I’ve been given a task by my instructor to write an essay. The theme for my essay is on the links between Tang Soo Do and Karete-Do. Now to some with a rudimentary understanding of the history of TSD and Karate that would seem like a quick and easy task – after all, TSD effectively is karatedo. It’s got me thinking though, I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as that and the more I think about it, the more my head hurts. I’ll come up with something though, and with permission I may even reproduce it here when it’s done for those who care. I can make a pretty safe bet now though that whatever I write I’ll disagree with in about a years time.
Martial arts history is tricky, it’s a difficult subject to cover and whilst I love reading and researching it, those same sources of information can be really irritating to me. The simple facts are that there is precious little in the way of surviving documentation from the early stages of most arts which are greater than 60-70 years old, and that most of what we all take as gospel (especially at lower Gup/Kyu grades) is basically hearsay. It’s based on stories and anecdotes passed down from master to student, and occasionally with a few tasty embellishments. So what annoys me is when I read books or articles written by people who claim absolutely one way or another how something came to be, or how a certain form came about, or what happened when. If authors cite original, old texts as their source I’m more inclined to believe it, but increasingly it seems to be authors citing other authors, who may only be passing along anecdotal evidence. Through this passage of Chinese Whispers (sic) a lot of facts are being taken as gospel, where it may not actually be true.
I don’t claim to know anything, certainly nothing more than long established and evidenced facts, but there’s a lot of things I believe, and I dare say many of them have been influenced by other peoples’ opinions. I prefer to think of it more as a kind of "Here’s what could have happened, make of it what you will". I’m lucky to not be part of a club set in ‘brainwashing’ its students, or being too afraid to change and adapt for fear of not being traditional, and it’s something I appreciate more with each grade I earn. All I know now is that if and when I become an instructor, a master or run my own class, history is not going to be presented as fact with infallibility afforded me by my rank.
Looks like this ended up as some kind of miniature rant in the end, it wasn’t meant to be when I started typing. I’m impressed it came out this far into NaBloPoMo! Consider my spleen vented :).