Picking up where the original Karate Kid seriesleft off, Netflix's Cobra Kai brings back the rivalry between Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso as their passion for San Fernando Valley teenage karate supremacy takes hold of their lives once again. Both Lawrence and LaRusso open their respective karate dojos and recruit a band of troubled high schoolers, hoping that they can instill these young pupils with the same skills in the martial arts and car washing/waxing that dominated their teenage years. The result is Street Fighter: The High School Years -- the usual school drama involving bullies, absent parents, and love triangles, all upping the ante by way of highly choreographed (and sometimes down-right brutal) fight scenes. And boy, does this show not hold back any punches.
There is something to be said about a show that depicts near senseless violence among high schoolers in 2020 with almost zero consequences. On our screens, we cheer when Miguel finally takes down a horde of crude jocks in the cafeteria, calling back to the days we wish we could've done the very same thing to our bullies. But if the same ass-kicking were to actually occur in our schools today, would we cheer? Or would we be left wondering how much worse the scene could have actually been ? Though honestly, "High school conflict DOESN'T result in shooting" could be the feel-good story of the year.
To answer these questions, we need to flip back to when the original Karate Kid and other major martial arts films came out in the 1970s-1980s and see how Americans responded then. Spoiler Alert: White suburban moms were not happy about them.
Before the Karate Kid films, there was martial arts legend Bruce Lee. His early '70s films like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon captivated young audiences and kicked off what would eventually become known as the "kung fu craze" in the United States. The impact of kung fu films from abroad made American youth rush to enroll in martial arts programs and develop a particular interest in one controversial element from the movies: the weapons.
Nunchucks. Throwing stars. Swords. Arguably some of the coolest aspects of martial arts movies, it's not surprising to see why these would capture the attention of young Americans, especially boys, before the advent of the internet. If you're telling me you never went in your backyard to throw sharp objects while pretending to be a ninja as a kid, I'm calling you a liar. Back in the day, these weapons were astonishingly easy to find, with throwing stars selling for anywhere from $1.00-4.50 at knife stores, army surplus stores, regular shopping malls, and even arcades.
As more and more kids got their hands on these martial arts weapons, parents, the media, and law enforcement became more concerned about what they perceived to be a growing danger to civilized society. This type of reaction isn't surprising, for we've seen it time and time again as new trends (i.e., rock music, hip hop, video games, the concept of fun, etc.) divide younger and older generations over fears of moral failings and civil unrest in our youth. Martial arts and their weapons were not spared from this social phenomenon.
In the 1970s, newspapers across the country began reporting on how these "concealed deadly weapons" were turning up in the hands of our kids, fueling the hysteria with rhetoric like "killer sticks" for nunchucks (also known as "nunchaku," always known as "rad as hell"). Law enforcement divisions were quick to crack down on these weapons. In 1973, the LAPD claimed to have made a dozen arrests in just a few weeks for 12 and 13-year-olds with throwing stars in their pockets. States across the country began banning these weapons, classifying their possession as a misdemeanor or felony and passing tighter restrictions than we've seen for some instances of firearm possession.
It's hard to determine whether the hysteria over the weapons was solely based on fear over youth exposure to violence or whether there were racist undertones involved. At this time, guns were already everywhere in American life and hardly viewed as threatening. With gun ownership hovering between 44.2%-50.5% of American households from 1973-1985, firearms were a staple of American domesticity akin to a white picket fence and a trimmed green lawn. But with remnants of "Yellow Peril" still present in America during these decades, it's not surprising to see a link between fear of these martial arts weapons and fear of East Asian peoples.
Many states explicitly called these weapons "Chinese" or "Japanese" throwing stars in their criminal codes, not unlike how racist naming associations for COVID took hold with "Wuhan flu" or "Chinese flu." The term "killer sticks" for nunchaku has its very roots in anti-Asian sentiments that have been present for decades in the United States. Martial arts practices themselves began to be viewed as wholly anti-American. This is something that Cobra Kai itself actually points out several times throughout the show. In Season 1, Episode 4, tensions come to a head when Daniel LaRusso confronts his car dealership rival for suggesting that he is unpatriotic for his love of karate.
Thankfully over the years, martial arts became a more accepted part of American culture. They've inspired video games likeStreet Fighter, children's cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and led to the founding of sports leagues like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). They've influenced modern renditions of martial arts films like Tarantino's Kill Billand even inspired an episode ofSouth Park that poked fun at the dangers associated with martial arts weapons. It's now entirely common to see suburban moms dropping their kids off at karate or taekwondo (some of us unfortunately never made it past their yellow belt).
As the hysteria over martial arts has calmed down, states are slowly beginning to reassess their bans on throwing stars and nunchaku. In New York, a federal judge overturned the ban on nunchaku, saying they are protected under the right to bear arms (or right turtle arms) in the Second Amendment. In Arizona, the governor signed a bill removing nunchaku from the list of banned weapons that included bombs and automatic firearms. Many practitioners are pushing for legal possession of these weapons for martial arts purposes, arguing that those who use the weapons for martial arts are unlikely to use them to commit crimes.
Elsewhere in the country, officials are asking why these weapons are banned when gun shows and knife shows have free reign. These arguments are pretty logical -- to quote New York lawyer James Maloney, "if you're going to commit a crime, your weapon of choice wouldn't be these two sticks." The time and resources spent enforcing these banned weapons could undoubtedly be used to tackle real issues like gun violence among youth. Seriously, why are we concerned about how much damage a kid with a few throwing stars can do when we have lawmakers and conservative pundits praising 17-year-olds who shoot protestors on the street?
In 2020, it seems that Cobra Kai is being received with much more widespread approval than its predecessors did decades ago. This is important, especially at a time when racism towards Asian people and gun violence among youth has reached peaks in America. It has yet to be seen whether the show will spark similar long-term trends of fascination and fear with martial arts culture that we've seen in the past. So far, we have yet to see any viral videos of kids leg-sweeping each other against lockers because of the show.
In the meantime, we can take Cobra Kai's success as a celebration of how martial arts has finally become an accepted part of our culture and relish it as an homage to one of the most iconic franchises in American cinema. In an era when tensions seem to be at an all-time high, it's reassuring to watch a show where its characters have total control over how they respond to their enemies -- and can actually land a punch or two. As we brace ourselves for a new year in uncharted waters, we can all apply the teachings of Cobra Kai in our own lives: Strike first, strike hard, and have no mercy.
TARAGI, Kumamoto Prefecture--The traditional notion that only men could be samurai has been turned on its head with the discovery of two letters written by feudal warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi to acknowledge a woman as head of a samurai clan.
The historical documents were found in the home of a long-established family here.
Hideyoshi (1537-1598) sent the letters to Munakata Saikaku of the Munakata clan, famed for producing successive generations of “daiguji,” the highest-ranking priest of Munakata Taisha shrine.
Saikaku is believed to have been married to Ujisada, the last daiguji of the Shinto shrine, which is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The discovery of the letters, announced by the town’s board of education on Sept. 18, immediately attracted a flurry of attention nationwide.
The two rare letters, one a “hanmotsu” official document signed with Hideyoshi’s “kao” stylized signature, and a “shuinjo” letter with a red seal, were handed down through successive generations of the Munakata clan, which served the ruling Hosokawa clan of the Higo Domain, present-day Kumamoto Prefecture.
A descendant of the Munakata family who lives in the town approached local officials with an offer to donate the letters.
Okifumi Hanaoka, an academic researcher at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, and other experts studied the documents for authenticity.
Ujisada died suddenly in 1586, the year before Hideyoshi conquered the Kyushu region. Hideyoshi praises the Munakata clan for stopping the Shimazu clan, which was based in southern Kyushu, from heading north. In gratitude, he issued the hanmotsu that same year guaranteeing that the clan can retain its territories.
In the shuinjo, the warlord instructs the Munakata clan to consult with his vassal, Asano Nagamasa, before sending troops to Kyoto.
Both letters were addressed to Saikaku, showing that Hideyoshi acknowledged Ujisada’s wife as head of the Munakata clan.
Although Saikaku is mentioned as the lord of the Munakata clan in letters passed down to other samurai families, little had been known about her.
“It became clear that Saikaku led the Munakata clan after Ujisada’s death and passed down its name,” Hanaoka said.
Choose a side, master your moves, and embrace your destiny in an epic beat 'em up adventure inspired by the hit show. Take control of 8 playable characters with deep movesets, combos, progression, real-time character swaps, ultimate attacks, and much more! 34 years after the events of the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, the rivalry of Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence continues. The fight is in your hands now! •Two-Fold Storyline - Featuring an all-new storyline filled with unique cutscenes and dialog-choose to take control of Daniel and his students at Miyagi-Do Karate through a storyline campaign. Or select their rivals, Johnny Lawrence and his disciples at Cobra Kai to play their side of the story. Completing both sides of the campaign unveils an ultimate ending. •RPG-Like Dojo Progression - Master 40 unique skills and upgrade your characters' stats as you karate your way through enemies. •Character Swap System - Choose your Dojo then seamlessly swap between your favorite characters within, including Miyagi Do's Daniel, Robby, Sam and Demetri; or Cobra Kai's Johnny, Miguel, Hawk and Tory. •Live the Cobra Kai Universe - Explore Los Angeles across 28 missions filled with characters and enemies from the show! •Authentic Cobra Kai Experience - Featuring the voices of William Zabka, Ralph Macchio and other top-tier cast, along with an exclusive soundtrack from the creators of the Cobra Kai show.
(photo and quote from Mr. Wolfagang Holzmann's Facebook page)
"By practicing martial arts, body and mind become one. Zen makes the thoughts and emotions that are like waves on a lake, smooth and level so that you can look at the water like a mirror."
As I'm riding my horse through the beautiful, sprawling landscape of feudal Japan, a golden bird flies in front of me. I had been on my way to liberate a small village taken from Mongol invaders, but I follow the bird off the trail. They'll always take you somewhere worth the detour in Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch's new open-world action game where you play as a samurai.
I get off my horse, run off the path, and the bird quickly leads me to the edge of a cliff. Not to lead me off the edge --- to look at the view. That view is breathtaking. Mountains surround an ocean that stretches all the way to the horizon, with a double waterfall flowing into it. The sun reflecting off the water. The bird leads me to sit on a rock between the two waterfalls.
It is so peaceful I'd be fine staying there for ten minutes, listening to the sounds of the water and the wind.
Beauty like this is everywhere in GoT, and it's nice to sit and soak it all in to take a break from the constant violence. I climb down the cliff to a sitting area, and sit to reflect and write a haiku. This will help me get stronger for the next big fight.
Even in a brutal, war-torn world, GoT emphasizes the importance of taking a moment for yourself. Players can ignore these little moments and bulldoze through the main quest, but the battles will be more difficult if you don't — for example — take the time to relax in a hot spring.
You play as Jin, part of a small group of samurai protecting their home — the Japanese island of Tsushima — from an invading Mongol army loosely based on real history. Jin's group is quickly overwhelmed by the Mongols; he's one of the few survivors.
Jin sets off on a mission to liberate Tsushima, make allies, and free his uncle Shimura, his only remaining family, from prison. Desperation makes him drift from the samurai rules and traditions that guided his life before the invasion, but one part of that code never changes: Protecting people is Jin's number one priority. Everything else is bendable. The threat of the Mongol invasion is too great to be constrained by noble ideals, and that tension between tradition and forging a new path is Jin's major conflict.
Throughout the game, Jin hears that fighting stealthily is dishonorable — but in practice, he finds that doing the "honorable" thing actually puts more people in danger. He can do the most good, save the most people, with stealth.
Players can fully get behind Jin's cause: Protecting the home that his family has lived in for generations. His connection to the island and its natural world is so intense, it becomes spiritual, magical — which makes for some interesting game mechanics. For example, Jin can make the wind blow in the direction of the next objective at will. It's a fun replacement to the typical navigation map. (Although the wind sounds are so soothing, you might be in danger of falling asleep.)
Ghost of Tsushima is every bit as atmospheric as Breath of The Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2, which makes it even more infuriating when you see the Mongol army burn towns to charred grey rubble, or when the beautiful forest you're riding through ends abruptly because the Mongols have chopped down all the trees. That fury kept me playing even when I wasn't particularly invested in the game's story.
And there were times when I wasn't that interested — Ghost of Tsushima suffers from flat characterizations, so flat sometimes they can deflate an entire storyline. At one point, I broke the news to a man that his brother was murdered by Mongols. He barely acknowledged it, a lapse so weird it threw me out of the game. Your brother was just murdered, and you're just going to talk about it for two seconds and move onto the next topic of conversation? That doesn't feel human. A war game that doesn't get too into its feelings makes sense for Jin himself, who's striving to control his emotions. But not everybody in the game is a highly trained samurai like him.
But the gorgeous surroundings and killer combat mechanisms help redeem GoT. You take on enemies with a katana, and you can shift through different stances that are effective against different types of fighters. As you level up, you get more weapons, abilities, and moves to make things infinitely easier. You start with just basic attacks — and eventually become strong enough to tear through armies with just your sword.
And you spend a long time getting to know the island of Tsushima itself. Between fights, you ride through picturesque forests of tall trees with orange leaves falling from the branches, and big fields filled with thousands of violets. You take a breather at lakes with cherry blossoms floating in the water.
It's impossible to not fall in love after moments like that, and playing through Jin's eyes makes you understand his love for Tsushima, even though his character is — well, meh. The sense that I'm making the world a better place drives me while I play, and I have the power to actually change the world. (That's a pretty common trope in this kind of game: The protagonist appears, and as if by magic they save the day and solve everyone's messy problems. But here, it works.)
So there's a huge sense of satisfaction as you travel around the world of Ghost of Tsushima, freeing cities from Mongol occupation and rescuing prisoners. If you train hard enough, the game says, you can save the world. Even nature itself will be on your side. And right now, that's a pretty appealing thought.
There was never a cop around when you needed one, especially in the subways, where these grim days they were needed more than they had ever been needed since, it seemed, the IRT opened for business in 1904. With the transit police force sliced from 3,600 to 2,200 in the wake of the mid-1970s fiscal crisis, the city's main mode of public transportation had become a festering Petri dish breeding violent young punks looking for quick cash and cheap kicks.
You could tuck the gold chain in your shirt, but you couldn't hide the swell $60 Pumas, which were like magnets for packs of teenagers carrying switchblades or worse. Fifty cents was the price of admission for a potential hell ride, an underground horror story waiting to be written in blood and graffiti.
Tasting the fear and seeing opportunity in this sorry state of affairs was a tough-talking Brooklyn kid with a sense of civic duty that was surpassed only by a talent for self-promotion. Cross Jimmy Cagney with Leo Gorcey, add a heap of P.T. Barnum and you had Curtis Sliwa.
Early in 1979, Sliwa, a 24-year-old high school dropout, formed the Magnificent 13, a volunteer patrol that rode the IRT at night particularly the No. 4 train, known to cops and riders alike as the Mugger's Express.
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Before year's end, the Magnificents' numbers had swelled far past 13, having drawn scores of mostly minority teenagers who were as fed up with the crime around them as anyone else. Sliwa Rock, he liked to call himself in those days rechristened his group the Guardian Angels and articulated what fast became a very popular philosophy as New York City's murder rate approached a frightening record 1,800.
"I have a very simple outlook toward problems," Rock mused. "Every problem can be attacked simply, without complex thinking. You are either right or wrong. If you're ripping someone off, you've got to be stopped."
And straphangers were only too happy to have the Guardian Angels riding with them karate-trained youths, fanning out through the night, anywhere from 12 to 40 eight-Angel patrols at a time. Mostly they were just deterrents to the bad guys and reassuring presences to frightened riders. But they fast jumped into action when they needed to chasing away predators, pulling to safety people who had been pushed onto the tracks, at one point even coming to the rescue of a policeman who was being beaten with his own nightstick.
The papers were full of their exploits.
"ANGEL ROUTS 3 MUGGERS. ANGEL AIDS COP IN BMT ARREST. NAB 2 AFTER SCUFFLE WITH ANGELS. RIDERS HAVE ANGELS LOOKING OVER THEM."
Every day was another chapter in the thrilling adventures of the multi-racial band of protectors in red berets and red-and-white T-shirts, making the subways safe for the people of the City of New York.
"I was born in this city many years ago," said 67-year-old John Caserno of Queens in a typical accolade. "Things have become almost impossible to deal with. But they help."
"God bless you," one elderly man told a band of Angels patrolling the No. 3 train early one winter's morning. "The mayor should give you a medal."
Mayor Edward Koch wasn't so sure about that.
As Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels began grabbing headlines faster than a speeding A train, there were those who had misgivings about what was, after all, a private army. "Paramilitaries," Koch denounced them, suggesting they should join the police force if they wanted to fight crime. But cops also were suspicious of them: the Angels had clashed several times with rank-and-file officers, and police brass and union officials did not welcome their help.
"We don't need 'em and we don't want 'em," said Capt. Gerald McClaughin, commander of the Central Park Precinct. "Historically, these groups have always turned bad. I think they'll probably assault somebody."
If City Hall was a little slow to grasp the social phenomenon that was the Guardian Angels, Lt. Gov. Mario Cuomo got it more readily. Still smarting from a 1977 mayoral primary loss to Koch and eyeing bigger and better things, Cuomo became the Angels' most eloquent champion. "They are a better expression of morality than our city deserves," he said.
Confronting the largely unspoken issue that these Angels were 80% black or Hispanic, he added: "If they were sons and daughters of doctors from Great Neck, would people be calling them vigilantes? Everyone would be giving them medals." New York City should be proud of the Angels, he said, kids who had been "born in troubled areas" and had "survived the test."
Sliwa himself missed no opportunity to make that same point: "We are taking kids who might have been committing the crimes and giving them an outlet to fight it. Before, while they were watching Superman and Batman on TV, they had no outlets for their good impulses to fight crime."
City Hall eventually started negotiations to work with the Angels but remained wary. "I don't know everything about the Guardian Angels," Koch said. "I do know they love publicity."
He was right, of course. Curtis Sliwa apparently had been born with built-in media radar. At 16, he had pulled several people out of a burning Brooklyn building one morning while on his Daily News delivery route; that earned him Newsboy of the Year honors and a photo op with President Richard Nixon, who presented him with a tie clip and a pen. In 1978, he won notice for starting an anti-litter campaign in the Bronx. That same year, he got some publicity returning a lost wallet packed with $300.
But with the Guardian Angels, Sliwa took a geometric leap into the big time and played it to the hilt. He did Tom Snyder. He did "Nightline." He was followed around by reporters from Japan and Norway and France.
There was talk about a movie of his life and he was adding to the script each day, with hair-raising tales of his narrow escapes from death. There were the three guys claiming to be transit cops who took him for a little ride and told him to disband the Angels or else. There was the gunman who opened fire at him and missed. There were the thugs who kidnapped him and tossed him in the river. You didn't have to be Ed Koch to be dubious about some of these stories
Meanwhile, as if New York weren't already a big enough stage, Sliwa, a one-time McDonald's manager, started franchising. Child killer in Atlanta? The Angels were there. Trouble in Detroit? Los Angeles? San Juan? You could count on the Angels.
By the end of 1980, some 700 Guardian Angels were roaming the New York subways, regularly racking up dozens of citizens arrests. The city, overwhelmed by a relentless publicity juggernaut, began moving toward an agreement under which the Angels would remain autonomous but would get police-issued ID cards and a modicum of police cooperation.
Koch sounded almost conciliatory: "It's like chicken soup," he said. "Have they hurt? No. Have they helped? Yes."
"The badges make the New York Times crowd feel good," Sliwa told the Daily News. "The people on the subways in Brooklyn never needed to see a badge. They were always happy enough just to see us get on the train."
Traditional martial arts teaches a lot of great values. That's why I believe it's such a great tool for any kids growth process. Not only physically (improving coordination & motor skills) but learning how to treat your surrounding with respect.
I was taught to always be my best self. No matter if it was in the dojo, in school, or simply walking down the street... We create the environment we want to live in, because our actions mirrors back at us. Both the good and the bad.
So if you see something you don't like, you have to be the change you want to see. Be the role-model! Give the seat up for an elder, hold the door for whoever comes next, and don't throw trash around like we have multiple earths. Call out whoever does that and they might think twice next time.
A true martial artists leads by example and uses his powers to make the world a better place, while bringing as many people he/she can along the way.
