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Musings on Japanese and Ryukyu Budo
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 Recently I heard, once again, that the word “sin” originally comes from archery. To sin, apparently, means “to miss the mark”. You loose the arrow, fail to hit the centre of the target and — there you have it — the human condition explained in one beautifully simple image. There is only one problem. It is not actually the origin of the English word sin. Indeed, rather wonderfully, the explanation itself misses the mark. Yet dismissing it completely would also be a mistake, because hidden inside the bad etymology is a much more interesting story — one involving Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Jesus, Augustine and nearly two thousand years of theological development. The metaphor may be defensible. The etymology is not. The English Word Never Owned a Bow. English sin comes from Old English synn, already referring to wrongdoing, guilt or transgression. It belongs to a Germanic family of words and was never, as far as we know, a technical expression for someone who was having a bad afternoon at the archery range. The famous “missing the mark” connection comes instead from languages behind the biblical tradition. The ancient Greek verb ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō) can genuinely mean “to miss” or “to miss the mark”. Classical examples include missing with a thrown weapon, but the word also broadens into failing, erring and getting something wrong (Liddell, Scott and Jones, 1940). Likewise, the Hebrew root חטא (ḥṭʾ), frequently associated with sin and wrongdoing, can literally describe missing. Judges 20:16 describes extraordinarily skilled slingers who could aim at a hair and not miss — using this very root. So something real lies behind the story. But “these ancient words could describe missing” is very different from saying: The English word sin means missing an archery target. Interesting metaphor. Wrong genealogy. But What Word Did Jesus Use? And this is where things become much more interesting. Jesus did not teach in modern English. More importantly, he probably did not normally teach in Greek either. The historical consensus is that Jesus and his disciples primarily spoke Palestinian Aramaic, within a multilingual world in which Hebrew and Greek were also present (Black, 1957; Casey, 1999). Yet our canonical Gospels were written in Greek. That means that when we read hamartia — usually translated into English as “sin” — we are already at least one linguistic step removed from the ordinary spoken language of Jesus. We therefore cannot simply declare that “Jesus said sin means missing the mark”. We do not possess recordings of his Aramaic. What we can say is more interesting. Jesus inhabited a Semitic linguistic and religious world in which what modern English compresses into the single word sin belonged to a broader family of ideas: wrongdoing, failure, transgression, debt, broken obligation and damaged relationship. Even the Lord's Prayer reveals this fluidity. Matthew asks God to forgive our debts; Luke speaks of forgiving our sins, while immediately returning to the language of debt. Already the conceptual world is larger than one English word. Perhaps we should therefore be cautious whenever someone tells us what “sin really means”. Which sin? In which language? At which point in history? Then the Story Travels Again Jesus' Semitic world becomes the Greek world of the New Testament. Greek Christianity subsequently becomes, in Western Europe, increasingly Latin Christianity. And the dominant Latin word becomes peccatum. Then, centuries after Jesus, comes Augustine. Augustine did not invent the idea that humanity was somehow damaged by the Fall. Earlier Christian thinkers had wrestled with Adam, death and the damaged human condition. But Augustine gave original sin — peccatum originale an enormously influential Western formulation, eventually understanding Adam's fault as something inherited by humanity itself (Matthews, 2024). And here language matters again. One of Augustine's crucial texts was Romans 5:12. Augustine worked principally from Latin biblical texts, and the Latin wording available to him could be understood as saying that humanity sinned “in” Adam. The underlying Greek more naturally permits the sense that death spread to humanity “because all sinned”. Scholars continue to debate Paul's precise argument and the history of the doctrine, so it would be far too simple to claim that original sin was created by one grammatical mistake. Nevertheless, Augustine's Latin reading of Romans 5:12 unquestionably became important in the development of the Western doctrine (Pagels, 1988; Harrison, 2026). And suddenly our little word has travelled an enormous distance. Hebrew and Aramaic religious thought ↓ the spoken world of Jesus ↓ Greek Gospel texts ↓ hamartia ↓ Latin Christianity ↓ peccatum ↓ Augustine's peccatum originale ↓ medieval Western theology ↓ English: SIN That is quite a journey to squeeze into three letters. Did Something Change Along the Way? This is the question that interests me far more than whether somebody once missed an arrow. I increasingly wonder whether something became narrowed during that journey. Not because Hebrew or Aramaic contained some pristine theology subsequently corrupted by wicked translators. Languages do not work like that, and translation is unavoidable. But translation is also interpretation. Over centuries, Western Christianity increasingly developed a powerful juridical vocabulary around sin:
There are profound theological traditions behind these ideas, and human beings are obviously capable of deliberate cruelty for which “oops, I missed the mark” would be grotesquely inadequate. Yet I wonder whether the predominance of guilt sometimes caused us to lose something equally biblical.
Again and again, the movement of the Gospel is not simply: Guilty. Sentence passed. It is: See. Turn. Rise. Follow. Begin again. That seems rather different. Original Sin — or Original Imperfection? And this is where original sin becomes particularly interesting. If sin itself carries centuries of accumulated theological meaning, attaching the word original to it can suggest something terrifying: that something is fundamentally wrong with us simply because we are human. Perhaps that idea has sometimes done more spiritual harm than we acknowledge. People genuinely seeking connection with the divine have too often been taught first to distrust themselves: their bodies, desires, doubts, failures and human limitations. Yet Christianity simultaneously makes an extraordinary claim. God became human. Not apparently human. Not temporarily disguised as human. Human. And the Gospel narratives do not protect Jesus from the darker limits of that experience. On the Cross he cries: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yes, these are the opening words of Psalm 22, and generations of theologians have quite properly explored that connection. But the Gospel writers nevertheless allow the words to remain. Jesus experiences and voices the terrifyingly human experience of divine absence. Christian scripture does not edit that moment out. Perhaps, then, being frightened, uncertain, limited, grieving — even wondering where God has gone — is not evidence of some fundamental defect separating humanity from the divine. Jesus himself entered that territory. That possibility seems to me much closer to the Gospel than a spirituality built principally upon human self-disgust. Back to the Target And perhaps this is why, despite everything, I still rather like the “missing the mark” metaphor. Anyone who has practised budō seriously understands it.
So no, the English word sin does not mean “to miss the mark”. The internet etymology is wrong. But perhaps the metaphor survived because somewhere inside it lies a truth that became harder to hear beneath centuries of accumulated theology.
Sometimes simply because being human means never seeing the whole target clearly. And perhaps the question Jesus asks is not whether we have somehow succeeded in becoming something other than human. Perhaps it is whether, in all our unfinished humanity, we are still willing to turn towards the divine. To see where the arrow landed. To learn. To return. And to pick up another. 日本語要約 —「罪」とは本当に「的を外す」という意味なのか英語の sin（罪） という言葉は、もともと弓術で「的を外す」という意味だった、と説明されることがあります。 しかし、これは語源としては正しくありません。 英語の sin は古英語の synn に由来し、弓術とは直接関係がありません。 ところが、この説明が完全な作り話というわけでもありません。 聖書で「罪」と訳される古代ギリシア語の hamartia / hamartanō には、「外す」「失敗する」「誤る」という意味があります。また、旧約聖書のヘブライ語 ḥṭʾ にも、「的を外す」という具体的な意味で使われる例があります。 しかし、さらに重要なのは、イエス自身は主にアラム語を話していたということです。 私たちが現在読む福音書はギリシア語で書かれています。 つまり、 イエスのセム語的世界 から ギリシア語 へ、 そして後には ラテン語 へ、 さらにヨーロッパの諸言語へと、 「罪」という概念は長い旅をしてきました。 特に西方キリスト教では、アウグスティヌスによって「原罪（original sin）」という考え方が大きく発展しました。 その過程で「罪」は、失敗、方向を失うこと、壊れた関係という意味だけではなく、罪責、裁き、罰、そして人間が生まれながらに背負う状態として理解されるようになっていきました。 もちろん、人間には意図的に他人を傷つける行為があります。それを単なる「失敗」で済ませることはできません。 しかし私は、後世のキリスト教が時として「人間であることそのもの」に罪悪感を持たせすぎたのではないか、と考えることがあります。 福音書のイエスは、不完全な人々に何度も出会います。 失敗した人。 恐れている人。 社会から拒絶された人。 間違った人。 それでも彼の言葉は、多くの場合、 立ちなさい。 向きを変えなさい。 もう一度歩きなさい。 という方向へ向かいます。 そして十字架の上で、イエス自身も、 「わが神、わが神、なぜ私をお見捨てになったのですか」 と叫びます。 これは詩篇22篇からの言葉でもあります。 しかし同時に、福音書はイエスが人間として経験した苦しみ、孤独、そして神が見えなくなる瞬間を消してはいません。 キリスト教が本当に「神が人間になった」と主張するのであれば、人間の限界そのものを単純に罪と考えることには、どこか矛盾があるのではないでしょうか。 武道では、私たちは何度も「的を外します」。 間合いを誤る。 タイミングを誤る。 姿勢を崩す。 心が乱れる。 技を無理にかけようとする。 しかし、失敗したからといって、その人間そのものが否定されるわけではありません。 失敗を見る。 原因を考える。 礼をする。 元の場所に戻る。 そして、もう一度稽古する。 もしかすると「恩寵（grace）」というものも、少しそれに似ているのかもしれません。 矢が中心に当たったふりをすることではありません。 失敗を無視することでもありません。 矢がどこに落ちたのかを正直に見ること。 そこから学ぶこと。 そして、もう一本の矢を手に取ること。 人間であることを捨てて神に近づくのではなく、 不完全な人間のまま、それでも神の方向へ向き直ること。 もしかすると、そこに「罪」と「恩寵」を考えるための、より古く、そしてより人間的な道が残っているのかもしれません。 References Black, M. (1957) ‘The Recovery of the Language of Jesus’, New Testament Studies, 3(4), pp. 305–313. Casey, M. (1999) Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liddell, H.G., Scott, R. and Jones, H.S. (1940) A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pagels, E. (1988) Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. New York: Random House. Stinton, T.C.W. (1975) ‘Hamartia in Aristotle and Greek Tragedy’, The Classical Quarterly, 25(2), pp. 221–254. The Hebrew Bible, Judges 20:16. The New Testament, Matthew 6:12; 27:46; Luke 11:4; Romans 5:12.  Work reviewed: Sukhoverkhov, A.V., Klimenko, A.A. and Tkachenko, A.S. (2021) ‘The influence of Daoism, Chan Buddhism and Confucianism on the theory and practice of East Asian martial arts’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 48(2), pp. 235–246. Returning to the Question of What Budō IsAfter almost forty years travelling the road of budō, I have become increasingly suspicious of simple explanations of what budō is. Perhaps this is one consequence of remaining with a practice for long enough: certainty gives way to complexity. This question has become particularly immediate as I work towards establishing a budō club in Waterford. I repeatedly encounter familiar propositions: budō is violence; budō teaches discipline; budō is self-defence; traditional Japanese budō is ineffective in a ‘real fight’. None of these claims is entirely without foundation. Yet none is sufficient. I do not believe that budō itself teaches discipline, humility, courage or virtue. Budō simply is. Meaning emerges through the practitioner’s engagement with it, mediated by teachers, communities, histories and particular cultural understandings. A dō provides a road; it does not determine what the traveller becomes. This is perhaps especially difficult to communicate when budō is removed from the East Asian intellectual milieu within which the idea of a ‘way’ developed. The road extends simultaneously outwards and inwards. Outwardly, one encounters distance, timing, technique, another body and, ultimately, the problem of violence. Inwardly, one encounters fear, ego, attachment, impatience, failure, responsibility and self-understanding. These are not two distinct journeys. They continually fold back upon one another. Plato’s Cave offers one analogy; the Buddhist and Jain parable of people encountering different parts of an elephant offers another. Each apprehends something genuine, yet mistakes a partial encounter for the whole. It was with precisely this problem in mind that I returned to Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko (2021). Philosophy as Martial Practice The authors examine three intellectual traditions—Daoism, Chan Buddhism and Confucianism—and argue that their importance to East Asian martial culture lies not merely in abstract doctrine but in their practical embodiment. Daoism informs concepts of softness, adaptation and non-forcing; Chan Buddhism contributes ideas of equanimity, non-attachment and perceptual clarity; Confucianism provides a language of propriety, obligation and socially situated ethical conduct (Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko, 2021). Their treatment of Daoism is organised principally around wuwei (無為) and ziran (自然). They connect these concepts to yielding, conserving energy, avoiding unnecessary opposition and adapting to an opponent’s movement rather than imposing a predetermined response (Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko, 2021, pp. 237–240). This is among the article’s most persuasive discussions because the philosophical language corresponds readily with embodied martial experience. What appears ‘natural’ in an experienced practitioner is rarely natural in the sense of unlearned. It is accumulated practice rendered increasingly tacit. Ziran may therefore be understood as cultivated naturalness: considerable effort transformed into apparently effortless action. The discussion of Chan Buddhism shifts attention from movement towards consciousness. The authors emphasise non-attachment, composure and the capacity to perceive circumstances without becoming overwhelmed by fear or fixation upon outcome (Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko, 2021, pp. 241–242). Non-attachment, importantly, is not indifference. In martial terms, it suggests engagement without psychological captivity: acting seriously while remaining sufficiently free from the desire to win, the fear of losing or the need to preserve an image of oneself. Confucianism introduces a rather different dimension. Through li—ritual propriety—and through ideas of duty, education and social responsibility, the authors locate martial practice within relationships rather than within the isolated individual. Their discussion of bunbu ryōdō, the complementary cultivation of martial and literary accomplishment, is particularly valuable because it complicates the modern tendency to measure martial worth principally through combative effectiveness (Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko, 2021, pp. 242–243). Strengths, Limitations and the Wider Field The article’s principal strength is its refusal to treat philosophy simply as ornament. It asks how ideas become bodily dispositions, ways of perceiving and forms of social conduct. In this respect, it sits productively within contemporary martial arts studies, which increasingly treats martial practice as cultural, embodied and socially produced rather than merely as a collection of fighting techniques. Its weakness lies in historical compression. At times the relationship between philosophical traditions and martial systems appears more direct and coherent than the evidence warrants. The narratives surrounding Zhang Sanfeng, the crane and snake, or the willow yielding beneath snow are powerful pedagogical stories, but philosophical usefulness should not be confused with historical provenance (Sukhoverkhov, Klimenko and Tkachenko, 2021, pp. 237–238). The authors recognise that some of these accounts are legendary and that distinctions such as ‘internal’ and ‘external’ martial arts are historically problematic, but this methodological distinction deserved greater prominence. Indeed, this may suggest a more fruitful reading of such material. Martial myths need not be discarded simply because their historicity is uncertain. They may instead be read as evidence of how communities subsequently chose to understand, legitimise and transmit their practice. Myth can reveal meaning without necessarily revealing origin. Directions for Further Research The paper consequently opens several worthwhile avenues for further enquiry. Ethnographic research could examine how concepts such as wuwei, non-attachment and li are interpreted within contemporary dojo rather than assuming that their textual meanings translate straightforwardly into practice. Comparative work might explore whether the same philosophical language acquires different meanings across kendō, jūdō, aikidō, karate and Chinese martial traditions, and how those meanings alter when practices move between East Asian and European cultural settings. Pedagogy deserves particular attention. If budō does not automatically create disciplined, humble or ethical people, then the instructor and training culture become analytically significant. Research might ask when hierarchy cultivates responsibility and when it produces conformity; when ritual promotes attentiveness and when it becomes empty performance; and whether proclaimed values are actually visible in relations between senior and junior practitioners. That returns me to Waterford. The significant question is not whether budō ‘teaches discipline’ or ‘works in a real fight’. Those are fragments of a much larger phenomenon. The deeper question concerns what practitioners make of the road and what kinds of practice, relationships and understandings emerge while travelling it. Budō does not guarantee wisdom. It offers a path upon which wisdom, vanity, fear, courage, insight and self-deception may all be encountered. The path moves both outwards and inwards. What we make of that journey remains our responsibility. 日本語この論文を改めて読んだのは、現在ウォーターフォードで武道クラブを立ち上げようとする中で、「武道とは何か」という問いに再び向き合っているからである。約40年間この道を歩いてきた私にとって、武道を「暴力」「規律」「護身」「実戦性」のいずれか一つで説明することはできない。どの見方も一部は正しいが、全体ではない。私は、武道そのものが自動的に規律や徳を教えるとは考えない。武道はただ存在し、そこに意味を与えるのは実践者であり、その意味形成には指導者、共同体、歴史、文化が関わる。Sukhoverkhovらは、道教の無為・自然、禅の非執着と平静、儒教の礼・義務・社会的責任が武術の実践にどのように関わってきたかを論じる。本論文の最大の強みは、哲学を装飾的な思想ではなく、身体、知覚、行動として捉える点にある。一方、張三豊や柳の逸話などでは、象徴的物語と歴史的起源が接近し過ぎる危険も見られる。今後は、こうした思想が現代の道場でどのように解釈され、実践されているかを民族誌的・比較的に研究する必要がある。武道という「道」は外へ向かう技術の道であると同時に、内へ向かう自己認識の道でもある。その道が何を生み出すかは、武道そのものではなく、私たちがどのように歩むかにかかっている。 Sept. 25, 2026Dysgraphia Is Real. But Are We Treating the Symptom Instead of Teaching the Skill?25/9/2026
 Writing difficulties, reasonable accommodations, and the uncomfortable question of whether we still teach children how to write. Since returning to Ireland after many years teaching internationally, I have become increasingly interested in what appears to be a significant difficulty with writing among some secondary-school students. The observation is necessarily anecdotal and should be treated as such. Nevertheless, I have encountered students who are articulate, intellectually engaged and capable of sophisticated oral discussion, yet who struggle considerably when required to convert those ideas into sustained written language. Handwriting can be slow or difficult to decipher, spelling remains insecure, sentences lack control, paragraphs struggle for coherence, and extended writing can quickly become an exercise in endurance. Alongside this sits an increasingly visible architecture of support: dysgraphia, dyslexia, difficulties with written expression, assistive technology, additional time, spelling and grammar waivers and other reasonable accommodations. None of this is inherently problematic. Dysgraphia and related specific learning difficulties are real, and reasonable accommodations are an essential part of an inclusive education system. The academic literature also cautions against simplistic assumptions about what dysgraphia is: the term itself is used inconsistently and can encompass difficulties involving transcription, spelling and broader written expression. The question that interests me, therefore, is not whether dysgraphia exists, nor whether students should receive appropriate accommodations. Both propositions are well established. The more difficult question concerns what happens educationally before and after a difficulty is identified. More specifically, how confidently can we distinguish a persistent disorder of written expression from writing skills that remain poorly developed because they have not yet become sufficiently explicit, practised or automatic? Writing Difficulty and the Problem of Explanation This distinction matters because formal written language does not emerge naturally from oral fluency. A child can speak English extremely well and still be a weak writer. Writing requires the coordination of transcription, spelling, vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, organisation, planning, revision and self-monitoring. These processes compete for finite cognitive resources. Where spelling or transcription remains laborious, for example, attention that might otherwise be devoted to argument, organisation or stylistic control is consumed by the mechanics of producing the text. Research on writing development has consequently attached considerable importance to automaticity in lower-order processes while simultaneously emphasising that competent writing requires much more than transcription alone. The literature on specific learning difficulties further complicates the picture. Persistent difficulties in written expression are significant partly because they remain despite appropriate opportunity, teaching and intervention. That qualification deserves attention. A student who continues to experience substantial writing difficulty after sustained, explicit and appropriately targeted intervention presents a different educational profile from a student whose handwriting, spelling, sentence construction or compositional fluency has never been securely developed. In the classroom, however, the two may appear remarkably similar: both may write slowly, avoid extended writing, produce short responses and demonstrate a marked discrepancy between oral and written performance. There is therefore a risk in treating observable difficulty as self-explanatory. To acknowledge this is not to question the legitimacy of diagnosis. Rather, it is to insist upon a distinction that good diagnostic and educational practice itself requires: a learning disorder and a skill deficit are not synonymous, even though they can coexist. Instruction, Automaticity and Written Expression The instructional literature is particularly important here. Meta-analytic research has consistently found positive effects for explicit approaches to writing, including strategy instruction, sentence combining, modelling, goal setting, feedback and structured revision. Graham and Perin’s work on adolescent writing, for example, found substantial benefits associated with strategy instruction and sentence combining, while subsequent research has reinforced the importance of integrating transcription with text generation and self-regulation rather than treating handwriting or spelling as isolated ends in themselves. The implication is not that all writing difficulty can be taught away. It is that writing is a complex learned competence, and therefore persistent difficulty should prompt careful examination of both the learner and the instruction the learner has received. Ireland’s curriculum makes the issue particularly interesting because Junior Cycle English formally presents writing as a developmental process. Students are expected to plan, draft, redraft, edit, learn from models, manipulate sentence and paragraph structures and evaluate their own work. In principle, therefore, the curriculum recognises that writing has to be taught and refined rather than simply produced for assessment. The more difficult question is how consistently these ambitions translate into classroom practice. When a student cannot construct an effective paragraph, has the architecture of paragraphing been made sufficiently explicit? When sentences remain weak, has sentence construction itself been taught? When spelling remains insecure, has it been revisited systematically? When students cannot sustain extended writing, has writing stamina been deliberately developed? These are not trivial questions because assigning writing is not the same as teaching writing. This is where my own thinking has shifted. Initially, I thought the problem might be one of insufficient rigour. I am now less persuaded by that language. Rigour without instruction can amount to little more than repeatedly demanding performances for which the learner has not yet been adequately prepared. The more useful concept is perhaps disciplined instruction: sustained modelling, guided practice, feedback, revision and gradually increasing independence. Accommodation and Remediation The distinction becomes particularly important when reasonable accommodations enter the discussion. Accommodations can be educationally essential. A laptop may remove the physical burden associated with handwriting; speech-to-text may allow a student with significant transcription difficulty to communicate ideas that would otherwise remain inaccessible; additional time may compensate for slower processing or production; and examination waivers may prevent a disability from distorting the assessment of knowledge or interpretation. Yet accommodation and remediation answer different questions. Accommodation asks how a barrier can be reduced so that a learner can access education or assessment. Remediation asks which aspects of the underlying skill can still be strengthened. A student may quite legitimately require both. The presence of a laptop does not eliminate the need to develop sentence structure, organisation or revision. Speech-to-text may reduce the transcription burden without automatically producing coherent prose. Additional examination time provides time; it does not itself develop fluency. This distinction matters because a diagnosis can, unintentionally, become explanatory in a way that closes down further inquiry. “He has dysgraphia”, “she has a writing difficulty” or “he uses a laptop” can gradually shift from descriptions of need into assumptions about what development remains possible. That is where caution is required. A diagnosis should explain a difficulty. It should not determine, in advance, the limits of learning. The Irish Context The Irish examination system makes these questions particularly salient. In 2025, approximately 26 per cent of Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate candidates received some form of accommodation under the Reasonable Accommodations at the Certificate Examinations scheme, with the spelling and grammar waiver representing the most common accommodation. These figures should not be misrepresented. They do not indicate that one quarter of Irish students has dysgraphia, nor do they provide evidence of widespread overdiagnosis. RACE is a needs-based system covering a much wider range of circumstances. Nevertheless, the scale of accommodation creates a legitimate educational question. If difficulties affecting access to written examinations are sufficiently widespread to require support for such a substantial proportion of candidates, it is reasonable to investigate not only how effectively we accommodate those difficulties but also how effectively we teach and remediate the skills associated with them. Better recognition of disability may explain part of the increase in support, and that development should be welcomed. It does not follow, however, that instructional practice should therefore be excluded from scrutiny. Recent Irish Inspectorate findings concerning Student Support Files sharpen the issue. Inspectors found appropriately individualised and meaningful learning targets in only a minority of the schools examined, with many targets requiring improvement. These findings do not establish that writing difficulties are being inadequately addressed, still less that diagnoses are inappropriate. They do, however, raise a broader question concerning the movement from identification to intervention. A description such as “difficulty with written expression” identifies a problem; it does not itself constitute an educational response. Effective intervention requires considerably greater precision about whether the primary difficulty concerns transcription, spelling, sentence construction, organisation, planning, revision, stamina or some combination of these. Diagnosis, Intervention and Educational Responsibility There is an important counterargument here. Educational systems have historically failed many students with genuine learning difficulties precisely because those difficulties were interpreted as laziness, lack of effort or insufficient determination. Improved identification and accommodation may therefore represent progress rather than pathology. Underdiagnosis remains a serious concern, and any argument that casually equates increased accommodation with diagnostic inflation risks returning to an educational culture in which pupils were simply expected to cope with barriers that their peers did not experience. For that reason, I do not think the available evidence supports the claim that Ireland is experiencing an epidemic of false dysgraphia diagnoses. Nor can current evidence establish that weaknesses in writing instruction are principally responsible for the difficulties teachers encounter. National longitudinal evidence on Irish handwriting, spelling and writing stamina is simply not strong enough to sustain such a conclusion. What the evidence does support is a more restrained, but in some respects more challenging, proposition: identifying a difficulty cannot substitute for analysing how that difficulty developed, what has been taught, what intervention has been attempted, and what aspects of the skill remain capable of improvement. This shifts the argument away from suspicion of diagnosis and towards educational responsibility. A student with genuine dysgraphia may continue to require assistive technology and examination accommodations throughout schooling. That same student may nevertheless become a substantially more effective writer through explicit work on syntax, organisation, spelling, revision or self-regulation. Conversely, a student whose written performance reflects underdeveloped skills rather than a specific learning disorder requires careful instruction before low attainment becomes interpreted as fixed incapacity. The important distinction, therefore, is not between children who deserve support and those who should simply be made to work harder. That is both educationally crude and unsupported by the research. The more useful distinction is between accommodation and instruction, while recognising that the two frequently need to coexist. Perhaps this is ultimately the question that has remained with me since returning to Ireland. Have we become increasingly sophisticated at identifying and accommodating barriers to writing without being equally systematic about teaching the underlying competence? I do not yet know the answer. But it is a question worth asking. A diagnosis should explain something important about a learner. It should open access to appropriate support and, where necessary, accommodation. What it should never do is bring the educational inquiry to an end. Dysgraphia is real. So too is the capacity of teaching to improve writing. An inclusive education system should be capable of holding both ideas at once. ディスグラフィア（書字表出の困難）は実在し、必要な合理的配慮は保障されるべきである。しかし、診断や配慮が、書く力を育てる教育そのものの代わりになってはならない。本稿では、口頭で流暢に話せることと、文章を構成し推敲できることは別の能力であり、書く力には、綴り、文構造、段落構成、計画、修正、書字の自動化など複数の技能が関わることを論じる。特に重要なのは、持続する困難が、十分で適切な指導を受けた後にも残るものなのか、それとも技能が十分に教えられ、練習され、自動化されていないためなのかを慎重に見極めることである。アイルランドでは合理的配慮を受ける受験生が増えているが、それを過剰診断の証拠とみなすことはできない。問うべきなのは、支援や配慮と同じだけ、明示的で継続的な書く力の指導が行われているか、という点である。診断は教育的探究の終点ではなく、より適切な介入の出発点であるべきだ。  Migration is often discussed geographically.
They are rather inadequate questions for human beings. A person who has lived between cultures for decades does not necessarily leave one identity behind and replace it neatly with another. Habits accumulate. Languages occupy different emotional spaces. Ways of greeting, apologising, teaching, disagreeing, eating, waiting and even remaining silent become embedded. Culture eventually ceases to feel like something one consciously performs. It becomes bodily. This is particularly true of budō. Decades of training do not simply leave behind a collection of techniques. They shape posture, expectations, relationships with hierarchy and ideas about effort, patience, responsibility and self-restraint. The dojo travels with you. So does the language. So does memory. An immigration office can withdraw a legal status. It cannot quite revoke these things. But I would be dishonest if I pretended that knowing this made the loss somehow easy. It did not. The pain went considerably deeper than losing a residence card. For almost thirty years, my legal status in Japan had represented something profoundly important to me. It was an official acknowledgement that, although I was not Japanese and could not participate politically in the same way as a citizen, I nevertheless belonged there in a recognised and enduring way.
And suddenly, through the brutal neutrality of a missed deadline, that official connection disappeared. There was no ceremony. No acknowledgement of the decades that preceded it. No distinction between somebody who had lived in Japan for most of an adult lifetime and somebody whose connection had been brief. There was simply a date. I had returned too late. Legally, the answer was finished. Emotionally, it was not. What hurt most was the feeling—irrational perhaps, but real nonetheless—of no longer being wanted.It was clear to me the current government of Japan no longer wanted people like me! Japan had been one of the principal answers to the question Who am I? Now the country itself seemed to be saying, at least bureaucratically: not here, not in the same way anymore. At roughly the same moment I was also selling my house. Those two events became difficult to separate. One removed a legal connection. The other removed a physical one. Together they felt almost like an eviction from a version of myself. And that still hurts. 居場所 — A Place Where One Belongs Japanese has a useful word here: 居場所 (ibasho). It can mean the place where one is, but emotionally it can carry something more: a place where one belongs, where one has a recognised place in the world. Perhaps what I feared I had lost was not simply residence. I feared I had lost my ibasho. That distinction matters because a house and an immigration status are external things, while belonging is partly internal. But knowing that does not remove grief. Indeed, perhaps grief is precisely what happens when internal belonging and external recognition suddenly separate. I still felt Japanese culture moving through my habits and decisions. I still found certain thoughts easier to formulate in Japanese. I still understood myself through decades of experience there. Yet the legal structure that had once mirrored that internal reality no longer did. The two had come apart. And then, while walking through the bamboo groves and tanbo around my former home, I came upon a field of lotus. 蓮 — hasu. A flower rooted in mud, rising through clouded water, opening above it without pretending the mud was never there.
Buddhism begins from an uncomfortable place. 苦 (ku)--dukkha. Life contains suffering, dissatisfaction, instability and loss. This is the starting point of the Four Noble Truths — 四諦 (shitai).
But standing there, the relationship seemed almost painfully obvious. My mud was not theoretical. It was grief. Loss. Dislocation. The end of a legal status I had valued deeply. The sale of a home. And the realisation that one chapter of life had closed without asking whether I was ready. The flower did not make any of that disappear. It merely offered another way to see it. 無常 — Impermanence This is not nihilism. It is 無常 (mujō)—impermanence. Not the claim that nothing matters, but almost the opposite. Things hurt because they matter.
Buddhism does not ask us to pretend otherwise. The problem begins when we require that what we love remain unchanged for it to remain meaningful. That was the part I was struggling with.
“You Must Go On” Perhaps this is where Beckett belongs in the piece. Not as an inspirational slogan. Beckett is much too unsentimental for that. At the end of The Unnamable comes the contradiction: “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” There is something almost Buddhist in that refusal to resolve the contradiction neatly. I cannot go on.
I was not ready to let go. In some ways I am still not. But continuing does not require pretending that the loss was insignificant. It means carrying it differently. The mud remains mud. The lotus does not deny it. Budō and the Practice of Continuing There is something here that also returns me to budō. Martial practice frequently teaches through loss.
The lesson is not indifference. It is continuation.
A Different Kind of Residence I no longer possess the same formal right of residence (evening writing this causes pain) that once meant so much to me. That still hurts deeply. I do not want to tidy that pain away for the sake of a neat Buddhist conclusion.
But perhaps 居場所 cannot ultimately be granted entirely by an institution. Japan remains in my language.
In the landscape I can still see when I close my eyes. The sounds I hear when English is just too jarring...when the oroa of Tokyo fades away on the bike on the Waterdord Greenway... Thirty years of breakfasts, train journeys, dojo evenings, typhoons, humid summers, New Year mornings, arguments, friendships, births, losses and ordinary Tuesdays do not vanish because an immigration category changes. They become sediment. Mud, perhaps. And from that mud something else may yet grow. I cannot go on. I’ll go on. The lotus does not need to forget the mud in order to flower. They are one, indivisible. この夏、私は「故郷」と呼んできた日本に戻った。しかし、その帰国は深い喪失感に覆われていた。 私は日本でほぼ30年を過ごし、家族を築き、子どもたちを育て、仕事をし、武道を学び、日本語で考え、日本の文化の中で自分自身を形づくってきた。日本は単に「住んでいた国」ではなく、私の成人後の人生そのものに深く結びついた場所である。 しかし今回、再入国の期限を約2週間過ぎてしまったことで、それまで長く維持していた在留資格を失った。 法的には単純な手続き上の出来事であったとしても、私にとってその意味はまったく単純ではなかった。 長年、自分が日本社会と正式につながっていることに誇りを感じていた。たとえ選挙権がなくても、その在留資格は「ここに居場所がある」という公的な承認のように感じられていた。 そのため、それを失ったことは、単なるカードや資格の喪失ではなかった。 「もうここには必要とされていないのではないか」という感覚さえ生まれた。 同じ時期に、日本の家も売却した。 法的なつながりと、物理的なつながりがほぼ同時に失われたことで、自分の一部が強制的に終わらされたように感じた。 その痛みは、今も残っている。 日本語には 居場所（いばしょ） という言葉がある。 単に「いる場所」という意味ではなく、「自分がここにいてよい」「ここに自分の場所がある」という感覚を含む言葉でもある。 私が失ったと感じていたのは、在留資格だけではなく、この 居場所 だったのかもしれない。 そんな中、家の近くの竹林や田んぼの間を歩いていた時、蓮の花が咲く場所に出会った。 蓮（はす） は、仏教を象徴する代表的な花である。 根は泥の中にある。 濁った水を通って伸びる。 そして水面の上に、鮮やかで美しい花を咲かせる。 大切なのは、蓮が泥を否定していないということである。 泥がなければ、蓮もない。 仏教の出発点には 苦（く）、すなわち dukkha がある。 人生には苦しみ、不満、喪失、変化がある。 これは 四諦（したい）、すなわち四つの聖なる真理の出発点である。 苦しみがあること。 苦しみには原因があること。 そこから自由になる可能性があること。 そしてそのための道として 八正道（はっしょうどう） が示されること。 蓮そのものが四諦の直接的な象徴というわけではない。 しかし、自分が感じていた喪失と重ねると、その意味は非常に強く感じられた。 泥は消えない。 苦しみも消えない。 それでも、そこから何かが育つ可能性はある。 ここで重要になるのが 無常（むじょう） である。 無常とは、「何も意味がない」ということではない。 むしろ逆である。 物事は大切だからこそ、失われると痛い。 家も、家族も、国も、居場所も、自分の立場も、大切だからこそ、その変化は深く心に響く。 仏教が教えるのは、苦しみを感じないことではない。 変化し続けるものに永遠の安定を求めることの難しさである。 私は日本が自分を形づくったことだけでなく、日本がこれからも同じ形で自分を認め続けてくれることを望んでいた。 そこに執着があった。 そして現実は、それを許さなかった。 ここで思い浮かぶのが、サミュエル・ベケットの『名づけえぬもの』の最後の言葉である。 「進まなければならない。進めない。進もう。」 この言葉は、単純な励ましではない。 「大丈夫だ」「忘れればよい」と言っているのでもない。 進めないほど苦しい。 それでも進む。 その矛盾をそのまま抱える言葉である。 私にとって、それはこの夏の経験にとても近い。 まだ手放せていない。 まだ痛い。 しかし、それでも人生は続く。 武道にも、同じような無常の学びがある。 技は失敗する。 身体は変化する。 師は亡くなる。 道場は閉じる。 組織は変わる。 弟子は去る。 かつてできたことが、できなくなる日も来る。 武道は、ある意味で、無常を身体で学ぶ稽古でもある。 大切なのは、失わないことではない。 失った後も、どう立ち、どう礼をし、どうもう一度始めるかである。 私は以前と同じ形では、日本に「住んでいる人」ではなくなった。 それでも日本は、自分の中に残っている。 言葉の中に。 家族の中に。 習慣の中に。 教育観の中に。 武道の中に。 そして何より、自分がどのように人と関わるかという感覚の中に。 30年近い人生は、在留資格が変わったからといって消えるものではない。 それらは土のように、自分の中に積み重なっている。 泥のように。 そしてその泥から、まだ何かが咲くかもしれない。 進めない。 それでも進もう。 蓮は、花を咲かせるために泥を忘れる必要はない。  Pain, Pleasure, Belonging and Embodied Knowledge in Mixed Martial Arts. Work reviewed: Stenius, Magnus (2015), The Body in Pain and Pleasure: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts, Ethnological Studies 60, Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University. There is an obvious difficulty in writing academically about fighting. One may watch martial artists train, interview them, count injuries, analyse rules and study institutions. Yet something remains frustratingly inaccessible. What does it actually feel like to have another person trying to choke you? What happens when exhaustion alters judgement? What does repeated physical contact do to fear? How does a painful technique that appears brutal from outside become understood as useful, pleasurable or even necessary by those participating in it? Magnus Stenius’ The Body in Pain and Pleasure addresses that problem by doing something both methodologically productive and academically dangerous. He gets onto the mat. Stenius spent several years conducting participant observation and training in MMA gyms, principally in Sweden but also through fieldwork in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Brazil and the United States. His argument is that MMA cannot be adequately understood from a disembodied position because much of its meaning exists as bodily knowledge: rhythm, exhaustion, fear, trust, pain, timing, adrenaline, and the tacit understanding that develops between training partners. The researcher therefore becomes part of the research instrument. But there is a stronger possibility here. The body in Stenius’ ethnography becomes something like a social archive. It stores not merely techniques but experiences: the first awkward entrance into the gym, the embarrassment of not knowing what to wear, the memory of being submitted, the gradual disappearance of panic, the recognition of familiar bodies, the accumulated bruises, the changing sense of what counts as acceptable pain, and eventually the feeling of belonging. Martial knowledge is therefore not simply stored in the mind. It is sedimented through the body and through relationships with other bodies. That, I think, is where this thesis becomes especially valuable. The Body as a Way of Knowing Stenius situates the study within autoethnography, phenomenology and what Loïc Wacquant famously described as a form of “carnal sociology”. The basic proposition is persuasive. Martial knowledge cannot be reduced entirely to language. Anyone who has trained for a significant period knows the problem. Explaining kuzushi, distance, timing, pressure or sensitivity verbally is possible, but verbal description never fully captures the phenomenon itself. A technique becomes intelligible in a different way when another body resists it. Stenius therefore argues that his own body had to enter the cultural system he was studying. His fatigue, bruises, physical development, anxiety and eventual familiarity with MMA were not simply side effects of fieldwork. They became forms of data. Phenomenologically, this follows Merleau-Ponty: we do not merely possess bodies through which we observe the world. We encounter the world bodily. For martial-arts research, this matters enormously. A researcher standing beside the mat can observe that two practitioners are hitting or grappling with one another. The participant begins to understand something else: how force is calibrated; when a training partner withdraws pressure; how a submission is communicated before injury occurs; how panic diminishes with familiarity; how exhaustion changes decision-making; and how something externally resembling violence may internally operate through elaborate systems of cooperation. The body does not simply endure the culture. It learns the culture. Pain Is Not Simply Pain The title "The Body in Pain and Pleasure" points to another important insight. Pain within martial practice does not carry a single meaning. Pain may signal injury and danger. But it may also indicate effort, technical effectiveness, endurance, achievement or entry into a particular community of practice. Stenius connects this with Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. The trained fighter may become absorbed in an activity in which action and awareness merge, ordinary self-consciousness diminishes, and highly demanding physical activity becomes pleasurable. Pain and pleasure can therefore coexist rather than simply oppose one another. This is useful because outsiders frequently interpret bodily pain through categories developed outside the practice.
Neither interpretation should simply displace the other. The participant’s interpretation does not magically make injury harmless. Nor does the outsider’s identification of bodily harm exhaust the cultural meaning of what is occurring. The interesting space lies between them. And crucially, the gym teaches the practitioner how to interpret that space. The gym does not simply teach the body how to fight; it teaches the body what pain means, whom to trust, when to endure, when to stop, and what kind of person belongs there. Controlled Violence — But Still Violence Stenius repeatedly returns to MMA’s uneasy position between sport and violence. The fighters in his research resist descriptions of themselves as violent people. They understand their practice as disciplined, technical and regulated. MMA violence operates within tactical frameworks in which participants have consented to particular forms of bodily risk. That distinction matters. But consent in a martial environment deserves more scrutiny than it sometimes receives. It is tempting to describe the gym simply as a space of consensual violence: everyone knows what they are doing, everyone has agreed to participate, and therefore the moral problem largely disappears. Yet consent is not socially weightless. A novice trains in a culture already populated by instructors, senior students, norms of toughness, rituals, and expectations. The practitioner may technically be free to stop, yet simultaneously feel pressure not to appear weak, cowardly or unserious. A tap is straightforward. The decision about when one is permitted to tap without losing status may be much less so. Likewise, the newcomer who agrees to spar does not necessarily possess the same cultural knowledge as the experienced practitioner who understands exactly how hard the session is expected to be. Consent, therefore, exists but is continually negotiated within unequal fields of experience and authority. This does not invalidate martial training. It makes the instructor’s role more important.
The Gym as a Social Body Some of the most revealing material in Stenius’ thesis actually concerns belonging rather than fighting. The chapter Moments in the Gym follows his painfully slow movement from outsider towards recognised participant. Initially he is awkward, uncertain and intensely self-conscious. He worries about where to put his shoes, what clothes to wear, whether he is behaving correctly and whether the fighters accept him. What is fascinating is that while Stenius believes he is observing the gym, the gym is simultaneously observing him. One participant later tells him that it took perhaps a year and a half before the group believed he was serious rather than simply another temporary visitor. Stenius gradually realises that he has been subjected to an informal process resembling initiation. This is one of the richest elements of the work. Martial knowledge is therefore not simply embodied. It is socially authorised embodied knowledge.
Eventually Stenius is invited to join the group for coffee. The moment may seem trivial, but emotionally it serves almost as a rite of incorporation. He has moved from a tolerated presence to social recognition. The incident reveals something larger than MMA.
The Instructor and the Hidden Curriculum Stenius’ discussion also raises a question he does not fully pursue. Who manages this process? The coach appears throughout the fieldwork as technical instructor, gatekeeper and interpreter of acceptable behaviour. This matters because martial teaching always contains a hidden curriculum. An instructor teaches obvious things: technique, fitness, tactics, movement. But the instructor is simultaneously communicating other lessons.
Nevertheless, they are learned. The instructor therefore occupies an important ethical position. Someone may be technically exceptional while possessing little awareness of group dynamics, vulnerability or the subtle pressures that accompany belonging. In such a case, harmful norms can become embodied precisely because nobody explicitly intended to teach them. Conversely, a reflective instructor can create a culture in which toughness does not require humiliation, physical challenge coexists with care, and belonging is not contingent on ignoring legitimate limits. The gym is therefore not socially neutral. Technique is transmitted within a community, and communities teach people how to understand themselves. Bourdieu: Learning to Belong Without Thinking About ItBourdieu provides a particularly useful way to extend Stenius without overburdening the analysis. At the beginning of his fieldwork Stenius cannot decode the gym. He has to think consciously about everything.
It also exists through tiny distinctions visible only to those who already belong: posture, vocabulary, timing, confidence, bodily ease, the way someone steps onto the mat or interacts with a senior practitioner. Those signs become readable within the community. The martial body therefore communicates status even when nobody mentions rank. Masculinity — or Comradeship? Stenius also engages extensively with gender. The obvious interpretation of MMA is hegemonic masculinity: muscular men engaging publicly in controlled violence and displaying endurance, courage and domination. Stenius rightly considers this insufficient. His fieldwork instead reveals bodies that are deeply dependent upon other bodies.
The fighter who appears radically autonomous in the cage is actually the product of profound dependency. His or her body has been constructed collectively. Coaches, sparring partners and other practitioners literally help manufacture the supposedly individual athlete. That observation destabilises the mythology of the solitary warrior. But I am less persuaded that homoeroticism always provides the most productive language for interpreting these relationships. Physical closeness between men certainly complicates simplistic accounts of masculinity. Yet embodied intimacy does not necessarily require a sexual interpretative frame. There is another vocabulary available: comradeship, interdependence, trust and mutual formation. These concepts may tell us more about what actually sustains martial communities. The fighter needs another body not simply to defeat but to become. The Great Strength — and Danger — of AutoethnographyThe strongest methodological claim in the thesis is also its greatest vulnerability. Stenius argues that without physically participating, he could never properly understand MMA. I largely agree. But embodied access does not necessarily produce epistemological privilege. Being punched provides knowledge unavailable to the spectator. It does not automatically provide the correct interpretation of being punched. Indeed, immersion creates its own blindness. Stenius provides a wonderful example himself. Near the end of the thesis, Coach Chris tells him that he seemed so intensely focused on observing everyone that he sometimes forgot to become genuinely interested in the people themselves. Chris concludes:
The researcher who enters the field imagines that proximity solves the problem of distance. But proximity creates different problems. Stenius wants acceptance.
Quite the opposite: his willingness to disclose it makes the ethnography valuable. But the body that provides access also develops loyalties. The researcher who learns the culture also learns its justifications. Autoethnography therefore does not abolish the insider/outsider problem. It relocates it inside the researcher. Pain, Pleasure — and Comradeship This is perhaps where Stenius’ thesis can be pushed beyond its own conclusions. What makes martial training meaningful is not simply that pain can become pleasure. It is that pain becomes socially shared and interpreted. A difficult training session undertaken alone is exhaustion. The same session, undertaken repeatedly with trusted partners, becomes memory, narrative, and belonging.
They are not simply attached to an activity. They have constructed part of themselves through other people. This also connects Stenius with the problem of martial community more broadly. The boundaries that initially make entry difficult can ultimately make belonging meaningful. Yet those same boundaries can become exclusionary. A community may legitimately require commitment before offering trust. But if hardship itself becomes proof of moral worth, or if outsiders must continually be diminished to maintain the group’s identity, comradeship can turn into tribalism. The difference is partly determined by leadership. A healthy dojo or gym uses difficulty to build confidence, responsibility and relationship. An unhealthy one uses difficulty to enforce obedience and reproduce grievance. Final Thoughts The Body in Pain and Pleasure is occasionally overstuffed with theory. Flow, performativity, phenomenology, materiality, posthumanism, masculinity, habitus and autoethnography sometimes compete rather than cooperate. Some historical claims are also broader than the evidence comfortably supports, and the language surrounding masculinity occasionally reaches further than necessary. Yet these weaknesses are offset by the remarkable honesty of the empirical material. Stenius allows us to watch a researcher become confused, bruised, insecure, accepted and eventually emotionally attached to the community he intended to study. That journey produces the thesis’ most enduring insight. Martial arts are not understood simply by looking at bodies. They are understood by asking what bodies learn to feel, tolerate, fear, enjoy and recognise in one another. Pain becomes meaningful because a culture teaches us how to interpret it. Violence becomes sport because communities establish limits around it. Technique becomes knowledge because another body resists us. Belonging becomes embodied when we no longer have to ask where we should stand. And the instructor, whether consciously or not, helps determine what those experiences come to mean. Perhaps, then, the deepest insight of Stenius’ ethnography is not that the researcher must suffer in order to understand fighting. It is that martial knowledge exists between bodies. No fighter constructs themselves alone. No martial community is produced merely through technique. And neither, ultimately, is the ethnographer. 日本語要約Magnus Steniusの『The Body in Pain and Pleasure』は、MMAを外部から観察するだけでは理解できないと考え、研究者自身が実際にトレーニングへ参加するオートエスノグラフィーを用いた研究である。Steniusにとって、身体は単なる研究対象ではなく、知識を得るための手段でもある。痛み、疲労、恐怖、信頼、タイミング、身体接触といった経験は、言葉だけでは十分に説明できない身体知として蓄積されていく。 本稿では、この身体を「社会的アーカイブ」として捉える。身体は技術だけでなく、失敗、痛み、承認、仲間との関係、そして「自分はここに属している」という感覚まで記憶していく。道場やジムは、単に戦い方を教える場所ではない。身体に対して、何を痛みとして受け入れるのか、誰を信頼するのか、いつ我慢し、いつ止めるのか、そして誰がその共同体に属するのかを教える場所でもある。 Steniusは、MMAにおける暴力を単なる野蛮な行為とは捉えない。そこには規則、同意、技術、自己制御がある。しかし本稿では、「同意」も単純ではないと考える。初心者は、指導者、先輩、忍耐や強さを重視する文化の中で判断している。形式的には自由に止められても、「弱いと思われたくない」という圧力が存在する場合もある。そのため、指導者には技術だけでなく、安全、信頼、限界、所属をどのように形成するかという責任がある。 また、SteniusはMMAの男性性を「ハイブリッドな男性性」やホモソーシャルな関係から分析する。しかし本稿では、男性同士の身体的近さをすぐに性的な枠組みで捉えるよりも、仲間意識、相互依存、信頼、共同的な形成という言葉の方が武道共同体を理解する上で有効ではないかと考える。 最も重要なのは、武道の知識は個人の中だけに存在しないという点である。技術は相手の身体が抵抗することで意味を持ち、成長は仲間に見守られることで認識される。痛みもまた、共同体の中で意味づけられる。 したがって、武道の身体とは孤立した身体ではない。 それは他者との関係の中で作られ、記憶し、変化していく身体である。 そしておそらくSteniusの研究が示す最も重要なことは、武道の知識は身体の中にあるだけではなく、身体と身体の「あいだ」に存在するということである。 |
James M. HatchInternational Educator who happens to be passionate about Chito Ryu Karate. Born in Ireland, educated in Canada, matured in Japan Archives
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