Giri 9.1.2013
This September marks forty seven years of Master Toyama’s passing and two years since Master Takazawa passed away. I’ve been thinking a lot about the two Masters and how they left such a great legacy of Karate to us. Master Toyama was truly the link between the old and the new way of teaching and passing down karate. While Master Toyama died in 1966 at the age of 88, he was training and learning karate at the golden age of Okinawan karate, being one of only three men to train with the two most important karate men of the 19th century (Master Itosu, and Master Higshionna).
The title of this article is Giri which is a Japanese word meaning duty, obligation, or even burden of obligation. While the concept of Giri is hard to translate into English it is one that has been an important word in karate. The word or concept goes back to feudal Japan and the Samurai, who lived the code of the warrior and really felt Giri.
A bond of moral duty whether of necessity or of one’s own choosing, that ties two or more parties together.
This feeling between master and student has always been around, from the Chinese to the Okinawan’ s to the Japanese. Out of respect to the master and the art, it has always been the obligation, responsibility, or commitment of the student to train hard and to pass the art to the next generation correctly with the same feeling that was passed on from their teachers.
It is with this kind of feeling that I pass on the way of our karate I have always felt that “moral obligation” to Master Toyama and Master Takazawa (and all of the old Okinawa masters) to keep training and to pass the katas down without any changes. To teach them as I was taught and to keep our lineage going for the next generation. I’ve always felt that I’m training the next set of teachers that will be passing our karate on and not just students I’m training with.
While this is not some action that is required that I do, it is with gratitude that I do it, and with gratitude comes a feeling of well being. So when we keep going over the same basics and kata over and over again, keep in mind the why and to whom we are trying to get this right for and think of Giri, because if not us who will carry on the “way”.
see you in the dojo