The Sad Story of Kai and Kan

I would like to follow the way of Karate,

such as life,

in the grace of the inherent truth

of the calm waving of pines.

Shoto

CAP. 1 - The Funeral

The foreigner was a man from a family of status. The funeral should be great and bring together people of diverse social levels.

Death did not surprise his old southern islander spirit, accoustomed to rites of passage and conversation with the world beyond. He was expecting it a long time. What amazed him was that the same destiny that cut short the lives of so many young men decided to prolong his life so many years beyond theirs.

- - Why? - he asked himself after the war, the terrible War - Why must I pass the rest of my days watching the incessant growth of this crowd that, for the sake of polishing the rough art of my homeland, joyfully delapidate it?

But that was, without doubt, the ill-luck that he had suffered since birth.

Born in 1868, the first year of the Meiji era - the turbulent transition period from samurai Nihon to modern Japan, he grew up seeing Japanese illuminism bleached, listening to an entire nation swearing allegiance to the new Emperor and His desire of openness to the Western civilization. In his youth he saw that euphoric wave now transformed into annexation and imperialism - China, Korea, Russia… In his mature years he sailed for Honshu, taking advantage of a second wave of curiosity for foreign things, brought about by the military servicemen returning from the imperial campaigns. He also watched broken-hearted the last wave of nationalistic spirit that would ultimately lead the nation to ruin, in 1945..

Tominakoshi, the deceased, traveled through a long, long life.... However, more than a long path, his life was a carefully pursued design.

Sadly now, everything seemed to indicate that the precious legacy of peace, truth and courage that he bequeathed, would not be enough to feed all the members of his family.

In the encounter their father's funeral organization had imposed on them, not only disparate personalities were confronted. The deaf conflict summarized the dualism of a whole nation forced to choose between its long tradition of learning, refining and selecting, and the uncontrollable desire of burning the old Holy Writs, tearing down borders in an attempt to reobtain a central role for the small islands in the new-found world.

Kai graduated at Waseda - the university of erudition in art and politics. Kan was formed at Takushoku - the college of expansionism and commercial success.

Facing the dilemma of choosing between Kai's capacity of being, and Kan's capacity of doing, the family council decided upon tradition - the funeral should be organized by Kai.

Still, Kan could not accept such a decision. Who gave Kai the privilege of arrogating himself heirdom of their father's last will? Kan was much more popular, and felt authorized by the wishes of all those, that despite being massacred in the war, yearned to show the world the potentialities of the Japanese nation. His father's art certainly deserved being divulged and offered to the whole world, and Kan, who worked so diligently with that goal in mind in the last years, felt that he was the right person to accomplish it.

- Damn them! They deny me the privilege of organizing my father's funeral? I curse them! I and all my pupils will not accept to stand by those people in the ceremony.

So that's how the funeral of Tominakoshi -- the master-poet who called himself Shoto, the foreigner who wanted to be accepted as fellow-countryman -- that was meant to be huge and congregate people of each lineage and stratum, was limited to solemn ceremonies, so superfluous in haughtiness as they lacked in the people's favor. These people who dressed the white judo Gi but wanted to be as popular as Kendo and, if possible, to be more respected than Sumo itself. The people who used Chinese techniques with Okinawan names translated to Japanese. The people who descended Fuji to scale Olympus. Those who intended to teach a new sport to the inventors of sport. These same people fulfilled, obediently, the will of Kan and, with a broken heart, were compelled to be absent from the funeral

CAP. 2 - A Cursed Name

After such a condemnable act Kan knew that he would be banished by his family, but what he could not imagine was that soon he would be forbidden to use his own family name:

- Who do they think they are to deny me the use of my family name? Shoto-kan is my name and even if the hand of scholars cannot write it, it will be spoken by people's mouth. Not only in Japan but all around the world! Today, I solemnly swear that in a few years Shoto-kan will be the most famous name in our family. Shoto-kai will be ignored and forgotten by all my descendants. Damn them!

Kan was not the kind of man who offers promises to the Kami. He offered his work to the people. With his bare hands he kneaded the clay, molded it up, burned it in fire and perfected the forms in ways never seen before. He adopted every modern Western science - anatomy, pedagogy and all the others - studied each of eagerly, and used them with enthusiasm. The spreading and commercialization of the product had not been forgotten, of course - he took care of the colors, the final looks and also a fair price. But of all the ingredients in this revigorating balsam for the spirit of thousands of postwar youngsters, anxious for challenges, two of them must be stressed: a strong emphasis on quality and adding a sport character. To seek excellence in performance, through an exigency, bordering on the unbearable, appealed to the collective memory of the samurai's spirit of refinement. The sport spirit, on the other hand, was the label that pleased the evermighty and omnipresent occupation forces. And what tremendous forces they must have been, to be capable of dethroning the direct inheritors of the gods, inheritance that all, for centuries, took for granted.

Only a few months after the funeral, Kan dared to defy his father's memory by organizing a championship in the biggest hall in Tokyo, it was large and had many participants, so much that the enthusiasm of the crowd would fill the pages of newspapers and Japanese magazines in every dojo in Japan.

Shortly after the Shoto family curse against Kan would turn against themselves: close and far Shoto relatives decided to organize their own sport competitions, some of which intended to rival, if not in success, at least in hardness and spectacularity, the more organized and each year ever popular, Kan sport competitions.

As the fame of Kan became international, invitations started appearing: periods of training abroad, book publishing, manuals and films, everything in English of course - the dominant language. The Western people, mainly English and North Americans, liked the way that Kan accepted to distance himself from the cultural traditions of his art (they were considered too close to the warrior culture of the defeated nation) transmuting it, unabashedly, into a sports activity such as basketball - understandable, logical and rational, easily digested by the general population.

Kai had no interest in any of this. Fame, notoriety, and a huge number of disciples, all this he despised. His dissenting voice, defending the traditional nature of the Art, was now inaudible amongst the uproar of the multitude and, maybe it was better that way… If his thesis were heard, they would certainly be ridiculed and invariably destroyed by the postwar current of opinion. This opinion, for example, was not at all prepared to accept that the same anticipation spirit, that the Japanese used with such destructive effectiveness in Pearl Harbour, could have something to do with this physical activity that they desired to possess and consume. The public asked for championships and competitions, tests of strength and dexterity, better each time, bigger each time, nothing more, nothing less…

CAP. 3 - The University Student

Far away from all of this was the youngest of the Shoto brothers. Also formed in Waseda and therefore nicknamed "the university student". Since his youth he showed that he possessed a strong leadership spirit and a great talent for his father's Art. The family encouraged him to try his fortune in USA and he, that initially had desired a different professional career, eventually became one of the most famous Masters of the Art of Shoto outside Japan.

Being of a faithful and meticulous character, he worked on, year after year, the English translation of his father's main book, not knowing that this edition would become the bible of all the scholars of the Art, definitively putting his name on the Art's board of honor.

Without offending any of his brothers, "the university student", even if he didn't excuse himself in organize sport competition test, for the sake of the North American taste, he did not hide his preference of the posture and ideals defended by Kai. He was one of the few that was aware of the mission that Kai embarked upon from the moment he felt endowed with the heavy inheritance of developing his father's Art.

The long distance that separate the two brothers did, by no means, diminish the deep admiration that they felt for each other.

CAP. 4 - Naked Belly, Hanging Arms

When people said that Kai, now, was lowering his arms in front of adversaries, he was one of the few that could interpret this attitude correctly:

- Don't be mistaken! His arms hanging along his body, without sketching neither guards nor protections, don't mean courage, not despondency.

He was one of the few who knew that Kai decided to boldly offer his abdomen to the fist attacks of all the ones that dared trying to knock him down. And the number of those who tried in vain was huge. Testing in this brutal manner the real effectiveness of the attacks, he finished concluding what he already suspected - all these punches, without exception, were absolutely ineffective.

One day, however, something surprising happened. It met one of the youngest Waseda students who decided to abandon, some years ago, the classic method of the Art, by consequence of divergences with a superior. So he left to the mountains, becoming hermit and hunter, finishing by becoming follower of a religious sect that had been popular in Japan before the great war. His physical posture and his disconcerting form of attack – loose and soft - occulted a tremendous effectiveness. At last Kai felt an attack really efficient. The effectiveness was felt "inside" more than not "outside", and it was felt sometime after the attack, sometimes hours, or even days, later…

Kai wanted to know more!

He was certain that the essence of what he was looking for was present in that form of attack. He was able to accomplish what rare persons do: he decided to become disciple after being Master, he relearned humbleness, and dared to reborn. Kai was a cultivated and fertile ground, where some seeds of the ancient Arts could root. Every one near watched, unconsciously, the accomplishment of Tominakoshi deepest dream: to transform the Art of Okinawa into a full-fledged member of the Japanese Budo! Would the Kami give him the honor and chance of materializing such a dream?

For a brief moment everything seemed to conjugate in the good way. Although the health did not help it, the receptive and innovative attitude of Kai attracted young practitioners of other Budo Arts who decided to try in their own bodies the teachings of Kai. The result of the work of this group was exceptional, a wonderful synthesis of old arts conjugating in a spirit of openness to innovation and investigation. True Masters of some of the most conservative arts, as Kyudo, while observing the practice one cannot avoid saying:

- In the continuous and fluid movements of that Keiko I wasn't able to find an aperture for attack.

Thus, by the end of the Sixties, by the time where the young French students lit a fuse of revolt against the establishment, the young disciples of Kai also dared to confront values instituted by the militarist hierarchy before the War. They reinvented naturalness of movements and freedom of gestures. In their bodies energy was able to flew again.

Even if the conservative Japanese culture was not totally prepared to accept this type of proposal, a different thing occurred in Europe and certain parts of America. The holistic and universalistic values that Kai defended were the same ones that the Occident was now looking for; the philosophy that he professed, that one that had been the root of the visible trunk of the Art during millenniums, was now a subject of investigation for many occidental scholars.

Many of the devoted disciples of the method of his brother - Kan - also recognized the genuine character of the new method. In a few years, the european followers of Kai were counted in tens of thousands and aspired to know the Master who became a symbol for them.

Unhappily, by this time, Kai was already incapacitated to demonstrate directly the sublime techniques that he developed. In the two short trips that he made to Europe, the terrible illness that has pursued him for long and aggravated, making it impossible for him to walk and preventing him to demonstrate physically the Art. He must restrained himself to help his young disciples to develop their own paths and writing… He was insistently asked to write a book, which may translate the essence of the Art, far beyond the technical aspects. And he eventually made it.

This book, launched in English, was an enormous worldwide success and quickly came to depletion. All around the world the most devoted students and historians of the Art leaned over this work and the brilliant evolutions that Kai dared to consider, finishing recognizing the gigantic step that he decided to undertake. And this step was a double movement rewinding in the past, fetching back the forgotten traditions of Budo, and, at the same time, a courageous advance to the future, launching seeds that would germinate in new Arts of body and movement.

The time of Kai arrived after all. But his life, pursued by an inexorable illness, was getting to the end. He would not live time enough to acknowledge the impact of his work in so many scholars of the Art. The inevitable consummates: the tenuous flame of his life was slowly fainting, and one day, despite the desperation of his pupils that yearned him to transmit to the world everything he had discovered, it softly extinguished.

Cap. 5 - A Black Mantle

One of the bitterest pains felt after the death of Kai belonged to the one that, most honourably, decided to preface the only written work of his oldest brother. The "university student" seized that chance to say to the world who was by inheritance and fact, the successor of the old southern islander and, with simple and firm words, he disclosed this reality to the world:

- The successor of Tominakoshi Sensei in the ancestral Art of the bare hands is Senior Kai.

And now while he contemplated the lifeless face of his brother these words resounded in his mind with an echo of tragedy. The "college student" was by then acquainted with these occult forces of the human mind, the dirty feeling of not supporting a pure enchantment, wrap it with a black mantle and burying it in a bottomless grave.

Who was then so laboriously engaged in the process of deleting every historical trace of the genial work of Kai?

Would it be Kan, the brother-enemy?

No! By then he already recognized the error of selling the soul to those who have now abandoned him as a used book. His grievous expression, revealed his realizing that the enthusiasm of his beautiful idea was ready consumed in a few years, like straw fire. In the pyre of dispute for podium rest the ashes of the beautiful values of the Art taught to him by his father.

The last years of Kan were sad. He went too far through a path, and he knew that he would not have the time to tread it back. Worse than this, although he accomplished the first dream of his father, to expand the art throughout the world, although millions have followed him, he does not know how to face his father when he finally met him…

No! By one of these laborious weaves of destiny, it was not Kan who was now pledged to delete the genius of the workmanship of Kai from history.

Those who are laboring to delete the footprints from the track, those that move away the disciples from home, while the world most dedicated students of the Art loose themselves, find and loose themselves again in the wonderful discoveries of Kai, those who, inexplicably destroy all the proposals, all the innovations, all the clues, those who systematically burn all the vestiges of this wonderful accomplishment until nothing more remained than a tenuous memory of the magnificent brightness of bygone times, are the sames that, after all, call themselves:

- The Shoto and Kai friends.

And yet, brought from the southern sea, the winged seeds of the brave pine insist on falling over the sad tombs of Kai and Kan.

José Patrão, 2001-11-18