I hope that you are all having a good break and that you have all re-charged your batteries for a new term of training.

I would also like to welcome all our new students and we hope that you are enjoying learning karate.

For us, it has been great to have so many new faces in the junior club and it has been a lot of fun to see how keen you all are.

Unfortunately though, we must declare the junior class as being full – we can take on no more at this time. If you know of anybody who is dead keen to join, we will be happy to put them on to a waiting list.

Last term was a great term for progress for the adults group – you worked very hard indeed and it is definitely paying off. I foresee another high-grade grading not too long into next term. Keep it up guys and girls!!!

Well done all.

The sparring competition was as exciting as ever with some really good techniques being displayed. Congratulations to the red team who won 12-matches to 8.

A lot of people have asked me why I have such negative views on the various Japanese rituals, titles and traditions so prevalent in many western karate clubs.

The main reasons are that the Japanese culture and etiquette are very complex indeed, especially to westerners and western karate clubs that try to emulate them and nearly always get it horrible wrong.

In the right setting, Japanese culture can be very beautiful indeed, but we westerners must understand that it is not our culture and tradition, and never will be – unless of course we have had to become immersed in the culture for other reasons, such as marriage etc.

Japanese people must quietly cringe or inwardly laugh at western pseudo samurai who think that they are doing the right things, when in reality we are either murdering what is a beautiful language, or are actually being quite rude by doing the wrong things in the wrong settings.

It would be like a non New Zealand team performing a haka before a match.

One of my biggest bug bears is this thing about titles. Many martial arts teachers insist on being referred to as Sensei – they believe that it is a title that they have earned through the long hard road to gaining a degree of mastery. Sensei is not a title that anyone can insist on being referred to. It is a polite title that Japanese people refer to anyone who, they acknowledge, has some sort of superior status in some way.

Yes, a karate student may well refer to a teacher as Sensei, but that teacher may in turn refer to someone of a lower grade within his/her club as Sensei because they are either older than they are, or because they have a profession or have a standing in the community that is regarded as being of a higher status than their own – i.e. a Doctor, or a Lawyer or a University Professor etc. The nearest equivalent in English would be “Sir.” Would an English speaking person insist on having Sir in front of their name on a business card if they hadn’t in fact been knighted? And that is why, karate teachers that insist on having Sensei before their names on their business cards are actually being quite ridiculous! You might as well be insisting on the title “All round good egg and snappy dresser!”

Sensei is not a title you can demand, it can only be given. And as I am not in any way of Japanese origin, I’ll have none of that – please use our first names – as that is our tradition.

Many western clubs use the title Sempei to refer to senior students (sometimes it is awarded to the most senior student). The Sempei/Kohai relationship in Japan is quite complex. The nearest thing in English would be tradesman/apprentice, but even that is not quite right. Sempei is someone that takes another person under their wing and shows them the ropes – could be at a place of work or at an association somewhere. And that Sempei would normally take his Kohai with him/her when ever they get transferred or promoted etc. It is usually a very long term relationship and they are terms used to describe that relationship – they are not titles.

I don’t really even approve of the use of Japanese terminology for techniques; counting in Japanese while performing exercises, drills or routines; the ritual meditation before and after training sessions or the incessant bowing to each other during training sessions. In my mind we shouldn’t really do it, but it has been so ingrained through the many years that I have been involved in martial arts that they are actually hard habits to break. And, of course, neglecting these traditions is seriously frowned upon by national organisations and even members of the public who have grown to expect them. So, for now, we’ll continue with them, but I am seriously trying to wean ourselves from them – bit by bit.

We have members of many nationalities at our club, and I encourage people to count in their own language. Try it, its fun!

The only time where I approve of the use of Japanese terminology is when referring to kata names or names of traditional drills where there are no English translations.

Wearing a gi (a karate suit) is also questionable, but I like to do so for several reasons: firstly, they make a nice noise when you get the co-ordination behind a technique right and therefore they are actually a help. Secondly, the gi does tend to put people in the right frame of mind for training – so for now, we’ll keep it, but it will always be optional!

Originally, the gi was the underwear that the Japanese wore underneath their kimonos and they would normally remove their kimonos for training so as not to soil them.

And, as I have written in previous articles, I do like the belt system as they are a great motivator and way to split the learning of a large quantity of knowledge into manageable portions. But the large number of belt colours that we now employ is not of Japanese origin.

In fact, in many of the Japanese university karate clubs, the colour of the belt actually denotes what year of study at university they are at.

Bowing, before and after sparring bouts, is something that can be regarded as tolerable as it shows respect and an intention to play fair. It can be likened to the salute used before and after fencing matches.

The phrase Oss, Uss or however else it is pronounced, is commonly used (shouted) by western students (on the insistence of western instructors) as a subservient sign of compliance to orders or instructions barked at them by their teacher(s). This, again, is a habit originating from Japanese university clubs and actually loosely means “Yo!” or “Right-on!”

In most non-university clubs, you never hear it. They use the word “Hi”, which, of course, means “yes.” We don’t speak Japanese, so “yep”, or “cool” or anything similar is fine when you are asked if you understand.

So, there you go! I hope this helps in understanding my reservations to western karate traditions.