# Korean and Okinawa



## terryl965 (Nov 1, 2006)

What are the major simalarities between this two style and are they so similar?


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## MBuzzy (Nov 1, 2006)

I was just about to make a thread about the same topic.  I was having a discussion last night about this very subject.  I met a guy who studies TKD here now, but came from Shotokan.  One thing that he told me - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that in Shotokan (kata at least), every block is also intended to be a strike and vice versa.  They are used interchangably.  I found this very interesting.  The Okinawan styles also seem to be a little harder and more crisp - at least than Tang Soo Do.

It also seemed that Shotokan used the shoulders more to give the power to strikes, whereas TSD uses the hips.

Not to get too far off topic, but this brought up a similar discussion as to the differences between TSD and TKD....which I'm sure has been discussed plenty of times before.


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## exile (Nov 1, 2006)

MBuzzy said:


> One thing that he told me - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that in Shotokan (kata at least), every block is also intended to be a strike and vice versa.



Yes, it's true that in a lot of the contemporary bunkai analysis by people like Iain Abernethy, Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder, and Rick Clark, `blocks' in kata are code for strikes (and also throws and other `grappling' moves). But exactly the same is true for the bunkai of TKD forms by Simon John O'Neil in his Combat-TKD newsletters, and in Stuart Anslow's new book on ITF bunkai. The karate analyses are deliberately informed by what information can be gleaned about applications from writings of or about the early 20th c. Okinawan masters, and are intended to be in effect reconstructions of the original bunkai for these forms. And the TKD bunkai analysts have been strongly influenced by the karate guys, and cite them at length. Given the major contribution of the karate katas to the inventory of TKD hyungs, it would be very strange if the same kinds of applications didn't make as much sense for the latter as for the former! So I don't think that there's all that much difference here between Shotokan and TKD.




MBuzzy said:


> It also seemed that Shotokan used the shoulders more to give the power to strikes, whereas TSD uses the hips.



Can you indicate where you got this impression from? As I understand it, the reverse punch is the main `workhorse' striking weapon in the Shotokan arsenal, and from what I've seen, the hips come very strongly into play in the karate reverse punch. I've heard that the turning kick is less strongly powered in karate by the `open' rotation of the hips to bring the striking leg around toward the target preparator to the lower leg attacking movement than it is in TKD, but I don't know if that applies to the side and other kicks.


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## MBuzzy (Nov 2, 2006)

It could easily be the practitioner.  I have only seen him and a few videos of Shotokan.  I noticed the use of shoulders specifically with the person who was demonstrating Kata.  

We were "trading" Bassais at the time.  The version of Bassai practiced by Shotokan is very close to the one that I was taught.


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## Miles (Nov 2, 2006)

Interesting thread!

My (albeit limited) understanding is that many of the Okinawan masters included a great deal of weight-training and conditioning in their teaching.  I think this is similar to how many/most train in TKD, but perhaps is not so similar to Shotokan.

Okinawan stances are short-exactly like the TKD walking and back stances whereas modern Shotokan extended the shorter stances.  Take a look at the book Essence of Okinawan Karate by Shoshin Nagamine-his stances are exactly Kukki-TKD.  I use the term "modern" Shotokan as Funakoshi's original book shows the shorter stances-the longer stances were introduced later, possibly by his son Gigo or perhaps Nakamaya?

When I was training in Shotokan, we ended Heian 1 with 4 middle section knife-hand blocks.  TSD's Pyung-ahn cho-dan ends with 4 lower section knife-hand blocks....just like Nagamine does in Pinan 2 in his book.

Miles


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## exile (Nov 2, 2006)

MBuzzy said:


> It could easily be the practitioner.  I have only seen him and a few videos of Shotokan.  I noticed the use of shoulders specifically with the person who was demonstrating Kata.



There's so much individuality to the interpretation, it's true... people's body dynamics vary enormously and they adapt their performance of patterns and individual techniques to those constraints. Terry and I were just exchanging laments on another thread that we have a lot of trouble these days rolling our feet over to perfect vertical for the correct striking surface in TDK roundhouse kicks. There are a thousand similar places where variation can creep in... usually, I find, people tend to perform the technique the way they were first instructed; probably the nervous system takes that imprint and holds onto it. 



MBuzzy said:


> We were "trading" Bassais at the time.  The version of Bassai practiced by Shotokan is very close to the one that I was taught.



Bassai and Nahainchi were at one time part of a lot of TKD school's curriculum and still are in some places (e.g., check out http://www.natkd.com/tkd_kom_do_kwan.htm), and are, I gather, commonly taught in TSD dojangs (or at least were until fairly recently). My own instructor teaches some of the older Japanese kata to his black belt students. I suspect that his take on these forms would also be very, very Shotokan-ish.


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## IcemanSK (Nov 2, 2006)

I trained with a guy who comes out of a Shorie-ryu (sp?) Okinawan tradition & he said the same thing about blocks being strikes, also. The philosophy is, "if you attack me, my block will hurt you so much, that you won't wanna attack me again." He is 63, & no fun to throw punches at.


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## terryl965 (Nov 2, 2006)

IcemanSK said:


> I trained with a guy who comes out of a Shorie-ryu (sp?) Okinawan tradition & he said the same thing about blocks being strikes, also. The philosophy is, "if you attack me, my block will hurt you so much, that you won't wanna attack me again." He is 63, & no fun to throw punches at.


 

See I believe the same thing if I need to block then I want to do damage to you. That is one thing I do not get with TKD the block are a deflection of the blow but does no real damage.


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## Brad Dunne (Nov 2, 2006)

"That is one thing I do not get with TKD the block are a deflection of the blow but does no real damage". (terryl965)..............

There are more than a few interpertations of TKD, that have different backgrounds. Here is one more that also fits into the equation, Hapkido/Aikijujitsu. Terry's reference to the "deflection" is basis for this assessment. There can be, IMO, a merging of the two aspects of blocking. One can make their block hard and inflict damage or they can just as easy make it a deflection and use it as a base for something else. The one main thing that I have found thru my journey within the arts is that they are all inter-related.


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## exile (Nov 2, 2006)

Brad Dunne said:


> "That is one thing I do not get with TKD the block are a deflection of the blow but does no real damage". (terryl965)..............
> 
> There are more than a few interpertations of TKD, that have different backgrounds. Here is one more that also fits into the equation, Hapkido/Aikijujitsu. Terry's reference to the "deflection" is basis for this assessment. There can be, IMO, a merging of the two aspects of blocking. One can make their block hard and inflict damage or they can just as easy make it a deflection and use it as a base for something else. The one main thing that I have found thru my journey within the arts is that they are all inter-related.



It seems to me there are at least three things you can do with a block:

(i) you can perform it as per a very literal interpretation of the hyung, but harder, so it becomes a damaging strike to the place that it's supposed to come into contact with, going by the most obvious bunkai for the form. 

(ii) you can perform it as a strike, but to a very different place, which you have made vulnerable by carrying out the moves concealed within the hyung. An example: your assailant, facing you, grabs the front of your shirt or whatever you're wearing, preparatory to punching your lights out. You grasp his gripping wrist with your right hand, pull it towards you while turning 90 degrees away from him, and bring your left hand up toward your right ear, contacting his gripping arm with your forarm halfway between his elbow and his shoulder---voila, an arm lock!---which you then put pressure on to force him down, lower and lower---and then, with his head moving doward towad yourt hip, you carry out your down `block', which has become hard strike to his lowered throat. Perfored somewhat differently, it's an armbar across his neck, forcing him to the ground... but in any case, you've got a decisive end to the attack right there.

(iii) you can perform it as a throw, e.g., the double block in Palgwe Oh-Jang, which begins with a simultaneous middle outward block (left arm) and rising block (right arm). The way this palgwe plays out, taking these arm moves to be the blocks as described makes little sense... but they make a lot of sense if you take the simultaneous block to be an arm lock where the rising block forces the assailant's arm up at the wrist, the outward block is the corresponding move at the assailant's elbow (where the `block' encodes a grip and an outward forcing move in tandem with the forcing move on the assailant's elbow). This will force the attacker's body down, and the subsequent uppercut in the palgwe should be a decisive finishing strike to the attacker's neck at the base of his skull.

Over and over again, I keep seeing the way `blocks' actually represent highly effective locking and throwing moves... grappling techniques, in fact; and setups for finishing strikes. These are probably the most combat-effective ways of looking at blocks. In their book _The Way of Kata_, Kane and Wilder give a number of rules for decoding combat applications of Karate kata---with Goju Ryu karate examples, but their point is that the rules work generally---with their 8th rule being, `There is no block'.  I suspect they've derived this rule from Abernethy's rules for kata bunkai in his _Bunkai Jutsu_ book, in particular his third rule: `All kata applications are designed to end the confrontation instantly', with a number of blocks used to illustrate---and reinterpreted so as to conform to---that rule. Blocks emerge from these guys' interpretations as traps, components of locks, strikes to exposed vital regions, interceptive strikes... but never as purely defensive moves restricted to keeping you from getting hit. 

For an orgy of blocks-as-counterattack-components, check out Rick Clark's _75 Down Blocks_---a really astonishing book in which he does, really, give 75 different interpretations for the lowly down block, and the ones in which the block is just a block turn out to be essentially hopeless as fighting  techniques. In the vast majority of Clark's applications for the down blocks, the block is a lock/throw/strike etc., and the technique is severely effective.


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## searcher (Nov 4, 2006)

Just a couple of observations here:   we need to remember that Shotokan is Japanese and is not Okinawan.   Yes it is a variation of Okinawan karate, but is not truly Okinawan.    The other is on the blocking part.   It would be good to remember that a block IS a strike.   The hard styles all share this to a certain degree.   The most devastating blocks I have ever witnessed or have even heard of are those from Hung Gar.    They are particular devastating.

As for the original question on similarities.   Okinawan and Korean styles tend to have a slightly higher stance and the techniques are very similar.   The other thing would be that they formed while the native populations were being oppressed by another country.   JMHO.


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## exile (Nov 4, 2006)

searcher said:


> As for the original question on similarities.   Okinawan and Korean styles tend to have a slightly higher stance and the techniques are very similar.   The other thing would be that they formed while the native populations were being oppressed by another country.   JMHO.



Interesting point... the difference in the circumstances is in the direction of transmission. Okinawan knowledge (but only some of it) went _to_ Japan, while Japanese knowledge---but again, only some of it---went _to_ Korea, with Japan the occupying power in both cases.  This is why people like O'Neil and Anslow emphasize that the karate that was incorporated into TKD, particularly the patterns, was a very diluted version of the original Okinawan fighting systems whose kata eventually turn up, sliced, diced and rearranged----but with the `atomic' two-to-four move combat scenarios intact---in the kwan-era KMAs that eventually fused to become TKD.


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