Twenty Precepts …And Justice for All

Manji Gamae: Peace for all

Following on from my previous post regarding the Precept Karate Ni Sente Nashi – there is no first attack in Karate, this next one homes in on the idea that karate is on the side of justice; it’s what is used by the good guys, against the bad guys.

Surely those reading this publication in 1938 would be in no doubt that Karate was to be a useful tool for good?

Then again, it depends on what is defined as “Justice”, and what the “good” and the “bad” are.

By having this Precept be as vague as it is allows the interpretation of the reader to determine what is deemed as “justice” and the use of Karate in that context.

Karate wa gi no tasuke.

Karate is an assistance to justice.

I’d like to think that Funakoshi Gichin was intending to mean the type of Justice that reduces the harm and suffering of others, the reason why we all train in Karate today, and this was perhaps a commentary on what was happening with imperial Japan at the time of writing.

Since 1931 Japan had conquered and expanded its influence into China with the complete taking of China proper in 1937, with the infamous event known as the “Nanjing Massacre”.

There would be no doubt that Imperial Japanese troops would have trained in some form of Martial Arts including Karate – students of the universities which taught karate would have been enlisted to fight.

Many of Funakoshi’s early students perished during the war years which he notes with great sadness.

Funakoshi at this time perhaps wished to make sure there was some distance between the practice of Karate and the growing militarism of imperial Japan.

Perhaps this is the reason why Funakoshi felt compelled to write out the 20 Precepts, adding on from the precepts written down by Sensei Itosu and “Bushi” Matsumura Sokon.

Itosu’s 10 Precepts in 1908 seemed very much focused on the physical side of training, stating that it has nothing to do with Confucianism or Buddhism, whilst Matsumura’s 7 Virtues of Bu, written in a letter in 1882, states that it brings about virtue and a general sense of harmony and prosperity. Albeit Matsumura is identifying the practice of Budo no bugei with that of Confucianism, which is about adherence to rules, formal structures and hierarchies.

Itosu writing his at a time of Japanese modernization and the rise of the Nation State which threatened the existence of the foreign “Chinese Hand” developed by “non-Japanese” Okinawans.

Matsumura writing his at a time of the removal of the noble class and the stipends of the Ryukyu Kingdom – Ryukyuan King Sho Tai being forced to abdicate, reduced to that of Marquis and moved to Tokyo in 1879.

The landscape in which Karate was practiced in had now changed yet again by 1938 and as Funakoshi already had the ear of many Japanese studying Karate what better way to try and bring about peace, and ‘Justice for All’, by attempting to state this amongst other precepts which were more about physical and mental awareness, rather than a deeper philosophical way of life.