Corky, Part One

Walter ‘Corky’ McFarland of Kodiak, Alaska died last week, aged 92, seven months after the loss of his beloved Mary, his wife of 71 years.  He served in both the Army and Navy, settling in his final duty station, where he raised a family, roamed the island as an outdoorsman, and became a self taught expert in a form of Judo otherwise lost to history, a turn-of-the 20th-Century adherence to the principles enumerated by founder Jigoro Kano and those who studied directly under him.

This was my Aged and Wise Sensei, who revolutionized my understanding of athletic movement and modeled the self reliance needed to tackle the most challenging of pursuits.  The news last week caused me more than a twinge of guilt, as it came soon after my damning indictment of Judo on the STARTING STRENGTH website.  I had only recently discovered Judo’s true potential in hand to hand combat, long after ending a 20 year career of more formal study.  

The truth is more complicated than the point I was trying to make last month.  I stand by the statement that Judo as it’s commonly taught is a moronic, needlessly difficult sport given to stalemate, frustration, and injury.  I elected not to get into the fact that seven years into my career, I made a major course change upon being assigned to Kodiak, Alaska, where Corky ran a class in what he called ‘Pre-War Judo.’  This was pre- World War Two, and was (is) a study of whole bodied, efficient mechanics, where speed and movement can transcend the limits of strength - yours or your opponent’s.  The most familiar analogies would be that of a tennis player swinging a racket with his whole body or Mike Tyson jumping and twisting - keeping his arms largely in place - as he generated the ferocious power we saw in his knockouts.  When you have grocery bags in both arms, and you didn’t close the car door all the way, that hip check with which you bash it shut is moving from your center of effort.  

All movement should originate in your center of gravity, Corky would say, which is true for any sport.  It’s something I bear in mind even now in the weight room.  I’ve interpreted all of Rippetoe’s technique through the lens of Corky’s instruction.  

Walter McFarland’s legacy could conceivably reach far beyond the mats in Kodiak’s National Guard Armory.  His ideas - or Kano’s old ones - on human structural engineering would prove eye opening to fighters of all kinds, and could even lead to a significant change in how Judo is practiced.  ‘If you want a new idea, read an old book,’ it’s been said.  This might be the revolution needed to save a dying sport.

Context is everything.

1.  JUDO

Much like Corky, Jigoro Kano can be characterized by self reliance and determination, which in his case made him a prominent official in Japan’s Ministry of Education and the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee.  As an ambassador for the sport he founded, he traveled worldwide lecturing and giving demonstrations.  He was the product of private schools as a child, academically inclined, studying English and German, aware of the wider world even at an early age.  However, this serious nature and his small size led to his being bullied mercilessly.  

Ju Jutsu can take care of that, young Kano was told.  He had some inclination that if done correctly, it could help a smaller person overcome someone far larger.  

Roughly put, Ju Jutsu at the time was not a very well maintained tradition in Japan.  Its techniques date back centuries, but fighting had become associated with the more thuggish elements of a divided, feudal society, and any real theoretical expertise had been either lost or limited to a very few specific schools.  Kano was at once hooked yet frustrated by the seemingly random set of techniques he had accumulated - though he remained driven to learn all he could.  Once, in a match, he resorted to a technique he had seen in a western book about wrestling, a fireman’s carry.  It worked and to this day remains part of his curriculum under the Japanese name for ‘shoulder wheel.’

Long story short: the threads of Kano’s career as educator and founder of the Kodokan Judo Institute wove into a series of broad ideals.  As an educator studying in Europe, he was quick to shake off the Japanese tradition in which teachers were subservient to socially superior pupils.  He embraced European and American approaches, in which teachers held roles as respected intellectuals and leaders.

In the dojo, he searched for ‘an underlying principle to Ju Jutsu,’ and over time fashioned what he mostly couldn’t find, a governing bio-mechanical principle, which turned out to be whole bodied movement.  This is something common among any number of sports, but Kano went on to discover that moving from one’s center of effort - or center of gravity - while preventing an opponent from doing the same was the key to victory.  An opponent’s center can be knocked out from under him, rendering him an unstable structure - AND if an opponent places too much strength in one particular area of his body, that’s displacing his own center, which can be exploited.  Much is said about Judo’s ‘gentleness’ or ‘yielding,’ but positioning and opportunism might be closer to the truth.  

This was the first step in Ju Jutsu’s becoming Ju-DO, where ‘Do’ means ‘way,’ an all-encompassing approach to physical, intellectual, and spiritual well being.  As an educator, he saw great value in what was a solid workout, a sophisticated skill to comprehend, and a pursuit that conferred mutual benefit and fellowship among practitioners.  

Jigoro Kano died at sea in 1938 during one of his international voyages.  

After the Japanese surrender in World War Two and during the American occupation, the story goes, a handful of Kodokan senior members somehow managed to secure a meeting with the supreme commander of the occupying forces, General Douglas MacArthur.  They probably tried to put as positive a spin as possible on their request: ‘We represent a cultural institution, one that traces its traditions back hundreds of years and espouses the highest moral ideals.  Our hope is to reopen - ‘

‘A fighting academy?’ MacArthur replied incredulously.  ‘Negative.  That’s how you have insurgencies.’ They were promptly shown the door.

When they had a chance to regroup, a fateful argument took place.  ‘We shouldn’t have even brought it up.’ 

‘That would be great.  The Americans find us training, and we all wind up in front of a firing squad.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We have to take the fighting out of it - convince them it’s a sport.’  This became the crux of the debate: Sport Judo vs. no Judo.  The Sport faction eventually won out, and they made plans to approach the American command once again.  They couldn’t get near MacArthur’s office, and to the subordinate who would see them they pleaded their case:  ‘It’s a sport, just like boxing or wrestling - and if you want, your guys can join in.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ the American official said, much to their surprise - and the die was cast.

That story’s apocryphal, but the occupation changed the nature and purpose of Judo.  

2.  CORKY

In 1955, a wiry 5’6”, 150 pound Corky McFarland joined the Judo club at the Kodiak Naval Base.  It was a pretty rough affair; a number of the members were substantially larger and stronger Marines  who were quite happy to dump Corky ‘on his head,’ as he recalled it.  Before long, he had had enough.  He quit.

In a week or two’s time, his front doorbell rang.  It was the instructor, who asked, ‘If you’re done, can I buy that gi back from you?  Someone else is going to need it.’

Corky was disappointed in himself.  This was the first time he had ever quit anything.  He said as much to the instructor, and added, ‘There must be something I’m missing.’

‘If you want, I have some books you can look at,’ the instructor offered - and that made all the difference.  Soon, Corky was poring through books he borrowed and then bought for himself, works by Aida, Kawaishi, Oda, as translated by EJ Harrison, along with Harrison’s original works.  In later years he collected books by Koizumi, Feldenkrais, and Eric Dominy, among others.  

Corky quickly grew wise to the fact that what was being taught on the mat was a very different thing from the content of these books.  Like Jigoro Kano resorting to that fireman’s carry that day, Corky began experimenting with some of the ideas he was reading about.  The Marines starting hitting the mat with increasing frequency.  

In 1958, a Navy Seabee newly assigned to Kodiak came to watch a practice.  He was not impressed by the jacket rasslin’ that had become typical of Judo; a great many skills had been lost in translation in the years since the war, though that one smaller dude seemed to know what he’s doing, he noticed.  The Seabee was Stanford Chai, hailing from Honolulu, where he had studied Judo and Danzan Ryu Ju Jutsu, an influential offshoot, in backyard and alley dojos from the time he was a boy.  

Chai would become the club’s new instructor, since the first one was soon transferring away.  It was back to basics, Chai decreed.  Everyone’s fundamental mechanics needed work, except those of the smaller dude, Corky.  ‘Where did you learn this?’ Chai asked.  

Corky told him his story.  ‘I got it from books.’  

The two of them were equally amazed by the other, Chai that Corky could transfer principles from the printed page to the mat, and Corky that Chai trained in an honest-to-God old school dojo with people who stuck to Kano’s original approach.  A beautiful friendship was born.  For the three year duration of Chai’s Kodiak tour, they were inseparable.  Their kids were the same age, the families were always at each other’s houses, and they hunted and fished, often with their kids, when they weren’t smashing around on the mat.  Chai’s specialty was self defense, specifically separating attackers from their knives, clubs, or guns.  Together, he and Corky ran the club and conducted training for the local police, the military police, and various commands around the base.  

Chai knew whereof he spoke, and he was no angel, having had run-ins with the law in previous duty stations.  In one, he was in a bar raided and cleared out by the military police.  Everybody was leaving peacefully, Chai pointed out, so there was no need to be swinging those billy clubs around.  However, one cop elected to give him a tap for good measure, whereupon he flattened four of them in short order.  He waited to surrender to the arriving reinforcements, figuring like guys in this situation often do, ‘Well, if I’m going to jail, I might as well finish my beer.’

In 1961, the Navy transferred Chai and his family to California.  Corky never saw him again.  

Kodiak Island is accessible from the mainland only by air or ferry.  Therefore, in the ensuing decades as Corky kept at it, he effectively preserved this ancient form of Judo in isolation, free from the influences of any organizations or tournaments.  This would be the template by which Corky lived his life: constant analysis, patient, steady improvement, roughneck fun, and a sense of discovery.  He taught for generations, in his own house, various gyms around town, and ultimately at the National Guard Armory.  To pay his rent there, he held seminars for the Guardsmen in handling batons and knives, or how to throw a man using his own rifle.   Students grew up and eventually brought their own kids to class.  

In 1999, 38 years after Stanford Chai left, I walked into the Armory.