Karate Around the World | ART OF ONE DOJO

[Music] last week since they used skate nagano a karate coach in japan and host of the karate dojo waku youtube channel joined us and talked about the traditions of teaching shotokan karate in japan today he's with us to share his exploration of other karate styles and martial arts around the world well thank you for being here sensei um you've been doing a lot of effort in your channel taking the time to kind of step out of your own system of shotokan and explore other martial arts and your reaction to that can you tell us a little bit about your experience and what you've seen and learned so far right um it's been very interesting so far because i've known shotokan just shotokan for like eight years since i started karate so i never imagined myself learning other styles and it's common to just do one style in japan so it's been a very unique experience overall and it's especially interesting to see um styles that's that branch off from shotokan such as uh i was so surprised to see something like that in korea i never imagined and you know styles that um are in the states as well so i'm still deciding on with deciding whether i should learn those seriously or not but it's always fun especially when you spar to take those you know different techniques from other styles that aren't so far away from what you do because some that's something you can just take in without that much effort so it's it's been very fun so it's something like tungsten you mentioned so toxido is based very heavily on shotokan correctly so do you see a lot of similarities or are there any like strange deviations that kind of were unexpected i think they're very very similar and um however the footwork is slightly different um shudokan has a very heavy emphasis on the relaxation of the knee having your pelvis upright and you know pushing with the back leg and those little ticking technical parts which makes a huge difference between the black belts or not even the back belts but the very very good karateka and the beginners but i didn't see those on emphasize so much in um tungsten so maybe the founder didn't think that was useful or maybe it just got um deleted in the history i'm not so sure but um those little part um things i think is the main difference when you see it from far away i don't think you can tell the difference but when you see up close and if you have experience on either side of it i think there are no small techniques that are different in the background now you recently traveled to okinawa what was that experience oh yeah it was my fault i've been toki now a lot of times for vacation you know the beaches there are just amazing so i mean i used to go there a lot but then for karate it was my first time going and it was a lot more laid back that was my first impression in um in japan a lot of the karate schools um are very very strict i guess um to the western audience um so that the western audience can imagine it like when you go in you have to be respectful like you have to you have to switch uh mentally after entering the dojo like you have to bow um like like i mentioned and in the other video you have to put your stuff very neatly um when you talk to the sensei you have to be respectful and i wouldn't say like it's not it's not like an army but it's almost like entering an arm is very strict but uh i thought that was what the expectation was from this teacher so i went in just like that and the teacher was just like no no just sit down let's have a little chat so i was like okay that's how it is here so it's a i mean it used to be a different country a kingdom there it's all too so some of the okinawans um still have their pride in in their culture and they differentiate themselves from japan so the culture was a lot different they're more laid back they want another person it's like karate is really something they do daily it's very um yeah very relaxed so i mean i personally liked it because it's something so new to me so just a quick curiosity so like okinawa um karate started in okinawa and then went to japan were there any influences in japanese karate that went back to okinawa um like i would say yes um regarding terms um like uh technical terms um in okinawa when they said uh well in in japan uh or i was in mainland japan we say kok tsudachi for back stances zheng tsudachi for front stances kipatachi or kodachi for the horse stance however in okinawa those didn't exist they just said put the weight at the back or put the weight at the front how to wait in the middle that's how they just described it there wasn't like a like a term to explain things for punches we have something like oiseki kakuzaki but in okinawa they just said i'll just just punch or just punch with the breakfast it was it was like that so i i'm not sure what it was but it got influenced um from the japanese language too so i would say that's one um technical aspects i don't think there has been a huge influence i think they've been going on on their own um we are i think that's the main that's the main influence of course the okinawan karate has been putting in a lot of influence or i guess that's the origin of the japanese um styles so you can see that back tour but the other way around not so much i guess so basically a lot of things you wouldn't notice unless you actually went there were able to compare the two right i never i never imagined something like that it was after talking to the okinawa masters and there aren't a lot of um japanese videos or japanese books um explaining about the differences between okinawa and japanese karate so unless you go there and talk to somebody in person it's very hard to actually learn it within your head let me ask you this so when you decide to look at another art that's not your own if you want to experience something new do you have a particular criteria and how you choose which art you're going to look at next and you go in with the mindset of trying to compare it to shotikan are you trying to go in completely blind and take it in all as new as for the forms when a martial art has forms [Music] i i compare it to shotokan or to the okinawan karate styles because that's that's what i know only so and also if you look at the person's movement you can tell how much work they've been putting into it regardless of the style so i guess that wouldn't be a style comparison but it would be like a practitioner comparison when you see somebody do a i think i recently did a uh karate a very i think it's american um karate style i did a uh like a reaction analysis video on that and i i think i did three three people and there were obviously um skill differences and that's something you can pick up if you do martial arts so i guess yeah that that part for kata for forms for um sparring kumite um i think i unconsciously think about whether i can implement it to my sparring or not so i have my set of ways of doing the sparring and techniques like um like boxing punches still i don't have a lot of experience so it's very hard for me to come up with the equation of how can i um combine these together but for let's say taekwondo the our distance is very similar so their kicks are very i guess rather easier for me to combine so those um for sure i like that you said that i like that you said that you look at their kumite and you're doing it for the purpose to draw ideas from as opposed to trying to impose your expectations on them because there's a lot of tendency for people to want to criticize other arts but i like that i like that you're doing another viewpoint that you're trying to draw inspiration from it i think that's fantastic and i think that's honestly what more people should be doing in the martial arts i i i just want to thank you for that oh no no i never thought about doing the opposite so all critiquings all over youtube yeah oh i i sense that and i don't like it so that's why i want to stay away from it yeah yeah and there's no reason there's no reason to think your style is absolute because nothing is absolute things change so exactly well i just want to say that i love that that you're being so positive about it that you're trying to draw more knowledge i think that's i think that is the goal of what we're doing here basically yeah i think so too yeah thank you so i have to ask what's the most curious thing you've seen in another martial art i did four or three or four videos on iaido which is the art of the sword in japan and the master that i talked to he was a he had a different um i don't want to use the word aura but he had a different feel what i mean is in other martial arts where sparring is very common like taekwondo chinese like wushu and those i guess martial arts or something like you do where sparring is i guess allowed or very common we have this common understanding that sparring is something it works as a way of communication so you spar you sense the other people and you become friends through sparring but when the martial art doesn't have sparring such as iaido if you spar you're dead so those those martial arts um their focus on i guess like completing or i guess practicing the technique it's for the purpose of actually killing so it's at such a high level that you can't really approach them so casually if you know what i mean you know seeing those people and um if you guys um know kudobi world which is a martial arts uh youtube channel uh a japanese one there is a one says sensei he does um chinese martial arts and he i i never met him in person but he has that same feel like if if you were to spar him it's it's literally a life or death situation you really have to put in that much energy and that decision is that heavy and so see i never imagined something like that um to be in the martial world since coming from shotokan shotokan does sparring so that was something very eye-opening and very scary to be honest like i don't know if i would be able to go on to that stage at all until i die so that's something very interesting for me absolutely because like like even here um we have schools that will hold open sparring days like they encourage people from other arts to come in and it's all about you know learning from each other having a good you know friendly sparring match improving so like when you're describing that that's actually can be very jarring and very intense so it's actually interesting that you've encountered that i never kind of um i never considered that myself that walking through school like that so they don't so you're saying they don't have that friendly camaraderie sparring it's they're training hard and you're gonna better train hard with them they would be talking to you very nicely very casually but their eyes are just scary they're not laughing yeah so yeah you would it's not a game it's not a game at all and it's it's not like they're a mukdojo some people might call it the mcdonald's but it's not it's not when you see the person and when you see the him in person you know you really cannot myself mess with him so you also mentioned that um you're still looking around but you haven't decided that if there's anything that you want to pursue seriously but have you come across in the arts that you looked at you're like oh that would actually mend or blend very well with shotokan or something that you think would complement shogukon more so than other arts like the style itself or from a competitive aspect well coming from a shotokan train you're back on the shotokan have you seen any other arts that you've been like you know what we don't have that or that might help me with this or i'd like to blend that because anything jumped out at you that you found interesting that you think that would work well to incorporate into your own training i think i think the the closest one and the easiest one would be the okinawan styles so like shorting you i think would be very good uh we have some similar katas um and the way they execute the technique is um it's a little bit different like the way they relax the body the way they do the kicks um they're all they're just slight differences but i think it um complements very well in shotokan when you punch you make a kime so you punch like this but then in okinawan showing you their punch is a little bit more like they relaxed it elbow and it's more pulled back so those uh differences when you you know learn that you learn how to okay you i can relax this much if i do shorting do so maybe when i do shotokan i can you know get that down to like thirty percent and apply to my skills something like that so shortening you would be one option um i would say um that itf taekwondo i think would be good as well their katas are very similar too and they focus a lot a little bit more on dropping down and shotokan were told to keep the head at the same level and use the extension of the knee to generate power um however um in it i think they call it a tool homsey is for wtf the one in the olympics um they go up so when the legs are apart when they when they go together they go up and then they when they step forward they go down and by using this up and down motion they change this this falling gravity to this forward momentum and they're very used to doing that so although we are taught not to get the head up it's just one way to use the body and they're sparring like i mentioned it's very similar um wtf uh taekwondo is very light so if you touch you get a point so i don't think that's very um something we can use in shotokan but itf takundo they actually hit and the techniques are quite similar so that's something i think will um complement or benef um become very beneficial for surprise speaking of beneficial i saw one of your episodes that i thought was really fun when you covered the virtual sparring event i thought that was really creative and that got me thinking because you did that and i had never seen that before but um i did an episode a little while back about using virtual reality headsets and see if that would implement or or complement sparring or karate at all so my question is is there any technology like now you know we're in a time where we've got zoom meetings and there's a lot of different programs out there virtual reality is there any technology coming up or technology that we have now that you think helps or is going to help the martial arts or or even heard it um i think the maybe in like five years ar is going to have a pretty large effect on learning martial arts and learning something physical because i do zoom and you know it's two-dimensional so but if if the ar um technology advances then i'll be able to project myself like in star wars and project my own body into students in a living room and they can they can move to see the different angles of a sensei's body which is amazing what i have to do right now is when i want to show my body from the side i move to the side and then when i want to show my body from the front i move to the front and i angle myself but that's only from my context if the student wants to you know see myself from the side when i'm facing them then they can freely do that and you know maybe with the finger like tony stark does they just do this and then zoom in and when that happens that's a breakthrough so i'm very looking forward to that it'll be very expensive in the first few years i'm sure but when it comes very um very cheap i'm gonna be the first one to do in this martial arts world so i'm very i'll totally sign up for that because i think that's because you're right there's a huge difference being able to just change an angle and see a better detail than you would on the flat screen i mean that that is a huge benefit i think it'll be easier even um to see in ar because if you're in an actual classroom sometimes you know when everybody's focused and standing in the same spot it's very hard for just you to move around and see the from a different angle and you can't zoom in but if it's ar then just spin and then just you know zoom and nobody's i mean you're you're in your own space so i you're not going to feel pressure to do the same like others so i i and and it's also you know you can still have conversations so i think it's very very good well speaking of technology and connectivity like that with the internet these days we've got youtube channels there seems to be a lot of even though we all have basically the same anatomy and martial arts vary so much from culture to the country there seems to be a lot of attitudes online about whose arts better and the better way to do it what are some things that are things that you think people should keep in mind in terms of when they look at other arts like what should they be aware of you know what are some prejudices that they should leave behind like just any any advice or attitudes going in looking at someone else's martial art well first of all i think it's okay to have that um that critical way of looking at other martial arts i i think it's okay because i think their goal is to perfect their art so when they see other martial arts it's not aligned with their martial arts so i think it's natural for them to react back to it but for people i think the battle the reason why there's a battle is because um there are people that think of martial art as a way to get themselves better or get themselves stronger and the focus is on them and not the style so for those it's it's so natural to just take different bits and pieces from other martial arts so i think it's just a perspective difference and i mean i'm on the latter side so when i see people critiquing um other styles i like my first reaction would be why is he saying that but then when you think deeply about it well their main focus is to just do show tokens so i mean there's no use persuading them to become open-minded i mean i i hope they do but it's not something i would force them to do as long as you're doing the work if you're just you know saying something bad about other styles just why not spend that time on doing 10 more punches so can you give us any hints are there any particular arts that you're looking forward to investigating or do you have anything coming up that we can uh look forward to um i um after the olympics i will be interviewing the top karateka in japan i can't tell who because it's not fixed yet but i will hopefully get um some of them on my channel at their interview so please look forward to that one and um i i'm hopefully going to be going back to okinawa later this year when the when when it's like fall winter because okinawa summers are just too hot i don't want to go there so maybe like um i don't know september is still hot um november somewhere there you might see a second series and here and there i will be going to other styles like itf taekwondo and other styles of shotokan such as which is a full body armor karate style it's different from kyokushin it's um it comes from uh maybe you've heard of the name khan in this stuff i've heard of it yeah it seems um shudokan was originally in in tokyo but then a lot of people brought it to i think mexico uh there's a huge shudokan community and in the states as well but the one in tokyo it's dead now we don't have it in japan anymore and it's only in in other countries and but sudokun changed um the members are still there so they changed its name to uh lim bukai and they have their whole armor their headgear is different and it's closer so think of it as shotokan full contact they there are styles like that in japan so i look forward to going to those dojos to do it so that one i can tell you that i will do well something just again i want to say thank you so much for spending your time today i think it's absolutely wonderful what you're doing like so you're expanding out you're looking at other arts and you're exposing your viewers to more arts out there and opening up their ideas so i just think that's absolutely wonderful and just want to thank you for your hard work and thank you for being on our show today thank you so much once again i'd like to extend a big thank you to sensei yusuke nagano i really enjoyed this collaboration and i appreciate his time to share his experiences with us if you didn't see last week's video i definitely recommend it and i've linked it in the description below and also please visit his karate dojo waku channel there you can find our discussions comparing american kenpo to traditional karate among other fantastic videos in this library as an exclusive episode for our patreon subscribers and youtube memberships i talked with sensei in a special off-the-mat interview that's a very funny question it's so weird to be talking about this but visit us on patreon or click the join button below for access [Music] you