eDitorial 9

Can Karate be fun?

Karate consumers often respond to ads such as "come along and have fun learning Karate" or "try Karate for fun and fitness" - but isn't this is a potentially deadly oriental Martial Art? The dictionary spells it out;

"Martial" adjective, "of or appropriate to warfare" ...so where does the fun come in?

Karate is a serious business. We are training to defend ourselves (or others) and this sometimes means having to take lawful pre-emptive action to avoid potentially bad outcomes. Most people have an innate fear of confrontation and those who don't, still exhibit physiological changes in preparation for the worst - a thing sometimes called fight/flight. see our Article by Karl Stewart This being the case, how can those responsible for people's well-being in a Budo environment such as JKA, entertain the idea of fun in a Karate class?

We need to differentiate between the light-hearted aspects that are intentionally built into Karate programmes for children, and the more serious aspect - having fun under stress. The first, planning to have fun, is usually designed to make the learning process a little softer and more palatable for juniors or special needs groups. The "Taste of Karate" sessions carried out recently by JKA Victoria is a good example of this; where everything is relaxed, predictable and safe, an ideal learning environment, especially for youngsters.

Stress of the kind associated with a high-powered Black Belt kumite class is another matter. The primary objective here is to test free-fighting skills in conditions akin to combat. Anyone who has experienced the unpredictability of not knowing how long an encounter will last or who their next opponent will be fight after fight, knows that they must keep all senses on high alert, relax, economise energy where possible and still be able to 'defeat' each adversary.

If this is what happens in the relative safety of a modern Dojo, imagine what mock preparation was/is like for the men and women of the armed forces and amazingly the Army still has room for fun. Read any war novel (the outstanding Danish writer Sven Hassel is a great example) and it isn't long before tragedy and despair makes way for outright hilarity. In the movie "Braveheart", which purported to be reasonably realistic and true to history, there is a scene where Wallace's highland army turns it's back on the enemy English, lifting kilts and baring bums as it prepares to fight for it's life. Maybe not everybody's idea of a laugh and probably a bit of a truth bender, but you can be sure that those warriors had fun in some measure at some time before meeting their fate, it's human nature. The alternative, running away, is also human nature and that can be funny too.

It seems that the more desperate the desperation, the better the fun, there is always at least one in a group ready to mock his fate. Under trying conditions, the laughter factor (nervous laughter) comes very easily - you may have heard it said that you are never more alive than when faced with your own mortality.

Sensei Mark Rayne Willis head of the Japan Karate Association of New Zealand is a Prison Officer by profession. Every day he works under the constant threat of violent attack in a maximum-security situation. This is a place where people have nothing to lose by lashing out, yet, despite this constant stress, Mark is one of the cheeriest men you could meet and also one of the funniest.

But we are talking about today's civilian Dojo where friends, not enemies regularly engage each other in mock fighting in a controlled environment. There's far less uncertainty and desperation on a clean wooden floor among mates than on any field of combat, or any street for that matter. So the job here is to keep things serious enough to be true to the priciples of Budo, while the job on the battlefield would be to kill.

Given the chance, children will have fun in almost any situation, particularly in the company of other children, Karate training is no exception. Recently Victorian Senior Instructor and national team Manager Nishimura Sensei introduced 150 Melbourne schoolchildren under the age of 12 to JKA Karate as part of MSAC's Planet Sports initiative. Anyone would think that a crowd of kids would be rowdy and hard to keep interested but it was amazing just how much focus and determination eight year olds can muster especially when they can do it with a laugh.

So can Karate be fun? Yes, for kids everything should be fun. For others, it can certainly be very enjoyable and rewarding, but first and foremost it is a Martial Art and it is the job of the Instructor to maintain among his students a link to Karate’s martial heritage by constantly reminding them of its Budo tradition.

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