries hard to ignore and suppress our natural ways of conflict and violence of humans.
Similar to the need for sports that relate to our need for combatives but in a form that will allow us to reduce injuries so they can be handles safely for fitness and health and to handle the potential of grave bodily harm that often comes with conflict and violence not to forget that remote possibility of even death. The military have used this type of teaching, training and practices to teach their troops how to handle conflict, violence and combat even tho the games they use don’t expose them to the actual dangers of combat, fighting and the violence that ensues.
It seems to me that accuracy in what we do and how we label it or symbolize the disciplines is critical to creating the appropriate mind-set/mind-state so when a practitioner encounters violence they are able to make that STEP to the other side to get-things-done. Use such terminology to provide appropriate distinctions so that no practitioner falls prey to false mind-states that would lead to damage, great bodily harm or even death.
If you love sport, competitions and the camaraderie that go with that then say you practice, train and apply sport. If you are training to fight,then say so but remember that outside the dojo fighting is illegal. If you are in it for self-defense then say so there as well but train for self-defense - not just the physical but the full and complete spectrum that is self-defense.
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