I think given enough time, the WMA community will get there. But I think there's another distinction, separate from, but hand-in-hand with the lack of a living tradition. Since it's primarily being pursued by western cultures, I think a cultural aspect comes into it in terms of the attitude people take towards it. What I mean, is that there's a desire to be practical and have fun at the same time, and so by necessity I think it tends to be taught casually (I think we're a bit unusual in that we're at a professional fencing school). People come and go, pick up what they care to, etc (not counting the die-hards, of course).
I somewhat agree and somewhat don't. I agree that many come into it with a different mindset, but I don't think that's as much a western mindset, because I think many JSA schools have the same types of students. I think, however, that, due to the pre-existence of a living tradition, they already have a right way and a wrong way to do techniques, and there really isn't any debate about that. Therefore any teacher claiming to do something differently is easily identified as a fraud. WMA, on the other hand, has gray areas in terms of some interpretations, and does not have the same levels of standards. As such, anyone can claim expertise, and it is harder to say who is more legitimate and who is less. And because of this, the average WMA practitioner isn't anywhere near the level of the average JSA practitioner, simply because there's so much more garbage in the modern WMA world right now.
One huge difference that seems to come out of this is that the eastern arts tend to start with very repetitious drilling of moves and footwork, and sequences of plays, the usefulness of which is often obscure to the beginning student. With the western arts, we jump right in, but this keeps it fun and interesting even at the beginner level.
It really depends on the school. When I was doing Aikido, my sensei explained the reasons for quite a number of the techniques, whereas other schools take the approach that you should do something until you understand it. As a teacher, I like to give a broad picture early on to help keep it interesting, then bring things back to being more focused later (e.g. teach basic footwork, have them do some handwork before they've necessarily mastered footwork, but then come back to the footwork again), but I think that's more of a modern mindset, not necessarily a western mindset. Classical fencing, for instance, has a lot in common with how traditional JSA trains, despite being western.
However, I think the eastern arts tend to be a little more prepared to look pretty in a demo as a result, whether or not the students are advanced enough to apply it.
Maybe, to a certain extent, but I'd caution against too much of that line of thought. First, I don't think it is an issue of them looking pretty, I think it is an issue of them doing something right. And being able to do something right happens to look pretty.
Also, many of the kata in JSA are a lot more free form than most people realize, and are not that different from the types of drills we do. Quite honestly, I borrow quite a number of ideas for how to drill from JSA and other art forms. Many of the kata are only slightly different from free-play, except with certain parameters for 1) safety and 2) making sure that the technique is absolutely correct had it been a real scenario.
While I'm not giving up free-play as a method of training (because it definately was a method of training utilized by our ancestors), I do wish the majority of the WMA world wouldn't put so much emphasis on it. To be clear, I don't think most of the top instructors in the WMA community do, but there are a lot of guys out there who feel that the only way you can tell if something works or not is by sparring... and I think people with this attitude are kidding themselves.
