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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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 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。  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:
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:
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:
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。 |
James M. HatchInternational Educator who happens to be passionate about Chito Ryu Karate. Born in Ireland, educated in Canada, matured in Japan Archives
December 2025
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