My mother made me study martial arts. She thought that the martial arts could make a person learn respect. The way she put it, “The respect that one human being owes to another you can only learn in a combative environment.” She felt that the tenets of the Japanese martial arts, being bushido, would make a person, at least, have respect for other human beings, and she felt that respect is the only achievement.

The martial arts are in an environment that’s combative, but it is like being in the eye of a typhoon because it is highly philosophical. It’s not fighting. Street fighting, on the other hand, is combative, but it is not philosophical.

I earned my first black belt in judo in 1941, but two years prior to that, I toured China and studied tai chi and pakua under Chien Chen Wa, that’s how I pronounce it.

I also studied daito ryu jujitsu, and shorinji ryu kenpo karate. It was during this period, in fact, that I made a tour of the Orient with the express purpose of studying the different martial arts.

Japanese training is philosophical, diametrically opposed to the Chinese training, even though it may appear to be the same.

All the martial arts tell you that the first move is defensive – that’s the premise of the martial arts. But the connotation takes in a very wide area. Most people, if you tell them their first move must be defensive, will wait for the enemy to hit and then counter. Now,with the Japanese samurai mentality, the fight starts when the issue or challenge comes up with an ‘offensive defensive’ move.

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For example, suppose you and I get into an argument and you were the kung fu champion of Shanghai. We would argue, say, in a restaurant, and then we go out into the street. As soon as you square off, I hit you because the fight started in the restaurant. It is a defensive move but it looks like an offense and a lot of people cannot see that.

That is where the Japanese karate training – what I call true karate – has the advantage. A lot of people do not understand the semantics, for instance, of the karate man never delivering the first blow. Semantically, you would envision a karate man standing there waiting to respond to a blow. But once there is a challenge, the contact has begun and you defend with an offensive defense.

My only involvement with the hard style kung fu in China was six bouts with kung fu champs, and I knocked them all out. That was it. That’s why I’m convinced that a combination of judo, Japanese karate and Chinese tai chi and pakua can take care of any hard-style kung fu people.

The kung fu people fight along one style – it’s whatever particular school they follow, and they are not flexible. Their efficiency is so highly specialized, you have deficiencies because it is a very narrow field. The specialty calls for that. But I have found that the person who is a generalist has an advantage in a physical encounter.

You’d be surprised, in my experience, that the best fighters are the tai chi people. They can beat any of the hard-style kung fu schools if it came to the nitty-gritty because they and the pakua people are philosophically flexible. You see, they can extrapolate from any situation and even follow back on an attack that is being given out.

If it’s done right, I think it will help classical karate. Contact karate does not step on traditional karate. Traditional karate is, just to use another expression, a different kind of animal.

Professional karate is not a martial art bushido and all. It’s a sport like boxing, and it’s a different arena, but not everybody can participate in it. But classical karate, anybody can engage in it, because you get taught respect and dignity of one human being over another. Also, it gives you some means of self defense in case your life is on the line. That’s what it’s meant for. It is not meant for some guy to go in the ring and be the Cassius Clay of karate.
Karate has changed in America and, probably, Japan, but the purist – a true karate man – is one that teaches his art exactly as those before him. Karate in America has changed because the styles have been simplified, but this is all on the physical level. Students we turn out may be high on a physical level, but if he moves to the sporting arena, which has wide appeal, he must not lose the philosophy. That is why we separate the amateur from the professional. 

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