The False Soul of Budō: Ilyenkov, Jacobs, and the Myth of Moral Transformation
Dedicated to all who journey toward—and help to form—the soul of budō
“One is not born a person but becomes one.” — Evald Ilyenkov (in Jacobs, 2024, p. 4)
Across the global martial arts community—from the dōjō of the Japan Karate Association to the worldwide branches of Aikikai—one promise unites otherwise divided organisations: training will make you a better person. Promotional brochures speak of “character,” “discipline,” and “respect” as natural consequences of practice. Yet such rhetoric, however well-intentioned, has long since ossified into ideology. The ethical claim of budō has been reduced to a consumer guarantee, a marketing slogan assuring parents that violence will ennoble their children. What remains is a mask of morality, not its substance.
Masks and Faces
Isabel Jacobs’ essay On the Soul: Ilyenkov’s Theory of Personality (2024) offers a remarkable lens through which to re-examine this moral mythology. Drawing on the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, she reminds us that “a person is not born with inherent qualities; their body and mind are formed through experience and social activity” (p. 1). In Ilyenkov’s dialectical anthropology, personality (lichnost’) is not a private moral kernel but a social creation--“a knot of relations that arise between individuals in collective activity” (p. 4). An ethical being is therefore never an inner possession; it is a mode of participation. By that measure, the idea that budō can individually bestow Virtue is an illusion. A karateka does not “become good” through repetition of kata any more than a bureaucrat becomes just by memorising a code of conduct.

Ilyenkov’s image of the mask (persona) and face (litso) is particularly apt. “And it also happens that the mask becomes so firmly affixed,” he wrote, “that [one’s] former personality slowly atrophies from disuse” (p. 1). The modern martial arts world is filled with such masks—ritual bows, moral slogans, the façade of humility—beneath which lie ordinary rivalries and commercial ambition. The tragedy is not hypocrisy per se but alienation: when gestures meant to express ethical life harden into empty performance, the face of practice disappears. What survives is the moral costume of budō.

The Soul of the Dōjō
Contrast this with the ethical seriousness of the ancients whom modern budō so readily invokes. Confucius warned, “To see what is right and not do it is want of courage” (Analects 2:24). Virtue (ren) was never politeness or docility; it was courageous moral discernment enacted through right relationship. Likewise, Takuan Sōhō, in The Unfettered Mind, cautioned the swordsman that “the mind must not be fixed anywhere”—ethical freedom being inseparable from mental clarity. Both thinkers understood self-cultivation as ceaseless labour, the ongoing negotiation between impulse and reason, self and other. By comparison, the modern dōjō’s moral instruction—“be respectful,” “show spirit”—appears thin, procedural, and essentially detached from reflection on what goodness entails.

Jacobs’ discussion of Ilyenkov’s concept of the soul illuminates why this hollowness matters. “The soul,” she notes, “is located not inside an individual body, but precisely outside it—in the system of real relationships … binding them as if into one body” (p. 6). The true “soul” of budō, then, is not hidden in the heart of the lone practitioner but emerges in the relational field of training: senpai and kōhai, teacher and student, attacker and receiver, all joined in the dialectic of embodied trust. Yet under capitalist conditions, that collective soul is commodified. The dōjō becomes a service provider; the practitioner, a consumer of Virtue. In Ilyenkov’s terms, this is pseudomaterialism—a mechanical imitation of ethical practice divorced from the labour of mutual recognition.

Hands, Labour, and Phronesis
For Ilyenkov, thinking and becoming are hand-work. “It is not the brain that thinks,” he writes, “but an individual entwined in a net of social relations, always mediated by material objects” (p. 13). In this light, kata and kumite—understood here not as competitive sparring but as any moment of training with another, any time two hands meet—are not moral rituals in themselves; they are opportunities for phronesis—the practical wisdom Aristotle described as the capacity “to decide what to do in light of what there is most reason to do” (Nicomachean Ethics VI.5). The bow, the strike, the parry, the shared rhythm of breath and timing—all are ethical materials through which reason can take form, but only if the practitioner engages them consciously and collectively. Without that dialogue, movement decays into etiquette, and etiquette into spectacle.

Toward the Soul of Budō
The ethical promise of budō has never been about moral elevation but about encounter—an unending practice through which one meets both the world and the self without illusion. Read through Jacobs’ Ilyenkov, this practice becomes a kind of phronesis: the lived, practical wisdom that arises only in relation, through the collective shaping of body, mind, and circumstance. Moral growth in martial arts is neither automatic nor inward—it is dialectical, a social and material creation born of struggle, reflection, and care. To practise budō ethically is to work, hand and mind together, within a community of others striving toward what Confucius called yi—rightness of action, not righteousness of appearance.

Budō will not make us better people on its own. But practised as the collective labour of recognition—as an art of relation rather than a commodity of Virtue—it may still teach us to see, in Ilyenkov’s words, “through the eyes of another person, through the eyes of all other people” (Jacobs, 2024, p. 14). Only there, in that mutual gaze, does the true face of budō appear.

Postscript
This idea has been germinating in my mind since my budō teacher, Miyase-sensei, first planted it there over fifteen years ago. Sensei is gone, yet I continue to learn from the kindness he embodied and from his unwavering commitment to excellence. What he taught through presence, patience, and precision remains a living reminder that the soul of budō is formed not in words, but in the quiet discipline of care.

References

• Aristotle (2011), Nicomachean Ethics. London: University of Chicago Press.
• Confucius (2017). The Analects, trans. Edward Slingerland. Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Jacobs, I. (2024). On the Soul: Ilyenkov’s Theory of Personality. Berlin: Brill.
• Takuan Sōhō (1986) The Unfettered Mind, trans. William Scott Wilson. Tokyo: Kodansha.

日本語要約（要旨）本稿は、イリェンコフ（Evald Ilyenkov）の人格論をイザベル・ジェイコブズ（Isabel Jacobs, 2024）の解釈を通して再読し、「武道を学べば人間的に成長できる」という現代武道の道徳的神話を批判的に検討するものである。
多くの武道団体や道場は、稽古によって「良い人間」になれると主張する。しかし、著者はそれを理念的・商業的なスローガンに過ぎないとみなし、倫理的実践の空洞化を指摘する。イリェンコフによれば、人間の人格（личность）は生まれつき備わるものではなく、社会的活動のなかで形成される「関係の結び目（knot）」である。したがって、徳や人格は個人の内面にあるのではなく、他者との共同的な行為を通して生まれるものである。
この観点からすれば、武道の本質的な修行とは、孤立した自己鍛錬ではなく、関係的・社会的な実践である。型（kata）や組手（kumite）は、競技的な技術ではなく、二人の身体と心が交わる瞬間、つまり「二つの手が出会う」場として理解されるべきである。そこにおいて初めて、アリストテレスが説いた実践的知（phronesis）——状況に応じて最も妥当な行為を判断する知恵——が生まれる。
また、孔子の「義（yi）」や沢庵宗彭の「心はどこにも止まってはならぬ」という教えを引用しつつ、著者は古代思想における道徳的修養の深さを現代武道の表層的な「礼節」教育と対比する。真の「武道の魂」は、個人の内面に宿るのではなく、師弟・先輩後輩・稽古相手など、他者との関係性のなかで形づくられる「共同的思考の身体」であると結論づける。
本稿は、武道を「より良い人間になる手段」としてではなく、人間と人間が共に人格を形成し合う社会的・倫理的な営みとして再評価するよう呼びかける。著者は、武道が「他者の眼を通して世界を見る」力を与えるときにこそ、その真の顔—--the true face of budō——が現れると説く。

Among contemporary karate and budō schools, it has become increasingly common to hear claims that a particular dōjō offers a “curriculum.” At first glance, this may sound reassuring, even professional. In reality, however, what is usually meant is not a curriculum at all but a syllabus: a sequential list of techniques, kata, and drills arranged by an instructor according to what they consider a logical progression.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with a syllabus, the uncritical use of the word curriculum misleads. It invokes the weight of educational discourse without embracing its responsibilities. In effect, it becomes yet another marketing tool, designed to lend credibility to a practice that may be only loosely pedagogical.

What a Curriculum Is — and Is Not.
In education, curriculum carries significant philosophical and pedagogical weight. It is not simply “what is taught,” but encompasses:

• Aims and outcomes: the purposes of learning, the qualities to be developed.
• Content: the breadth, depth, and selection of knowledge and skills.
• Pedagogy: how learning unfolds and why.
• Assessment: how growth is measured, validated, and reflected upon.
• Values: the cultural, ethical, and social purposes underpinning education.

Curriculum is also always a political and economic instrument. Central authorities — ministries of education, governments, accrediting bodies — use curricula to codify norms, transmit cultural values, and shape future citizens. What is included or excluded is never neutral; it reflects contested struggles over identity, ideology, and purpose.

As an educator whose doctoral research focused precisely on how power, culture, and normative assumptions shape teaching, I cannot help but note how casually the term curriculum has been lifted into karate discourse. In schools and universities, curriculum is debated, contested, and politically charged. In budō, it is too often reduced to a neat list of “things to be done” — stripped of context, reflection, and accountability.

The Historical Roots of Karate’s “Curriculum”
Even the categories of kihon–kata–kumite — now treated as the universal building blocks of karate pedagogy — are far from timeless. They reflect a particular post-war project, spearheaded by the Japan Karate Association (JKA) under Nakayama Masatoshi.

Nakayama, a senior student of Funakoshi Gichin, systematised karate in the 1950s–70s into a structured, exportable model. His Best Karate volumes codified training into neat stages: basic drills, formal kata, and controlled sparring. This was crucial for karate’s spread into universities, schools, and eventually into global sport. Yet in the process, Funakoshi’s more holistic emphasis on karate-dō as ethical cultivation was sidelined.

Many Okinawan ryūha — Shōrin-ryū, Gōjū-ryū, Uechi-ryū — never relied on kihon as an isolated drill category. In those traditions, the kata themselves embodied both basics and applications, and the separation into “basics–forms–sparring” would have seemed artificial.

Thus, what is now presented globally as karate’s “curriculum” is in fact a JKA invention, reflecting the politics of post-war Japan, the drive to modernise martial arts, and the desire to make karate resemble a school subject.

Curriculum as Marketing
Here lies the deeper critique. To speak of a “curriculum” in karate is not neutral. In formal education, curriculum is a tool through which authorities codify not only knowledge but also citizenship, values, and identities. It is an exercise in cultural power.
In contrast, karate’s use of the term often arises from the pressures of globalisation and institutionalisation. As karate spread into Western schools, universities, and sports federations, the language of “curriculum” provided an aura of legitimacy. It reassured parents, appealed to educational administrators, and aligned martial practice with modern institutions. Yet it did so without adopting the political and ethical responsibilities the word implies.

Towards a Genuine Martial Arts Curriculum
If budō schools wish to use the word curriculum seriously, they must embrace its full implications. This would mean:

• articulating the aims of training (self-defence, cultural transmission, ethical cultivation, sport, or some combination);
• clarifying the values that underpin teaching;
• aligning pedagogy with those aims;
• developing assessments that capture not only reproduction of form but growth in understanding, adaptability, and ethical sensibility;
• acknowledging the cultural, political, and economic context in which martial practice unfolds.

Anything less is not a curriculum, but a syllabus dressed up in borrowed authority.

Conclusion
The misuse of “curriculum” in karate is not just a semantic slip. In education, curriculum is the central tool through which states and institutions define what counts as knowledge and shape future citizens. To apply the same word to a list of kata or drills, stripped of social or ethical reflection, is to misrepresent both education and budō.
Perhaps the real question is not whether karate has a curriculum, but whether karate is willing to accept the responsibilities that the word entails.


日本語の要約 (Japanese Summary)
今日、多くの空手道場や武道団体が「カリキュラム」を持つと主張している。しかし、実際にはそれは教育的意味でのカリキュラムではなく、単なるシラバス、すなわち技や型、組手を順番に並べたリストに過ぎないことが多い。
教育学においてカリキュラムとは、学習の目的、価値、方法、評価、そして社会的・政治的文脈を含む包括的な枠組みであり、国家や制度が市民性を形作るための政治的・経済的ツールでもある。これに対して、空手で使われる「カリキュラム」という言葉は、主にマーケティング用語として機能しており、真の教育的責任を伴っていない。
現在広く知られている「基本・型・組手」の三分法も普遍的なものではなく、戦後の日本空手協会（JKA）と中山正敏による国際化プロジェクトの産物である。沖縄の諸流派では必ずしもこの枠組みは用いられていない。
したがって、もし空手が本当に「カリキュラム」を名乗るのであれば、その言葉が持つ責任を引き受けなければならない。それは単なる技術の伝達ではなく、文化的・倫理的・社会的文脈を含めた教育的プロジェクトであるべきだ。

A Note to Readers
I must begin with an apology to regular readers for my long silence. The past eight months have been entirely consumed by my return home to Ireland and the search for a secure teaching post. Although the move itself has been in preparation for over four years, these recent months have been the decisive and most demanding stage — a period that absorbed not only my time and focus, but also no small measure of my health.

With a position now secured and my belongings on their way across the sea, I am at last able to turn my attention back to writing. I look forward to resuming my regular reflections and reviews on matters related to Japanese budō and international education. Thank you sincerely for your patience and for bearing with me during this absence.

Friday Academic Review: The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence (Cardiff University, 2024)
Citation
Cardiff University, School of Journalism, Media & Culture. (2024). The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence. Symposium Call for Papers. Cardiff University.

Self-Defence and the Karate Debate.
It takes only a glance across the martial arts landscape to see how contested the very idea of “self-defence” has become. A YouTube video promising “five deadly karate moves for the street” might sit alongside a glossy seminar on “reality-based defence”, both claiming to deliver authenticity while disparaging one another. In Ireland, I have seen dōjō market traditional kata as “proven self-defence”, while others dismiss this as ritualised performance with little real-world application.

This paradox is at the heart of karate’s modern identity crisis: training is frequently justified as goshin-jutsu (self-protection), yet what practitioners mean by that term varies enormously. For some, self-defence resides in decoding kata, while others point to the need for scenario drills, awareness training, and legal literacy. The Cardiff symposium The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence (2024) steps into this contested field, insisting that before we can answer “what works”, we must first ask a deeper question: what do we mean when we speak of self-defence at all?

Summary of the Symposium Call
The symposium call frames its guiding question starkly: “What are the ethics and ideologies of self-defence?” (Cardiff University, 2024, p. 1). It draws attention to the historical unevenness of the right to defend oneself, observing that “the right to self-defence has been heavily allocated to certain subjects (e.g., white, propertied, male) and withheld from others” (ibid.). Women’s self-defence, it notes, was a crucial part of first-wave feminism in the UK (Dodsworth, 2019; Godfrey, 2012), while more recent work positions learning to fight as a potentially emancipatory act of “physical feminism” (McCaughey, 1997).

Philosopher Elsa Dorlin pushes the debate further, asking: “Is self-defence ethical? Is teaching self-defence ethical, and who can or should teach whom?” (Dorlin, 2022). The symposium builds on this, questioning the very boundaries of the self and the scope of defence: does it end with the body, or extend to the mind, clothing, architecture, or digital infrastructures? “Almost everything that humans have done to ward off one or another kind of threat might be viewed as self-defence” (Cardiff University, 2024, p. 2, citing Sloterdijk, 2013).

The media’s influence is also highlighted. From newspaper moral panics to cinematic tropes and gaming environments, the ways we imagine threats profoundly shape both practice and pedagogy. The organisers conclude that interpersonal self-defence is not simply technical know-how but a “complicated and controversial ethical, ideological and political matter” (ibid., p. 3).

Situating the Symposium within the Field
The Cardiff symposium aligns with the expanding intellectual project of martial arts studies, which has consistently treated combat practices not as neutral skill sets but as cultural texts. Paul Bowman’s scholarship (2015, 2021, 2023) is particularly resonant, situating martial arts within media circulation and ideological production. The symposium also draws heavily on feminist theory (McCaughey, 1997; Dodsworth, 2019), critical race scholarship (Light, 2017), and philosophical approaches to violence and protection (Dorlin, 2022; Sloterdijk, 2013).

In doing so, it poses a critical challenge to martial arts and karate practitioners alike. Rather than assuming that “self-defence” is a natural or universal good, we must recognise it as an historically and ideologically conditioned discourse.

Critical Observations
The text is, of course, a call for papers rather than a finished study. Its contribution lies in shaping an intellectual agenda rather than presenting definitive answers. Nevertheless, it raises several crucial issues.

First, the expansive scope—suggesting that almost any defensive gesture across history might qualify as self-defence—risks diluting analytic precision. Yet this breadth is not without purpose: it reminds us that logics of protection permeate every level of human culture, from national security doctrines to everyday bodily comportment.

Second, its emphasis on ideology cuts against the grain of standard karate pedagogy. Too often, bunkai (applications) are presented as timeless truths, as though kata encode universally valid strategies. By contrast, the symposium insists that “what counts” as defence is always a product of historical fears, cultural fantasies, and social norms.

Third, the ethical lens cannot be ignored. To describe karate as “self-defence” is not a neutral act. It positions instructors as arbiters of who deserves protection, what forms of violence are deemed legitimate, and whose lives are considered worth defending. In Irish dōjō, for example, women-only classes are sometimes framed as empowerment initiatives, yet without addressing whether they inadvertently reinforce assumptions about women’s vulnerability. Similarly, some seminars on knife defence play into racialised stereotypes of urban threat. These examples demonstrate why the ethical interrogation demanded by the symposium is so necessary.

Contribution to the Field
The symposium’s most significant contribution is to destabilise the complacent invocation of “self-defence” as a justification for martial practice. In doing so, it bridges martial arts studies, feminist theory, philosophy, and cultural studies. For karate in particular, it highlights that appeals to self-defence are not guarantees of authenticity but ideological claims that require scrutiny.

This does not diminish karate’s potential relevance. Instead, it forces practitioners and scholars alike to ask more complex questions: What are we teaching when we say we are teaching self-defence? Whose safety are we prioritising? What social narratives are we reinforcing?

Directions for Further Research
Several productive avenues follow from this intervention:

• Comparative studies of how karate organisations in different cultural contexts articulate self-defence, and what ideological assumptions underlie those framings.
• Analyses of how “reality-based” self-defence diverges ethically and pedagogically from traditional karate.
• Ethnographic research on the intersections of gender, race, and class in karate-based self-defence instruction.
• Historical inquiry into Okinawan and Japanese discourses around goshin, asking whether earlier frameworks offered alternative ethical orientations to those dominant today.

These lines of inquiry promise to enrich both scholarship and practice.

Conclusion
The Cardiff symposium is more than an administrative call; it is a critical reframing of “self-defence” as an ethical and ideological problem. For karate practitioners, it punctures the assumption that invoking self-defence is enough to secure authenticity or relevance. Instead, it challenges us to interrogate the cultural, political, and ethical conditions underpinning that claim.
​
As part of this Friday Academic Review Thoughts series, this review builds on earlier reflections on Bowman’s The Invention of Martial Arts by continuing to examine how martial practice is shaped not just by physical techniques but by cultural discourses. If karate is to speak meaningfully of self-defence in the present, it must do so with awareness of whose selves are imagined, and what worlds are being defended.

日本語の要約 (Japanese Summary)
本稿は、カーディフ大学で開催されたシンポジウム「The Ethics and Ideologies of Self-Defence」（2024年）を取り上げ、その学術的意義を検討したものである。シンポジウムは「自己防衛」とは何かを問い直し、その権利が歴史的に白人男性に偏って与えられてきたことや、女性の自己防衛がフェミニズム運動において重要であったことを強調する。また、防衛の境界を身体に限らず、精神・衣服・建築・テクノロジーにまで広げて捉え、メディアが脅威と防衛の想像を形成してきたことを指摘する。
空手において「自己防衛」がしばしば正統性の根拠とされるが、これは中立的な概念ではなく、文化的・政治的・倫理的条件に左右される言説である。本シンポジウムは、技術的側面を超え、誰が誰を守るのか、どのような社会的物語を強化するのかを問い直す必要性を示している。

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Morgan, K. (2020). Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment. Presentation to the 6th Martial Arts Studies Conference, Martial Arts, Religion and Spirituality, July 2020.

Ressentiment and the Martial Arts: Towards a More Fraternal Discourse?An academic review of Kai Morgan’s “Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment” (2020).

In her 2020 conference paper Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment, Kai Morgan delivers a timely and philosophically informed analysis of a long-familiar pathology within martial arts culture: the persistent rivalries, dismissiveness, and tribalism that can define inter-style relations. Drawing on the philosophical tradition of ressentiment—primarily through Nietzsche, Scheler, and more recently, Tomelleri—Morgan reframes martial rivalries not merely as personality clashes or ideological disagreements, but as deeper, affectively charged expressions of perceived inferiority and inverted values.

Morgan’s paper contributes meaningfully to the maturing field of martial arts studies, particularly the branch that engages with critical theory and philosophy. Rather than focusing on technical efficacy or lineage histories, she explores how martial practice becomes entangled in social psychology, institutional hierarchies, and the ethics of recognition. In doing so, her work stands alongside scholars like Sixt Wetzler and Paul Bowman in framing martial arts not just as embodied disciplines, but as ideologically saturated and ethically contested cultural fields.

Her argument begins with a compelling analogy: just as religious denominations may seek similar ends but fall into mutual mistrust, martial artists often profess to pursue self-mastery, discipline, and growth—yet remain mired in suspicion and critique of others. As Morgan notes, “It’s a very common topic of conversation to say that such and such style is severely flawed and/or would never work on ‘the street.’” This dismissiveness, she argues, stems not only from insecurity but also from a deeper emotional structure: ressentiment.

Drawing from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Morgan defines ressentiment as a toxic inversion of values—wherein individuals or groups, unable to match others in strength or success, recast their own weakness as moral superiority. In Nietzsche’s words, this is the “transvaluation of values”—a process whereby “worldly power, wealth and success are seen as ‘bad,’ while meekness, humility and poverty are seen as ‘good.’” Morgan maps this neatly onto martial arts culture: a struggling school may denounce a more successful one as a “McDojo,” regardless of technical quality, thus claiming the moral high ground through critique rather than self-improvement.

Crucially, Morgan distinguishes between valid critique and ressentiment. It is not inherently wrong to criticise poor-quality instruction or commercial excess. The line is crossed, she argues, when “you’re jealous of their financial success, and telling yourself that their focus on money is immoral,” without any objective basis for judgement. This, she notes, is “ressentiment at work.”

Her paper offers several sharp examples. The “keyboard warrior” who lacks practical experience but issues withering critiques online; the teacher who eschews sparring and instead elevates esoteric energy work; or the practitioner who disdains MMA as “brutish,” yet has never stepped into a ring. In each case, ressentiment emerges not from philosophical difference, but from a defensive reframing of inadequacy.

Building on this analysis, Morgan brings in Max Scheler’s critique of Nietzsche. Writing in the early 20th century, Scheler rejects Nietzsche’s claim that Christianity causes ressentiment, instead locating the problem in the dissonance between modernity’s promise of equality and the ongoing reality of economic and social inequality. In Scheler’s view, societies with rigid hierarchies or actual equality suffer less from ressentiment; it festers most where aspiration and opportunity are out of sync. Morgan deftly applies this to martial arts dojos as “mini-societies”—structured but porous, often offering the illusion of empowerment without its lived reality. A black belt may feel powerful within their own gym, yet inadequate in the broader world, or threatened by rival instructors. Here, martial rank masks insecurity, and rivalry becomes psychological compensation.

Yet Morgan’s argument does not end in cynicism. Indeed, the most refreshing turn in her paper lies in her turn to Stefano Tomelleri’s reinterpretation of ressentiment as potentially transformative. For Tomelleri, ressentiment is not the province of the “morally weak,” as Nietzsche would have it, but a universal and even necessary experience. When acknowledged honestly, it can push individuals toward “growth, justice and transformation.” As Morgan writes, “Ressentiment… instead of poisoning the soul becomes the soul’s salvation.”

This transformative vision is rooted in Tomelleri’s concept of fraternity—not as benevolence, but as a mutual commitment to shared vulnerability and dialogue. Morgan aligns this with Ben Spatz’s notion of martial arts practice as a form of research, particularly one in which our training partners are also our rivals. The Japanese term aite (相手), meaning both “opponent” and “partner,” captures this tension beautifully. The dojo, then, becomes a site for ethical inquiry, where practitioners face both their technical limits and their emotional reactivity.

To conclude, Morgan introduces Steven G. Smith’s “bowl climbing” metaphor—a direct challenge to the tired trope of all martial arts being “different paths up the same mountain.” Smith suggests that in both religion and martial arts, we often appear to be asking the same questions, while actually seeking fundamentally different ends. Therefore, meaningful dialogue requires not consensus, but “shared seriousness about seeking what is worthiest to be sought.” This, Morgan argues, is a more honest and productive foundation for inter-style engagement.

Taken as a whole, Morgan’s paper is a rigorous, incisive, and ultimately hopeful intervention in the study of martial arts culture. Her fusion of Nietzschean critique, Schelerian sociology, and Tomellerian ethics offers a valuable theoretical framework for both scholars and practitioners. It also opens multiple pathways for further research. Ethnographic studies could explore how ressentiment operates in different martial subcultures—traditionalist, sportive, or commercial. Pedagogical work might examine how martial educators can cultivate fraternity in their dojos, turning envy into empathy and rivalry into research.

Morgan’s real gift here is to show that martial arts are not just about dominance, lineage, or even self-defence. They are about ethics, power, and meaning. And if we are willing to do the hard internal work, they might also be about transformation. As martial artists and scholars, we are not merely keepers of style or tradition—we are stewards of the culture we create through our interactions.

日本語概要：「武道、宗教、ルサンチマン ― カイ・モーガンによる理論的考察」カイ・モーガンの論文「武道、宗教、ルサンチマン」（2020年）は、武道界における流派間の対立や嫉妬、軽蔑の感情を、ニーチェやシェーラー、そしてトメッレリの哲学的概念「ルサンチマン」を用いて分析する、鋭い理論的アプローチです。
モーガンは、他流派への否定的な態度が、しばしば「道徳的優位性」を装った嫉妬や不安から生まれると主張します。たとえば、成功している道場を「マクドージョ」と軽蔑する態度には、しばしば自己の劣等感の裏返しが見られます。
このような価値の転倒をニーチェは批判しましたが、シェーラーは近代社会の不平等こそがルサンチマンの原因であると反論します。モーガンはこの議論を道場という「ミニ社会」に適用し、階層構造と現実の不一致が感情の歪みを生むと述べています。
一方、トメッレリの現代的な視点はより希望に満ちています。彼はルサンチマンを自己変容へのきっかけと捉え、「共に脆さを分かち合う」フラタニティ（兄弟愛）へと昇華する可能性を示唆します。武道の稽古がまさにそのような実践的・共同的探究の場であるという提案は、実践者にとっても研究者にとっても大きな示唆を与えます。
この論文は、武道を「単なる技術」ではなく、「倫理的・社会的探究の場」として再考させる重要な貢献であり、今後の研究にも応用可能な理論的枠組みを提示しています。

Bowman, P. (2021) The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture Between Asia and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dedicated to Mike Clarke — mentor, friend, and fellow traveller on the path of Budō (武道).

In The Invention of Martial Arts, Paul Bowman offers a bold and theoretically rich intervention in the expanding field of martial arts studies — a field increasingly shaped by poststructuralist inquiry, cultural theory, and global media analysis. With clarity and provocation, Bowman argues that martial arts as we know them today are not timeless traditions but recent inventions: cultural products forged through 20th-century media flows, nationalist movements, and global capitalism.
Having lived in Japan since 1995 and returned recently to Ireland, I have spent decades immersed in both the practice and pedagogy of Budō (武道). This perspective makes Bowman’s work especially engaging — not because it undermines traditional arts, but because it dares to ask where those traditions come from, how they are framed, and what ideological work they do in the present.
After several months focused on relocation and new professional beginnings, this review marks my return to regular blogging — and it is fitting that I do so with a work that so carefully unpacks the complex intersection of embodiment, representation, and identity within martial arts cultures.

Martial Arts as Discursive Formations
At the heart of Bowman’s book lies a powerful thesis: “Martial arts are not natural kinds of thing. They are invented. They are constructed. They are social, cultural and political inventions and constructions” (2021, p. 9). This claim is not merely provocative — it is deeply Foucauldian, treating martial arts not as stable inheritances but as discursive formations shaped by historical contingency and power.
Bowman insists that “the very terms that we use today (‘martial arts’, ‘martial artists’, and so on) should be understood to be modern—indeed, recent—constructions” (p. 19). What is commonly imagined as an ancient, unbroken chain of warrior knowledge is instead a product of cultural negotiation, institutional framing, and representational repetition. In this sense, martial arts resemble what Pierre Bourdieu might call a “field” — a structured space of positions and struggles over legitimacy, status, and capital.
This approach does not deny the physicality or sincerity of martial practice. Rather, it draws attention to how meanings are made, valorised, and contested — often in ways invisible to practitioners themselves.

Media as a Site of Martial Invention
A standout feature of the book is its deft analysis of how martial arts have been shaped by film, television, advertising, and digital media. Bowman demonstrates that popular media do not merely depict martial arts; they produce them — shaping public understanding, practitioner aspiration, and even institutional structure.
As he writes: “Our ideas of martial arts actually come from media representations” (p. 10). This is not to say that dojos and disciplines are illusions, but rather that the way we imagine and structure them — from what a legitimate form looks like, to what counts as mastery — is heavily mediated.
Particularly compelling is Bowman’s claim that “the spectacular is not supplementary to martial arts. It is constitutive of it” (p. 55). Cinematic spectacle, viral forms, and performative ritual are not just decorative; they actively shape the ontology of martial arts in global consciousness. The flying kick and the choreographed kata (型), the slow-motion shot and the master’s pose — these are not just styles, but structuring myths.
Here Bowman’s work aligns closely with Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital: prestige accrues to those who embody recognised signs of “authenticity,” even when those signs are produced by media rather than lineage.

Challenging Authenticity, Defending Inquiry
Bowman’s treatment of authenticity is among the most intellectually valuable aspects of the book. He critiques the common claim that some martial arts are “pure” or “traditional,” while others are diluted or fake. “Authenticity is always relational and constructed — and often politically mobilised to assert superiority, purity or lineage” (p. 91), he argues. These claims often obscure the very real historical ruptures and reinventions that define most martial arts systems.
This should be of particular interest to Budō (武道) practitioners, especially those working within Japanese (日本) or Okinawan (沖縄) traditions. The image of an unbroken, sacred lineage may be personally meaningful, but Bowman reminds us it is also culturally convenient — often built as much from nationalist sentiment and institutional branding as from spiritual inheritance.

A Call for European Engagement
While Bowman focuses primarily on Anglo-American cultural contexts, the implications of his work reach further. Martial arts in Ireland, the UK, and the broader EU have long been understood as extracurricular, exotic, or recreational. Yet, Bowman’s framework opens new ways of thinking about how these arts might be integrated into conversations about identity, pedagogy, and intercultural ethics.
Catholic and Quaker schools — institutions with philosophical commitments to global citizenship, nonviolence, and reflective practice — have much to gain from re-examining Budō (武道) not as an oriental curiosity but as a disciplined practice of self, community, and ethical development. But this can only happen if educators and practitioners alike are willing to see beyond the myth of martial arts as timeless truths — and engage them instead as living, evolving, and ideologically rich forms.

On the Limits and Potentials
The book’s theoretical sharpness is one of its greatest strengths, but it leaves some areas relatively underexplored. Bowman does not attempt to provide thick ethnographic accounts of practice, nor does he explore non-Western interpretations of martial arts media in detail. These are not flaws, but invitations: openings for future research to examine how martial arts are appropriated, resisted, or reimagined in different socio-cultural contexts — from Brazilian favelas to rural Japanese towns.
Indeed, as Bowman writes in his final chapter: “There is no essence of martial arts, only practices, representations, and negotiations about what counts as martial arts” (p. 153). It is a bracing claim — and a freeing one.

This review is not a first encounter with martial arts thought, nor a re-entry into blogging per se. Rather, it is a resumption — a recommitment to thinking critically, writing publicly, and engaging respectfully with the evolving field of Budō (武道). I remain deeply grateful to my friend and teacher Mike Clarke, who has never stopped asking difficult questions — and who, in his writing and life, reminds me that martial arts must be lived, not mythologised.

I hope this piece sparks dialogue, challenges assumptions, and contributes to what Bowman calls “the permanent negotiation of what counts.” In that negotiation, I believe we all have a role to play — not merely as practitioners, but as thinkers.

ポール・ボウマン著『The Invention of Martial Arts』書評：要点まとめ（日本語）ポール・ボウマンの著書『The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture Between Asia and America』（2021年、オックスフォード大学出版）は、現代の武道や格闘技が「伝統的」あるいは「古来の」実践であるという一般的な理解に対し、それらはむしろ20世紀以降にメディアや消費文化を通じて形成された文化的・言説的構築物であると主張する、画期的な学術研究です。
以下に、本書評の主な論点を整理します。

🔹 武道は「本質的」カテゴリーではない
ボウマンは、武道とは自然発生的なものではなく、歴史的・文化的文脈の中で構築された社会的・政治的実践であると論じます（p. 9）。その意味で、「武道」「武道家」といった用語自体が、近代のメディアや言説によって形成されたものであると明言しています（p. 19）。

🔹 メディアによる武道の構築
映画、テレビ、広告、YouTubeなどのメディアは、単に武道を「描写」するのではなく、むしろ武道の在り方そのものを「構築」してきたと著者は述べます。ボウマンによれば、武道におけるスペクタクル（見世物的演出）は補助的な要素ではなく、「本質的構成要素」であるとされています（p. 55）。

🔹 「真正性」の再考
「正統性」や「純粋性」といった概念は、しばしば特定の流派や系譜に権威を付与する政治的手段として利用されます。ボウマンは、「真正性（authenticity）」は客観的な真実ではなく、関係性と文脈によって構築されるものであると指摘し、その批判的検討を促しています（p. 91）。

🔹 ヨーロッパ文脈における武道の再定位
筆者は長年にわたり日本に在住し、沖縄武道（武道）の実践と教育に携わってきましたが、近年アイルランドに帰国し、教育機関における武道の可能性を再考しています。とりわけ、カトリック系およびクエーカー系の学校において、武道が人格形成や国際理解の実践的枠組みとして再評価されるべきであると提言しています。

🔹 今後の研究への示唆
本書は、非西洋圏における武道の受容、SNSや動画プラットフォーム上での武道的アイデンティティの形成、そして教育現場での活用といった、多くの新たな研究領域を開くものです。ボウマンは最終章において、「武道の本質は存在しない。存在するのは実践、表象、そして『何が武道であるか』をめぐる絶え間ない交渉である」と述べ、議論を結んでいます（p. 153）。

本書評は、筆者が日本から帰国し、再び武道と教育をめぐる言論活動を本格的に再開する中で執筆されたものであり、武道を固定的な「伝統」としてではなく、批判的かつ創造的に再構築されるべき文化実践として捉える重要性を再確認するものです。