Kombat Kulcha 1

This is to be the first post of many describing my experiences with the martial arts of Japan, both participating in them and (hopefully) teaching, at least once I arrive in Matsue. These posts may contain more than a little technical detail and martial arts nerdery, so I apologise in advance to anyone who is bored, offended or otherwise put off by the tedium. Note the title to avoid future such faffery. The picture with this post is the gym I train in, taken before I graced the bag to the right of the room with a little bit of martial kindness.

Before I mention my experiences of Kenpo I should perhaps digress to discuss in more detail my reason for choosing the most obscure of Japanese arts over the other, more prevalent ones. I had originally given up all hope of finding a decent set of kicking bags in this tiny town, and so decided that just to keep my mind in the right vein I would take up a Japanese art. This way I hoped to meet young Japanese people, have something resembling fun, and at least try to remain linked by some tenuous thread to the more violent elements of my Australian past. I decided originally on Kendo, but when I was walking through the university the evening before I was due to visit a kendo class I heard some yelling in a gym, and decided to investigate. Ascending stairst to the gym I found the most enticing of sights before my very eyes - a group of martial artists engaged in exercise on a floor covered in mats, and behind them two (count them! two!) bags hung on ropes depending from the ceiling. Oh glorious vision! Half of the room had no mats, and on this half the kendo people were engaged in sadly bag-less swordplay, accompanied by much yelling, screaming and banging of feet. If there are 2 things which really bother me in the martial arts, they are yelling and banging feet on hard floors. My decision was further improved when one of the white-coated troopers in the foreground detached himself from teh group and came over to speak to me in very poor English, in very diffident tones. The very next night I went to my first Kenpo lesson, and was welcomed with open arms.

Some things which happen in martial arts gyms at the university which do not happen in Australia, and which I have observed over the course of my three lessons so far are:

they share a gym. Usually there are 2 classes going on at once, and they rotate through the matted area over the week. The third art sharing my gym is aikido.

the arts are shrouded in ritual, more so perhaps than anythign else in ordinary life in this country. They bow when they enter the gym, engage in complex ritual introductions to the class which can include bowing to shrines, each other, sensei, pictures of the founder, etc; and in the case of kenpo, bowing in the direction you came after a long series of exercises

they all seem to share a common goal or vision. When one martial art is engaging in the ritual of commencing its lesson, the other group cease what they are doing, move to the side of the gym and wait in silence for the other class to commence (this can take several minutes for aikido!) When one group is gathered informally outside of the lesson area and the other group comes down from the stairs to leave the gym, they exchange a ritual greeting

they all share a close social life as a group. After my second lesson they all went to an onsen (hot spring) together. They invited me but I was tired, I have a tattoo (which they confirmed is a problem here) and I had homework to do, so I desisted (as a consequence of this tattoo issue, one of them is going to find an onsen which accepts tattooed thugs, and we will go there)

Another detail of martial arts training here which I consider rather backward and definitely very eighties is a phenomenon I have chosen to call testing rather than training. In this phenomenon people who are not actually inherently very tough (such as young university students) engage in training activities which require considerable toughness. As a consequence, they fail to succeed in the chosen activity, desist rapidly, and thus fail to train themselves for greater toughness. The classic example of this in my gym is the sparring. Sparring, for those of you with no interest in martial arts who have made it this far through the email, is practice combat in which one fights another member of the gym, usually at less than full power, usually for a defined period of time with various sorts of rules depending on what one is aiming to achieve in the lesson. In my Kenpo gym the senior students spar without any protective gear, i.e. no mouthguard, no groin guard, no shinpads. As a consequence they drop like flies within a minute or two of commencing the sparring, and they restrain themselves from proper technique in order to avoid injury - head punches are severely restrained, leg kicks are very light, and often leg checks (the process of stopping a leg kick on the blade of the shin) are performed improperly to avoid the pain. If these kids wore protective gear - particularly shinpads and mouthguards - they would be able to spar for longer and harder, and they would slowly build up the hardness of their shins, get used to defending against hard head punches, etc. The guys at the gym have very little resistance to solid leg kicks, because unless one is inherently very tough one has to train the property of hard shins, resistance to pain etc. Without protective gear one cannot train these properties, only test them.

So on my second kenpo class the assistant instructor decided to test my properties of toughness, etc., and it was during this experience that I developed my theory of testing vs. training. I had already told my classmates that I am a kickboxing instructor in Australia, since I wanted to use the bags outside of class and wanted to justify this rather extreme request. I think they wanted to find out whether this was really true, and perhaps also find out what kickboxing is all about (they watch it here but no one at my gym has ever done it), so the assistant instructor came up to me mid-class, gloves on, and said "let`s spar!" I had no protective equipment of any sort except 10 ounce gloves, but for some stupid reason (possibly due to the cheerful nature of the request, and my general sense of safety in this country) I agreed. There were to be no blows to the head, and they had already clearly selected a referee, so I felt fairly safe (with a no headblow rule very little can go wrong). The sparring commenced with the instructor launching a massive, fulll power kick at my leg, and I was so stunned that they even do leg kicks in kenpo that I didn`t even see it coming. After that the whole business was on in earnest, and I am proud to say that I smashed the guy. After a minute the fight ended with him　nursing a huge purple bruise on his shin and another on his arm (thanks Mick for the old mid-section switch-kick tactic, works a charm). The nature of the gym, the Japanese personality and the general atmosphere here was such that he was merely cheerful about having copped some big blows, and was cheerfully telling all and sundry that I have strong kicks and hard shins.

It would appear that from this minute-long baptism of fire I have been accepted into the gym; on Friday I requested permission to do more sparring, this time with all my protective gear on, and was rewarded with four 2-minute rounds against 2 of the senior students (one of whom was the chap from the previous week), both of whom thoroughly enjoyed the experience (and neither of whom complained about my use of shinpads!!!) It would also appear that, even though I am considered to have soft shins at my Australian gym, here in Japan I am hard. 14 years with shin pads is considerably superior to 2 years without!

Since this session I appear to have become quite accepted; on Friday I was part of the run-of-the-mill beginners section of the class, rather than being taken aside and taught in English, and as a consequence I did my first ever cart-wheel!!!! Without hearing the instructions in English!!! (I didn`t understand them). I would never have believed it possible that I could come all this way, to a tiny country town, and find my kickboxing training barely interrupted, but aside from a small loss of fitness and strength it appears that this may be the case! This has left me very cheered (and quite bruised, I might add, from Friday`s engagements).

So the moral of the lesson is that protective equipment is of more use than just guarding the family jewels, especially if, like me, you are a softy; and also that life is what you make it, and if you approach strangers with an open and cheerful manner you get respect and all the bruises you asked for!!!