Is This A Test?

Two things need to be true for a test to be held… or maybe I should say be valid. If one of them is missing, you have a problem. If both are, you no longer have a test. I’m not sure what you have in that case, something between a theatrical performance and a reality show? Anyway, the two key things are -

The student needs to believe that the test is an accurate evaluation of their skills. Does the test actually test the skills they have been developing? There’s certainly a place for stretching or taxing the student during a test, but generally most of the test needs to be “on topic”.

The student needs to believe that the examiner is qualified to administer and evaluate the test. If you don’t think the examiner is qualified to judge you… then what’s the point of the test? Whatever comes out the other end isn't meaningful.

I ran hard into both of these before I separated from my old Sensei. We had planned to hold a rank test, but I fell ill and had to postpone it. This was actually good luck because in the interm I got more information about the test and realized that Sensei and I were not on the same page at all.

I had thought that I would present bunkai for each of the Goju-ryu kata up to my rank – which was all but Supairenpei – complete with explanations and descriptions of why that bunkai fits with that kata at that rank. If you’ve read my post on Thematic Bunkai, my thought was that my test would be a seminar presenting those bunkai as a coherent whole. I thought this was a great “capstone” for full Sandan, the last of the early black belt "ho-" ranks.

What I realized my Sensei wanted was my interpretation of bunkai for the two newest kata I had learned – Unshu and Jion. Two non-Goju kata that I’d essentially have to make up bunkai for. I had thought we moved passed this, especially when Sensei admitted that these “research kata” were added a means to keep newer black belts engaged in training. To me, they are fillers stuffed into the lower black belt ranks from a time when dojos were packed to the rafters with students and you’d have tens of shodan and nidans in the school that you have to shepherd along. I expect that in those days a student training regularly would pass through those ranks in five or so years. This was a very different experience than the one my Sensei and I shared, which I thought was being acknowledged in our conversation setting up the test.

So this was the first hit. The test wasn’t something I was interested in because it wasn’t testing the skills I had been developing. It wasn’t showing my depth of study into Goju-ryu specifically, or how the kata build into a coherent fighting system with specific Goju-style tactics. It was just moving me back to being a Bunkai Monkey trying to puzzle out movements from random kata. My study had moved on from that, probably years before this test. It was a sign of how little interest my Sensei had in my own practice and their tendency to shut down questions that we never had a fulsome discussion of my thoughts on this.

But the real clincher was the second thing. When I had to postpone, I tried to explain what I intended to do at the test and it went over like a lead balloon. I don’t think Sensei understood what I was saying or my perspective on bunkai. I don’t know that they were really trying to comprehend.

So it was clear to me that not only was the test not going to be relevant, but the examiner wasn’t qualified for the type of test I was seeking. If they didn’t understand my thematic approach, or even the need for a different bunkai approach, or had never fully articulated their own flexible bunkai model in the first place…ugh it just wasn’t going to work. And if I did play by their rules and got the promotion (the certificate was already printed)… what would it even mean?

I was foolish to expect a different sort of test. A tiger can’t change its stripes. Now of course the person awarding rank has the right to hold whatever type of test they want. It is just that I should have expected more of the same, not a new direction in training and our relationship. I think this Sensei’s inability to change, inability to treat me like a fellow traveler or comrade on the path, is why I was their most senior student and why no one else had even attempted the Sandan test.

I did realize that they wouldn’t understand the reasons I’m laying out here. It would only have been taken as a personal attack, not a discussion of ideas or bunkai philosophies. So on the day of the test, I just showed up and said thank you, but I will no longer be training with you.

As you can probably imagine, that didn’t go over great either...