In the whole it is important to be open, tolerant and respectful toward all martial arts. However, people should be knowledgeable about the differences between the traditional and non traditional approaches.

The problem is that the general public rarely is.

We must agree with Yagi Meitoku Dai Sensei and Kenwa Mabuni when they caution the world that the traditional approach to training is dying.

We have no problem with sport karate, provided it is not confused for traditional karate. When the lines get blurred, sport karate seems to dominate because of market forces and cultural factors. When we believe, like we do at the WTKA, that traditional karate is a precious human cultural treasure, we have a responsibility to ensure that the distinctions are very clear in order to preserve what we practice.

This is why Mirakian Sensei has put so much emphasis on the "way of traditional" karate, on his website (http://www.meibukan-goju-ryu-usa.com/karatedo.htm).

We at the WTKA also worry like him that allot of Karate has degenerated into a fighting or a winning art only and is often taught and structured simply to make money.

Why is the traditional approach different and why is it worth preserving?

To us, at the WTKA, it is because it conserves the ethical and philosophical ideals of Budo, while preserving the physiological discoveries and combat theories of a particular human culture. That is that the answer is both philosophical and physical.

The advantage Karate has over many other physical activities, and it is perhaps the reason why so many westerners are attracted to it, is that traditional Karate not only trains the body but also the character, mind and spirit of the person and is a holistic approach to improving the entire human organism.

Its physical art has been developed thousands of years to do exactly that. Too many changes and the training will no longer serve this holistic purpose. In brief, traditional karate is a non sectarian "Spiritual Warriorship" and not a sport. One cannot reasonably expect to learn the same lessons about oneself from doing traditional karate and playing badminton.

This is essentially the difference between the changes made by someone like Miyagi Chojun Sensei and someone like Master James Redfield from New York (fictional). Not that there is anything wrong with Master James Redfield and his martial art, but he is probably not operating under the same holistic principles based on the philosophy of Budo. When one changes Karate it must be consistent with the goals of the philosophy of Budo.

If not, it becomes something else. Which is fine, but it should not be called traditional anymore. The changes made by Miyagi Chojun and Yagi Meitoku were consistent with the history and the philosophy of Budo.

So that covers the philosophical perspective, now for the physical.
Traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate has a set of physiological principles it teaches, including: haragei,, michimi, tenshin, tai sabaki, etc., which inform how one should perform the art. There is a tendency to assume that all human movement is just movement. But certainly a ballet dancer does not move like a ball room dancer.

Traditional Okinawan Goju is in itself a coherent unified theory of human movement. Unfortunately, this is often the first thing that is lost. When this is lost the physiological subtlety of the art is also lost. This is an important loss because an intimate body of knowledge about the human body, preserved by a specific group of fellow human beings, is also being lost.

What this amounts to is the loss of a particular method of self-knowledge. That is that every physical art has its unique way of teaching the practitioner about his body. It would be tragic if the traditional Goju way of teaching that self-knowledge was lost. It would be tantamount to smashing a Han dynasty vase because there are other containers that one could use. But the Han dynasty vase still tells us much about who we are and maybe even more than a plastic container bought at the dollar store or at a Walmart.

Again, the changes and additions made by Miyagi Chojun and Yagi Meitoku to the physical art were consistent with the unified theory of human movement as found in Okinawan Goju. We can be less sure of this about our fictional New York master James Redfield.

In a more general way, the purposes and effects of Traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu training are myriad, subtle and rarely obvious. It is an art which when properly practiced works on the mind in many important ways. It constantly reveals things to the practitioner about his body and himself even after two or three decades of practice.

It is the main paradox of the martial arts that while one is learning how to destroy the human body one learns something deep about human nature. It is also a paradox that all Budo, though seemingly cruel, is in fact an "Arts of Peace.” How can someone who has trained countless hard hours and knows the depth of himself and his weaknesses still want to destroy another human being?

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