View Single Post
Old 08-16-2009, 05:55 AM   #44
Ryan Seznee
Dojo: Does it matter?
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 102
United_States
Offline
Re: 5th Kyu Shihan

Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote: View Post
What Ron really said:

...followed immediately by....

If Ron wants to correct people, he's the worst correcter in the world. All he's done is state his own personal preference of not using "sempai/kohai" in the dojo, and explained why. I'm not exactly sure why you are looking for an argument here.

Ron believes that in Japan "sempai/kohai" carry a lot of cultural baggage, and rather than deal with that baggage he's decided not to use those terms.

You believe that in Japan "sempai/kohai" carry a lot of cultural baggage, and rather than deal with it you choose to ignore it as not relevant to your cultural context.

Ron's happy with what he does, and perfectly happy to let you do as you want to do. Why not extend the same courtesy to him? Are you not perhaps transferring adversarial vibes from Szczepan to Ron?

And FWIW, here's my take on Japanese in the dojo.
I am not working off adversarial vibes at all. I just enjoy arguing. Frankly, I liked Szczepan's posts more than Ron's because they were more assertive and clear. I believe I mentioned this before.

Secondly, Ron is arguing. If he is just stating his opinion, there would be no need for a follow up. He also started (in the quote you posted) this whole thread as a correction to Red. The way his paragraph is set up, the opening sentence leads to the development to the rest of the paragraph. Therefore, his point is (as it is written in post #1) you misspelled Sempai... I wouldn't use that word in that context. Which is a very passive aggressive way of correcting someone. In a future post he chastises me for not looking into the social significance of the word, which is DEFINITELY starting an argument in my book.

Thirdly, I did not acknowledge the argument of Sempai having a cultural subtext because no one will answer my question and follow the concept to it's logical absurdity. The entire art form is Japanese, a lot of things we do have religious and social subtext (bowing before and after class, having a picture of O'Sensei...), but it is ignored for the sake of tradition, transmission of the art, or out of conviniance. Why take out one part and not all?
  Reply With Quote