A while back, I theorized that taekwon-do’s student oath may have been heavily influenced by the dojo kun, a set of five training hall rules used by many karate clubs. Since then, I’ve been stewing on another karate list.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan karate, put together a list he called the niju kun. The term translates to “twenty precepts” or “twenty instructions.” It’s a list of vague instructions for both karate and for life in general, apparently culled from his various writings.
Karate-do begins and ends with bowing.
The heart must be set free.
Formal stances are for beginners; later, one stands naturally.
Perform prescribed sets of techniques exactly; actual combat is another matter.
Unlike the dojo kun, the niju kun doesn’t have one particular equivalent in the Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do. But I can’t be the only one who feels like it has some similarities to General Choi’s writings.
For example, don’t precepts 17-19 sound a little like the training secrets of taekwon-do?
I get the impression that these sorts of moral and philosophical prescriptions are somewhat common among East Asian cultures (at least within the martial arts). But I can’t help but think that General Choi’s lists were something more than run-of-the-mill Korean musings. I get the impression he felt that to make taekwon-do a proper martial art, he needed teachings similar to those of Funakoshi and other karate masters.
Consider this: many of the taekwon-do pioneers studied karate in the years leading up to World War II. At the time, Funakoshi was one of the biggest (if not the biggest) name in Japanese karate, and many of the TKD pioneers studied his Shotokan system. He had a lot of influence and played a huge role in shaping karate on mainland Japan. His system essentially became the basic template for all other styles of karate. Funakoshi also first published his niju kun in 1938 (the year General Choi started his karate training), although the individual pieces had been written as early as 1890. The niju kun is still a popular list today, the timing was right, and Choi would have seen Shotokan as the way that martial arts are supposed to be. Why wouldn’t he use Funakoshi’s philosophy as a foundation for his own?
If General Choi could see the way ahead, it seems like he was able to do it by standing on the shoulders of a giant. Figuratively speaking of course… Funakoshi was not a big man.