Don’t Try This at Home, Kids! Kanazawa Demonstrates.
When I watch a serious karate exponent demonstrate, I tend to sigh, and say “I could do that, with a lot more practice!”
But, you know, there aren’t enough hours in the day!
And Sensei Kanazawa has always had good technique, and also spars very well. He bested Enoeda in the first All-Japan Karate Tournament, and Sensei Enoeda was very capable indeed.
JKA Film: It Starts Slow, But there’s Good Karate If You’re Patient
This is a lovely JKA video, and it starts artistically.
And slowly!
On the other hand, if you keep the faith, you’ll see some interesting karate techniques, and very, very good technique at that.
Ice Doesn’t Hit Back, Nor do Boards, Bricks, Tiles, or Anything You Will See Broken Here.
Above are some impressive breaking demonstrations by Sensei Oyama, the gentleman who killed bulls by hitting them with his knife hand strike, and several of his students. His style of karate is called Kyokushin, and students of that style often focus on full-contact competition, and do well in that discipline. They allow kicks to the head, but not head punches, which I find interesting. Their kicks to the outer thigh are impressively painful. Kyokushin Karate schools tend to emphasize breaking more than Shotokan Karate schools. Do Shotokan Students and Instructors ever break stuff (the practice of breaking hard objects with empty-handed karate techniques is called tameshiwari)?
Well, yes; some folks expect to see it at demonstrations, and it’s not terribly difficult. You can make it look more difficult, or make it look scarier (by setting the bricks on fire, for instance). Sensei Nishiyama recounted demonstrating breaking for the U.S. Military during Shotokan Karate exhibitions directed by Sensei Nakayama. Sensei Nishiyama indicated that he never failed in a break that he was asked to make, but that he did experience soreness, pain, and swelling after some breaking demonstrations.
That did not surprise me.
Now, is breaking hard and brittle objects utterly without meaning in the martial arts? No. It does demonstrate that a high degree of percussive force can be generated by a trained practitioner.
It can also demonstrate a high degree of hand- or fist-conditioning, which prepares a fist to encounter a hard object.
I’m not wild about the idea of smacking anything like a brick with my knuckles; I like my knuckles. On the other hand, when I was a kid, without any training, I attempted a bunch of breaks to see what would happen, because I’d seen breaking demonstrations in karate books. And I normally bruised my hand pretty well, and often broke stuff, like cinder blocks.
There are a lot of ways to demonstrate the power of a punch or a strike; you get to see a nice demonstration of power when a heavyweight boxer hits a heavy bag, for instance. Or when a trained practitioner of Shotokan Karate hits a makiwara. Or a heavy bag!
But if you ever want to try breaking an object made of ice or glass, for instance, I’d pretty strongly suggest that you don’t. In fact, don’t try breaking anything, at any time, unless you talk to a fully qualified Sensei and Medical Doctor first. I remember a photograph of a gentleman who had broken the neck off of a partially filled beer bottle (don’t ask me why). He attempted the same demonstration at some later point in time, and the amount of blood that was distributed around was pretty impressive. I believe there was also tendon and ligament damage, but I might be wrong.
Golden Age Karate Video
This is the old black and white film shot with Sensei Nakayama and early karate students, who transmogrified into Senior JKA Instructors.
It looks a little rough by today’s standards, but for a world that had never seen Shotokan Karate, it was remarkable.
Isn’t Shotokan Karate Supposed to be a Non-Contact Sport? Yes. And Errors Happen Sometimes, Some Places.
Generally, if you punch your opponent through the back wall in a Shotokan Karate Tournament, it is considered poor form.
And it’s also likely to result in a reduction in the number of folks willing to spar with you.
After all, if you look like a cubist portrait by Picasso (nose on the far right side of your face, cheekbone located up by your forehead), it’s hard to go to work the next day. And I’ve seen practitioners expelled from competition for punching an opponent.
Still, in some places, and some times, Shotokan Sparring was pretty rough.
Then everybody went to the hospital for post-game discussions! Read A Precise History of Shotokan Karate, by Harry Cook. And note that my personal experiences in ordering from the Dragon-Tsunami Website have been amazingly good, although that’s not a guarantee, of course.
Just for entertainment, I’ll point out that if somebody does bleed during Shotokan Training or Tournament today, that means that something has gone wrong, and attention is paid to reducing that sort of incident in the future.
In a boxing gym, of course, if blood makes an appearance, that simply means it’s Wednesday.
Which is one reason you should never, never, never underestimate a boxer. While he doesn’t know how to bow properly, or how to tie an obi, or how to kick very well, he has focused on job one: giving you the opportunity to take a nap, when coup-contra-coup impact causes a circuit breaker in your brain to shut things down for a rest. His fist doesn’t need to travel very far, because when a boxer is in range, the distance between his fist and your chin is very short, and probably much shorter than your reaction time.
That doesn’t mean a boxer will always win against a Shotokan Karate Exponent. On the other hand, if one is a professional and one is an amateur, that’s how the smart money bets.
p.s. I know this is obvious, but I have to say it: don’t box a boxer, because you’ll lose. Don’t wrestle a wrestler. You know? Don’t start your fight with the Judo Guy by trying to throw him. These things fall in the category of obvious errors. Now, how will you know if someone is a boxer, wrestler, or judoka? Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it?
Is Karate an Effective Form of Self-Defense?
Probably the best variety of self-defense is not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which certainly includes places with the trifecta: pretty girls, lots of alcohol, and pool tables (as a source of sticks). The second best variety of self-defense is probably Nike-do, or covering them with heel dust.
A distant third is fighting, of any sort.
Now, karate specializes in percussive techniques.
So does boxing.
Both boxing and karate use the knuckles of the fists in an effort to set up a vibration in the lower part of the brain, which results from strikes to the chin and jaw (there are other targets for knockouts, of course).
This video demonstrates that punches delivered to the chin and jaw can result in a knockout.
When someone is asleep, they are unlikely to harm you extensively.
But not being there, and running, are both better choices.
If you have choices.
Shotokan Karate Sparring Demonstration
I like watching enthusiastic Shotokan Practitioners demonstrate sparring.
It reminds me why I don’t spar much!
Note: this isn’t very much like a real fight at all. Bad guys really never learned to attack properly!
They attack effectively, but not very well at all. In fact, I give most muggers very low points for correct form.
