Thought for the Day

LOL The only PhD I'll ever have is a Doctorate in Phone-calling, which has become quite the recreational activity of mine lately. My bill will be likely to induce nausea. Let me not digress!

Akira Yamshita, Shihan. I looked up his name during lunch when I was at work the other day. This is what I found out about our Shihan's names.

-Yamashita-

We can split it into two parts- Yama and Shita.

Yama means "Mountain" and as we can see this is added to by the qualifier- Shita, which means "beneath." The Shita acts to qualify the Yama. It's a same gamble that Yamahsita can be taken to mean "beneath the shadow of the mountain." This would be a place of obscurity and a private world for the ones who lived there, (if such were to dwell in a village, say at the base of the mountain).

Akira on the other hand means "Brightness" or "Radiant One." Don't get this wrong. Westerners often confuse the semantic of this word, and render it "intelligent." But that's not the kind of brightness the Japanese have in mind. They mean it more literally- meaning the actual radiance and brilliance of the sun or moon. Or both! As a point in fact, "Akira" is written by placing the Kanji for sun next to that for moon. (Please see my illustration below).

The meaning of the boy's name Akira is seen best in the Japanese anime program named, funnily enough, "Akira." Try as he might to live up to his name and harness the power of the sun, (which would see much honour showered upon him), he just can't quite ever do it, can he. For movie buffs, "this is Japanese cinematic tension breathing lustily at its pinnacle," (to quote Mitchell Thompson in his email of Wednesday, the day we began talking about names and their meanings).

I find it enlightening and appropriate that true to the nature of the gentleman, Yamashita Akira lived up to his name in that he is Akira, "the radiant one," whose technique and philosophy continues on shining. I conceive of Yamashita Shihan as having always been the one to shine from the obscurity of shadowy veils that kept his precious Art cloaked and hidden from outside perturbances. His life and Art were both secreted "beneath the mountain." Yet he was such a shining man, and the form of his Karate so radiant that is shines today.

Unlike the little anime boy, Yamashita Shihan lived up totally to the meaning of his name. His light shines on in our times, too, and finds focus in the form of the Art: in kata, kidokai and rinai- the internal discipline of Shoshin.

When I immerse myself in Kokoro-no zuki, during za-zen and watch the glittering moon in the still waters; and when I see the fully risen sun of the invisible opponent in the kata; then I see Akira Yamashita, even though I understand that I can no longer see the gentleman.

That is the power of a legacy that was forged through a brilliant lifetime.