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Dan Inosanto Speaks About Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do
To Learn How to Fight, You Have to Fight! By Roger Shimatsu
Taken from February 1998 Karate/Kung Fu Illustrated
"Line up 10 punters and let them perform their kicking styles without the football. Can you honestly judge who is the better kicker or which is the better kick - by just studying their form? The real test of a punt is how far and how accurately the football can be kicked. And yet this is exactly what many schools of karate and kung fu are doing - they are teaching how to kick without the football. In other words, karate and kung fu instructors are attempting to teach how to fight without actually fighting."
So says Dan Inosanto, an ex-kenpo karate instructor who also studied jujitsu and kung fu before delving into jeet June do under the tutelage of Bruce Lee. A former physical education teacher in the Los Angeles area, Inosanto is reluctant to offend others. It is obvious he's dedicated to the martial arts, and on first impression he seems to like everything about them. Once the surface is scratched, however, one finds he has some very definite ideas about what's good and bad in the martial arts. His delivery is soft and his voice subdued, but after the interview, it feels like a huge tank has rumbled past, shaking the very foundation of one's philosophy of karate.
Having studied many styles, Inosanto has a broad background in the martial arts. It all began when he took an Army self-defense course in jujutsu in 1959. The next year he graduated to karate. The style he and the others in that loose group of enthusiasts were taught depended on which instructor was teaching that day and where he had studied. The course was a blend of Japanese, Korean and Okinawan styles.
"The exposure to the various schools in the beginning taught me not to be one-sided because everyone had his own philosophies and each school seemed to have its good points and bad points," Inosanto said.
After Inosanto was discharged he moved to Southern California, where he began taking kenpo. Why did he choose that art? "I was very impressed with a kenpo student I met at Fort Campbell," he said. "He wasn't stiff, and he seemed freer with his movements. He was graceful, smooth, and fast. He had studied kenpo in Hawaii and had a brown belt.
"In 1961 I started taking kenpo from Ed Parker at his Pasadena school," Inosanto continued. "At that time, kenpo reached my expectations of what I was seeking in karate. I was looking for a self-defense and also a body-conditioning sport. I guess I got carried away with it. I became fascinated by the martial arts field and how there could be so many different ways of fighting."
Karate Factions
Even with the variety of fighting arts, Inosanto found himself in a quandary. "I was puzzled by the attitudes of the instructors and their schools here in Southern California," he said. "At Fort Campbell we were learning many different styles at the same time, and we felt this was good. There was a give and take of information. The various instructors came together to try to help one another. In Los Angeles it was a different story. I never realized how cliquish karate factions could be. I couldn't understand this, and it made me even more curious about karate as a whole. I couldn't believe instructors could be so hostile to one another and refuse to share knowledge.
"When I began taking kenpo, the instructors and students there would run down the Japanese stylists, " Inosanto continued. "So I went to a Japanese karate school out of curiosity, and they ran down the other karate styles I was studying."
As in football, there are various ways to run with the ball, and Inosanto uses this analogy to drive home the point. "Take the three types of runners in football. A good runner can have speed, power, or deceptiveness. The runner can use any two of the three, but rarely can one be found with all three outstanding characteristics. Karate schools may stress as many as two, but it's hard to find a school that stresses all three: speed, power and deceptiveness.
"It wasn't until I started learning jeet kune do under Bruce Lee [that] found a style that used all three important aspects of fighting. Bruce Lee was able to take all the pieces of the karate puzzle and make them fit together in an integrated system. It seemed to me the other karate and kung fu schools were trying to fit everyone into a size 38 coat - regardless of and individual's size, speed, build, reaction time, reflexes or anything.
"In boxing, everyone can't be a [Rocky] Marciano because everyone doesn't have the rugged build needed to wade in and take a punch, or the ability to give one. Not everyone can be a [Mohammad Ali] because they don't have his speed or his deceptive coordination.
"Karate in general doesn't take the individual into consideration because the system stresses everyone must do the same things in the same way. The Karate student becomes a factory product - a molded replica of the instructor. The student sometimes comes out good, sometimes bad, sometimes better than the instructor, but it's hit or miss depending on the individual."
Overcoming Style
To Inosanto, the individual is most important. "A man doesn't excel because of his style," he said. "It's only when a man can go outside the bounds set by his system that he excels. If a martial artist can practice a style without being bound and limited to his particular school, then and only then can he be liberated to fit in with any type of opponent. A great majority of instructors, however, blind their practitioners and brainwash them into believing only their school of training is best. This is especially true of kung fu."
Inosanto met Lee in 1964 at the first International Karate Championships. He got to know him pretty well in the few weeks they traveled from one dojo to another around California. During this period, Inosanto was introduced to Lee's philosophy. He wanted to study under Lee but the noted jeet kune do stylist had to return to Asia, so Inosanto began taking kung fu from other instructors in the Los Angeles area. He tried different schools, often studying at two to three schools at the same time.
He soon discovered what he was being taught was a far cry from what Lee was talking about. "To me, what they were teaching - the forms, the blocks, the postures - wasn't realistic," he said. "The means to get good at self-defense became the ultimate end.
"Their teachings didn't seem to have any direct relationship to self-defense, although it probably taught me to be graceful and helped with my coordination, posture and smooth, correct body movements."
Enlightening But Frustrating
Lee returned to the United States to star as Kato in the television series, The Green Hornet. Concurrently he opened two schools, one in Los Angeles and the other in Oakland California. Inosanto began studying under Lee in LA, and he recalls it as frustrating but enlightening. "I had been practicing and instructing in a kenpo karate style for some years, and I felt it gave me the most freedom and variety of moves," he said. "By that time I had stumbled across many partial truths, and I had become more aware of workable and unworkable techniques. Being a diehard kenpo man, I found myself confused and frustrated. I began to actually rebel against jeet kune do.
"I was bound by loyalty to my former instructor and his style," he continued. "Looking back on it, I really didn't want to see the truth in self-defense. I began to mentally criticize the informal and unstylized way JKD moved, kicked, punched and trained. Yet I found myself using what I had learned and liked it better than kenpo, finding it more functional, powerful, faster, freer and above all the easiest style to express.
Inosanto calls jeet kune do the art of "fitting in" with all types of opponents and a way of expressing oneself in combat. Many of Lee's students were former karate and kung fu stylists and they've always maintained that JKD's "styleless" style of combat is 50 to 100 years ahead of its time. Inosanto anticipates that karate will continue to progress and will someday reach the beginning stages of the ideas and principles set forth by Bruce Lee.
As explained, jeet kune do is not an organization or even a style in which the students can affiliate. The principles of JKD are stated simply as self-defense, because everything is so dependent on what the opponent will do. It's almost like an exchange between two combatants with the communication being done with offensive and defensive techniques instead of words. The action must flow like a conversation, and the two combatants must be in tune with each other as the fighting reaches its climax and one or the other is taken down, knocked out or placed in an otherwise helpless situation.
Likened to Kickboxing
Martial artists who watch a JKD practice session always come away with differing views. The sparring has been described as vicious but polished street fighting. At other times, it looks like boxing, sometimes wrestling and even Thai kickboxing. The kicks resemble karate, but in a more informal, livelier and freer manner. The practitioners use 12-ounce to 16-ounce gloves, and they are encouraged to punch and kick below the waist, especially to the shin, knee and thigh areas.
"Karate is mainly a stylized form of punching and kicking," Inosanto said. "Judo is a throwing, grappling and choking sport. Wrestling is grappling, and boxing is a punching sport. All of these arts or sports are highly effective in their range of distance. What boxers call the ‘in-fighting' range is never reached in a karate tournament because the referee usually separates the combatants before they reach this stage of fighting. But in reality, isn't this where real fighting begins?
"If a good boxer learns jeet kune do's bridging, he needs only his hand to be effective," Inosanto continued. "A proficient wrestler, using jeet kune do's techniques, can tie up the majority of the classical martial artists. If the wrestler is sharp with his grappling range, he will be more than effective. An experienced fencer, if he learns jeet kune do techniques, can become very skilled with his outside range.
"A great many karate men have the tendency to belittle, degrade and look down on judo, boxing, and wrestling as being inferior to karate. To me, it is like a football coach who uses and believes in his split-T formation, then starts to belittle other formations and styles such as the wing T, slot T or the I formations. A good football coach, even if he believes in his own style of play, will study and learn how to defend against those offenses. A good martial artist should likewise prepare for the wild street fighter, the wrestler, the slugger, the judoka."
To illustrate the importance of preparing for all types of fighting situations, Inosanto likes to quote Bruce Lee who, in turn, quoted Sun Tzu's book, the Art of War, written around 500 B.C.: "Know your enemy and know your self, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."
"Some people thing they know themselves, but in reality they only know their weak points and not their strong points, or vice versa," Inosanto said. "Others are intelligent in knowing themselves, but ignorant in knowing others."
He left us with this one quote that seemed to sum up his own philosophy and the principles of Bruce Lee's JKD: "Totality and freedom of expression toward the ultimate reality of combat should be the goal of all martial artists. To achieve this, absorb what is useful; reject what is useless; add that which is specifically your own."