Question 027: Saishu Ryu

Have you heard about Saishu Ryu Karate Jitsu? It's a very modern system developed out of Ryuei Ryu karate, Shotokai, Shorinji Ryu, and Jujitsu. Check out www.saishuryu.com if you'd like to find out more info.

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Thanks for the link. Saishu Ryu appears to be just another “new” stew recipe.

In a stew, a cook takes a little of this and a little of that and mixes them in a pot to make a new dish. The resulting taste of the stew depends on the quality and quantity of each ingredient used to make the stew. The stew may taste good to some people and some people may be able to tolerate an ingredient used in the stew that they otherwise would not like, but better health benefits may be gained from eating the individual ingredients than from eating them after they have been combined into a stew. The resulting stew is nothing original; it is just a different combination of original ingredients.
The martial arts world is full of “masters” who founded “new” arts by combining the “best” qualities of other arts into a “better” art. The resulting arts may be new in that they have just been combined and cooked, but they are nothing new. Yoga is an original creation that did not exist before it was founded.The numerous variations of Yoga are not anything new, they are merely attempts to repackage Yoga to please the changing tastes of the public and to boost the egos and bank accounts of the “founders.”

There are few original martial arts, for example, pressure point fighting is original, boxing is original, archery is original, grappling is original, and Savate and Capoeria are original in their methods of kicking. However, repackaged or remixed martial arts are not original, for example, Taekwondo is not original, it is a mixture of traditional Korean martial arts and Shotokan, and Shotokan is a repackaged version of Okinawan Kara-te.

 

If a master wants to found a new martial art, then he or she should invent an original art instead of merely combining other arts. Maybe a master could found an art based on eating certain herbs and then using well-aimed belches and farts to fire the resulting indigestion gases at opponents to incapacitate them. Merely changing the position of the fist when punching or adding grappling to a striking martial art does not make the result a new art.

Sometimes the public likes the taste of a “new” martial art stew; sometimes they do not. Saishu Ryu is new on the market; it may succeed, it may fail as a many martial art stews do, or it may just linger on the fringes of success and barely survive, as most do; time will tell.

If Saishu Ryu prospers, I will add it to the TKDTutor.com list of martial art styles.

NOTE: Scott Mertz the "founder" of Saishu Ryu was proven a fraud, so he "dropped" his Saishu Ryu "project" and has moved on to other martial art "projects."=