Master rational karate with a rational system

I don't say that karate is easy to master. I've been training for over 20 years and still feel I can learn. The further you follow the path, the more you come to realize the depth of both karate and human ability. Given this fact, it is no use just bellowing out "give it 100%" or "practice till you can do it without thinking" and then expect people to understand. Apart from anything else, the instructor is likely to lose his voice! A rational teaching system that is both convincing and takes account of the students' varying levels is necessary to teach rational karate. I believe that Ashihara Karate alone achieves this.

My karate has developed through my own experience in fights, so you might think me presumptous to speak of a 'rational' system. Through the fight experience of having either to down an opponent or be downed myself, I have learnt to skin off all that was unnecessary and forced. My karate is not armchair karate, nor does it consist of absurd movements that no one else can master. The movements I have developed are based on basic body movements, which any man or woman can perform.

What is the best way to fell someone? I've been obsessed with this question since I was a teenager. My training consisted only of attack. The karate I taught when I opened my first dojo in Yawatahama twenty years ago, was karate that consisted only of felling the opponent. Those students who came to me to learn karate were taught only the knock-down variety. Not surprisingly, since knocking down was the only aim, there were those students who always tended to be felled themselves. Many would quit, and never dream of starting up again. So in effect I was denying the opportunity of learning karate to many who had come along to give it a try. In time, I noticed this shortcoming. Karate is not these to ensure the survival of the strongest, rather it should be a means by which the weak may, with a certain amount of effort, become able to fell the strong. To that end, it is vital to teach the correct way to block your opponent and utilize his own power against him. Only a bad teacher would teach his students to soak up an opponent's attacks with their bodies.

In order not ot repeat my shortcomings as a teacher 20 years ago, I set about reforming my system through much trial and error to enable the members of my school to master the art of blocking enjoyably and accurately.

~ Hideyuki Ashihara

Adapted from his book More Fighting Karate
Published by Kodansha Amer Inc, 1989