Saturday, September 19, 2015

The Death of an Art

I had some interesting discussions last week with someone I highly respect who is the head of an old Japanese martial art.  We talked about how so many martial arts students simply lack passion and commitment in their training, how they just aren't excited (or at least expressing excitement) and when opportunities come to get around some of the top people in martial arts, their interest level is almost utterly non-existent.  It is sad to see, as each year we lose some of the most notable and amazing figures from the martial arts world - and every year it seems less and less of these greats are there to take their place.  He felt the same way I did, that each generation is weaker when it comes to producing martial arts masters on the same level or greater than previous masters.

In essence, the arts are dying.



Last week, I also had a great conversation with someone who is one of my highest ranking students.  But, he is also a black belt in Aikido.  He mentioned how their classes are so small, there are nights he texts his training buddy to see if he is going.  He also said that the head instructor of this school also has stopped training with his teachers.  He simply lost his passion as a student and just goes through the motions of presenting the art as he understands it.

Our conversation paralleled the exact conversation I had previously with the other gentleman - the arts are dying.

Why is this?

We deduced that our current society is so dependent on technology, instant results, and this notion that everybody is a winner.  There is little or no struggle to get what you want when you can simply point and click.  Video games have replaced sports.  My own son no longer wants to play in sports, because his online gaming community is where all his friends are at anyway.  Even in schools, failure rates are skyrocketing as a broken education system continues to lower the bar on what is expected to pass, because too many failures means the teachers and schools lose money and are blamed for "not providing quality education".  So, society learns that failure is always somebody else's fault and holding someone to a high standard is somehow a negative.

In martial arts, we also see this trend.  There are "fast track" promotions.  You can buy a black belt program that guarantees receiving a black belt in a given amount of time or classes (instead of actually earning it, no matter how long it takes).  There are so many marketing gimmicks designed to sell snake oil to generations of people willing to pay for convenience and instant gratification.  One of the main reasons is simply commercial, or profit making, but also because schools who don't will not attract as many students and if they can't pay their bills, then the school closes.

This leads me to my point and something brought up during these discussions.  Gone are the days where prospective students had to prove themselves acceptable as students.  Gone are the days when a student would practice the most simple thing, like a punch or a cut with a sword, over and over for hours.  Gone are the days when a student would toughen their body through repetitions of striking a hardened surface to condition the hands, fingers, elbows, knees and such.  Gone are the days when a student would travel hours just to learn a single lesson from their teacher and focus on just that until their teacher feels they are ready for another.  Gone are the days when promoting in a school meant years of commitment, hard training and sacrifice.  Gone are the days when the teaching of an old system was just as much a pursuit of history, archeology, language and culture, as it was training the body.

Gone are the days when a student's belt actually went from white to black from all the grime, sweat, blood and dirt gained from enough training.

And, gone are the days when students had passion so strong they would take advantage of every opportunity to train, instead of only when convenience and interest allow for it.

If I opened a school, new people came to sign up, and for the first week all I had them do was practice a low, extended punch over and over until their legs gave out, would they come back?  What if I didn't use mats, just hardwood flooring, and had them practice rolls and break falls repetitively for the entire first week.  Would they come back?

What if I told them they wouldn't reach their first belt rank unless they not only know a list of techniques, but also maintain regular attendance, show consistency in the quality of their training and follow up their class training with drills to practice at home?  Would they do it?  Would they do it beyond their first rank?

After several months of training went by, what if I held a ranking exam and some students didn't pass.  Would the bitterness of failure discourage them from continuing, or would it inspire them to push harder for excellence?

A friend of mine in Japan mentioned to me how the younger generations of Japanese are losing interest in the old martial arts.  They are more interested in sports.  It's no different here.  Many of the traditional martial arts classes in Japan are usually populated by more non-Japanese than Japanese.  With the popularity of sport martial arts like MMA, young men and women are flocking to gyms instead of dojos.  They have coaches instead of sensei.  They want the excitement that comes from competitive sports - and there are entire industries built around it which are more and more common and available.

Hatsumi Soke wrote about how budo (and martial arts) are about humanity.  This is because martial arts were started by humans interacting with each other in conflict.  Back then, conflict was real, brutal and often deadly.  Today, with the exception of violent assaults that happen from time to time, what society views as conflict is a Monkey Dance - a chest puffing slugfest by two drunk guys (or more).  They also see sports like MMA on the same level as violence.  Yet, they are not - at least from where the traditional martial arts came from.  As a result, those old arts lose context and, thus, people lose a reason to actually learn it.  They'd rather learn MMA, ground fighting systems, Combatives and any number of other modern methods.  They don't care about history, culture and masters.

Thus, the arts are dying.

What people often fail to understand is quite simply this:  The struggles that it took for a student to just be accepted as a student, the struggles it took for that student to progress and the struggles it took for that student to succeed, all forged a person into mastery of not just the art, but of himself.  The quality of the spirit was revealed in what it took to just be a student and, those who eventually mastered the art, were amazing individuals who inspired the next generation and taught through their life examples.  When you think about the old masters, they seemed larger than life!  Although they were known for their art, what they had to share wasn't about any particular technique - it was their spirit, their intensity towards life and the wisdom that was gained from their pursuit of mastery.  The kind of person that reached that level truly was a master, not by what they said, but by what they did.  They walked the walk, not just talked the talk.  They didn't have to prove themselves.  You just knew it.

The arts were alive because the masters and their students were alive through those arts.  The life force of the arts were the collective life force of all the masters and students in them.  What about today?  Are the old arts living vibrantly and powerfully, or are they getting weaker and weaker.  Even if there are many students in the dojo, do you feel the collective life force is still weaker than it should be?  Who bears responsibility for it?  You?  The teacher?

The arts are dying.  That is a sad fact.  But, they are only dying because people are letting them.  Yet, the answer lies in the individual, as it only takes one individual to breathe life back into an art.  So, are you that individual?  Or, is your art dying within you, too.