Chanced upon this thread, as Paul Sellers has just blogged on this book and I thought I'd see what people here thought about it..... heh heh!!!
Yeah, 'nuff said, I think.
catface":2de6p4bs said:
In may martial arts (and certainly in the more traditional JApanese forms) innovation is anathema, certainly until master level has been achieved (perhaps after 20 years, and then some still never do) - and this is to preserve the content of what genuinely able and experienced persons have already discovered and can pass on. We dont alter a movement to make it a little easier, a bit more showy, or more suited to competition uses. In this way the skills and content are preserved and passed on.
It is unfortunate that manual craft skills are not given the same respect.
As a fellow practitioner, I would add the caveat that some techniques do sometimes get altered to better suit an individual and their basic physical structure, particularly for larger Westerners practicing arts of the smaller Japanese people. Also, we do alter some techniques for the purposes of training and competing, otherwise we'd be killing each other on a regular basis.
Certainly a lot of arts do get taught completely rote, but at the same time the ability to adapt techniques for different scenarios and still use them fluidly is also a key factor. Without that it's just a rehearsed kata, whereas the art in martial arts is precisely in how well you apply it. It's just like driving - Your instructor teaches you the fundamentals, which you yourself then learn to adapt and make use of in the real world.
In the same way, a master craftsman doesn't specialise in doing exactly and only what he has been taught in order to make things to some artistic standard - He has a wide range of tools, resources and experiences that give him a
greater understanding of his craft and the
choice in what he uses, in order to make something the best he can. He may not choose differently, but it's about being able to if it will give a better result.
