Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#141

Post by reitanqild » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

cheriot wrote: post #128

coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, though it's not the kind of thing one will find on sugar coated high school history or books from patriotic academics. It's common historical knowledge that the Japanese were pretty much defeated and desperate (out of oil and resources, with the Russians circling them, and they had already examined the possibility and terms of surrender, using USSR as a mediator). Of course to make it less easy, the US insisted…

> I know that the enemy is on its last legs So they're still fighting and the war is not over yet? > there's nothing about "invading" that's worse than dropping nukes on civilians A country's leadership is responsible to its own people first. Truman dropped bombs to avoid sacrificing his people. Tojo let his people die to avoid loosing face. WW2 ended in a horrific way and the stories popular in the US definitely lea…

> However your comments read like you've adopted the opposite bias rather than less bias.

I'm adding this to my selection for future usage.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#142

Post by pluma » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #16

hoodoof wrote: post #4

Related but at a tangent - after a lifetime of interest in karate I came to realise that most of the stuff taught at karate is not practical. Katas and karate punches and kicks - most of this better thought of more as dancing or ceremonial. A bit like Tai Chi - except that Tai Chi claims no real world martial value. The myth remains however of karate being great self defence training. Our local karate club is packed…

for what it's worth, there are a bunch of combat tai chi practitioners out in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcc0jNJwgJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQnuWY13ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw4xFD-47Q

It's sad to see so many people think that Tai Chi is just meditative shadow boxing. It's really more about fluid/soft and hard movements, developing an intuition for how your opponent will move and using an attacker's force against them.

I've seen people finding it very useful as an influence in HEMA where 9/10th of the difficulty lies in reading your opponent to know when and how they will attack.

It's also immensely useful for demonstrating the importance of footwork, as the last video you link to (by the English-speaking Wing Chun instructor -- even if his style isn't "really" Tai Chi) shows very beautifully.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#143

Post by qrendel » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #77

titanix2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much the unusability is actually related to weapon carry right. I mean, of course sword skill is useless for defence if you cannot carry a sword with you. If it were otherwise, like in pre-Meiji Japan, I'm sure kendô skill would be better than nothing. But given that by the time warriors were taught real military fighting and not martial art in the modern meaning, the question is a non starter. So I agre…

People always think aikidô is fake, until they try it. I couldn´t believe it for myself until a girl, two heads smaller than me and probably a third of my weight, brought me to the floor. There´s nothing fake in it. There is just pain if you resist, so you don´t. And besides that, the goal of aikidô is to prove the enemy that attacking you will not help him with anything. It´s not meant to overcome him with force, by…

The techniques aren't fake, they're just unreliable outside of training.

It's one thing to pull it off against a training partner who is using a known subset of attacks and when you know they're coming. Different when you're in a chaotic self-defense situation and facing a fully-resisting opponent who will try anything to win.

You need a much higher level of skill to deal with the latter than the former. It's the same as how a really good boxer can (against a less skilled opponent) just drop his hands and bob-and-weave to avoid strikes, but an average or unskilled boxer can't afford to try fancy, high-risk techniques, when simpler tactics are a much safer way to win the fight.

That's the biggest problem with stuff like aikido for self-defense. Taking an average person and giving them six months or so of aikido training will NOT make them able to effortlessly toss around men 3x their size who are seriously trying to hurt them, and telling them that it will is selling them a dangerous lie. Even if they put in decades of training, they're still relying on relatively high-risk techniques when there are other more reliable ones.

I don't mean to crap on anyone's favorite styles. Aikido is an art form with some self-defense applications, and it's great for that. But a lot of people don't understand how hard it is to beat someone who is massively bigger and stronger than you, and it's doing them a dangerous disservice to market it to them as more than that.

(~5 years previous experience in tae kwon do, muay thai, BJJ, and hapkido, among others.)

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#144

Post by meerita » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

cyberferret wrote: post #57

titanix2 wrote: post #29

I recently (3 months) started iaidô[1] in my Japanese university club, and one thing that struck me was how few "bullshit" talks we had about the discipline. In contrast, when browsing for clubs in my country, each website was filled with a last a few paragraphs saying how spiritual the art is, how it is all about discovering yourself and the truth of the universe. People of my club are more interested in it because…

I just starting Kendo training here at a local dojo. Our instructor is very adamant and clear at almost all training sessions that the skills we are learning with the bamboo and wooden swords are NOT usable in a self defence or martial capacity at all. Rather that our studies are for mental focus, fitness and spiritual calmness. These are the exact reasons I took up the study of this art. In my younger days, I studie…

form kendoka here: I don't want to distrust your instructor, but Kendo IS the way to study all you need to fight. Then there is each school where you can practice special katas and become proficient with one or another technique, but overall.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#145

Post by peatmoss » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #77

titanix2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much the unusability is actually related to weapon carry right. I mean, of course sword skill is useless for defence if you cannot carry a sword with you. If it were otherwise, like in pre-Meiji Japan, I'm sure kendô skill would be better than nothing. But given that by the time warriors were taught real military fighting and not martial art in the modern meaning, the question is a non starter. So I agre…

People always think aikidô is fake, until they try it. I couldn´t believe it for myself until a girl, two heads smaller than me and probably a third of my weight, brought me to the floor. There´s nothing fake in it. There is just pain if you resist, so you don´t. And besides that, the goal of aikidô is to prove the enemy that attacking you will not help him with anything. It´s not meant to overcome him with force, by…

Current aikidoka here--ukes are generally more compliant in aikido than, say, judo. But then again the throws often have a lot more going on, and thus require some level of compliance to just learn. Pressure ramps up as one advances, but there's really never shiai-level intensity.

I mainly do aikido because it's insanely difficult (at least by my estimation having done judo and a somewhat more traditional jujitsu) and a good workout. I don't think aikido or most other martial arts are particularly good for self defense. Actual violence is ugly and unpredictable.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#146

Post by jhbadger » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

qrendel wrote: post #133

__s wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vonnegut's a good read for this, often gets into Dresden

Specifically, Vonnegut was present at and survived the bombing of Dresden, which became part of (the main?) the inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut#World_War_II The book makes a lot more sense once you understand Vonnegut's history with the bombing.

Sadly, Vonnegut quotes David Irving's "The Destruction of Dresden" as a source for the number of dead (extremely inflated over other sources). Sadly because although Vonnegut didn't know it at the time, Irving was a Holocaust denier who wanted to rehabilitate the reputation of the Nazis by showing them to be no worse than the Allies.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#147

Post by mendelsd » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

Masaki Kobayashi made a couple of subversive films in the 1960's that present a very dark view of Samurai culture. These films [1][2] are excellent. [1] in particular is exquisite (and tied for the Jury Special Prize at Cannes in 1963).

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056058 [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061847

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#148

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #126

kbart wrote: post #73

Every nation rewrites its history according to contemporary needs and cherry picks (or creates) sources to support it. A good example of today is Russia, where Stalin cult is resurgent and not so honorable history facts (pact with Hitler, Holodomor etc.) are being suppressed or played down[1]. 1. http://www.economist.com/node/10102921

Next you're going to tell me that George Washington never actually chopped down a cherry tree! http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cher...

This is explicitly lampshaded in TFA.

[EDIT:] Honestly though, since this allowance comes so late and is not connected back to the main narrative, it does undermine the whole mess. Next up, a hard-hitting takedown of Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson...

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#149

Post by peatmoss » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

qrendel wrote: post #143

martin_a wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always think aikidô is fake, until they try it. I couldn´t believe it for myself until a girl, two heads smaller than me and probably a third of my weight, brought me to the floor. There´s nothing fake in it. There is just pain if you resist, so you don´t. And besides that, the goal of aikidô is to prove the enemy that attacking you will not help him with anything. It´s not meant to overcome him with force, by…

The techniques aren't fake, they're just unreliable outside of training. It's one thing to pull it off against a training partner who is using a known subset of attacks and when you know they're coming. Different when you're in a chaotic self-defense situation and facing a fully-resisting opponent who will try anything to win. You need a much higher level of skill to deal with the latter than the former. It's the sam…

This is well put. In judo, for example, most throws are pretty simple in having a readily discernible fulcrum. The setup and execution of the throws are efficient and reliable.

In aikido, the point around which someone falls can often be floating unintuitively in space after a combined sequence of off balancings that are neither intuitive nor natural. I study aikido primarily today--not because it is easy, but because it's hard. I'm also utterly unconcerned with self defense. I train for those moments when everything is in alignment and either I or my training partner go vaulting effortlessly through the air. I wouldn't count on that happening in real life.

In terms of self defense, people are almost always better off 1. giving an attacker what they want in terms of money or belongings, 2. Running away, 3. Fighting dirty--in that order.

Re: Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

#150

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

cheriot wrote: post #128

coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, though it's not the kind of thing one will find on sugar coated high school history or books from patriotic academics. It's common historical knowledge that the Japanese were pretty much defeated and desperate (out of oil and resources, with the Russians circling them, and they had already examined the possibility and terms of surrender, using USSR as a mediator). Of course to make it less easy, the US insisted…

> I know that the enemy is on its last legs So they're still fighting and the war is not over yet? > there's nothing about "invading" that's worse than dropping nukes on civilians A country's leadership is responsible to its own people first. Truman dropped bombs to avoid sacrificing his people. Tojo let his people die to avoid loosing face. WW2 ended in a horrific way and the stories popular in the US definitely lea…

Tojo let his people die to avoid loosing [sic] face.

According to TFA we should probably blame Nitobe for that as well. Frankly this seems as ridiculous to me as blaming Nietzsche for the Nazis.