Being Uncomfortable
(Karate Way, March 2007)
Being Uncomfortable
|
A martial artist recently revealed on an Internet forum that he “hates etiquette.” It wasn’t the bowing and other conventions we normally think of as etiquette to which he objected. What caused him despair was confronting the landscape that must be navigated in pursuing a traditional Japanese budo. And, he said, he didn’t like the territory. Specifically, he bemoaned all the awkward mistakes, gaffes and bon mots one inevitably makes when dealing with Japanese culture, which is such an integral part of the arts. One well-meant but wrongly worded phrase in a conversation with a teacher, one innocent gesture at an inappropriate moment, and a person is in trouble. If there’s a serious martial artist out there who can’t identify with his complaint, he must not be serious about his training. Everyone who’s worked to learn the ways of karate-do, aikido or any other Japanese fighting art has been embarrassed. Usually, it’s something entirely innocent. In the case of this martial artist, he said he visited a high-ranked and respected aikido teacher who’s also skilled in iaido, the art of drawing and cutting with the sword. The teacher talked at some length about his aikido classes. The martial artist was interested in the iaido instruction offered, and he said so, politely. Immediately, the teacher went cold, obviously insulted. Yikes. In another incident, the leader of a dojo hoped to formally present a visiting teacher with his fee for conducting a seminar. The dojo head went to a Japanese department store here and got a nice envelope. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that it was an envelope used for giving money to the relatives of the recently deceased, a tradition in Japan. I was once scolded for improperly holding the flask while pouring sake, and my Japanese has been corrected countless times in formal situations. Anyone who’s trained in Japan will have similar tales. Indeed, it’s impossible to read accounts of foreign budoka in Japan who haven’t suffered from such embarrassments. To be sure, Japan has customs, social conventions and unwritten rules that are at least as complicated as those of any other culture and probably more so. Why? We have to remember that Japan remains a remarkably homogeneous country. Its people share the same history, language and behaviors. It was also isolated for much of its formative history, creating an insular society. In Japan, one constantly hears phrases like “Ware-ware Nihonjin,” (we Japanese) and words like Nihonjinron, which refers to the notion of uniqueness. When a culture develops under Japan’s historical circumstances, it isn’t surprising to discover so many details, nuances and shared meanings within the group, and they’re not immediately apparent to outsiders. However, I wonder if the Internet writer was really trying to say that he hated to be uncomfortable. I know I do. In many ways, a serious study of the martial arts requires one to be uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s a physical discomfort: The older I get, the less I tolerate sleeping on a hard dojo floor, waking up cold and creaky, and facing another day of training at some seminar hundreds of miles from my home. Sometimes it’s an emotional discomfort: Leaving my family to go to Japan or some other place for training, being homesick and missing loved ones are intimate parts of the budo experience, and they stink. I’ve known budoka who’ve spent decades in Japan, and even after all that, they can still feel uncomfortable dealing with their sensei or others in the dojo. They still make mistakes. Sometimes a senior or a teacher will take them aside and explain their gaffe. Other times they get nailed publicly and humiliatingly. I wish to emphasize that these aren’t arrogant jerks or culturally insensitive people; they’re martial artists who’ve been involved in their budo for a long time and, in some cases, are high ranked. And still they endure situations that are uncomfortable. The simple truth is that these feelings—the hot face of embarrassment, the sudden heavy clunk in the pit of one’s stomach, the bewilderment, the “no matter what I do, it’s wrong” sensations—are all part of the budo. One might avoid some of them by having been born and raised in Japan, but few of us have that background. We must accept that what we’re doing lies outside the mainstream and certainly outside the culture in which we were raised. No one is forcing us to go to the dojo. We’ve elected to take this trip on our own, and that has ramifications. If we want to avoid being socially uncomfortable, feeling inept or awkward or “out of our element,” we have plenty of choices. We can join a softball league or bowling team. We can take up an activity that’s a part of our culture, one in which we understand the behavior and the unwritten rules. We, as budoka, however, have decided to leave behind a comfortable and familiar setting. Bear in mind that no matter how long they’ve been practiced here, no matter how watered down they sometimes are, the real budo are still very foreign to Westerners. The budo have their own rules and code of conduct. They exist in a special place, and if we want to travel there and spend time practicing them, we have to accept that being uncomfortable is part of the journey. About the author: Dave Lowry is a freelance writer who’s trained extensively in the Japanese and Okinawan arts. He started writing Karate Way in 1986.  BUY THE BEST OF DAVE LOWRY TODAY!
|
