You Make it Look So Easy

I was teaching at a seminar many years ago, with some very talented and high-ranking martial artists. After one particularly well-done demonstration of kata, we took a break and some of the audience members came up to talk to us.

One young lady approached the senior instructor and gushed, “That was great! You make it look so easy.”

He thanked her, but it was fairly curt and abrupt. Then he walked away.

Later he came over to me and said he had been angry, because he hates to be told that he “makes it look easy”, because he has worked hard all his martial arts career to attain the high level of skill he has achieved.

I thought his response was a bit rude, and his reasoning faulty. The young lady had merely been trying to compliment his skills. And after all, he had made it look easy.

Still, I knew what he meant. There are some few individuals for whom everything comes easy, not just martial arts, but all that they do. We all have met somebody like this, and maybe we wish we had a little bit of their talents to go along with our own drive to attain skills.

But in reality, most of us only get anywhere in the arts and in other parts of life, by hard work, sweat, blood, and perseverance. See the phrase below:

“We are unique, gentlemen, in that we create ourselves... through long years of rigorous training, sacrifice, denial, pain. We forge our bodies in the fire of our will.”

Master Han, Enter the Dragon

I might add that we are only able to do that forging because of the great men and women who took the time to train us. Those teachers who saw something in us worth taking the time to squeeze out of us, and who never let us slack for a moment of our training. We owe them debts of gratitude that we can never fully repay. We can only make payments, so to speak, by passing on the knowledge.

In Chinese boxing schools, the master often sent his son(s) and/or daughter(s) to other teachers to train, fearing that they cherished their children too much to enforce the “through long years of rigorous training, sacrifice, denial, pain.” Then after the youngster(s) come back to the home dojo, dojang, kwoon, tahana, etc. they also bring back skills and knowledge to enhance the art they will eventually inherit from their own parent.

In this way, the fresh blood, so to speak, keeps the excellence going for another generation.

In Japanese martial arts schools, there are two lines of descent: the Soke and the Shihanke. The Soke line is by blood or adoption into the family. The rest of the teachers who are not blooded related or adopted are part of the Shihanke.

Somethimes the Soke line is broken, either because there is no heir to take over, or because the Master has died without designating anyone to be the next in line, or for whatever reason the family line doesn’t work out. Then the knowledge must be passed on by the Shihanke line.

Once in a great while, a family heir comes back into the Soke lineage, maybe a grandson or great-grandson (or granddaughter, great-granddaughter). They may even learn whatever is left of the family art that has been preserved. But hopefully they can meet with the Shihanke and get that experience and expertise, and become the next Soke. When this happens, it is a reason for great joy.

In my studies I have only found such an occurrence two to three times. But we have such an instance in our Tobosa Kali-Escrima family. Hopefully my facts are correct, but if not, the mistakes are definitely mine.

Batikan Tobosa passed away in July of 1990 (I believe), and Manoi Toby did not immediately take over, as he wanted to see what would happen, and which personalities might surface and try to take over the mantle of leadership. But eventually he did step in to take over as the head of family. But when he passed away in April of 2000, there was no heir apparent to step in. The arts were maintained by the Shihanke line.

Eventually Maestro Chaston Tobosa, grandson of Batikan was able to begin training, and he had Maestro Don Mendoza, Maestro Lee Manibog, Maestro Rico and others to help him learn the family escrima. The great thing though, was that the Tobosa Kaji-Kumi system had been maintained by Maestro Michael Mulconery and some colleagues and so Maestro Chaston can be the once-in-a-lifetime joiner of the Tobosa Kali-Escrima and the Tobosa Kaji-Kumi systems.