Master or Manipulator: The Dark Side of Trusting Your Karate Sensei

Here’s one for you to kick around with your dojo mates the next time you’re relaxing after training. It was back in the 1960s, a time when the Japanese dominated – almost laughably so – the international karate competition scene.

For years, they had toyed with Western competitors, scoring on them almost at will. Much of their dominance was of a psychological nature. Karate was, after all, "Japanese." To face a Japanese opponent was intimidating for many karateka simply because of the other person's nationality.

That dominance was not compromised in any dramatic, single moment, but as the decade progressed, a handful of Americans worked their way up on the circuit. It started in 1967, when a team of American karateka defeated a Japanese team in an international goodwill tournament.

The event had enormous repercussions in Japanese karate circles. Americans began to develop more technical skills. They began to defeat Japanese competitors, and the whole mystique of the karate expert who is invincible merely because of his race started to erode fast.

At this time, one of the most talented and formidable American karateka was making a name for himself.

The name I'll use for him is Bob. (He's still alive, and I don't wish him any attention he may not desire.) He trained under a Japanese sensei, and he trained hard. He was physically large and imposing and terrifically strong.

Still, it was Bob's remarkable use of technique, applied with an amazing precision, that elevated him in karate circles. He once scored using a knee strike. Think about how difficult that point must have been.

Bob trained with near-obsessive intensity. Always first in the dojo, he often stayed long after others had left to engage in hours of free sparring with visiting Japanese practitioners. He devoted his life to karate.

Bob won national championships year after year. Further, in matches against Japanese karateka, he was winning, as well – not all the time, but more and more. And some of his wins were being scored against senior-level Japanese karateka.

He was defeating men who were, in fact, professional karate teachers, who had been sent by their organizations to countries around the world to instruct. Bob was winning often enough in national and international events that it looked as if he might be one of those karateka who would write a new chapter in the history of the art.

A particular international championship was months away. Bob had trained steadily and was in peak condition. He would travel to Japan to compete against some of the most senior karateka in the world. He was anticipating the event; it would offer a chance for him to prove himself and prove his art and his teacher in a dramatic, very public fashion.

Bob appeared at the dojo one evening for class and was summoned into the office of his teacher. His teacher, not incidentally, was among the most respected and senior karate sensei in the world. The teacher was, even though only in his early 40s, already a legend. He was Japanese. He was known for pushing his students to the point of exhaustion and beyond, refining their technique, honing their spirit.

For his students – including Bob – he was less a teacher and more a reincarnation of a samurai, respected, even adored as a stern but caring father figure. For most of his students, he embodied the karate spirit.

"You are not going to participate in the international competition in Japan," Bob's teacher told him. "It is not good for your development in the art to put so much emphasis on tournaments. You need now to focus on karate as an art, not as a sport."

And that was it. After years of sweat and sacrifice, Bob's tournament career was over.

I don't know Bob. I do suspect there must have been a lot of conflicting thoughts for him at that moment. Most crucially, I bet he was considering two perspectives. He was beginning to threaten the Japanese domination of international karate competition.

He had to wonder if this was really a matter of his sensei forbidding him to compete because the sensei wanted him to focus on facets of karate other than tournaments. Or was the sensei bowing to pressure from his Japanese counterparts to take Bob out because his appearance at the competition might threaten their dominance?

Was Bob's sensei testing him?

Did he want to see if Bob would trust him completely by accepting his order to stop doing what was so important to him? Was his sensei trying to teach him a lesson, to show him that he was too focused on competition?

Was his sensei trying to actually acknowledge Bob's maturation, telling him, in effect, "You're good enough that you no longer have anything to prove in competition"?

Or, after all those years of submitting to his sensei and trusting him, was Bob finally having his eyes opened to the real character of a man he'd respected and who did not deserve that respect? Was Bob being told that, for all his teacher's accomplishments, that teacher was in reality a petty little man whose warped and racist views outweighed his sense of obligation to his own student?

I don't know. I don't know how Bob weighed all those questions – or if he entertained them at all. Maybe he just blindly trusted his teacher and gave it no more thought. I do believe, though, that this is something every karateka should consider, particularly those who have a long and close relationship with their teacher.

How much do you trust him? Enough to follow his dictates without hesitation?

Maybe the real question is not how much you trust him but rather how much you should trust him.

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