Please note: All mis­un­der­stand­ings and errors in this review are all mine!

I have col­lec­ted through dint of much effort and invest­ment of time quite a com­pre­hens­ive mar­tial arts lib­rary. Includ­ing the clas­sic writ­ings of such authors as Musashi, Sun Tzu, Yagyu Mun­enori , Gichin Fun­akoshi, Ueshiba and Tak­uan Soho as well as the more mod­ern works of the likes of Bruce Lee, Geoff Thompson, Ver­non Bell, W E Fair­burn and Tomiki to name only a few. I have the great pleas­ure in adding Sen­sei Mulholland’s work to this list and not least of all because it is com­prised entirely of crys­tal clear prose. Few liv­ing mar­tial arts teach­ers are able to express them­selves as artic­u­lately and it is a crit­ical part of the pleas­ure found in read­ing Four Shades Of Black.

Here I am going to dis­cuss the con­tent of the writ­ing, but I must men­tion that this is a bril­liantly presen­ted book.  The pic­tures and lay­out of the text are lightyears ahead of 90% of most mar­tial arts books.

“I know that Okinawan Goju Ryu con­tains all of these things because Cho­jun Miy­agi Sen­sei told me… he did it through kata.”

Four Shades Of Black

I have heard many teach­ers dis­cuss the vital nature of the katas or pat­terns found in their sys­tems, but I have yet to come across such an integ­rated approach of using the katas to drive the les­sons them­selves and provide struc­ture to the prac­tice of the art. Goju in gen­eral and Daigaku Kar­ate Kai in par­tic­u­lar is able to point to a her­it­age that is not simply dir­ect from the art’s source in terms of its teacher’s lin­eage but also dir­ect in terms of what is actu­ally being taught. Many arts I have been involved with in the last 15 years have either been “fol­low­ing the motions” when it came to kata or had mod­i­fied the ori­gin­als through a mis­un­der­stand­ing of the tech­niques involved through a belief that katas were essen­tially ana­chron­istic. Goju Kar­ate is dif­fer­ent and it is this that is the main focus of the book. Sen­sei Mul­hol­land con­tends that the katas found in Goju are a layered roadmap through which the stu­dent is led from the first prin­ciples of com­bat through to and advanced and subtle manip­u­la­tion of the oppon­ent. Each Kata brings the fight closer and closer in range until the kata is dir­ectly describ­ing grap­pling and what to do about it. From the “attack and smash” approach found in the hard side of Go to the softer “sens­it­iv­ity” that is present in the Ju katas. This is some­thing very sim­ilar to what I had encountered in a par­tic­u­lar Wado Ryu sem­inar in my teen­age years and once explained to you in such expli­cit terms it is imme­di­ately and obvi­ously the truth.

There is more. The map is not the ter­rit­ory and each kata is partnered with a com­plete set of one-step spar­ing drills and con­di­tion­ing exer­cises that expose the “secrets” held in the kata proper. Without these vital ingredi­ents the prac­tice of Goju would risk end­ing up like so many other mar­tial arts and only be going “through the motions” without bring­ing the teach­ings out of the kata and onto the mat.

I have had the priv­ilege of train­ing at the Lon­don Daigaku Kar­ate Kai for the last 6 months and a couple of things struck imme­di­ately upon enter­ing. Firstly, Goju is tough. Its meth­ods forge the bod­ies of its prac­ti­tion­ers by the devel­op­ment of a strong and indom­it­able will. It does this at full pace from day one and con­tin­ues right through years of prac­tice. Not here will you find the black belts relax­ing at the head of the class. Here the Yudan­sha lead by example. The les­son is clearly out­lined in the book; that the Black Belt rep­res­ents the begin­ning of the mar­tial instruc­tion and not the end. This is an often repeated claim in many mar­tial art styles but in Goju I can attest to the truth of the mat­ter. The belt sys­tem of Goju, Sen­sei Mul­hol­land writes, is the com­pass that the stu­dent uses and indeed needs to pro­gress through the ‘Four Shades’. Each belt emphas­ises a dif­fer­ent men­tal set. One thing I was imme­di­ately impressed with in the DKK club and it is reit­er­ated here in the book is that the Goju stu­dent learns to fight from day one. He learns this not through advanced tech­niques, but rather through form­ing a mar­tial mind set. Com­bat is neces­sar­ily aggress­ive and viol­ent. In order to mas­ter this one must first have the cap­ab­il­ity of being viol­ent. I have known brown belts with soft natures fail their black belts in Wado because they didn’t have the neces­sary aggres­sion to fight. Goju prac­tice and train­ing devel­ops that aggres­sion needed imme­di­ately. For those with an abund­ance of aggress­ive­ness or a viol­ent past (like myself) Goju gifts the begin­ner con­trolled dir­ec­tion through the first stage of com­bat found in the very first kata; attack and smash. This “Hulk-like” lan­guage dis­guises what is for me the most import­ant les­son of the mar­tial arts; men­tal strength. That is it found at the begin­ning is another test­a­ment to Goju’s effect­ive­ness as a sys­tem of com­bat. This is because it recog­nises the true nature of that arena.

One of the most pleas­ur­able moments of my time at DKK Goju was when I fought a black belt for the first time. I had a 1st Dan in Taek­wondo from the fant­astic Mas­ter De Bre­ton (WIF) together with 2 national and one inter­na­tional title to my name. That I was knocked straight of this ped­es­tal by Akin­tunde Oladimeji (one of the book’s mod­els) was a bril­liantly hum­bling moment of clar­ity. I had found the pre­vi­ous battles against lower grades that lead up to this fight chal­len­ging but essen­tially straight­for­ward. Akin­tunde was a whole new world that is present in all the Goju black belts I sub­sequently encountered. I remem­ber think­ing at the time that the only way I could step up to the plate against this guy was “to actu­ally fight him”. This of course led to me to won­der what the hell I had been doing up until then? I wondered hard at this until read­ing Four Shades Of Black. It out­lines how the Goju sys­tem is a con­trolled pro­gres­sion. Each junior stu­dent I had faced was essen­tially not yet a com­plete fighter across-the-board. They were in the pro­cess of being built, moul­ded into roun­ded com­bat­ives, and were all strong fight­ers but not there yet. The Yudan­sha were a dif­fer­ent thing all together; they had roun­ded off all the corners of their art and thus were a much stronger force to face. This is entirely to Sensei’s plan and out­lined in Four Shades.

“Think back to any fights in any format you have ever watched and try to pin­point an act of psy­cho­lo­gical suppression’.”

Four Shades Of Black

The concept of Goju pro­gres­sion is best high­lighted in the “Trial By Break­ing” chapter. In other arts I have prac­ticed break­ing was a very com­mon and usual part of every single les­son. In ITF Taek­wondo break­ing is so com­mon­place that for me the concept out­lined in Four Shades had com­pletely passed me by until I had read that chapter. Around Christ­mas 2007 I had atten­ded a DKK Goju grad­ing and watched as a green belt con­tender faced off against a single board to com­plete his pass. This per­son had already been pur­posely exhausted by bag work, then fought against all grades, per­formed katas and gen­er­ally stood up to a real “shoe­ing” with a demon­stra­tion of a remark­ably developed indom­it­able spirit. Yet facing that single board I could sense the ten­sion in the air and on the body of the con­tender. Why was this? I had seen 10 year olds do what he was about to attempt, surely he would find this easy? Upon read­ing Four Shades it all became clear. Sen­sei had pur­posely setup this event in such a way that:

1) It was known about for months ahead of time.

2) The stu­dent was con­di­tioned by bag work, press-ups, etc.

3) The stu­dent was not allowed to prac­tice breaking.

That last num­ber was the vital ingredi­ent. By not being able to prac­tice break­ing the whole thing had been built up in the stu­dents mind. Could he do it? Would he fail in front of every­one? Many people were present includ­ing a mas­ter from another style. Thus the fact that break­ing one board is easy was irrel­ev­ant. This stu­dent was facing a true trial of spirit and determ­in­a­tion. Did he have the will to be a Goju green belt? Could he face the fear of the board? As the hushed audi­ence watched he struck with con­fid­ence and will, thus ban­ish­ing his fear, and suc­ceeded. This was prob­ably the hard­est break I have ever seen because in his mind the board was prob­ably 2 feet thick. The book explains how this was all to the sensei’s plan­ning and this nature is present in all of Goju.

This men­tal aspect high­lights what is per­haps the true secret of Kar­ate and the hard­est insight to teach or learn. It is often referred to as “Empty Hand” in terms of the lack of weapons. This of course doesn’t answer why there are weapons in Kar­ate, but I have heard it enough to be a clas­sic inter­pret­a­tion of the name. Oth­ers point to the link with “China Hand” and the mas­ters who didn’t like the “non-Japanese-ness” of the art they stud­ied and so changed it to “Empty” and this rings true. How­ever I feel that there is another more fun­da­mental secret to this name. When think­ing of Kar­ate as “Empty Hand”, for me, it is not the hand that is empty at all. It is the mind. It is being of “no mind”, being in “the moment” and act­ing. On one hand not hold­ing back by turn­ing away from the truth of com­bat and viol­ence, and on the other hand not los­ing one­self in the rage of aggres­sion and thus being blinded by the “red mist” and “tun­nel vis­ion”. It is express­ing one­self at a fun­da­mental level of being in the “moment of com­bat” and let­ting the les­sons flow through you out into the world. You can only truly react and do this if it is your mind that is empty. Ignor­ing the pain, the com­plain­ing limbs, the bub­bling brook of your thoughts and most import­antly; your fears. Only rely­ing on trained instinct are the keys to com­bat and the mean­ing of “mar­tial spirit”. This is developed in no greater way than in the kata of Goju and in the les­sons out­lined by Sen­sei Mul­hol­land in this book.

I think that Kar­ate has had a large share of pun­ish­ment from the press and on the inter­net from other more “mod­ern” arts such as MMA and Sys­tema. This has some­times been accur­ate as all arts are simply con­veni­ent umbrella terms for a very wide range of teach­ing qual­ity and meth­ods. How­ever, of all the “Te-based” arts that I have stud­ied, Goju is the most com­plete in both its devel­op­ment of spirit and that it has not just tacked on the trap­pings of grap­pling as a reac­tion to the cri­ti­cisms of the present. As Sen­sei Mul­hol­land writes so elo­quently these things have been part of Goju from the very begin­ning and the proof, maps and com­pass are found in the kata.

Whether new to Goju, new to Kar­ate or cross­ing from another art this book is vital read­ing as an access­ory to train­ing. As a mar­tial arts work on its own I proudly dis­play it on my shelf along­side my other great works of com­bat­ive writing.

Regards,

James Bell (Basho)

If you are inter­ested in buy­ing this book (and you should be!), you can do so here: Four Shades Of Black

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