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Old 12-02-2006, 05:56 PM   #375
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Re: China as the Source of Japanese Martial Arts

Quote:
David Orange wrote:
Yes, but as Kano said, I think that any internal aspect to those arts was developed in a uniquely Japanese way for reasons including that they changed everything to fit their sense of superiority and also to make it "stronger" for fighting and conquering the people from whom it came.
David, this is absurd. The Japanese copied everything that the really Big Dog did... there was no sense of superiority by the Japanese. The hair-do's, the clothes, the systems of measurement, the cosmology, the building techniques, the swords, the naginatas, the writing system, the manufacturing techniques, the ceramics, etc., etc., were all copied from China. What "superiority" are you talking about from a people that copied everything they thought was worthwhile? Some interpretations and divergences from the Chinese? Yes. But on the whole the structure is so manifestly Chinese that any discussion of Japanese "superiority" is an empty rhetoric.
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...except that child movement influenced the Chinese methods as well...so either way, it goes back to toddlers.
That's your theory, David, as everyone knows. We could argue that tennis-players use natural movement derived from children, too.
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One thing that wore me out over there was the relentless insistence on doing everything "just so." Whatever you were doing, there was a Japanese way for doing it and there was always pressure to enforce that.
Weird how the ways they insist on doing things so often reflect the ancient Chinese ways, eh?
Quote:
But again, I do think that the Chinese methods reflect an older, broader culture with a deeper understanding and better results in the long term. I think that highly developed Chinese martial artists tend to live longer with better health than similarly developed Japanese martial artists, and I think that comes from the very different qualities of the two approaches to martial power.
Not to be contrary, but I disagree with the idea that the Chinese longevity is any more than the Japanese martial artists'. Abe Sensei would be a good example. Ueshiba did quite well. I see an increase in expected longevity and quality of life through martial arts, but I have never seen anything to suggest that the Chinese ways of doing qi/ki exercises makes for any difference in longevity. Note, BTW, that Abe's "macrobiotic" lifestyle is really just a take-off on old Taoist stuff.

Regards,

Mike Sigman
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