Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
“A culture that bases a significant amount of its cultural energies on militarism/martial (military oriented) skills.”
Culture, generally, is defined as, “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively; the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group; the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group; AND A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next..”
Martial, generally, is defined as, “Of or appropriate to war; warlike.” In Japanese, since this is the origins of the term martial for this article, the word, in English, is, “Bu [武],” meaning or translated to, “the art of war; martial arts; military arts; military force; the sword; valor; bravery; military officer; military man.”
A Martial Culture therefore is, “An war-like attitude toward behavior that influences one’s way of life, i.e., their behavior, their beliefs, their perceptions, their values and the symbols used to represent those traits that are passed down from generation to generation.”
I suspect everyone who holds membership in a martial arts and karate discipline assumes that they too belong to a martial culture but the real question I have is this, “Is that true?” I am not sure because taking my personal translated definition the mere fact it involves a war-like attitude means to me that a critical part of that martial culture is the training, practice, and experience gained by war and war-like experience in either or both reality based adrenal stress-conditioned training for war along with actual in a theater of war experience with bombs bursting in air or above ground, flags and other symbols waving to rally the troops and promote the brotherhood of man (not sexist but merely a means of expression without regard to actual gender) so that they can achieve goals of war. Only in this way can one create and achieve a war-like attitude and behavior toward a way in life that is based on the physical, mental and spiritual attitudes, beliefs, perceptions of such a life.
In short, most supposed military disciplines or martial arts or martial jutsu’s cannot lay claim to having a martial culture, more like a sport culture based on a perception of fighting and defending and combatives derived from the teachings of ancient martial traditions, beliefs and experiences (that are watered down and obfuscated at each generation of passing without actual military war/war-like experiences, etc.).
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