Fancy a free day out watching spectacular, world-class martial arts? Well, here’s your chance as the All-Japan Taekwondo Championships will be held at Yoyogi National Gymnasium No. 2 on February 15 and 16, and entry is free.
Japan Today caught up with former world champion Hwang Su-il to get some background information on the upcoming tournament. Hwang, 54, is a seven-time All-Japan champion and won his world title at the 8th World Championships in 1992. He also took double gold (sparring and patterns) at the first International Taekwondo Federation World Veterans Championship.
The All-Japan Championships are held over two days. The first day consists of tul, or patterns, the taekwondo equivalent of kata in karate. The second day is mattsogi, or combat. The event features weight categories for men and women, as well as team events and, from this year, competitions for veterans and youths. In the breaks between some of the categories, there will be exhibition performances, such as board smashing and high kicking.
Like karate, from which it is derived, taekwondo is a young sport, around 70 years old. Also, like karate, its world – and local – organizations are divided between different groups. For taekwondo, the main groups are the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) and World Taekwondo (for reasons that you can guess, formerly the World Taekwondo Federation, or WTF).
The All-Japan Championships this week are organized by the International Taekwondo Federation Japan. Although, the ITF and WT are separate organizations, they do recognize each other and even hold some events together, but only athletes that follow WT rules are accepted into the Olympic Games.
Taekwondo was introduced as an exhibition sport at the 1988 Games in Seoul and was retained as an exhibition sport at Barcelona in 1992. It became an official sport at the Sydney Games in 2000 and has been part of every Olympic Games since.
Hwang explained some of the differences in the sport’s two main groupings. “For a start, the mats that fighters compete on are different,” he said. “The WT use mats that are octagonal in shape, while we (ITF) use square mats.” The tul patterns are slightly different, while the actual fighting is significantly different, according to Hwang.
“In competition, the WT use electronic devices for scoring like in fencing, so if you hit a certain part of the body, you score points. If you don’t hit the right part, you don’t score. For us, we still use a referee system, so scoring is done on a more intuitive level based on good striking, speed, etc. I think the WT version is less about technique and more about scoring, while the ITF style is probably a purer form of taekwondo.”
Hwang is not just a former world champion, he is a senior figure in the ITF. He is a 7th Dan Master, an International Referee, an International Instructor, Chief Examiner and Chair of the Technical Committee.
Hwang believes that all the main martial arts – judo, karate, taekwondo – should be part of every Olympic Games. “I think karate should be in the Olympics and I’m kind of sad that it’s not,” he says. One of the results of this exclusion and taekwondo’s inclusion is that the popularity of the former is declining while taekwondo is booming. “It’s become very popular in Japan,” says Hwang, who has his own training center in Tokyo.
He has also featured as a character in a best-selling video game, TEKKEN. Bandai Namco originally developed the fighting series for gaming arcades and when they moved onto TEKKEN 3, they wanted more realistic fighting moves, so they linked Hwang up to motion sensors to recreate his moves for the character Hwoarang.
Hwang was a relatively late starter to the sport, taking up taekwondo at the age of 12 at the urging of his father. Ten years later, he was the lightweight world champion.
“Taekwondo is great for discipline and balance and it’s great exercise for the core parts of the body,” says Hwang, who believes that anyone at any age can take up the sport. “There’s no need to be afraid,” he says with a smile.
If you want to sample the sport, head to the All-Japan Championships this weekend. You won’t be disappointed.
All-Japan Taekwondo Championship
February 15: 15:00-18:00, Patterns
February 16: 09:00-17:00, Combat
Yoyogi Gymnasium No. 2, Tokyo
© Japan Today
1 Comment
Login to comment
Aly Rustom
I would love to go but have other commitments...
oh well.