When I first started this essay, my intent was to refurbish a set of safety rules that I had previously established for my Swordfighters group. The earlier article existed as a webpage listing equipment requirements and safety admonitions for sparring. As I reviewed it, I remembered a controversy surrounding a Code of Conduct that had arisen during the years of Covid, along with a broader cultural tendency—especially among some of my younger colleagues—to avoid causing “harm” to sensitive students.

Reading through all of this led me to think about Morita Therapy, a form of Japanese psychotherapy. In Morita Therapy, overly sensitive individuals are described as shinkeishitsu. Among the symptoms of this condition is toraware, or mental captivity—when people become entrapped by their own symptoms. At least, that is how it has seemed to me. Somehow we have entered an era of great sensitivity in which people are increasingly entrapped by their own minds and fears.

I return to this writing now, refreshed by time and the fresh air of an unseasonably warm February, to ask myself what I really think about all this safety and harm.

My first thought, in a stream of consciousness, is “to be measured.” But that suggests restraint, and yes, these admonitions are about restraint. Restraint of what? Perhaps I want to measure my comments against the reactions of others. Another thought is to consider what is appropriate for the continued development of character and strength in human beings. To limit myself to that might be a form of restraint measured against what is ultimately healthy.

When I first set foot in a dojo in 1974, such considerations were not common. My early experiences in martial arts were defined by an edge of fear. I walked into a new dojo at Penn State, euphemistically called the “League of Oriental Karate,” run by two astounding young men, Tom Seabourne and Ralph Vaklavik. Please forgive me, fellows, if I do not remember your names correctly. They came from different schools—Tom from Taekwondo and Ralph from Shotokan—and at that time they were young, fresh black belts united in their desire to practice full-contact karate.

Asian martial arts were just beginning to gain popularity then, and most new schools were being run by young practitioners with only a few years of experience. I believe these two were no exception. The Professional Karate Association had just begun around that time, and the group I joined was focused on learning to fight.

I stood at the door, guts churning, hesitating—and then stepped across the threshold. To enter meant to commit. Walking into that dojo felt like walking off a cliff.

I am lying when I suggest that this was my first exposure to martial arts. The first time I saw karate was a year earlier at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I was considering studying architecture there, and while exploring campus, I wandered into a karate club practicing in the gym. There were many students—karate was in its heyday, and everyone seemed interested in martial arts, perhaps owing to Bruce Lee. I was familiar with karate from movies and from a small paperback book by Bruce Tegner. I walked in with unabated interest. I don’t really know what I expected.

The entire gym seemed filled with people screaming as they moved through techniques. The intensity was astounding—so much so that my eyes watered as I imagined participating in such a wild practice. They did not seem ready to stop anytime soon, and sweat pooled beneath their feet. They appeared oblivious to everything but their imaginary opponents. I slowly edged my way back out the door and into the summer breeze to watch an Aikido demonstration instead. At that time, I walked away from martial arts. I had college and life to sort out.

Ironically, that karate organization was the one I eventually joined a few years later (Shotokan Karate of America), by happenstance and another pathway. Who knew?

When I did decide to practice, I was well aware that it was up to me to choose whether to subject myself to whatever would come. No one apologized for the harshness of training. No one made excuses for not trying. You decided to stay or you didn’t. That was the nature of many choices then. Universities were similar. Professors were not expected to coddle students into learning. Teaching was an obligation to share expertise. Students were there to learn. Student evaluations did not exist. Opportunities were available—but it was up to you to decide which version of “hard” you wanted to take on.

My early training was bold, harsh, and naïve. I spent a few years kickboxing and felt good about it. This was my stage of arrogance. Although I had never truly tested myself in a real match, I had sparred extensively and competed in tournaments. In my youth, I also dealt with bullies and had many fights, which likely influenced my desire to train in the first place.

I cannot say with accuracy that the practices in those schools were “safe.” Bones were broken. There was blood. Many times before practice, I would visit the bathroom so that I would be ballast-free and ready to face whatever harshness might ensue.

There is a term in medieval alchemy called calcination, a thermal treatment used to remove impurities from a substance. That is what early practice felt like to me. Whether I knew it or not, those experiences began to teach me that I could face frightening things and survive—a kind of mental calcination.

Later in my martial training, after I had joined that karate organization that had so unsettled me earlier, I experienced a further calcination called “Special Training.” Special Training was a voluntary ordeal—a period of intensified practice, extended hours, repetition, fatigue, and confrontation with oneself. No one was required to attend. You chose to go, knowing it would be physically demanding and psychologically uncomfortable. It was considered by us to be a powerful personal challenge.

After one such Special Training, I was so full of myself for having endured it that I mistook endurance for superiority. On the drive home, I stopped at a grocery store to buy some food. I remember looking down my nose at the overweight clerk behind the counter, silently judging her for what I perceived as weakness. I had just completed something difficult, and in my youthful arrogance, I believed that this made me different—perhaps better.

It took time to understand the foolishness of that moment. Many people face challenges far greater than Special Training. Illness, loss, responsibility, exhaustion—these are ordeals no less real than a thousand punches in a hot dojo. The person who appears bedraggled by life may have walked through fires I have never known. Training had shown me that I could face fear. Life eventually showed me that I was not alone in that capacity, nor was I unique in having been tested.

Life is hard. Martial practice has always been one way of providing a kind of calcination to endure the challenges we all face. You cannot do this without facing hard things. But practice is only a metaphor.

In general, in the martial arts and in life, people were not coddled much then, and often we suffered as much as we gained. There were arcane and dangerous practices, such as warm-up routines in which one person forcibly stretched another beyond tolerance. I sustained several hamstring tears from overzealous partners in my early training. This was not unlike high school wrestling culture, where students wore plastic sweat suits to drop weight—containing fluid that the body would lose anyway had we not worn the suits.

The violent nature of sparring in some schools drove away all but the most brutal students. Others, still interested, moved toward less brutal forms of practice. Even in those forms, there remained a stoicism in the discipline that felt fresh and real.

Things have not entirely remained that way, though some groups still follow the old, harsh methods. Over time, warm-up practices evolved from early torture routines toward more scientifically defensible methods. Every few years brought new developments in exercise physiology, and I incorporated these into my understanding of health. Some of what I learned came from research; some from continued study of tradition. I came to see that not all traditions were hard. I evolved, and martial arts culture evolved more broadly.

As leadership passed from older generations to newer ones, I began to notice a pattern. It seemed similar to what occurred in Japan when the first Okinawan teachers retired or passed away and new leaders assumed control. I have observed it in my lifetime as well. Sociologists might call this institutional drift toward accessibility.¹

Here is the generational drift pattern:

Generation 1: Founder
Clear purpose grounded in reality
Personal demonstration and validation
Cultural coherence

Generation 2
Techniques preserved
Intensity partially preserved
Meaning slightly dulled

Generation 3
Safety emphasized as martial arts appeal to the masses
Rituals softened for normalcy and marketing
Feats and challenges become optional and rare

Generation 4
Martial arts viewed primarily as fitness or sport
Rites disdained as unnecessary
Voluntary ordeals replaced by inclusivity that feels shallow
Safety codified into rules and conduct codes rather than character development
Marketing outweighs sincerity

Sociologists identify similar drift in other institutions—universities, athletic programs, scouting. Perhaps it reflects a society that has matured into decadence.

My point is this: concern for safety and “harm” is nested within this generational drift. We are embedded in this flow of events, often failing to see its direction as we struggle to find our place within it.

In my own teaching, I tried to address this drift consciously. I had noticed that my parent karate organization, despite its intensity and serious training practices, gave careful thought to the relationship between juniors and seniors. My teachers taught me about the unbroken line of hierarchy that exists from teacher to student. We were taught not to brutalize people while still being true to the martial reality of level differences. Like my seniors, I did not want to build a school that was merely harsh, nor one that was merely accessible. I began to think of training as a ladder.

Most people do not walk into a dojo knowing what martial arts can offer them. Some come because they want a hobby. Some come because they have been hurt and want to learn to fight. Some come because they want to prove something to themselves. That is where most people begin. Historically, in my own groups and in the groups where I have been a student, the attrition rate has been fairly standard. On average, perhaps ten percent rise to the deeper challenges of the martial path. The others come and go.

Rather than forcing intensity upon everyone, I tried to create an environment where movement was possible. Beginners were introduced to the martial environment gradually. As they matured, the physical and psychological demands increased. Intense practices were always voluntary. If someone wished to take on more, the path was there.

I encouraged students to undertake what I called “Feats” and “Quests.” A feat was a short-term challenge—something measurable and demanding, such as committing to one thousand sword strokes a day for a year, or performing one hundred pushups in a day for someone who had never done them before. Quests were different. A quest was a longer vow—a decision to follow a path and see where it led. It might mean committing to practice for life or to pursue some deeper question about fear, discipline, or character.

In this way, the school did not demand that everyone become exceptional. It offered the opportunity. Those who chose to climb could climb. Those who did not were not condemned. The ladder was there, and it was real.

Over time, I think the cycle of hardness and softness, of concentration and dispersion of intensity and truth, repeats. The adage—“Hard times make hard people; hard people make soft times; soft times make soft people; soft people make hard times”—speaks to this rhythm.

What I have seen is an endless flow of the mundane, ordained by the masses as correct, punctuated by unique individuals of character and prowess who influence us for a time. If we are fortunate enough to be close to such a person, we eventually realize that you cannot learn what they are saying merely by listening and copying. You must do what they did. You must become an outlier. You must ask hard questions. You must test yourself with feats and quests.

The lieutenants of the first generation attempt to emulate their predecessor and often succeed in large part. But with each subsequent generation, the tendency to codify, normalize, and soften gradually erodes the art until only a ghost remains—until another exceptional individual rises and a new cycle begins.

I think this happens at multiple scales within our culture and society.

In all of this, to search for deep truths, to be among those who emulate rather than merely follow—it is never safe.

¹ For discussion of how founding intensity becomes formalized and adapted over time, see Max Weber’s concept of the “routinization of charisma” in Economy and Society (1922); Robert K. Merton, “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality” (1936); and Paul DiMaggio & Walter Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields” (1983). These works describe how organizations institutionalize, bureaucratize, and conform to broader social norms across generations.