Martial Arts

Some years ago, I had opportunity to study the Shorinji-ryu style of karate in Rosemere, Québec. For those interested in practical details, I recommend the following two foundational resources (in this order):

I earned a Shodan (first degree) black belt, and when I relocated to Teviotdale, Ontario, I operated a dojo at Wilfrid Laurier University for a number of years. Unfortunately, although I was to have been promoted to Nidan (second degree), checking the boxes and jumping the hoops required by the style proved difficult for me in view of geographical separation from my teacher, my poor memory, and the fact that at the time we had few audio-visual aids beyond material up to Shodan level. I eventually decided to give up the dojo for reasons of practicality and personal health.

What I found most interesting in Shorinji-ryu was what I was told were the marked ‘Chinese elements’,¹⁾E.g, predominance of circular motion, certain types of movements, etc. particularly since, for whatever—not necessarily rational²⁾I would like to draw attention to the fact that ‘non-rational’ is not to be interpreted negatively, say as ‘inferior’, ‘wrong’, ‘bad’, let alone ‘irrational’. Modern Western culture seems to me to have succumbed to an ill-advised worship of logic. Human beings are as much emotional beings as they are rational, if not more; and to attempt to justify anything on the basis of reason alone disregards at least half the animal!—reason, had I had my druthers, I’d have looked to some form of Chinese rather than Japanese/Okinawan martial art in the first place. But a bird in the hand is better than two in the tree, as they say, and Shorinji-ryu it was.³⁾And let me be clear: I have no regrets. The last thing anyone should induce from what I say here is that Shorinji-ryu, in whatever variant, should be discarded for being found wanting.

Planned re-exploration

I have been for some time contemplating some kind of solo revival of my practice for the sake of improving my physical condition. But no longer being constrained to a given style or philosophy, I wanted to explore my options with a view to determining what fulfils my particular need best. Further, our current COVID reality (and my distance from any urban centre) means that there was little point in letting more-or-less local schools influence my decision.

Being an academic (and a skeptic by nature), I began with some formal research.

Initial formal research

A perusal of the university library system revealed that there’s not that much out there, which may have as much to do with the fact that until recently there’s not been much interest in pursuing this line of research as the fact that there isn’t very much solid material upon which to base the research to begin with, despite claims one hears from time to time that this or that goes back thousands of years.⁴⁾Sure, the roots of any martial art—which, in its essence, is primarily a system designed to inflict maximum damage upon others in the most efficient way while minimizing that to oneself—go back as far as human conflict. But we’re talking about recognizable systems, here. Incidentally, the primacy of self-defence, it turns out, is a much later, Western overlay. That, of course, does not make it bad! Most things with any element of myth⁵⁾Again, ‘myth’ is not a dirty word! It simply refers to a style of discussion or argument which relies at least as heavily on the emotional as it does on the factual, and is not, to those who understand it properly, intended to prove much if anything in the realm of facts. have a tendency to include artificial genealogies (consider, e.g., the Sumerian King List ⁶⁾This literary text grounds the then current Third Dynasty of Ur in the primordial roots of kingship in that area. It’s certainly emotionally true; but it’s equally factually false. Let me stress that in their inception, at least, such things are not intended to deceive so much as to provide an appealing emotional context within which to define the subject.

For the sake of acquainting myself with the historical reality as best I could, I consulted the following works available to me through the university system, in order:

These works confirmed some of my premonitions and did indeed help orient me in a number of ways. Some of my main learnings follow.

Shaolin > Shorin

My original idea had been to explore ‘Shaolin’ genres on the basis of the etymological connection with ‘Shorin’, but that soon proved to be a rabbit-hole venture of little value. It turns out that the whole notion that there is an art originating with and taught by Shaolin monks is largely a mythical genealogy of the type alluded to above whose details vary depending upon the current practice making allusion to it.

Wushu

Wushu is another well-known Chinese art. It is widespread, mainly because it has been adopted and promoted by the People’s Republic of China, but, from what I understand, is heavily syncretistic and thus in some ways artificial. There’s nothing whatever wrong with that; what I had in mind was likely to be syncretistic as well, but I wanted something designed for my needs, not someone else’s.

Wing Chun

Wing Chun, on the other hand, does, as nearly as we can ascertain, continue an authentic Chinese tradition, though it is hardly, in its relatively concrete and continuing form, ancient. It seems to have been systematized for all intents and purposes in the late 19th/early 20th century in a milieu in which river piracy was prominent, courtesy of the so-called ‘Red Junk Opera Company’. This can’t be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the style does have at least some degree of pedigree, so I decided to begin my serious enquiries here.

From Wing Chun to Jeet Kun Do

It didn’t take long for me to discover that Wing Chun spread internationally at least in part due to one famous practitioner: Bruce Lee. I’d always thought of him mainly as an actor in some (in my estimation) pretty bad martial arts movies, and, not having looked into it any further, had been unaware that there was anything more to him.

I learned that while Lee had started out in Wing Chun, he very soon began to adapt the system in light of his own experience. This is obviously a subjective undertaking, and, in fact, he recommended that others to the same. He initially packaged his revised style under the heading Jun Fan (those being his non-English given names), but later abandoned the notion of a formal, teachable system in favour of a constantly morphing kind of style which he called Jeet Kun Do . I’ve decided to study the material relevant to this ‘style’ and adopt whatever seems profitable. You will find my comments on this on the appropriate page within this site.⁷⁾Note: that page has not yet been started.

Hakutsuru Kenpo

Being in regular contact with an old Highland reserve friend of mine whose martial arts career predates mine and has been continuously on-going, I took the opportunity to drop him a line and let him know of these developments. By the way, you can learn about him and what he offers through

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He was curious about my motivation to look at Jeet Kun Do in particular, since it was in many ways very antithetical to what either of us had been doing thus far, so we set up a Zoom meeting to chat about that.⁸⁾This page has been written partly as a result, so that my current thinking is preserved for anyone else who might be interested down the road.

He mentioned to me that he had begun some work in Hakutsuru Kenpo , which, though ‘Okinawanized’, is ultimately reconstructed, as I understand it, from the Chinese White Crane art. As I have opportunity to work on that with him over the internet, and it’s always good to have a community for support, I’ll be reporting on my progress/learnings in that area as well.

Bibliography of citations