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Reflections on the Impact and Importance of International and Global Education
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Musings on Japanese and Ryukyu Budo
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 Bibliographic Entry Mizoguchi, N. (2024). Judo and Gender in Japan. The Arts and Sciences of Judo, 4(2), 19–27. Friday Academic Reflective Thinking (on Budo) – Judo and Gender in JapanOver the past year I have found myself reflecting increasingly upon the state of contemporary Budo, particularly within Japan. Recent discussions with a colleague who practises judo locally prompted me to revisit broader questions regarding the role of martial arts within modern society. Simultaneously, reports concerning harassment and problematic institutional practices within certain areas of contemporary judo culture have raised important questions regarding authority, pedagogy, and organisational structures. Such concerns appear particularly relevant given that judo, like many forms of Budo in Japan, faces changing social expectations and declining participation rates. Although I no longer practise judo regularly, I have long regarded Jigōrō Kanō as perhaps one of the strongest examples of a Meijin in the modern era. Not merely as a technician or founder, but as an educator whose aspirations extended beyond technical instruction towards broader personal and social development. In many respects, I have often viewed Kanō as someone I aspire to emulate both as a teacher and as a Budoka. Against this broader context, Mizoguchi’s (2024) Judo and Gender in Japan offers an informative and timely contribution. Situating the Article within the Field Over the last two decades, martial arts studies has increasingly emerged as an interdisciplinary field that extends beyond narrow technical descriptions and historical chronologies towards broader analyses of identity, culture, politics, embodiment, and social structures (Bowman, 2015; Bowman, 2017). Rather than treating martial arts simply as systems of combat or self-defence, scholars increasingly examine them as complex cultural practices embedded within wider historical and social contexts (Farrer & Whalen-Bridge, 2011). Within scholarship concerning women in judo specifically, considerable research has focused upon physiological performance, competition histories, and the biographies of pioneering female practitioners. However, a smaller body of literature has explored broader historical and social dimensions of gender within martial practice (Miarka et al., 2011; Callan et al., 2018). Mizoguchi’s article contributes meaningfully to this latter body of scholarship. Rather than simply examining when women entered judo, the article asks more fundamentally how and under what institutional conditions participation became possible. This shift in focus is significant because it reframes women’s judo not as a linear narrative of progress but as a product of negotiation between social expectations, institutional structures, and competing pedagogical philosophies. Strengths of the Article One of the strongest features of the article lies in its rejection of simplified historical narratives. Rather than presenting women’s participation in judo as a straightforward movement from exclusion towards inclusion, Mizoguchi instead demonstrates the complexity and contradictions characterising this development. Particularly noteworthy is the treatment of Jigōrō Kanō. Contemporary martial arts discourse frequently portrays Kanō in idealised terms as an educational reformer, visionary founder, and progressive moderniser. Mizoguchi presents a considerably more nuanced interpretation. Kanō appears simultaneously supportive and restrictive: encouraging women’s education and physical development while maintaining limitations concerning competition and participation (Mizoguchi, 2024). A second strength lies in the article’s comparative institutional perspective. The contrast between Kōdōkan policies and regional organisational practices is particularly valuable. Whereas the Kōdōkan sought to preserve specific educational and organisational structures, local federations occasionally demonstrated greater flexibility in implementing practices and participation (Mizoguchi, 2024). Finally, the article succeeds in situating judo within broader social transformations occurring within Japanese society. Rather than treating martial arts as isolated phenomena independent of wider social contexts, Mizoguchi demonstrates the interaction between judo and shifting educational, political, and gendered expectations. Areas for Further Development Despite these strengths, several areas could benefit from further development. First, while institutional structures and policies receive considerable attention, the experiences and perspectives of female practitioners themselves remain comparatively underdeveloped. Readers receive relatively limited insight into how individual women experienced and negotiated these systems. Several questions consequently remain:
Second, while Mizoguchi generally interprets Kanō’s restrictions as emerging primarily from educational concerns rather than discriminatory intent (Mizoguchi, 2024), greater engagement with alternative interpretations may have strengthened the analysis. Finally, greater international comparison may also have proved useful. More sustained comparison with women’s experiences outside Japan may have helped distinguish uniquely Japanese developments from broader patterns across martial cultures. Future Directions and Next Steps Mizoguchi’s work opens several productive pathways for future research. First, greater attention to oral histories and practitioner narratives could provide insight into how institutional policies were experienced at individual levels. Second, contemporary research might examine whether historical structures continue to shape organisational cultures within judo today. Questions concerning hierarchy, authority, gender expectations, and institutional responses remain highly relevant. Finally, comparative work across other Budo disciplines, including karate, kendo, and aikido, may reveal broader patterns extending beyond judo itself. Conclusion Ultimately, the significance of Mizoguchi’s article extends beyond women’s participation in judo alone. The article raises broader questions concerning the relationship between institutions, ideals, and historical memory within martial arts culture. Martial arts frequently present themselves through narratives of continuity, tradition, and universal principles. Yet martial arts studies increasingly remind us that such systems are also social products shaped by historical circumstances and institutional choices (Bowman, 2015). Mizoguchi’s article, therefore, serves as a useful reminder that Budo does not exist outside society. Rather, it reflects, reproduces, and occasionally challenges the assumptions of the societies from which it emerges. 本稿はMizoguchi（2024）の『Judo and Gender in Japan』を武道研究（Martial Arts Studies）の文脈の中で位置づけ、その学術的意義と課題を検討したものである。本論文の重要な貢献は、女子柔道の歴史を単純な進歩の物語としてではなく、制度、社会規範、教育理念の相互作用として分析している点にある。特に嘉納治五郎を理想化された創始者像としてではなく、進歩的側面と制約的側面の双方を持つ歴史的人物として描いている点は興味深い。一方で、女性実践者自身の経験や視点については十分な検討がなされておらず、口述史や個人の語りを用いた研究の必要性も示唆される。また、柔道のみならず空手、剣道、合気道など他武道との比較研究も今後の課題として考えられる。本論文は武道を社会的・文化的文脈の中で理解する重要性を示している。  This week, as with many educational institutions and media organisations across Britain and Ireland, my own school marked the centenary of David Attenborough. Assemblies were organised, documentary clips circulated, and social media became saturated with tributes to a figure who has, for several generations, become almost synonymous with public environmental consciousness itself.
The celebration was understandable and, in many respects, entirely deserved. Attenborough’s contribution to environmental awareness cannot be easily overstated. Through the institutional machinery of the BBC and the wider Anglophone media sphere, he helped render ecological crisis culturally visible in ways few scientists, policymakers, or activists ever managed. Entire generations learned to imagine the natural world through his narration. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that Attenborough became not merely a broadcaster of nature, but one of the principal mediators through whom late modernity emotionally encountered ecological fragility itself. For many people, the voice of Attenborough became the voice of the planet speaking back to humanity. And yet, amidst these celebrations, I found myself thinking instead about Jane Goodall and the comparatively muted public response which accompanied her passing. The imbalance struck me as quietly revealing. Not because Attenborough ought not to be celebrated, nor because the two figures should be simplistically opposed to one another. By all available accounts, they held deep mutual admiration and respect. Attenborough repeatedly praised Goodall’s work as transformative in reshaping human understanding of animal consciousness and environmental responsibility. Goodall, in turn, consistently acknowledged Attenborough’s unparalleled role in bringing ecological awareness into mainstream public discourse. They were not rivals, but rather complementary figures emerging from the broader post-war environmental and scientific awakening of the twentieth century. I was fortunate enough during my international career to meet both figures briefly at different moments. Indeed, I met Dr Goodall several times. Both possessed an undeniable presence, though in markedly different ways. Attenborough carried the cultivated authority of the great public narrator — intellectually composed, observational, almost civilisational in tone. Speaking with him, one sensed the immense institutional and symbolic weight he carried as perhaps the single most recognisable environmental communicator of the modern era. Goodall, by contrast, radiated something quieter and more relational. There was less performance in her presence and more attentiveness. Even in brief encounter, one sensed not simply an intellectual commitment to environmentalism, but an ethical orientation grounded in reciprocity, humility, and encounter. I was also privileged during my years in international education to help guide students in establishing a Jane Goodall youth chapter within one of my previous schools. In retrospect, I suspect that experience shaped my understanding of environmentalism far more deeply than I appreciated at the time. The emphasis was never solely upon awareness, advocacy, or symbolic concern, but rather upon participation, responsibility, and relationship — the idea that young people were not merely observers of planetary crisis, but active participants within the difficult work of restoration and stewardship. Perhaps this distinction partly explains why their respective environmental imaginaries continue to resonate differently with me. Attenborough frequently spoke from the position of the reflective observer — almost as a historian of the biosphere. His later documentaries increasingly became meditations on ecological overshoot, planetary fragility, collapse, and the consequences of industrial modernity. Humanity appeared as a civilisation confronting the destructive logic of its own expansionary trajectory. Goodall, however, consistently articulated a more relational and participatory vision. Her work emerged not through grand narration, but through prolonged encounter, patience, observation, and reciprocity. She did not merely interpret the natural world from a distance; she entered into relationship with it. Even while fully acknowledging the exploitative and colonial dimensions of humanity’s historical relationship with nature, she continued to insist upon the possibility of restoration, coexistence, and ethical participation. The distinction is subtle, but significant. Attenborough invited modern audiences to observe ecological crisis. Goodall invited humanity to re-enter relationship with the living world. One discourse foregrounded witnessing. The other foregrounded participation. Increasingly, I find myself wondering whether contemporary environmentalism has itself become absorbed into the wider logic of consumption and symbolic performance characteristic of late modern culture. Environmental concern is now endlessly mediated through spectacle, branding, streaming platforms, curated anxiety, institutional campaigns, and performative gestures of awareness. Ecological consciousness risks becoming something aesthetically consumed rather than existentially inhabited. Nature itself becomes content. This is perhaps why Attenborough’s symbolic reproduction appears so culturally effortless. He fits comfortably within the structures of public legitimacy:
Again, none of this is intended as criticism of the man personally, whose sincerity and contribution remain beyond serious dispute. Nor is it an attempt to diminish the extraordinary achievements of his life’s work. Rather, it raises questions regarding which forms of environmental discourse contemporary institutions find most easily reproducible and symbolically useful. Goodall’s worldview is quieter, slower, and perhaps ultimately more destabilising. Her work unsettles the hierarchical separation between observer and observed, human and animal, civilisation and nature. She demands not merely awareness, but reciprocity. Not simply concern, but relational obligation. Perhaps years spent immersed in the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu have left me particularly sensitive to the ways institutions reproduce legitimacy and symbolic authority. Schools, media structures, and public discourse do not simply celebrate individuals; they simultaneously reproduce culturally sanctioned ways of imagining humanity’s relationship with knowledge, power, morality, and the natural world itself. Of course, I am hardly outside these structures myself. Like most of us, I remain deeply entangled within the very systems of symbolic consumption I find myself critiquing. I too have consumed Attenborough’s documentaries, shared environmental concerns online, and participated in the same mediated forms of ecological awareness which increasingly dominate contemporary public life. And perhaps that is what my unease this week ultimately revealed. Not discomfort with the celebration of Attenborough, but rather a growing awareness of how effortlessly certain forms of environmental discourse are institutionalised, aestheticised, and endlessly reproduced, while more relational, participatory, and ethically demanding visions of ecological life remain comparatively marginal. Perhaps, too, there is something revealing in which environmental figures become canonised as the “faces” of planetary care within educational and media culture. Modern institutions appear deeply comfortable with environmentalism when it remains observational, mediated, and symbolically consumable. They appear less comfortable with ecological philosophies which ask humanity to fundamentally renegotiate its relationship with the living world itself. If nothing else, this reflection has reminded me why I began writing publicly in the first place. Increasingly, I find myself wanting to step quietly away from educational commentary, institutional discourse, and the performative velocity of contemporary digital culture. More and more, I feel drawn back toward the original intellectual and existential concerns which first animated this blog: Budo. Not Budo as performance, branding, nostalgia, or commodified identity, but as disciplined practice; embodied inquiry; relational ethics; and lived imperfection. Perhaps that path still offers a small corrective to the increasingly consumptive character of modern intellectual life. Wisdom, like stewardship itself, cannot merely be observed, curated, or symbolically performed. It must be practised. David Attenborough生誕100周年を祝う学校やメディアの姿を見ながら、私はむしろJane Goodallの死去が比較的静かに扱われたことに違和感を覚えた。両者は互いを深く尊敬し、共に地球環境への危機感を共有していた。しかし、アッテンボローが「観察者」として自然を語ったのに対し、グドールは「関係性」と「参加」を重視した。現代環境主義はしばしば映像・SNS・制度を通じて「消費される関心」へ変化しているように思える。私自身もかつて生徒たちとジェーン・グドール青年支部を立ち上げた経験があり、環境とは単なる知識ではなく実践的関係性だと学んだ。この省察は、教育論から少し距離を置き、再び武道（Budo）の実践的探究へ戻ろうとする私自身の姿勢とも重なっている。  Imagine a school shaped by a Christian ethos. Its mission speaks of peace, dignity, moral formation, and care for neighbour. It rejects violence not merely as imprudent but as contrary to human flourishing.
Now imagine a proposal that students might study budō — not as street self-defence, not as competitive fighting, but as a disciplined martial art rooted in restraint, hierarchy, repetition, and self-mastery. Is there a contradiction? At first glance, perhaps. Martial arts train the capacity to strike. Christian education seeks to form the conscience away from harm. The optics are uneasy. Yet beneath the surface lies a deeper question — not about bruises, but about anthropology. Christianity has never spoken with one voice on violence. Across history, it has held at least two distinct moral trajectories. One tradition — most visible in pacifist movements such as the Religious Society of Friends — insists that participation in violence is incompatible with discipleship. Peace is preserved by refusal. One simply does not take up the sword. Another tradition — articulated most clearly in Augustine and Aquinas — accepts that force may, under strict moral conditions, be used in defence of the innocent. Here, violence is never celebrated, but neither is it categorically excluded. It is morally tragic, tightly bound, and sometimes necessary. I write from within the Roman Catholic tradition — a tradition that developed just war theory as a moral attempt to regulate the use of force, yet whose historical record reveals how often those limits were strained, ignored, or manipulated. Crusades, religious wars, political entanglements: the Church has not always embodied the restraint it theologised. That history matters. It cautions against moral triumphalism in either direction. Most Christian schools today operate, whether consciously or not, within this Augustinian inheritance. They teach virtue, justice, courage, and self-control. They field rugby and hockey teams without perceiving contradiction. Physical contest is framed as discipline rather than aggression. The difficulty with budō is not injury. Controlled dojo practice often produces fewer serious injuries than collision sports. The difficulty is symbolic. Budō carries an explicit lineage of combat. It trains techniques that, in another context, could cause harm. The question, therefore, becomes whether the cultivation of such capacity is already a moral compromise. Here, the tension sharpens. One regime of thought holds that peace is safeguarded through abstention. If one refuses the sword entirely, one cannot misuse it. Moral clarity lies in distance from force. To rehearse violence, even in ritualised form, risks normalising it. Another regime holds that force, as a human capacity, does not vanish by being ignored. Strength exists. Anger exists. The potential for harm exists. The question is not whether these capacities are present, but whether they are disciplined. Peace, in this view, is secured not by denial but by mastery. Budō belongs to this second logic. At its philosophical best, it is not the celebration of aggression but the training of restraint. Repetition tempers impulse. Hierarchy humbles ego. Ritual slows reaction. One learns precisely how much force is possible — and therefore how grave its misuse would be. The highest expression of skill is often the refusal to strike. Everything turns on telos — on the end toward which the practice is ordered. If the end is domination, spectacle, or personal superiority, then it stands in tension with Christian anthropology. If the end is the disciplined formation of character in service of peace, the contradiction is far less obvious. This is not alien to Christianity. Monastic traditions cultivated bodily discipline through fasting, silence, obedience, and structured hardship. The aim was not punishment but purification of desire. The body became the site where will was trained. Budō functions analogously as a corporeal asceticism: through physical form, the self is governed. The New Testament does not present a systematic theory of violence; it presents actions that later theology must interpret. Christ refuses retaliation at his arrest and commands Peter to put away the sword. Yet he also confronts injustice forcefully and disrupts the Temple in a dramatic prophetic gesture. The Gospels leave space for ethical development. Christian history filled that space in divergent ways. It must also be admitted that the cultivation of force always carries danger. Discipline can slide into pride. Technical mastery can inflate ego. A martial framework without humility becomes caricature. But refusal carries danger as well. Moral abstention can drift into abstraction, detached from the embodied realities of conflict and responsibility. The disagreement, then, is not between peace and violence. It is between two visions of how peace is secured. Peace can be imagined as the refusal of power. It can also be imagined as the disciplined governance of power. Within a Christian educational setting, this becomes a question of formation. What kind of person is the school trying to produce? A person who never touches the sword, believing that purity lies in abstention? Or a person who understands the weight of the sword so thoroughly that it remains sheathed? The Roman Catholic tradition, for all its historical failures, has long held that strength itself is not evil; it is its ordering that determines its morality. The tragedy of history is not that power existed, but that it was so often disordered. Yet there remains a further question — perhaps the most uncomfortable one. Can one meaningfully guide others through the realities of conflict without ever having encountered its mechanics? Peace formed entirely in abstraction risks fragility. Restraint that has never wrestled, even in disciplined form, with the dynamics of force may prove thinner than it appears. There is a difference between refusing violence. After all, one cannot wield it and refuse it because one has learned its weight. What appears at first to be a curricular question is in fact a theological one. It turns on the nature of the human person. Is strength inherently corrupting? Or is strength morally neutral until directed toward good or ill? The sword, literal or metaphorical, is always dangerous. The Church’s own history testifies to that. The question is whether peace is best preserved by refusing to touch it — or by learning to hold it without drawing it. Optics cannot settle that question. It must be answered by anthropology. And that, perhaps, is a conversation worthy of any Christian school — especially one mindful of its past. 「平和」と「鞘に収められた剣」― キリスト教的学校における武道の位置づけ（要約）本稿は、キリスト教的理念を持つ学校において武道を導入することが矛盾するのか、という思想的問いを扱っている。 キリスト教は歴史的に暴力について一枚岩ではなかった。一方には、すべての暴力参加を拒否する平和主義的伝統（例：クエーカー）がある。もう一方には、アウグスティヌスやトマス・アクィナスに代表される「正戦論」の伝統があり、一定の厳格な条件下でのみ武力行使を認めてきた。 筆者はローマ・カトリックの伝統に属しているが、その歴史は武力を神学的に制限しようとしながらも、必ずしも常にその理想を守ってきたわけではない。この歴史的自覚は、どちらの立場にも単純な道徳的優越を与えない。 武道の問題は、怪我の多寡ではなく「象徴性」にある。ラグビーなどの接触競技が容認される一方で、武道は「戦いの技術」を明示的に扱うため、倫理的緊張が生じる。 ここで二つの「真理の枠組み」が現れる。
キリスト教の修道的伝統における断食や沈黙の修練と同様に、武道も身体を通して意志を鍛える「身体的禁欲」と理解できる。 しかし最後に、より根本的な問いが残る。 暴力の現実や力の構造を一度も経験したことがないまま、人に平和を教えることは可能なのか。 抽象的な平和は脆いかもしれない。力を知らずにそれを拒否することと、その重みを理解した上でそれを鞘に収めることは同じではない。 結局のところ、この問題は課外活動の可否ではなく、人間観の問題である。 力は本質的に腐敗的なのか。 それとも、方向づけられることで善にも悪にもなり得る中立的なものなのか。 平和とは、剣に触れないことなのか。 それとも、抜かずに持つことを学ぶことなのか。 この問いこそが、キリスト教教育の核心に触れている。  How cultural blending, media mythology, and market forces reshaped a modern martial art Much of what is called “traditional karate” today is not a preserved ancient system but a modern hybrid shaped by cultural exchange, institutional reform, media myths, and market pressures. That does not make it illegitimate — but it does make it misunderstood. What follows is an attempt to look at karate honestly as it has actually developed, rather than as it is often described, and to suggest that historical clarity strengthens practice rather than weakening it. One of the quiet ironies of modern karate is that what is most often described as traditional outside Japan is, in reality, profoundly syncretic. Rather than reflecting a coherent historical lineage grounded in Japanese martial culture, contemporary “traditional karate” frequently represents a philosophical and practical assemblage: elements of Chinese martial thought, Okinawan pragmatism, Japanese modern budō ideology, and Western individualism, all bound together by myth, nostalgia, and commercial incentive. Much of what is labelled traditional karate outside Japan is better understood as a modern syncretic construction—one that is regularly misrecognised as ancient, culturally pure, or uniquely Eastern. That misrecognition matters. It shapes authority structures, teaching habits, behavioural expectations, and ethical claims within practice, often in ways that sit uneasily with Japanese cultural norms and with the documented history of martial development. This is not an attack on karate as practised globally, nor a claim that cultural adaptation is inherently corrupting. Cultural transmission is never static. Martial traditions have constantly evolved through contact, reinterpretation, and necessity. The aim here is clarification rather than dismissal: to look at how karate changed as it travelled, and how stories about “tradition” were often built afterwards. A practice that is better understood is usually better respected. Modern martial arts scholarship increasingly supports this reading. Historical research over the past several decades has shown that many practices now described as ancient are, in fact, modern reconstructions shaped by educational reform, nationalism, and global transmission. What feels like unbroken continuity often turns out to be institutional redesign and curricular reframing from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That does not cheapen practice — it situates it in real history instead of mythic time. Syncretism as History — and as Misrecognition Syncretism is not, by itself, a problem. Cultural traditions are always hybrid. Languages, rituals, educational systems, and martial practices all emerge through borrowing, blending, and adaptation. Claims of purity are almost always retrospective. Karate is no exception. The real difficulty appears when hybridity is denied — when a modern, composite practice is presented as timeless and unchanged, and when that claim becomes the basis for legitimacy and authority. Acknowledged syncretism is simply history. Denied syncretism becomes mythology in the service of power. In many karate environments outside Japan, layered symbolic systems are presented as if they were part of a single, coherent inheritance. Confucian-style moral sayings appear beside Zen aphorisms. Japanese etiquette rituals sit next to Western motivational slogans. Training goals are framed simultaneously in terms of spiritual awakening, competitive victory, therapeutic wellbeing, and personal branding. These elements do not come from one unified source. They have been accumulated and combined across time and place. The issue is not a mixture. The problem is mistaking a mixture for an unbroken tradition. The Historical Syncretism of Karate Karate itself developed through cultural blending from the beginning. Its early forms drew heavily on Chinese martial traditions, filtered through the specific social and political realities of Okinawa. Okinawan practice was practical rather than doctrinal, civilian rather than warrior-based, and shaped by local defence needs rather than formal battlefield systems. It grew in trade environments and local communities, not in samurai war schools. Later stories often project samurai-era assumptions backwards onto Okinawan practice, but historically this is inaccurate. Early karate functioned more like an adaptive civilian toolkit than a closed martial doctrine. The decisive transformation came in the early twentieth century when karate was introduced to mainland Japan. There it was deliberately reframed to fit the emerging modern budō model. Techniques were standardised. Terminology was Japanised. Kata were reorganised. Training structures were formalised. The art was reshaped to function within schools and civic institutions. It helps to keep a key distinction clear here. Classical martial lineages were typically closed transmission systems tied to specific historical and military roles. Access was restricted. Instruction was layered and contractual. Technique was inseparable from social obligation. Modern budō systems developed under very different conditions. They were redesigned as vehicles for ethical education, character formation, and civic discipline. Their purpose extended beyond combat effectiveness into social development. Karate belongs to this modern budō project, not to classical battlefield systems. Blurring that distinction produces both historical and pedagogical confusion. It is also helpful to remember that Japanese martial environments usually embed behavioural expectations within broader social norms rather than presenting them as exotic codes. Courtesy, humility, restraint, and group awareness are extensions of everyday conduct. When exported systems present these behaviours as mystical ritual, their meaning shifts. Ordinary disciplined behaviour becomes staged symbolism. That shift is subtle but essential. Syncretism in the Contemporary Dojo Environment Syncretism is easy to observe in contemporary dojo culture. Philosophical quotations from multiple traditions appear together on the walls. Instruction blends Japanese terms, Chinese metaphors, Western sports science, and self-development language. Grading ceremonies combine Japanese bowing protocol with Western award theatrics and corporate certification structures. These are not signs of decay. They are signs of layering. Problems arise only when these layers are presented as a single ancient inheritance rather than a modern composite. Students may be stepping into an unchanged historical stream when they are entering a contemporary educational synthesis. From a teaching perspective, blended frameworks can be confusing if not explained. Students benefit when instructors clarify what is symbolic, functional, historical, and newly added. Transparency strengthens practice. It does not weaken it. Western Individualism and the Re-Mythologising of Practice As karate spread globally, it entered cultures shaped strongly by individualism and self-actualisation narratives. Training was often reframed as a personal journey rather than a communal discipline. Rank became identity marker. Authority became personality-centred. Popular media amplified this through the familiar myth of the mysterious Eastern master and the hidden deadly secret. These stories are compelling, but they reshape expectations. They encourage the idea that legitimacy comes from secret knowledge rather than visible method and ethical conduct. Where secrecy narratives dominate, accountability tends to weaken. Systems grounded in transparent method and open explanation distribute authority more safely. Transparency should not be read as disrespect. It is a safeguard. Market Forces, Rank Inflation, and Sportification Economic reality also played its role. As karate expanded, scalable and standardised systems proved more sustainable. Competitive formats increased visibility and created measurable success markers. They also shifted training priorities. Rank systems expanded. Certifications multiplied. Instructor titles diversified. These developments support motivation and organisational stability, but they also change how expertise is perceived. Sport practice and budō-oriented practice are not moral opposites. Competition can produce very high technical standards. The difficulty arises when purposes are confused — when competitive success is treated as total mastery, or when ethical-development language is used to market purely competitive systems. Clarity about purpose resolves most of this tension. Syncretism as Risk — and as Possibility Syncretism, when recognised, becomes a strength. A hybrid system that understands its sources can choose its direction deliberately. One that denies them simply drifts. Traditions remain alive because they remain interpretable. When explanation disappears, and only myth remains, continuity becomes fragile. When the explanation continues, continuity adapts. Towards an Accurate Practice Karate remains a meaningful and transformative discipline for many people. Its adaptability is one of its real strengths. But honesty about its development matters. Responsible practice is less about performing tradition and more about understanding it — what was inherited, what was reinvented, what was added, and what was marketed. That awareness deepens commitment rather than weakening it. It shifts emphasis from secrecy to clarity, from spectacle to substance, from inherited myth to conscious practice. Syncretism acknowledged becomes literacy. Syncretism denied becomes an illusion. Knowing the difference is where mature martial culture begins. 日本語要約本稿は、海外で「伝統的」と呼ばれている空手の多くが、実際には単一の古い伝統ではなく、中国武術、沖縄の実践、日本の近代武道思想、そして西洋的個人主義や商業化の影響が混ざり合って形成されたシンクレティック（混合的）な実践であることを指摘するものである。問題は混合そのものではなく、それがしばしば「純粋で不変の伝統」として誤認される点にある。メディア神話、マーケティング、競技化はその誤認をさらに強めてきた。歴史的背景と文化的文脈を正しく理解することは、実践の価値を下げるのではなく、むしろ倫理性と成熟度を高める。伝統とは演じるものではなく、理解して継承するものである。  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
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。 |
James M. HatchInternational Educator who happens to be passionate about Chito Ryu Karate. Born in Ireland, educated in Canada, matured in Japan Archives
April 2026
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