The Misconception of Historical Analysis in the Martial Arts

by Ken Warner
December, 2003

It is all too easy to imagine martial arts history as one homogenous, smooth line, from the earliest fighting arts of hundreds or even thousands of years ago to today. I always fall into this trap myself. We hear that the early Okinawans learned Chinese Chuan Fa, and that they called their art "Tode," or China hand because it came from China, and we unconsciously tend to assume this means the Okinawans were therefore practicing a carbon copy of what those Chinese were doing. Clearly this is false.

I can use my own lineage as an example. At our schools, we have introduced a set of fighting drills to our Kempo. After years of practicing these drills and thinking about these drills, one comes to some powerful conclusions about the principles of fighting. These conclusions cannot help but have an effect on the techniques we are doing even if we do not consciously alter those techniques.

My Kempo teacher, Master Steve DeMasco, did not teach such drills. He believed that if you teach a student self defense techniques, the student will become good at self defense. Can it be said that he and I practice and teach the same art?

The system DeMasco learned came from Professor Nick Cerio. But I know that in his techniques DeMasco was always striving to achieve a level of control over his opponent's body that does not seem to have occurred to Professor Cerio. Did those two men practice the same art?

Professor Nick Cerio added a dozen techniques and half a dozen forms to the system that he inherited - a system that came from Victor Gascon. But he also kept the techniques and forms that he inherited from his instructor. Was he practicing the same art as his instructor?

And Victor Gascon and his contemporaries put together 1-5 Kata based on shorter sets taught in Adriano Emperado's original Kajukenbo, and the first twelve combinations based on variations of those techniques taught in Kajukenbo. Was Gascon still practicing something called "Kajukenbo?"

There is no doubt at all that our art comes from Kajukenbo. But can we say that we are practicing Kajukenbo? At what point did the core, the heart of what we are practicing change?

There are no answers to these questions. But the questions do make one realize that martial arts history works quite differently from the way we may assume that it works. When we say that the early Okinawans practiced "China Hand," does that mean they were practicing something Chinese? Maybe, maybe not. But they were clearly not practicing a carbon copy of what came before.

The same holds true for every art. Judo, for example, was formulated based on different ryu of Japanese Jujutsu. But those ryu had their history based in the ancient Japanese warrior families. Those warriors also practiced archery and fought with Katanas. But today when one trains in Judo in North America, one does not generally learn archery or Kendo at the same time.

Martial arts change and evolve. They grow over time. And this is a good thing.