{"id":321,"date":"2022-07-03T10:53:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T10:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/?p=321"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:12:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:12:58","slug":"the-misuse-of-osu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"THE MISUSE OF OSU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western karateka may not be aware of their misunderstanding and misuse of the martial arts phenomenon of osu<\/em> prevalent in their karate dojos. Jigoro Kano, who founded judo in the late 18th<\/sup> century, forbade any judoka from using it. He and other martial arts leaders considered it a vulgar expression belonging to low-class behaviour. No Okinawan karate leaders, including Shotokan founder Gichin Funakoshi, used it and there is no evidence that he adopted or encouraged it after his relocation to Japan. Western karateka who knew JKA headmaster Masatoshi Nakayama confirm that he neither encouraged nor restrained the use of osu<\/em> but that he personally never used it. In the JKA, going as far back as the days of the Suidobashi honbu dojo, osu<\/em> was virtually absent\u2014the standard word to express acknowledgment was hai<\/em>, meaning yes. It was, however, a feature in the universities, where its traditional meaning in the karate forging process made the most sense. It was always an impressive sight to see university competitors, all dressed in their black uniforms and steam train driver-type caps, assemble in their teams at the old Budokan during the annual intervarsity championships, waiting for their instructors at the stairway entrance leading into the hall. The noisy but stirring \u201cossing\u201d would start loudly and in unison when the instructors were still 50 metres away.<\/p>\n

Not one of my South African instructors ever explained the proper meaning of osu<\/em>\u2014I doubt they even knew what it meant beyond the standard \u201cyou say it to show your strong spirit.\u201d My research reveals at least four theories. Osu<\/em> may have originated in the Japanese military academies before and during WW II to express aggression, battle and machismo\u2014and was certifiably impolite. Mas Oyama\u2019s Kyokushin karate seems to have been the first to introduce it to karate. Kyokushin tolerated no cream-puffs and demanded impossibly heavy intensity and sacrifice. The style\u2019s adherents assert that osu<\/em> is a contraction of oshi shinobu<\/em>\u2014to persevere, to endure. Hirokazu Kanazawa explained osu<\/em> as a phonetic transcription of two Chinese characters: \u201cpushing,\u201d meaning fighting spirit and effort in facing up to obstacles with a positive, unchanging attitude; and \u201csuffering,\u201d meaning courage and a spirit of perseverance; suffering through pain and resisting depression with patience and without giving up. So every time you need to push yourself, you scream osu<\/em>. A third theory suggests that osu<\/em> is a contraction of ohayo gozaimasu<\/em> (the polite version of \u201cGood morning\u201d), and a fourth that it\u2019s a contraction of onegaishimasu<\/em> (\u201cPlease do me the favour\u201d) commonly heard immediately after students bow to the instructor before training begins. It may even have inspired the \u201cooh rah\u201d battle cry among U.S. Marines who use it to respond to a verbal greeting or as an expression of motivation.<\/p>\n

But these definitions don\u2019t cover the myriad meanings that osu<\/em> has outside Japan. It\u2019s an all-purpose slang word. It can mean yes, no, I understand, I don\u2019t understand, no kidding, hello, goodbye, you look great, everything\u2019s cool, whassup?\u2014whatever you want. It appears to bind players with a sense of camaraderie, like a little injection of instant group therapy when you want to feel good about yourself. And can there be any doubt that this seemingly magical word makes us move faster, jump higher and hit harder? There are at least five versions. There\u2019s the standard \u201cOss\u201d, rumbling up from the gut, the emphasis on a full-throated macho growl to demonstrate real karate spirit. Then there\u2019s \u201cOssssssssssss\u201d, a long, drawn-out, reptilian hissing, and the playful \u201cOsa\u201d, two syllables with the stress on the second. How about \u201cHey Oss\u201d, rhythmically chanted during a run on a gashuku? And then there\u2019s the laughable machine-gun staccato \u201cOss, oss, oss, oss, oss\u201d. But it is virtually absent from Japanese instructor-level training (I never once heard it during all my training in Japan) and is a serious social gaffe (like referring to yourself as a sensei or shihan) if you say it to a Japanese person unless they are younger than you, lower in rank, or they invite you to say it. And don\u2019t ever say it to a woman.<\/p>\n

There was a time, now long gone, when it was taken too far by some Western extremists, where fighting spirit, proper respect, and an appropriate degree of subservience were all necessary prerequisites to survival. And the primary tool for that survival was osu<\/em>. In that era it was a special word to indicate your devotion to the karate way. If you needed to show more aggression, you shouted osu!<\/em> More enthusiasm and spirit? You shouted louder until it was audible over 20 miles of open water. And if it wasn\u2019t loud enough, you were ordered to do knee-busting bunny hops round the dojo however many times the seniors decided was appropriate. And if you still didn\u2019t get the point, you would get sorted out.<\/p>\n

Decades of brainwashing guarantee that osu<\/em> will never disappear from Western dojos. It\u2019s as ingrained as the hilarious but stupid habit among legions of non-Japanese players of trying to instruct like the Japanese. They transform into pseudo-Japanese, barking out unintelligible instructions in a strange hybrid language . . . you know, that monosyllabic nonsense like \u201cmore hip down,\u201d \u201cmore knee up,\u201d and \u201cmust more hard training.\u201d They\u2019re even more irritating when they conduct a social conversation with a Japanese instructor in the typical clipped Japanese English. Assuming that the Japanese are uniformly incapable of understanding normal English, they resort to blundering nuggets like “Sensei, how you like coffee? \u201cSensei, you want some eating?\u201d \u201cSensei, what your favourite kata?\u201d \u201cOss, Sensei, very important we understand this point of punch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering just how far non-Japanese players bungle their Japanese act, isn\u2019t it more sensible to keep things simple? Is it necessary to shout osu<\/em> every five seconds to prove your karate worth? The dojo isn\u2019t the military, and it\u2019s much more common in Japanese society to hear hai<\/em>, so why not adopt it in the dojo in response to your instructor? In the end, though, why say anything? Just shut up and train.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Western karateka may not be aware of their misunderstanding and misuse of the martial arts phenomenon of osu prevalent in their karate dojos. Jigoro Kano,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}