A walk through the garden

Fukushuen Garden in Naha celebrates the ties between Okinawa and southern China. I'll drink to that.

Today I'm passing on some Okinawa pictures and background this week, along with the usual links and comments below. As I mentioned yesterday, Okinawa, now a prefecture of Japan, was once an independent monarchy. It's political center was the palace at Shuri, also featured yesterday. Nearby was the port city of Naha, which has since absorbed Shuri.



Port cities have the reputation of being wild and woolly and Naha was no exception. Okinawa enjoyed wide trade and diplomatic contacts and all kinds of interesting people and rough characters passed through.




Ties were especially close to southern China, which had an Okinawan community as well as extensive travel back and forth. Those ties are celebrated at the Fukushuen Garden in central Naha.




Those ties also influenced the karate traditions that developed in Naha as distinct from the Shuri te or Shorin ryu styles associated with the palace culture discussed yesterday. A leading example of Naha te is the Goju ryu or hard/soft style. Higashionna Kanryo, circa 1853-1916, is regarded as one of its forerunners. Higashionna traveled to Fuzhou in the Fukien Province of China and studied several styles of Chinese martial arts. He is pictured below.



One of his most prominent students was Miyagi Chojun, 1888-1953, who also went to Fukien Province in 1915 to study Chinese styles. Miyagi gave Goju its name and established the system. If the Shuri/Shorin karate tradition is rapid and whiplike, Naha/Goju karate training emphasizes strength development, dynamic tension, breathing and develops the ability to absorb as well as dish out powerful techniques. In practice, the style lives up to its name with its combination of "soft" and hard techniques.



The real Miyagi, pictured above, probably inspired the naming of the teacher in the Karate Kid movies. Some Goju techniques actually look like tasks Mr. Miyagi assigned Daniel-San in the film (wax on/wax off, paint the fence, etc.)


TWO FROM THE TIMES. These items caught my eye this morning. First, Japan is starting to admit that it has a poverty problem. Second, here's a look at how local food is starting to replace tobacco in a North Carolina town.

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT MINE SAFETY. Here's an op-ed on the subject by a friend of mine.

EARTH DAY. Here's one person's list of things to do about it.

GET UP, STAND UP. There's a connection between body motion and memory. Upward movement seems to be related to happy memories.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Wayne's World moment

Goju ryu karate master Morio Higaonna. I'm so not worthy.

One of my favorite parts of the original Wayne's World movie was when Wayne and Garth got back stage passes at an Alice Cooper concert. At first, they waved their passes around, showing them off to one and all. But when they actually made it backstage with Alice, they couldn't handle it and fell to the ground saying "We're not worthy!"

I kind of felt that way Friday, the last official day of the karate seminar in Naha (luckily I didn't hurl). The morning's instructor was traditional Goju master Morio Higaonna Sensei, whose status in the karate world is above rock star and somewhere just below deity.

Now in his 70s (like most of the teachers this week), Higaonna is still extremely powerful and his technique is something to behold. It's hard to take one's eyes off his hands, which have been conditioned by decades of makiwara (striking board) and other training to the point where they are truly lethal weapons.

The good news is that he is actually very gentle, humble and self-effacing. He has an amazing presence and is a truly spiritual person. He also made a few Karate Kid jokes--there really are techniques that look like wax on/wax off.

We were expecting to be drilled to exhaustion, but he took it fairly easy on us, working on body movement or tai sabaki and fighting applications from kata. At the end he spoke about karate as a peaceful discipline, quoting the old Okinawa proverb karate ni sente nashi--in karate there is no first attack.

As an example, he told of the dark post-war days when many people were driven to desperation and attempted to rob others. Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Goju, made it a point to always carry a little money and always gave it to anyone who demanded it without a fight. Note: he could have whacked them without really trying.

Another sensei put it like this: in other styles of martial art, people train to win. In Okinawa, we train so as not to be conquered.

Live (for the moment) from the Budokan

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a civilized society is one that maintains a spacious and elegant martial arts training facility at the public expense. It's nice to be in such a place for once.

Today was day one of a five day seminar on traditional Okinawan karate do in the Holy Land itself. The items on today's menu were some of the main reasons I left home, kindred and even the iPhone (!) To travel to the far side of the world: an introduction to authentic Naha te karate, a strand of the tradition not taught in proximity to Goat Rope Farm.

The two main styles of Naha te are Goju Ryu and Uechi Ryu. Since we're doing Uechi all day tomorrow as well, I'll save that one for later. Goju literally means hard / soft as in yin yang. It's an elegant and sophisticated fighting system much influenced by southern Chinese styles.

Our teacher for the morning session was Yoshio Kuba Sensei, who took us through a session that began with junbi undo or warm up exercises that literally started with the toes and worked methodically through the rest of the body. Then came kihon or basic movements similar to but different from the other Okinawan tradition of Shuri te that I'm more familiar with. In Goju, an apparently simple move can have several layers of meaning.

Next came a study of katas, which are pre-arranged series of fighting movements which form the essence of karate, followed by bunkai, which form the basis of karate. A well executed kata solo exercise is beautiful to watch but is also loaded with meanings and practical applications. We worked with the kata Sepai, which is one of my favorites. Kuba Sensei explained some of the traditional applications hidden within the movements.

One of my goals for the trip was to study authentic versions of the kata Sanchin, which means something like "three battles." It is a tanren or forging (as in metal) kata, which in Goju is performed with dynamic tension and special breathing . The movements are deceptively simple but hard to get right. Kuba Sensei gave us a tour through it today. More on that later.

Day Two is about to start. Once more unto the breech ...