Picking a Martial Arts School in the Phoenix Valley

Horror stories abound about many martial arts schools in the Phoenix valley. One of the largest traditional American-Okinawan-Japanese martial arts associations in the country, which has ties and lineage traced to Okinawa and Japan, notes that more than 85% of martial arts instructors and schools, have no proof of lineage, with instructors displaying diplomas purchased on- line from diploma mills. So, you can be guaranteed to run into this problem when searching for a school. 

So, why doesn't government control the licensing of martial arts instructors?

Heaven forbid if that ever happens!

Government is even more ignorant of martial arts. 

One school we are familiar with in France, teaches out of a Catholic School, because the French bureaucrats do not recognize Shorin-Ryu karate, and instead they only license Shotokan karate.  This is insane, particularly if one has any knowledge of martial arts history.

Shorin-Ryu karate is one of the primary forms of karate developed on Okinawa hundreds of years ago, the home of karate. Karate was invented on Okinawa! So, in this sense, France is outlawing the most legitimate karate schools, because the government is ignorant of history.

'Aerial karate', original sketch
courtesy of Soke Hausel

In 1922, a master of karate from Okinawa by the name of Gichin Funakoshi traveled to mainland Japan and taught Okinawan Shorin-Ryu at Jigoro Kano's dojo in Tokyo. Kano is known for many things including the creation of judo from jujutsu, a modern yudansha-mudansha ranking system for martial artists, and the introduction of judo and kendo to the school curriculum in Japan, which later opened the door to karate clubs in Japan's schools. After teaching the Japanese Shorin-Ryu karate for decades, the Japanese members of his dojo decided to rename the simplified Shorin-Ryu after Funakoshi. Funakoshi wrote some articles and books under the pen name of Shoto, so his students called their karate Shotokan in his honor. Even though it is called Shotokan, it is actually Shorin-Ryu karate without kobudo. So, you should now understand how ignorant the French government is about karate. And based on what we have seen in the past with government in general, it is not something we would like government to get involved in. After all, it was just last year (2019) that Arizona finally made it legal for Shorin-Ryu martial artists to carry and train with nunchaku in public, and the Arizona legislature had no idea why the Okinawan farmers' tool had even been outlawed. 

'Eye of the tiger' original sketch by
Soke Hausel

We know of a husband and wife combination of legitimate martial arts instructors from Gilbert Arizona, with proper credentials and the wife was even of Japanese samurai lineage. They both taught periodically in a Mesa karate dojo, and mentioned that their grand-children were taking classes from a martial arts school in the East Valley that had no evidence of lineage or proper certification. The owner of the dojo (a dojo is a place for training in the traditional martial arts as well as a place to practice sane meditation. Dojos are places for dao, and typically include arts that end with the suffix - 'do', meaning a 'path' or the 'way'), periodically would walk into and interrupt classes and lean against the wall wearing a jacket over his gi, and talk to the students while sipping on a can of coca-cola. His instructors were teenage black belts. The grandparents were appalled at their daughter's choice.

In another case, another mother took her two kids to two popular dojos in Gilbert, Arizona. One was described on its own website to be mixed martial arts (note - there is no such thing as mixed martial arts). After leaving that school, she moved to another school near the Gilbert town hall. This one taught the kids how to do forward rolls, run around in circles, do push-ups, while a lady screamed on top of her lungs (and wearing street clothes) different orders. She had two large teens wearing yellow and white belts as her assistant instructors as they taught the kids everything but karate - yet this was listed as a martial arts school and the class was listed as a beginners kid's class.

So, learn what you can about martial arts, history of martial arts, what it requires to be an instructor, what a diploma looks like, and search the internet about the schools before you waste thousands of dollars on a bogus contract.

There are many things one can look for in searching martial arts schools - here are a few:
(1) Is the instructor's diploma available to view - is it written mostly in kanji?
(2) Is the school affiliated with a international martial arts association?
(3) Is the school a mixed martial arts school?
(4) Does the school have a kamidama? Do they recognize the shoman of the dojo?
(5) Check the internet and search the name of the dojo, the name of the association, and the name of the instructor.