A Brief View of the Martial Arts Social Contract

Are you curious about the dynamic between a martial arts instructor and student?

Between the martial arts teachers at the Japanese Martial Arts Center in Ann Arbor and their students, there exists a social contract. The contract—mostly implied, sometimes written down—goes something like this: 

As the teacher, I agree to give you, the student, the absolute best training opportunity I can give you, be it in judo, jujutsu, or iaido. I promise to offer you the complete martial art I know, including all physical power, mental strategies, cultural aspects, and any spiritual benefits that are part of the art. I promise not to deceive you with martial arts mumbo-jumbo, and I promise not to try to falsely build up your self-esteem without providing any basis in real martial arts skill. I promise not to ask you to pay absurd dues rates, but will ask you to pay a fair rate in keeping with the expenses of the dojo and my need to earn a modest living. I won't give you a black belt unless you deserve it, but at the same time, I won't unnecessarily prolong your journey to black belt by making the standards impossible. I will try my best to help you develop yourself—mind, body, and spirit—so that you can excel in the dojo and in life.

Earn Your Karate Black Belt Certificate at SMAA

Does the martial arts social contract sound fulfilling? If so, you’re ready to be a martial artist!

SMAA offers five different divisions of authentic Japanese martial arts, including karate-do. To start your journey towards a karate black belt certificate, call 734-720-0330 or submit a contact form here.

Confucius Today

Have you thought about how ancient principles apply to our everyday lives?

Confucius’s four corners principle says that a teacher’s role is really limited. No matter how much he offers, he is only, as the Buddha would say, a “pointing finger” showing you the path to wisdom. It is up to you, the student, to take that road and find its end. The teacher is a marker, a pathfinder. He’s not going to carry you all the way to the end like a baby. 

A teacher, a sensei (“one who has lived more than you”, i.e., an elder, someone with more experience), can teach you only a smidgeon of what you need to know as a martial artist. The rest, the majority of the learning, in fact, is up to you. You can be shown one corner of the room by the teacher. Given that one corner, as a student you should have enough wits about you to be able to discern where the other three are. The teacher shouldn’t have to show you all the rest of the corners one by one.

It made me realize that, as gifted a martial artist as my head instructor was, he couldn’t teach me all I needed to know. Other people had to show me things a different way for me to grasp everything fully. And I had to spend more time working things out on my own to make the knowledge fit my body morphology and ways of movement.

Improve Your Martial Arts at a Japanese Karate Association

Have you been looking for an authentic Japanese karate association?

SMAA offers five different divisions of authentic Japanese martial arts. Submit a contact form here or call 734-720-0330 to start your martial arts journey!

Confucius and the Four Corners

Are you familiar with Confucius’s idea of four corners?

“Every truth has four corners. As a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.”

Confucius has been influential in the premodern educational system of many East Asian countries. This is true too of Japan. The Confucian classics were part of the traditional education of the warrior class before Japan’s modernization, and Confucian philosophy still exerts great influence over Japanese culture and society. It’s easily seen, of course, in the way teachers are supposed to be accorded great respect by their pupils.

What I find more wanting, however, is the self-motivation espoused by Confucius in the above quote. One would think that this lack of motivation would be expected in Japan, China or Korea, countries that were the bedrock of Confucian societies and whose educational system relied heavily upon rote memorization and repetition. But in many martial arts dojos in America, this lack of self-discovery and personal initiative is also easy to find.

Learn More from a Japanese Karate Association

Have you been looking for an authentic Japanese karate association?

SMAA offers five different divisions of authentic Japanese martial arts. Submit a contact form here or call 734-720-0330 to start your martial arts journey!

Balancing Budo with Life

Wondering how master martial artists balance their art with their daily lives?

Wayne Muromoto Sensei had this to say:

From my personal experience, trying to find your own balance can be frustrating at times. I wish I could train more myself, but given my work and family responsibilities, I only have a limited amount of free time in a week. I therefore know that I am not progressing as rapidly as I could were I still in Japan, training four nights a week. But I tell myself that I was glad I was young and reckless and did that, but now I am older and have responsibilities, so those days are long past. I will still grow in my skills, only slower. In the meantime, I am also progressing in my work, and my little family is growing as we live and learn and love together.

I’m not saying that you have to abandon martial arts entirely if work or family needs take precedence. I know a budo student who will sometimes get into terrible arguments with his partner because he wants to take one night out of an entire week to train. That’s not an unreasonable request, in my opinion, because training night is basically his one and only social night out “with the gang.” He doesn’t gamble, play golf, drink, or go to parties. He just works and comes home. Asking him to cut off his one and only social engagement is a bit too possessive, I would say. People need a way to blow off steam, to exercise, and to make friends outside of family and work.

Begin Your Balance at an International Martial Arts Association

SMAA can help you make time for budo! We are an international martial arts association. with five divisions of martial arts to pick from. To get started, call (734) 720-0330 or submit a contact form here.

Find the Time to Train

Struggling to make time for martial arts?

Wayne Muromoto Sensei had this to say:

A friend recently asked me to comment on how one finds the time to train. We live in a day and age, he noted, that puts a stress on how many waking hours we have to devote to training in budo. How did the great masters of the past manage to train so much? How can we devote all the time we really need when we have jobs, families, and other responsibilities? 

It’s not a minor question. Surveys show that we Americans, at least, are working more hours and getting paid overall less (figuring in inflation) than a decade or two ago, and stereotypes notwithstanding, we work more productive hours than almost any other country, including the vaunted Japanese worker. All that work and then having to deal with daily family life will, indeed, put a crimp on training time. Surely, if you’re an adult with a job and a family of any sorts, you can’t be going to the dojo five nights a week to train for five or six hours. It just ain’t gonna work.

Budo Starts at an International Martial Arts Association

SMAA can help you make time for budo! We are an international martial arts association. with five divisions of martial arts to pick from. To get started, call (734) 720-0330 or submit a contact form here.

Mental Cleansing Through Martial Arts

Looking for ways to declutter your mind and body?

Mental cleansing comes through concentration. The complex actions performed in budo require our strict attention, distracting us from petty concerns. Paradoxically, deep concentration on the details of technique frees us from the worry over daily issues, allowing us to concentrating on fundamental matters. Thus, we can look clearly at our circumstances and decide if they are what we think they ought to be. In a lesser sense, this can mean something like examining a technique and deciding the best way to perform it. In a larger sense, it can mean contemplating our whole relationship with the world and perhaps making behavioral changes that bring us more in line with our ideas of how we ought to live.

Through frequent practice, we learn to stay in this state of sharpened perception for longer periods of time. Repeated efforts of this kind eventually sharpen perception permanently. Like the results of regular meditation, daily exposure to a clearer way of viewing the world affects our thinking in fundamental ways. Learning to perceive truth is intrinsically rewarding, and we begin to seek it in experiences outside the dojo. Constant exposure to this kind of thinking can ultimately have a profound effect on our personalities.

Self-Improvement at Karate Organizations

Are you unsatisfied with the karate organizations you’ve looked at so far? 

SMAA offers five different divisions of martial arts, all offering opportunities for physical and spiritual growth. Submit a contact form here or call 734-720-0330 to start your journey.

Budo and Self-Purification

Have you ever thought of martial arts as purifying?

An important concept in budo is that of self-purification through training. Budo practice is thought by some to be a means of approaching the presence of the sacred. In some ways similar to the ritual of washing the hands and mouth before entering a temple, training is a way of cleansing the body, mind, and spirit in preparation for an encounter with a higher plane of existence. The physical cleansing that takes place is fairly obvious. Sweat cleans out the pores, and the rush of blood through the veins and arteries is thought to help keep them clear. Comparing the physical condition of a budo man at seventy years of age and that of someone the same age who has not trained will satisfy you that exercise is good for the body. If, in fact, "the body is a temple," then hard physical training is equivalent to sweeping the floors of the temple, painting the walls, and burning incense to welcome the gods.

Done Researching Karate Organizations?

Are you unsatisfied with the karate organizations you’ve looked at so far? 

SMAA offers five different divisions of martial arts, all offering opportunities for physical and spiritual growth. Submit a contact form here or call 734-720-0330 to start your journey.