small victories

I have written a few posts about my daughter’s interest – or lack of – in the martial arts. We continue going to a gong fu class together on Friday nights. These days I have been very pleased to see her interest growing and her motions and concentration improving.

We started quite young, about age four, mostly just playing rather than truly practicing. My goals were to expose her to the training environment and to do something together regularly.

Her initial excitement wore off after a few sessions, but her attachment to the teacher and some gentle nudging from us parents have kept her going for a couple years now. And it seems it is finally paying off.

During the week, I can actually get her to practice several days, if only a couple runs through the shortest of gong fu routines. But she would never practice at home before, so this is a big step for her and a great source of pride for me.

She seldom wants to practice during the week. But on Friday nights, she is (almost) always eager to go, and is always happy once inside the gymnasium. And these days, she does the entire workout (arriving early, staying until the end with all the Big Kids and assorted adults) without her customary breaks for drawing and reading.

Part of this may be because, while still the youngest in the group by a couple years, a new woman has joined and looks to my daughter for help and instruction. Fun to watch, and a boost for my daughter’s confidence.

Another part of it may be because our teacher co-hosted a couple free introductory demos with about 30 kids each and my daughter got to be a model a few times. And we have our first parent-child demo coming up later this month as part of a larger exhibition in Tokyo.

But despite my happiness with all these changes, there has been one small disappointment. My daughter informed me and the teacher that she does not want to do the demo together with me as planned, but wants to appear separately.

Fair enough. A small price to pay in the face of so many other small victories recently. My daughter may never share my passion for practicing martial arts, and her dream is to become an Olympic swimmer, but each practice we share together is a great victory for me.

in praise of newbies

Things are going much better on the gong fu front. Most importantly, my daughter seems to be over her “I’m quitting gong fu” phase. It is tough for her, at age six, to be in a class of half adults and with the nearest kid at least three years her senior.

Last week I had a really good practice. My daughter was off at a school function and I went alone to gong fu for a change. No progress on the sticks (nangun, 南棍) but great progress in other areas.

Usually I partner with her through the extended aerobic / agility exercises so I have to hold back quite a bit. But last week I blasted all out and enjoyed it, pushing myself to the limit in the extreme humidity.

For some reason, five new people joined the class that night, all of them adults, three or four of them very experienced. That kicked everybody’s intensity level up several notches, on top of the all-Japan tournament starting this week.

Midway through practice, I was called over to run through basics with the new member who lacked much experience. Usually there is little explanation and there are few if any reps of the demos by the teachers. But that night, the teacher really slowed down for the beginner – and I could benefit from that and really soak in some motions that have been half –understood and half-assed for far too long.

This strikes me as being somewhat similar to my situation in iaido lately. The teachers tend to focus heavily on whoever has joined the group most recently. The longer you have been in, the less attention you get. The less direct attention, anyhow. You have a growing responsibility to watch how the teachers teach those who are newest – to steal what you can and apply it to your own practice. I got a lot of attention when I joined this group – a thorough re-tooling of my iaido to get in line with our style. But now I am seldom taught directly and have to watch the teaching of others.

I am in a strange position in gongfu. They know I have experience with other arts. Despite the fact that I have little background in long fist (the core of this class) or southern fist, I am treated as one of those with experience. That means I am always trying to get all I can while others are being taught – but I am struggling to learn it the first time. At least in iaido I had a strong grounding before joining my current group.

Anyway I had a rare and special opportunity last week, since my daughter was gone and I had been partnered with a newbie.

Now what we really need in this gong fu class are some new young kids, my daughter’s age, to join. That would do more for her motivation than anything. As for me, I hope the newbies keep coming, as their presence gives me the rare chance to get some in-depth explanation and slower reps while learning new moves.

disappointment

We didn’t go to gong fu tonight. Again.

Last week had a reasonably good excuse, as did the week before.

But tonight was simply “I don’t want to go”.

For over a year now, my daughter and I have been going to gong fu class together. I know it was early to start her, but I kept the pressure off and we had fun each time we went. We didn’t enforce it as a weekly ritual, but offered praise and support each time she wanted to go.

The first several visits, she would last about 20 minutes before whining and saying she couldn’t move anymore. And besides, she had brought plenty of toys in her backpack. I let it be. She was, after all, five, and couldn’t be expected to have such a long attention span. Especially when everyone else is older than her. So she played with her toys or drew pictures and I struggled to keep up with the smoother motions of those much younger than me.

But over more than a year, she has become able to stay for the entire class – and still walk home carrying her own backpack. That’s no mean feat for a tired and bedraggled six-year-old. True, we often celebrate after class with a healthy and nutritious Mac or 7-11 dinner for her, and that may contribute to much of her motivation to attend class at all. But hey, she is a kid after all.

It is basically a kids’ class, though several young adults have remained after coming up through the ranks. A gap of a couple years separates my daughter from the next youngest kid – an eternity at that age.

A gap of a couple decades separates me from the young adults. But I can out-stretch and out-stamina them all. Except the teachers of course. Husband and wife, they both have chin-to-the-toes flexibility (I am getting closer, millimeter by millimeter) and amazing form. One is (inter) nationally known for the Northern Long Fist style. The other is (inter) nationally known for the Southern Fist Style. And so far as I can tell, neither is terrible at the other’s specialty….

My main purpose in joining the class was to do some kind of martial arts activity together with my daughter, but not as her teacher. Nope, we are learning side by side in this class, as I have no background in either of the main arts taught.

From the start, I have harbored no illusions about going deeply into Northern or Southern Fist (though I have always cultivated a secret passion for the Southern Sword [南刀]). The greater part of each class is devoted to stretching and line drills of gong fu basics, both fine with me – intersecting well with and reinforcing my other training without opening up another new art for me to explore.

Learning a few basic sequences together has been fun, as has drilling each other at home. I really love it when she teaches me, repeating the points she just got drilled on the prior week. It is good for me – and she is, I must confess, often right.

All of this is to say that it really hurt tonight when she announced that she did not want to go to gong fu. At the moment it is unclear whether this is a one-time declaration or a permanent cessation. Either way, it leaves me a bit empty this windy Friday night.

(photo from a housing project near the gong fu practice location. desolate as it appears, I wouldn’t mind living there – at least there is plenty of space to practice outdoors)

kung fu or gong fu???

In the West, almost everyone knows it as kung fu. The classic song “Kung Fu Fightin’”, the recent movie “Kung Fu Panda”, even a terrible cartoon when I was young referred to it – Hong Kong Phooey.

But in the system of Romanization used in China, called pinyin, it is rendered as gong fu, and that is how I write it here. (Experienced practitioners may/ should know all this already and may skip ahead a bit…) As has been written endlessly elsewhere – yet still has not seeped into general consciousness outside of Asia - is that the words “gong fu” (功夫) refer to a deep level of accomplishment in almost anything – not necessarily martial arts. And these characters, 功夫, are best rendered as “gong fu” in my opinion.

But whether kung fu or gong fu, it is a convenient way to refer to Chinese martial arts (especially if you want to highlight the difference from modern, sports-oriented wushu…but that opens up hours of discussion…) All of this puts me in a funny position here in Japan, with its mania for adopting semblances of foreign words. Two native Japanese can understand each other’s use of words like “sarada” / サラダ, “raito” / ライト (right? write?), and “konsento” / コンセント (electric outlet / socket). But don’t ask any native English speakers to follow these usages any time soon.

Then add in more fake words altered from languages such as French and German, and pretty soon the entries in the Japanese dictionary are more than 10% of these adopted foreign words.

And then there is カンフー, pronounced like “kan fu” (the first word sounds like con, as in con man), taken from the Chinese. Or is it? 1.3 billion Chinese (and growing) pronounce it and write it in Roman letters as “gong fu”. So it seems the Japanese have taken the mistaken “kung fu” from western countries and changed it to fit Japanese pronunciation styles, and the word has thus been doubly distorted.

Recently I have noticed a very small number of publications using ゴンフー, with two volumes of the excellent 達人の道leading the way, which is a much better approximation of the actual pronunciation within the constraints of the sounds of Japanese language (there is no “ng”, for example). But 99% of Japanese people would not recognize this usage, since “kanfu-- / カンフー” has entered standard usage.

Because there have been different systems of Romanization over the years, we have different spellings such as tai ji quan – t’ai chi chuan; ba gua zhang – pa kua chang; xing yi quan – hsing yi chuan; and even names, such as Mao Ze Dong – Mao Tse Tung.

Again, the standard on mainland China is pinyin (the first example in each pair above), but in the West the influence of the Wade-Giles system lingers, offering alternate romanizations. Things get more complicated because on the island of Taiwan, pinyin is not used (go read your history books/ internet if necessary). And a fair number of prominent martial artists … relocated…. from the mainland to the island of Taiwan around 1949 (once again, do some quick googling if necessary).

I don’t know if we’ll ever all agree on how to spell/ Romanize the arts names above, but I do think that “gong fu” should be adopted universally.

(another picture from the Beijing subways)

gasshuku (1)

gasshuku 合宿
Sept. 2008

Gasshuku is a Japanese word referring to a group of people stepping outside of normal lives and routines and going on a sort of retreat together. There are lots of happy group activities, practice, and, in the case of adults, much drinking. Having practiced Japanese martial arts here in Japan for about 13 years, I have had a good share of gasshuku experiences.
At the moment, I am taking a high-speed shinkansen train out of the endless sprawl that is Tokyo, headed into the semi-countryside for a 3-day gasshuku with xx University Kung Fu (sic) Club. I usually travel to gasshuku by bus - with the group of course – but I don’t know how well I fit into this group.
Almost all these kids are literally half my age. It would be easier if I were from the university, but I am not. I began joining their monthly special trainings (one-day or half-day affairs) a few years back. Then last year I was invited to join their gasshuku and it was fantastic. I look forward to another excellent experience.

My first gasshuku in Japan was kendo- and iaido-related. A group of us foreigners from my then-dojo took a trip into the countryside for a weekend with another kendo group. Ogino Sensei and his students welcomed us warmly and it was made better by the presence of many lively children.
On the last day, we all ate nagashi-somen outdoors. This is a traditional summer favorite in which a long slide made of split bamboo runs down a slope. Ice and water flow down from the top in order to bring cool and delicious noodles to those waiting below. We lined both sides of the trough and used chopsticks to quickly grab mouthfuls of noodles as they streamed down.
Inevitably, germs are spread with all the chopsticks going in and out of the oncoming noodles. And people at the bottom of the slope, like me, are left with the few strands of noodles which remain after everyone else has dipped in. But these are healthy young kendo kids and are not easily brought down by a few mere germs.
Not so the adults, it seems. A day or two later, my throat was painfully swollen and I could barely open my mouth or swallow. For three days, I ate nothing but watery rice gruel. おたふくかぜ. Yes, it seems that the mumps I had never had in my youth had finally caught up with me.
Even so, that remains one of my favorites gasshukus ever, and I look forward to another chance to study with Ogino Sensei someday. (Curiously, he is also a friend of with my iaido teacher. Last year, they were chatting and looking over pictures from Ogino Sensei’s mountain dojo when Kogawa Sensei spied my picture and just about spat his dentures out in surprise. “How the hell do you know that guy?”)

Then there is karate. Kenkojuku Shotokan (Okano-Ha) has an annual summer gasshuku which is completely oriented toward the 200 or so kids who jam onto one bus too few for a weekend of practice which culminates in a rank exam. I was lucky enough to join several times and one memory stands out in particular.
Adult black belts are strongly encouraged to attend but their role is primarily to teach and watch over the children (and to handle the massive job of orchestrating meals for these 200+ kids). We adults had one special practice each day and could of course practice on our own, but the real instruction was focused on the kids.
During the rank exam on the third day of the 1997 gasshuku, Okano Sensei waved me over and took me outside. I wondered what massive breach of protocol I had committed and was about to get busted for. Nothing of the sort. He had suddenly remembered that he had asked me the night before what kata I would like to work on the next day. So we went bit by bit through kankuu sho, which is rarely taught in the dojo. We drilled it carefully about seven times, going slowly and making sure I understood. He seldom taught kata like this, and it was the first time I had been taken so thoroughly through a kata in Japan, so that brief time outside the main gym remains special to me, one of my best Kenkojuku memories.

Then there is naginata (think of a long wooden handle with a curved blade on the end, something like a glaive in appearance). I used to spend much time practicing naginata and built a strong foundation. I attended numerous weekend seminars on top of 3 times a week practice and eventually passed the test to become a naginata referee, something only a handful of foreigners have done. Alas, my training time for naginata has diminished rapidly, though many good memories (and that foundation, I believe) remain.
One such memory takes us to Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido. Winters are snowy and cold, damn cold. And our gasshuku was in the heart of the snow and cold.
Naginata is one of the least popular budo or martial arts in Japan in terms of numbers. Also, it has been relegated in the public awareness as a woman’s martial art.
More on the history of that elsewhen. Though outside Japan more men than women practice naginata, men are still the overwhelming minority within the already small naginata world in Japan (less than 5% of the total). The naginata federation is making efforts to promote the presence and participation of men in naginata. One part of that effort is the annual men’s naginata gasshuku, which is held in a different part of Japan each year, in a move toward accessibility.
For whatever reason, someone decided to have one year’s gasshuku in Hokkaido in mid-winter. The snow was deep – streets were lined on each side with walls of snow more than three meters tall after the snowplows went through. And the cold was cold. Then another someone had the idea of taking our group picture outdoors in our uniforms.
The naginata uniform is not designed for cool climates. The legs are covered by a hakama, a sort of pleated skirt-like thing which is split into two legs and is usually made of a fairly heavy material. But the tops…thin white cotton, short sleeves…and the wind was blowing. And the cameraman was taking his time. I think I suggested going topless to show what we were really made of, but nobody warmed to the idea. Anyway, the mandatory group pictures were taken and we hustled back inside the unheated school gymnasium which suddenly seemed so much warmer.

Back in Nebraska, we trained hard in the university dojo. And we made several trips each year to Denver, where a senior teacher in karate, kendo, and iaido taught. We joined their special trainings and took rank exams there. We might skip some Friday classes, make the 7-8 hour drive and arrive just in time for Friday night training.
We felt the effect of the high altitude right away but energy remained high on the first day. Saturday was devoted to several sessions, sometimes in the mountains. The pain and fatigue of the second day was lessened over eats and drinks, but the third day was just plain hard. And time seemed to move so much more slowly. Somewhere in the afternoon it ended and we piled back into our cars for the long drive back to school. Each of these trips left us utterly exhausted as well as filled with new excitement and energy.
So tonight I have returned to the big city from my second gasshuku with this university group. Again, it was an excellent experience and very different in feeling or flavor from my gasshuku involving Japanese martial arts. I was not pushed to the point of utter exhaustion – nor did I need to be. We all left feeling that we had been pushed, challenged, and filled with new energy. So now it is back to everyday life and everyday training.
NOTE - The 5 characters in the picture refer to five virtues upheld by swordspeople. Our gasshuku was held in the kendojo and ping pong room of a community gymnasium, and the characters were brushed by a junior high school kendo student.The Japanese reading is jin-gi-rei-chi-shin. Anyone know if this same set of 5 virtues is commonly referred to among Chinese martials artists?