East Meets West: A Museum in the Making

I haven’t checked my dictionary lately but I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of Michael Matsuda displayed by the word “entrepreneur”. If not, there really should be. Matsuda is both founder and president of the world’s first museum to be entirely dedicated to the history of martial arts.

That it should take someone raised in Southern California to launch a project celebrating a legacy that originated centuries ago and half a world away is an ambitious endeavor to say the least. There is also no existing model on which to pattern his vision of a venue that devotes as much time to showcasing martial arts techniques as it does to commemorating Eastern contributions to Western culture.

There’s one karate museum in Japan,” Matsuda cites, “but that’s about it. When you stop to realize that in the U.S. alone there are over 30,000 martial arts schools, there’s obviously a widespread interest in the discipline and lifestyle but nothing that is being done to preserve its past as a way to enlighten future generations.”

We know from what we’ve read about or seen in movies,” he continues, “that it’s something that’s been around for a long time. What a lot of people don’t realize, however, is that the study of martial arts wasn’t officially introduced in this country until 1903. President Theodore Roosevelt – impressed by what he saw in a judo demonstration – immediately became one of its first American students.”

Although a lot of moves were incorporated in action films in the 1940’s, Matsuda explains that it wasn’t until the emerging popularity of Bruce Lee as a film star and the arrival of instructors from the Far East that martial arts really picked up a following.

Matsuda’s own interest in it was the product of a father who recognized the value of being able to protect oneself.

I was a skinny, scrawny little kid in elementary school,” Matsuda reminisces with a chuckle, “and my dad forced my brother and me to learn judo at the Japanese Community Center because he knew we were going to get picked on. Well, sure enough, I did get picked on, used the judo I knew, and it actually worked!”

From there, he went on to learn karate, jujitsu and then joined a kung-fu school in 1974. “Around that time, a friend of mine named Paulie Zink – the first non-Chinese to master the arts of Tai Shing and Pek Kwar - was learning a very rare form called Monkey Kung-fu and offered to teach me.”

Most Kung-fu styles, he explains, are based on animal characters such as dragons, tigers, and cranes and incorporate elements of these creatures’ movements in blocking, striking, crouching, etc.

Monkey Fung-fu,” Matsuda says, “is unorthodox because it’s low to the ground and imitative of the playfulness and cunning nature of monkeys to keep their opponents confused.” He and Zink went on to co-author a text entitled “The History of Monkey Kung-fu”.

Around 1981, Matsuda started taking classes in journalism, marketing, writing and newspaper production. Never reticent about taking the initiative, stirring excitement, and getting individuals to participate in new ventures, he soon found himself talking to John Stuart, one of the top editors of a martial arts magazine.

He invited me to write an article for him. Specifically, Bruce Lee had died 10 years previous and his top student, Dan Inosanto, was still living. My assignment was to interview him. From the outset, I was amazed. Inosanto was telling me stuff he had never told anybody before about Bruce Lee! The article became the cover story and, from there, I started pitching my ideas to other magazines. That’s when I thought that magazines are great but I really wanted to touch on more aspects of martial arts. Because I knew about writing, graphic arts, advertising, photography and marketing, I decided to start my own magazine. It was only a quarterly but it was able to sustain itself and keep me in the black.”

After 4 years, though,” he goes on, “I realized I was still limited. A month or so after an issue came out, I thought, people didn’t always remember what they’d just read. The history I was trying to represent was being lost each time an issue was discarded. I wanted to have something that was long-lasting and would appeal to the whole community.”

In 1999, a friend of his started a website and Matsuda recognized that this was a wonderful medium for what he wanted to do. “The Internet,” he exclaims, “was amazing! It’s accessible 24 hours, it’s easy to update, and all of this wonderful history I wanted to share wouldn’t be lost. What I realized would be even neater, though, would be to have a place that people could come and see not only everything about the history of the martial arts but also understand the influences and contributions of the Asian community on American culture.”

The first website generated about 60 hits a month. “It was the ugliest looking site you ever saw!” Matsuda says. “My friend offered to make me a co-CEO if I helped him out. Well, we revamped the whole thing, including an online magazine, and we started getting a thousand hits a month, then two thousand and so forth. The following month I introduced the concept of the museum and people really got excited.”

What he dreams of is the notion that people can look at his museum and say, “Oh, so that’s how my art started or that’s where the word ‘Samurai’ came from or why certain swords are used or what’s the meaning behind the different uniforms”.

Matsuda is adamant against his venture being a “Who’s Who in Martial Arts” because there would be a lot of argument regarding who – especially in the celebrity circuit - was entitled to be represented. “It’s also not like a sports museum,” he clarifies, “because although it takes mastery of physical skills and uses weapons, it also touches on art, folklore, music, theater, philosophy, respect and mental discipline and focus.”

He goes on to illustrate that, “We have the Japanese American Museum but its focus is on the internment camps. There isn’t anything in it about the history of Japan or how its traditions came here. With the Chinese History Museum that’s just starting out there’s plenty of historical documentation but no inclusion of martial arts. A Korean museum exists but it, too, has a limited focus. As for a Filipino museum or a museum about Thailand, these are non-existent. What I wanted to do was have a place that vibrantly brings all of these Asian countries under one roof and showcases each of their contributions to the martial arts.”

There is also an interactive component where children can use Samurai swords – “safely, of course!” – learn some basic words in Chinese, study Filipino arts and origami, and listen to Asian folktales. Since the programs are constantly changing and evolving, Matsuda promises this won’t be just a one-time visit for families and schools.

As for the collections, he is constantly amazed by the volume of artifacts that exist. “On the one hand,” he says, “there are martial arts masters who have died or retired and their relatives have no comprehension of the value of the old shoes or uniforms or mats that they’ve found in hall closets or up in an attic. Every time these things are thrown away, another piece of our history goes with it. On the other hand are those who come forth with items for which there is no documentation. Documentation is essential, of course, to portray an accurate picture. Since the practice of martial arts is still so new by America’s timeline, it’s not as if we’re researching what happened in Egypt 2,000 years ago. If someone claims to have been a student of a certain master, it’s easy enough to check it out and verify an artifact’s authenticity.”

In 2004, the fledgling museum did a ribbon-cutting to launch a touring exhibit which has since traveled to conventions, festivals and schools. “The response has been tremendous,” Matsuda says. “When we decided to do the Cherry Blossom Festival - an annual Pasadena event that celebrates Asian culture - we were told that one of the exhibitors had cancelled and that, accordingly, there was a whole lot of space available. I laughed and said ‘That’s good because we’ve got a whole lot of stuff’.”

The museum’s traveling exhibit has 10 portable walls, plenty of photographs and small artifacts, mannequins in authentic costumes, and videos. “When we do tours,” he tells me, “we focus a lot on martial arts in the media and film, primarily because that’s what kids today get the most excited about.”

This leads me to the question of how today’s young people can regard martial arts as a centuries old tradition when the messaging they’re receiving is that it’s little more than a cool way to engage in violence.

Matsuda is blunt in his assessment. “That message is one that’s never going to get across,” he acknowledges. “When you take martial arts, though, everything changes. For example, bullies are encouraged to take judo and karate. On the one hand, you have to ask yourself why bullies would be allowed to learn more techniques for beating people up. After you start taking it, however, you realize you don’t need to use those techniques because you already know how to defend yourself. Those techniques have meaning. You start telling yourself, ‘I can re-focus my bully energy into learning this art’. This then translates to putting positive energy into other pursuits like doing well in school and setting goals that will help you get a good job, help people in your community, and be a better person. You don’t convince anyone of this by telling them; you convince them by allowing them to participate and discovering this awareness themselves.”

Because the museum will expose students to the different types of martial arts, Matsuda believes it will help them make better informed choices on what they’d like to study. “People tend to stay with a program longer if they’re interested in it than if they feel they’re forced to take it. For instance, if you have an interest in learning weapons, you would be better suited to something like kendo as opposed to judo where you’re throwing people around.”

There are plenty of history books about California and the rest of the country,” Matsuda says. “There’s nothing, however, that brings everything about Asian history and its martial arts legacy together in one place. We’ve been very fortunate to have California State Senator Richard Alarcon in our corner as a wonderful supporter of this effort. He has assigned Alvin Kusamoto to work with us in bringing this museum to its full potential by helping us pursue funding through donations and grant opportunities, and make the public aware of the value our non-profit facility will bring in terms of education, tourism, and the celebration of cultural diversity. At our North Hollywood and Woodland Hills satellite centers, we’ve already having monthly fund-raisers and movie nights for kids as well as film seminars for aspiring writers, actors and directors. We’ve even had classes in how to make sushi!”

Readers are invited to learn more at the museum's website at www.MartialArtsMuseum.com.