Chapter 17: Terminology, “To Use or Not To Use, that is the Question?”

Terminology is important as its use in communications. Communications are critical in conveying the right message to the recipient. You cannot fathom the true nature of anything unless you can convey that information in a manner that speaks to the recipient so they may create his or her own. As the reader will find later in this book the art of communications is second only to the art of listening. In both it often comes down to body language, attitude, character, and personality and “terminology” when chained together to make sentences with ideas, theories and facts. 

In martial disciplines, born in the America’s from what our military brethren learned in Asia, fostered a certain mystic that included, at least basically, a set of terms to describe certain aspects, traits and other concepts. The limited time they had exposure to the Asian sensei in the dojo’s didn’t allow for more than a modicum of terminology and those were fraught with misconceptions due to communication difficulties compounded by different cultures and belief systems. This didn’t stop the American’s from taking what little they did learn and use that when they opened the first dojo so many years past. 

In order for people to create a more mystical and mysterious atmosphere in the American dojo often, before the advent of the Internet, they created what they understood terms to mean and then embellished as necessary to achieve certain goals and objectives most often about economic needs. We call it here, “Commercialism.” 

In defense, with the creation and expansion of the Internet and its data collection, today’s martial artists and karate-ka can dig deeper to find out what it all means and take the extra effort to seek out more understanding by learning the terms then defining them properly into an English meaning. Yet, humans are kind of lazy and that isn’t bad because it is this inherent laziness that speeds up the mind and its processing for one thing and one thing only, “Survival.” Although our species has evolved a lot, nature still left behind all those instinct-like conditioned responses, like flight-or-fight, and they all tend to cause issues in modern society. It will take time as it takes time to learn and encode martial practices and methodologies into conditioned-response memories. 

I see terms from Okinawa and Japan as tools, especially with the great Internet translation system available. You see, here in the West when you hear a term you can find its exact definition in an English dictionary but when you look at the characters/ideograms called, generally, kanji those can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Those ways are also, in Japan, different depending on what area of Japan you live, etc., making understanding them very difficult even for Japanese. 

I use the minimum of terminology from Japan and Okinawa in the dojo and I use more extensively other terms and definitions in writing about the martial disciplines more as a teaching tool to convey how muddled the terms can be and how difficult it can be to get the right idea’s from them. But mostly, to convey that on one thing in the martial arts world is set in stone as to the terms used. You as martial artists and karate-ka will learn from the term-tools that what you know and understand today will change the next day and even in the next moment - nothing is static, it all lives in a chaotic environment where situations, circumstances and moments will effect them to change. This is likened to the concept here we refer to as a, “paradigm shift.” 

Do we NEED Japanese terms and terminology? No, not really and as long as we can seek out and learn what we don’t know as well as, importantly, what we don’t know we don’t know then we have a chance to actually learn, understand and then apply that to life, living and defense-protection. 

One martial artist said adequately, " ... about technical terms, in any field any person will understand them differently and when people start to use them in conversations the are getting deluded into thinking that they are talking about the same things were in fact they are sometimes being at cross purposes." - KyOhan

For this reason only is why I consider the terms used in martial arts and karate serve a purpose, to drive the practitioner to work hard to learn and understand their intention in meaning if for no other reason than academic understanding because what ever you learn you store in memory and when your mind needs to create it uses any and all data available to - create.