# importance of kata?



## onibaku (Aug 26, 2007)

I think kata is useless. tell me why karatekas study it


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

There are about half a dozen threads on MT exploring exactly why kata are the self-defense heart of karate-based fighting systems, along with a five-foot shelf of book on combat-realistic bunkai for kata, dozens of DVDs showing how kata movements translate into realistic fighting moves, and so on. If you make the effort to become acquainted with all (or _any_) of this material showing in detail exactly how kata constitute a physical record of effective fighting tactics, and _still_ think they're useless, well, so be it. But doing so before you've looked into any of the above is a bit premature. 

You might want to start with the following threads:

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29821

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14915

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51803

and follow up on the references to the work of Iain Abernethy, Rick Clark, Bill Burgar, Patrick McCarthy, and Javier Martinez mentioned at various places in the discussion.


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## twendkata71 (Aug 26, 2007)

Frankly, the fact that you made this comment shows your lack of knowledge. Plus, we have had this discussion on other threads. Try reading those. 
Do you think that kata is useless because you read one of Bruce Lee's books and he said so. Also, you have black belt in karate listed on your profile. What type of karate did you study that doesn't have kata? 






onibaku said:


> I think kata is useless. tell me why karatekas study it


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

twendkata71 said:


> Also, you have black belt in karate listed on your profile. What type of karate did you study that doesn't have kata?



I also was struck by this, twendkata, but it occurred to me that he may not be in a dojo where bunkai are studied and trained realistically. I gather that there are quite a few schools like that, even in Japan. 

The thing is, I think the various thread we've both referred to contain all the information anyone needs to answer his original question, `why do karatekas study kata?' Anyone who reads that material should no longer be in doubt about why; if they don't agree with the conclusions, well, that's a different issue, and I don't see what more we could say. The evidence is out there, certainly...


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## MJS (Aug 26, 2007)

onibaku said:


> I think kata is useless. tell me why karatekas study it


 
A few questions for you.

1) What art do you train in?

2) If you do train in an art that contains kata, its possible that you don't understand them, because you were never taught to understand them.  In other words, if your instructor can't provide you with some breakdowns, how would you expect to know what a kata is for, other than just blindly running thru a series of moves.

3) There are countless threads, as exile has pointed out, on the debate of kata.  If you're here to ask legit questions, fine, but if you're here to cause issues, I suggest you read the General posting rules of this forum!

Mike


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## aplonis (Aug 26, 2007)

In short, kata (forms, poomsae, hyung) require you to practice a wider variety of elements and combinations. Left to your own you'll only do the things you are already good at.

Kata reveal your weaknesses, among them, weakness of memory. Forgetting them shows you haven't been practicing them. Finding time for 30 plus forms is an obsticle, I know. But the embarassment of stumbling through one with others watching is the goad to stay in practice even when time otherwise would seem to disallow.

I used to feel as you do, back a long time ago. I still don't enjoy having to keep so many memorized since memorizing lists ranks chief among my own personal mental deficiencies...as my wife will testify from any number of times she has sent me to the store to buy "just a few items".

But even so I see forms as entirely worthwile to the maintenance of the art. Forms are MA spinach. You need them no matter what.

From my own experience, one of the things that makes them more palatable is the attitude of our GM, Monte Beghtol, 10th Dan. Some of the moves seem to make no sense at first glance. Ask him, though, and he will proffer an explanation...often a personal demonstration. He'll get to that point in the form and say, come at me with a punch (kick, knife hand, whatever) then he'll do the mystery move in a way wholly consitent with the form and which demonstrates it's unquestionable effectiveness.

I remember in the TKD form Palgwe 4 a spear hand/180 degree turn/hammer fist combo which made no sense to me at the time. GM Beghtol was visiting on that day, so I asked. He demonstrates that bar, getting to the spear hand part, and says, "Grab my wrist as if you're going to try a throw or wrist lock." I do that. Then his spear hand shifts to a counter-grab of my own wrist, he does the twist, and I am arched painfully backward as he does the spin still locked onto my own wrist and next thing I know I'm looking at his descending hammer fist. Hey...it was a jujutsu-like move, and worked perfectly. All I needed was the right vector for that grip. I love that move now. It was only in the form, not anywhere else. GM Beghtol has an explanation for every move in every form. Nor does he insist that you accept his. Every student is free to make up their own explanation. That is how forms come alive in the mind of every student. Without these mental scenarios the forms are just a stupid shadow dance. Maybe that's the problem?


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

aplonis said:


> I remember in the form Palgwe 4 a spear hand/180 degree turn/hammer fist combo which made no sense to me.



I know the stage in the form you're referring to; we train the `pressing down block' that accompanies the spearhand strike as a slapping punch deflection setting up the `spear', which is in fact  a rotated palm-heel strike to the face, with a hair or ear-grab as that downward arcing followup muchimi continuation to the `spear'; and we do a 360º turn which pulls the trapped, already miserable attacker around and down. The hammerfist is a hard blow to the side of his temple. The robustness of kata, hyungs etc.&#8212;the fact that they lend themselves to so many good, effective applications&#8212;is one of the best things about them. 

(On the other hand, in Palgwe Chil-Jang, we do the late, standard 360º turn as a 180º instead...)


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## Tez3 (Aug 26, 2007)

I know those moves from Wado Ryu kata! it's also in Pyung Sam Dan albeit a little differently. The explanation Exile gives is the one I was taught in Wado, I've always liked it! 

We do kata because we understand it's importance, if you don't like kata, don't do it, simple really.


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> I know those moves from Wado Ryu kata! it's also in Pyung Sam Dan albeit a little differently.


 

Bingo, Tez! Thanks for the tip about the Wado Ryu treatmentdo you happen to recall the particular name(s) of the kata involved? One of my little projects over the past while has been going through various hyungs that I do and cross-referencing combat subsequences of them both to other hyungs and also to karate kataan awful lot of the Palgwes, for example, are mixmastered and recombined from material in the Pinan kata set.



Tez3 said:


> We do kata because we understand it's importance, if you don't like kata, don't do it, simple really.



That's really the whole story!


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## FieldDiscipline (Aug 26, 2007)

I was going to.  But I wont. :jediduel:  This time.


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## Kacey (Aug 26, 2007)

exile said:


> I know the stage in the form you're referring to; we train the `pressing down block' that accompanies the spearhand strike as a slapping punch deflection setting up the `spear', which is in fact  a rotated palm-heel strike to the face, with a hair or ear-grab as that downward arcing followup muchimi continuation to the `spear'; and we do a 360º turn which pulls the trapped, already miserable attacker around and down. The hammerfist is a hard blow to the side of his temple. The robustness of kata, hyungs etc.the fact that they lend themselves to so many good, effective applicationsis one of the best things about them.



That sounds very similar to a set of movements in Do-San tul, the 3rd pattern in the Ch'ang H'on set.

No matter how independently forms arose, there are only so many ways in which the body can move, and only so many ways in which one person can act on another.  The combinations will be different, as will the emphasis on types of strikes (hand, foot, elbow, knee, soft, hard, etc.), but in the end, similar problems will create similar solutions, as each person/group experimenting with such movements comes closer and closer to the "ideal" solution.


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

Kacey said:


> That sounds very similar to a set of movements in Do-San tul, the 3rd pattern in the Ch'ang H'on set.
> 
> No matter how independently forms arose, there are only so many ways in which the body can move, and only so many ways in which one person can act on another.  The combinations will be different, as will the emphasis on types of strikes (hand, foot, elbow, knee, soft, hard, etc.), but *in the end, similar problems will create similar solutions, as each person/group experimenting with such movements comes closer and closer to the "ideal" solution.*



This I believe to be one of the fundamental truths of the MAs. It makes a lot of the wrangling about which style is `superior' or better for street defense (or whatever) look, in the end, like a bunch of futile bickering, like the blind men and the elephant...


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## aplonis (Aug 26, 2007)

exile said:


> I know the stage in the form you're referring to; we train the `pressing down block' that accompanies the spearhand strike as a slapping punch deflection setting up the `spear', which is in fact  a rotated palm-heel strike to the face, with a hair or ear-grab as that downward arcing followup muchimi continuation to the `spear'; and we do a 360º turn which pulls the trapped, already miserable attacker around and down. The hammerfist is a hard blow to the side of his temple. The robustness of kata, hyungs etc.&#8212;the fact that they lend themselves to so many good, effective applications&#8212;is one of the best things about them.
> 
> (On the other hand, in Palgwe Chil-Jang, we do the late, standard 360º turn as a 180º instead...)



I am supposing that 360º might better describe the move from the point of view of turning of the head and the final direction of travel ending up the same. So indeed, a full 360º from that point of view. 

But I tend to consider moves more from a footwork perspective. Looked at in terms of footwork alone it comes out to only 180º since the opposite foot comes to the fore tracing only half a circle while the once-forward foot is pivot ending up in the rear.

Sorry to have confused the issue.


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## exile (Aug 26, 2007)

aplonis said:


> I am supposing that 360º might better describe the move from the point of view of turning of the head and the final direction of travel ending up the same. So indeed, a full 360º from that point of view.
> 
> But I tend to consider moves more from a footwork perspective. Looked at in terms of footwork alone it comes out to only 180º since the opposite foot comes to the fore tracing only half a circle while the once-forward foot is pivot ending up in the rear.
> 
> Sorry to have confused the issue.



Gotcha, aplonis! (I have problems with spatial orientation, and translating verbal descriptions into 3-D visualisationsneither of them good if you're a MAist, believe me!so I actually had to perform the Palgwe physically to see what you were getting at... duh...) That makes sense.


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## Steel Tiger (Aug 26, 2007)

aplonis said:


> But I tend to consider moves more from a footwork perspective. Looked at in terms of footwork alone it comes out to only 180º since the opposite foot comes to the fore tracing only half a circle while the once-forward foot is pivot ending up in the rear.


 
I too look at forms from a perspective of footwork.  I do this because power comes from the ground, through footwork.  Thus, if my footwork is good, I have balance and power.  I often teach forms without the hand movements so that my students can get a better feel for proper, balanced footwork.  

Footwork is one of the major reasons to study forms (kata, sets, patterns, whatever you prefer to call them).


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## chinto (Aug 26, 2007)

onibaku said:


> I think kata is useless. tell me why karatekas study it


 
your profile claims a BB in a system of karate and you can ask this question??? 

some how I think I will just say tht if you DO Indeed HAVE a even a Shodan Ho in any System of Karate you would know the answer to the question.


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## chinto (Aug 26, 2007)

twendkata71 said:


> Frankly, the fact that you made this comment shows your lack of knowledge. Plus, we have had this discussion on other threads. Try reading those.
> Do you think that kata is useless because you read one of Bruce Lee's books and he said so. Also, you have black belt in karate listed on your profile. What type of karate did you study that doesn't have kata?


 

yep! I found myself asking the same question!!  I find the 2 threads he has opened to make me wonder if he has ANY training in Any system of Karate????....


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## Tez3 (Aug 27, 2007)

exile said:


> Bingo, Tez! Thanks for the tip about the Wado Ryu treatmentdo you happen to recall the particular name(s) of the kata involved? One of my little projects over the past while has been going through various hyungs that I do and cross-referencing combat subsequences of them both to other hyungs and also to karate kataan awful lot of the Palgwes, for example, are mixmastered and recombined from material in the Pinan kata set.
> 
> 
> 
> That's really the whole story!


 

The Wado Kata is Pinan Sandan, I'm on nights tonight and as it's a Bank holiday very quiet so I shall sit when it's my turn at the desk and compare the TSD hyungs we do with the Wado kata and PM you. The Pyung hyung were very easy for me to learn as they were so very similiar.


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## exile (Aug 27, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> The Wado Kata is Pinan Sandan, I'm on nights tonight and as it's a Bank holiday very quiet so I shall sit when it's my turn at the desk and compare the TSD hyungs we do with the Wado kata and PM you. The Pyung hyung were very easy for me to learn as they were so very similiar.



Brilliant, Tez, I appreciate it. :asian: The way in which the various subparts of these kata and hyungs get recycled and recombined is very inspiring, in a wayit shows how much sense the components make on their own. I'll look forward to hearing from you!


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## chinto (Aug 28, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> The Wado Kata is Pinan Sandan, I'm on nights tonight and as it's a Bank holiday very quiet so I shall sit when it's my turn at the desk and compare the TSD hyungs we do with the Wado kata and PM you. The Pyung hyung were very easy for me to learn as they were so very similiar.


 
that will be interesting... but then I would bet your Pinan katas are slightly diferent from meany of the Okinawan Karate systems Pinan kata.. 

Wait, meany of the Okinawan Systems Pinan kata are diferent from each other!!   at least I know for a fact that my styles Pinan kata are diferent from Matsumura Seito's Pinans...


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## Tez3 (Aug 28, 2007)

chinto said:


> that will be interesting... but then I would bet your Pinan katas are slightly diferent from meany of the Okinawan Karate systems Pinan kata..
> 
> Wait, meany of the Okinawan Systems Pinan kata are diferent from each other!! at least I know for a fact that my styles Pinan kata are diferent from Matsumura Seito's Pinans...


 
We know what you mean! Going to have a kip then get done to typing!


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## chinto (Aug 29, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> We know what you mean! Going to have a kip then get done to typing!


 

ever wonder if Anku Itosu tought diferent versions of pinan kata to people and laughed at what was going to happen with all the versions that over a centery or two might be tought?  an perhaps laughed at the arguments about who was right when all most all of them were or at least might be??


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## FieldDiscipline (Aug 29, 2007)

chinto said:


> ever wonder if Anku Itosu tought diferent versions of pinan kata to people and laughed at what was going to happen with all the versions that over a centery or two might be tought?  an perhaps laughed at the arguments about who was right when all most all of them were or at least might be??



Heh.  I've been known to do that! 



Not intentionally though unfortunately :waah:


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## chinto (Aug 30, 2007)

FieldDiscipline said:


> Heh. I've been known to do that!
> 
> 
> 
> Not intentionally though unfortunately :waah:


 

OHH MAN!! now that is mean..and a Dirty Trick .... hmmmm:yoda:"A Jedi desires not these things, NOOO, not these things!

LOL


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## TheOriginalName (Aug 30, 2007)

Just a quick note....

I can understand why some of you have flared up at this question, as it is a commonly asked one to which the "answers" have already been posted. 

However, the thing i love when i open a thread like this is the passion. 
It is clear that many of you are passionate about your art - it comes through clear as day. And that is to be commended. 
This passion i hope extends right through your lives - as such passion can only enhance life. 

What also shows is the "control" which our arts teach.
It would be so simple to lash out at such as post with a volly of....well i'm sure we could all imagine. 
I also hope this control extends beyond your art. 

The final thing - this post i believe highlights the need to be careful with our wording. We need to be upfront in our view and questions, however post them in such a way that we do not cause insult. We must show the "respect" to those around us that we would expect them to show us. 

Just a few thought on why this type of post is not always a bad thing....

Enjoy my insanity one and all.....


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## exile (Aug 30, 2007)

chinto said:


> OHH MAN!! now that is mean..and a Dirty Trick .... hmmmm:yoda:"A Jedi desires not these things, NOOO, not these things!
> 
> LOL



LOL is right! Anko Itosu looks very grandfatherly and kind in various photos of him I've seen reproduced, but don't forget, this was a guy who had dozens of fights in his life and had his reputation made in part by going to Naha and breaking the arm of some guy who was dissing Shuri style karate with a `shock block' that ended the fight in one move... a guy like that could well be someone who'd get a kick out of setting up a bunch of rival disciples and their schools with slight variations that eventually led to doctrinal disagreements on the scale of the religious wars of the 17th century.

But really, I suspect it was more a matter of Itosu's thinking evolving continuously, changing and modifying stuff as he saw fit, and everyone he taught his latest, new-improved method to adhering to it, well, ... religiously. People have, if I recall correctly, suggested that Ed Parker did something like this in Kenpo, constantly updating and refining his method, but different groups of students assumed that they and they alone had been privy to the EP's Final Word on the subject, which led to a lot of rivalry and contention in Kenpo later on. My own picture of guys like Matsumura, Azato, Itosu, Kyan, Miyagi and the rest is that they were experimentalists and innovators, not doctrinaire system-builders trying to get every `i' dotted and `t' crossed. He may well have tinkered with the Pinans on an ongoing basis; after all, he created them (on the basis of older material, of course) and  maybe couldn't resist tweaking them and playing with them to get them just right as his thinking evolved... like, _we_ never do that with our pet projects, eh? :lol:


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## chinto (Aug 31, 2007)

exile said:


> LOL is right! Anko Itosu looks very grandfatherly and kind in various photos of him I've seen reproduced, but don't forget, this was a guy who had dozens of fights in his life and had his reputation made in part by going to Naha and breaking the arm of some guy who was dissing Shuri style karate with a `shock block' that ended the fight in one move... a guy like that could well be someone who'd get a kick out of setting up a bunch of rival disciples and their schools with slight variations that eventually led to doctrinal disagreements on the scale of the religious wars of the 17th century.
> 
> But really, I suspect it was more a matter of Itosu's thinking evolving continuously, changing and modifying stuff as he saw fit, and everyone he taught his latest, new-improved method to adhering to it, well, ... religiously. People have, if I recall correctly, suggested that Ed Parker did something like this in Kenpo, constantly updating and refining his method, but different groups of students assumed that they and they alone had been privy to the EP's Final Word on the subject, which led to a lot of rivalry and contention in Kenpo later on. My own picture of guys like Matsumura, Azato, Itosu, Kyan, Miyagi and the rest is that they were experimentalists and innovators, not doctrinaire system-builders trying to get every `i' dotted and `t' crossed. He may well have tinkered with the Pinans on an ongoing basis; after all, he created them (on the basis of older material, of course) and maybe couldn't resist tweaking them and playing with them to get them just right as his thinking evolved... like, _we_ never do that with our pet projects, eh? :lol:


 

yep that could well be, but remember also that the Pinan kata were for the Okinawan School system primarily. ... So gota also when thinking about it seriously wonder if some of the diferences were based on perhaps who and what age groop they thought the student might be teaching in the schools, and or be in thoes schools perhaps?


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## Danny T (Sep 1, 2007)

Could someone explain to this non karataka the differences in Kata, Hyung, and Bunkai? As someone looking in there often appears, at least to me, they are used synonymously and at other times they seem to be different.

Danny T


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## exile (Sep 1, 2007)

Danny T said:


> Could someone explain to this non karataka the differences in Kata, Hyung, and Bunkai? As someone looking in there often appears, at least to me, they are used synonymously and at other times they seem to be different.
> 
> Danny T



Kata on MT are the formal patterns that embody the technical core of karate; kata in general refers in Japanese to any formal pattern or stylized method (floral arrangement, tea ceremony... you name it, there's a kata for it in Japan). Hyung is the Korean term for the same thing. Bunkai is the analysis of kata to reveal the application of the _movements_ the kata consist of so that the combat uses of the kata, the _moves_, are revealed. From the time of Anko Itosu more than a century ago, the fighting system of karate and its related arts has been deliberately obscured by labelling certain moves by misleading movement: an arm pin followed by a horizontal elbow strike followed by a downward hammerfist to the assailant's neck, face or upper arm might be labelled a `down block' and so on. The Japanese expression _kaisai no genri_ specifically refers to the decoding method that would allow bunkai to be carried out for kata, and was taught only to the most advanced students. Innocent-looking, seemingly choreographed series of kata and hyung moves turn out, when such methods are applied systematically and realistically to these forms, to contain extremely brutal and damaging fighting techs.


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## Sukerkin (Sep 1, 2007)

Excellent and straighforward synopsis of the concepts there, *Exile* - bravo!


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## Tez3 (Sep 1, 2007)

I don't think anyone actually started out to change movements in kata, I think it happens naturally! It's like the game of Chinese whispers, what starts out with the first person is rarely what is recieved by the last.

If I'm doing kata on my own or for a display and there's a side kick I will change it to a front kick because my front kicks are far better than my side ones so it looks better. I of course teach the side kick version but if I was the head of a school and decide to change it who would say anything? I and plenty of others have 'senior moments' in kata comps where you forget a move, IIve done also when teaching, I go off and check in the book but what if I forgot the original move and thought it was something else?and the kata will change. If I have a bad back one day when teaching and don't do a certain movement with so much of a twist, the students will do it the same way and oops, there's another kata changed! 

Taken over time instructors quirks will influence kata hugely I think! No one follows another _exactly _right, there's tiny changes which over time again will change katas.That's without the instructors who think "well I don't think that bits right, I'll just tweak it a bit" there's also the instructors who leave and start their own schools who change parts of a kata to make their own mark on it and I could go on .....lol! ( no don't they shout!)


That's some of the things I think happen,of course that's without the deliberate updating and changing that goes on! To be honest it's a wonder anyone recognises anyone else's kata!!


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## exile (Sep 1, 2007)

chinto said:


> yep that could well be, but remember also that the Pinan kata were for the Okinawan School system primarily. ... So gota also when thinking about it seriously wonder if some of the diferences were based on perhaps who and what age groop they thought the student might be teaching in the schools, and or be in thoes schools perhaps?



That comes into it too, I'm very sure. Itosu was an educator, as much as anything else. I suspect he saw the teaching of karate in the schools as a key to its survival; even in Okinawa, the complexity of life was scaling up rapidly from how things were when he worked for Bushi Matsumura and helped, if the stories are true, defend the last King of Okinawa. Mass education was the wave of the future, but Itosu also, I'm convinced, saw the Pinans as the embodiment of the martial content of the karate that he, Matsumura and a few of the other masters of that time had worked out, so there would be an adult constituency as well as a schoolchild constituency for the Pinans, and some of the variations may well have hinged on those circumstances as well.

I strongly suspect that for people of that time, the content of these arts was much more fluid and dynamic than we're used to thinking of them these days. As I say, I don't think the masters of the past regarded what they were doing as fixed doctrine; they themselves were still in the discovery phase of these arts, and experimentation and innovation were the order of the day. They certainly weren't nearly as worried about lineage and doctrinal purity as many contemporary martial artists seem to be; they were eclectic, by necessity, I think, and would change the story they were telling depending on the age and experience of the practitioners they were teaching, and as their own understanding evolved. Fixed codification was something that I just don't see as part of their vision of the arts that they were busy bringing into being. 



Sukerkin said:


> Excellent and straighforward synopsis of the concepts there, *Exile* - bravo!



Mark, thanks very much for your kind thoughts&#8212;I could probably have put it a bit more clearly, but fortunately, I don't have to, because Iain Abernethy has done that way, way better than I ever could could, here. And he has this incredible treasure-trove of papers and e-books on the subject of kata and bunkai at his site here, absolutely free, no strings or membership or anything attached. There is literally weeks of extremely insightful and informative material there on methods of bunkai analysis, the history and technical content of specific kata and kata sets (such as the Pinan and Naihanchi), strategic issues such as preemptive strikes and the role of kicks vs. hand/arm techs, etc.

I can't figure out how someone can provide all that stuff for free, but if it works for _him_....  

Anyway&#8212;the stuff I've mentioned should make it very clear to anyone, even from a non-karate-based MA, just what the role of kata and bunkai are.


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## chinto (Sep 1, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> I don't think anyone actually started out to change movements in kata, I think it happens naturally! It's like the game of Chinese whispers, what starts out with the first person is rarely what is recieved by the last.
> 
> If I'm doing kata on my own or for a display and there's a side kick I will change it to a front kick because my front kicks are far better than my side ones so it looks better. I of course teach the side kick version but if I was the head of a school and decide to change it who would say anything? I and plenty of others have 'senior moments' in kata comps where you forget a move, IIve done also when teaching, I go off and check in the book but what if I forgot the original move and thought it was something else?and the kata will change. If I have a bad back one day when teaching and don't do a certain movement with so much of a twist, the students will do it the same way and oops, there's another kata changed!
> 
> ...


 

I guess that depends on the instructor.  my instructor and his instructor say "this no never change!" so if and when I am an instructor of a school I WILL NOT change any thing about how I was tought the kata.  the kata was made by men who know more then I or my instructor or his instructor.. besides you change the kata you change the meaning and perhaps what it it trying to teach you on a deeper level.  the kata was made by men who were looking to pass on what they had found out the hard way..   Namely to stay alive in a fight for your life.


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## chinto (Sep 1, 2007)

"That comes into it too, I'm very sure. Itosu was an educator, as much as anything else. I suspect he saw the teaching of karate in the schools as a key to its survival; even in Okinawa, the complexity of life was scaling up rapidly from how things were when he worked for Bushi Matsumura and helped, if the stories are true, defend the last King of Okinawa. Mass education was the wave of the future, but Itosu also, I'm convinced, saw the Pinans as the embodiment of the martial content of the karate that he, Matsumura and a few of the other masters of that time had worked out, so there would be an adult constituency as well as a schoolchild constituency for the Pinans, and some of the variations may well have hinged on those circumstances as well.

I strongly suspect that for people of that time, the content of these arts was much more fluid and dynamic than we're used to thinking of them these days. As I say, I don't think the masters of the past regarded what they were doing as fixed doctrine; they themselves were still in the discovery phase of these arts, and experimentation and innovation were the order of the day. They certainly weren't nearly as worried about lineage and doctrinal purity as many contemporary martial artists seem to be; they were eclectic, by necessity, I think, and would change the story they were telling depending on the age and experience of the practitioners they were teaching, and as their own understanding evolved. Fixed codification was something that I just don't see as part of their vision of the arts that they were busy bringing into being. " |Quote|



yes and no, they were not going to change things for the hell of it. or for looks, they were looking for effeciant and effective combat techniques. they were training for survival.  so the things that worked were fixed at least to a point.  they did not change the kata that was handed down, but perhaps made a new one if they learned something well that really made things easier.. or perhaps to pass on something they found in the older kata and wanted to emphisise ...   remember the Pinan kata came from the Kusanku and kusanku dai.


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## Tez3 (Sep 2, 2007)

chinto said:


> I guess that depends on the instructor. my instructor and his instructor say "this no never change!" so if and when I am an instructor of a school I WILL NOT change any thing about how I was tought the kata. the kata was made by men who know more then I or my instructor or his instructor.. besides you change the kata you change the meaning and perhaps what it it trying to teach you on a deeper level. the kata was made by men who were looking to pass on what they had found out the hard way.. Namely to stay alive in a fight for your life.


 

I think Exile has demonstrated correctly that kata does change. the founder of Wado Ryu Ohtsuka Sensei trained under Funakoshi Sensei and when he left to start Wado he certainly changed the kata, which again have been changed by Wadokai as documented by Shingo Ohgami (Exile if you don't have his book called "Karate Katas of Wado Ryu" do get it, you will love the very technical explainations he gives !)

The fact that Tang Soo Do's hyungs and the katas from Wado are strikingly similiar (yep still typing lol on that) prove to me without a doubt these came from a common source and have been changed by various people. 

I like the argument for fluidity, as I said before my side kicks are rubbish basically i will never use one in a fight street or competition so there's no 'deep' meaning to those movesments of kata that seemingly require a side kick, my front kick is extremely good so I will use that if a kick is needed. There's no stretch of the imagination needed to see others may have had a similiar thought. The katas in Wado require front kicks where in TSD there is a sidekick ie in Pyung Ee Dan in movement 7 you move your left leg half a step then do a mid section side kick with the right along with  a hammer fist. In Wado at same point, the kick is a front kick. 

I don't believe at the time Funakoshi Sensei and Ohtsuka Sensei were teaching there was a dramatic need for self defence, I think I'm right in thinking that Funakoshi Sensei actually hated fighting. I have seen a great many versions of Kushanku, there is Kushanku Dai (big) Kushanku sho (small) Shiho Kushanku (four directions) Chibana no Kushanku ( Kushanku of Chibana) Kuniyoshi no Kunshanku and Chatanaya no Kushanku are the famous ones.


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## Danny T (Sep 2, 2007)

Thank you Exile.

This helps me greatly. In my training we have forms which are the catalogs of our tools. These catalogs contain the movements of the body, the positions & presentation of the tools, the structure of body when presenting the tools. All available usage is within the movements, positions, and most importantly the transitions from movement to movement. We then have specific drills to unlock some of the techniques available within the forms and to make one aware of some of the possibilities. Then there are the applications based upon ones understanding & ability as well as the spatial & physical relationships between combatants. In other words the Striking, Clinching, Joint-locks, Chokes, Throws, Takedowns, Ground-fighting and Weapons work are all within the forms, the drills & exercises build the attributes needs to be able to function and the application process is where we actually function within the possibilities. (Sparring)

From what I see and what you have explained katas contain a vast amount of martial knowledge; Striking techniques, Attacking vital points, Grappling, joint-Locks, Strangles, Ground fighting techniques, Chokes, Throws, Takedowns etc. The amount of martial knowledge contained within the katas can be overwhelming but only when one understands otherwise it is only movement for the movement sake. From my experience with persons of some or limited Karate training I can see why many dont like kata as well as those of us looking in. When asking about kata  I am usually greeted with very passionate quips such as Kata is very important;, if you dont understand what you are doing then do your katas; kata is the essence of karate if you are asking these questions then you dont understand kata; continue to do your katas and your weakness will be revealed to you.

How is one to understand if one only gets these kinds of answers? As passionate as they are it provides no answers for understanding.

Bunkai then the key one uses to unlock the meanings of the movements and possibilities contained with in kata. This is a great help!! 

Now is Bunkai a specific part of training or is it something most express as a part of kata? I ask this because in my very early martial art training I had some karate training (quite limited) and most karate BBs I have spoken with or trained with never talk about or use the term bunkai. I can only assume those I have been associated with dont understand because they didnt stay in the system long enough or were never taught bunkai. I presently have 4 BBs from 3 different Shotokan schools and 5 from TKD schools training with me. In conversation with them only one knew the term bunkai and his explanation was he never used it but that it was a part of kata. He is a BB but left before learning bunkai. 

Now this isnt a slant so please dont take it that way, I am only trying to understand the usage of kata and its importance in training. There seems to be far more importance on kata in the karate systems over the Chinese, Filipino, and Silat systems I am far more familiar with. I believe all the training systems are good just different but in order to be effective the participant must have an understanding of what they are training and why.

Thank you Exile for your explanations

Danny


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## exile (Sep 2, 2007)

chinto said:


> *yes and no, they were not going to change things for the hell of it./B]or for looks, they were looking for effeciant and effective combat techniques. they were training for survival.  so the things that worked were fixed at least to a point.  they did not change the kata that was handed down, but perhaps made a new one if they learned something well that really made things easier.. or perhaps to pass on something they found in the older kata and wanted to emphisise ...   remember the Pinan kata came from the Kusanku and kusanku dai.*


*

Well, sure, kata weren't fashion items to the karate pioneers, and any changes that were made would have been made for sound practical reasons. But those practical reasons can encompass a variety of factors: changes in the instructor's thinking, different adaptations by senior students based on height, weight or other physical differences, feedback from bunkai into karate form... there are all sorts of reasons. Consider e.g. this, devoted to Shotokai kata. Note in particular their observation that 

Some katas are performed under the same name but differently. This is due to the fact that some masters have made some changes in kata on the basis of their own specific philosophy. As said before, in the past, the main axis of karate practice was kata as it was done to use techniques in attack and defense. Beauty in performing kata was not considered. ​

I've seen the same thing over and over in the writings of karateka; some bemoan the fact and some, such as the author(s) of the essay I gave the link to, accept it in a very matter-of-fact way. Like anything else, it's almost certainly a mistake to play around with a kata before you deeply understand it and its bunkai. But it happens, and I suspect it has always happened. As an illustration of the remark I've quoted from the Shotokai source, look at the number of somewhat different versions of Rohai that are out there. And as someone noted, I don't remember where, there are a number of different versions of the Pinans even in Okinawan styles. No one would suggest that these variations were created for frivolous reasons, but the karateka who understood kata most deeply almost certainly regarded them as textbooks, not as sacred texts, and subject to modification in their own teaching to reflect their ideas about the best use of the kata. The process is happening before our eyes, so to speak, in Bill Burgar's terrific book Five Years, One Kata. Burgar, a sixth dan Shotokan practitioner, spent five years training exclusively in bunkai for the Gojushiho kata, and the results of his explorations and analyses are in his book, including certain deviations from standard Shotokan Gojushiho which are systematically motivated as they are introduced. For example, where the kata contains certain `stylized' moves that Burgar believes would have been understood by experienced as `code' for a particular technique sequence, he modifes the kata, usually only slightly, so that the kata movement in his version of Gojushiho is more transparently linked to the oyo he demonstrates for the movement as an effective application. 



Tez3 said:



			... the founder of Wado Ryu Ohtsuka Sensei trained under Funakoshi Sensei and when he left to start Wado he certainly changed the kata, which again have been changed by Wadokai as documented by Shingo Ohgami (Exile if you don't have his book called "Karate Katas of Wado Ryu" do get it, you will love the very technical explainations he gives !)
		
Click to expand...


Thanks for the pointer, Tez&#8212;I've just ordered it from Amazon!



Tez3 said:



			The fact that Tang Soo Do's hyungs and the katas from Wado are strikingly similiar (yep still typing lol on that) prove to me without a doubt these came from a common source and have been changed by various people.
		
Click to expand...


Lots of changes in the transition from the Japanese to the Korean interpretation of karate. But similar things happen as new styles fragment off established ones even within particular national MA traditions. 



Tez3 said:



			I like the argument for fluidity, as I said before my side kicks are rubbish basically i will never use one in a fight street or competition so there's no 'deep' meaning to those movesments of kata that seemingly require a side kick, my front kick is extremely good so I will use that if a kick is needed. There's no stretch of the imagination needed to see others may have had a similiar thought. The katas in Wado require front kicks where in TSD there is a sidekick ie in Pyung Ee Dan in movement 7 you move your left leg half a step then do a mid section side kick with the right along with  a hammer fist. In Wado at same point, the kick is a front kick.
		
Click to expand...


Another example of the modification of kata based on `instructor preference', as I've seen it referred to. Look at different versions of Pinan Shodan, where some versions of the kata use a hammerfist on the third move and others use a knifehand strike. In TSD, the hammerfist is used; in most lineages of TKD that I know of, Palgwe Sa Jang, whose first subsequence is lifted whole from Pinan Shodan (or more likely Heian Nidan, since it would have come into the KMAs via Shotokan), is performed with a the knifehand on that move. This difference could possibly have corresponded to different targets: hammerfist for an attack on the jaw, knifehand for a strike to the throat. After a few such changes in detail accumulate, you're looking at distinctly different versions of the form, although both are recognizably the `same' kata.



Tez3 said:



			I have seen a great many versions of Kushanku, there is Kushanku Dai (big) Kushanku sho (small) Shiho Kushanku (four directions) Chibana no Kushanku ( Kushanku of Chibana) Kuniyoshi no Kunshanku and Chatanaya no Kushanku are the famous ones.
		
Click to expand...


Right... it's just so common! No one is saying people make these changes just on a lark; there's usually a good reason for it, but it does happen, and I'd bet high it's always been that way.*


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## Tez3 (Sep 2, 2007)

That's a thoughtful post Danny T! I think too many karateka follow blindly that kata is just a catalogue of movements that you have to do to pass your gradings and because they've always been done.

I was introduced to Iain Abernethy's teachings early on and am going to one of his seminars hopefully next month. When doing Wado and now doing TSD the Bunkai is tremendously important. I also do MMA and Iain has shown several 'kata moves' that are very useful. In the Wado kata Chinto and the TSD Hyung Jin Do there is a move where you raise your leg to have the foot just behind your other knee and raise your arms. Iain pointed out that if you were doing this move on your back this is a standard move from juijitsu used for arm and leg bars etc. Hard to explain but it's on one of his videos.

I've often had said to me about kata that people can't fight someone doing all the moves in a kata. They mistakenly think that if someone is attacking you, we launch into the entire kata to defend ourselves! I get it a lot from the MMA guys, when I point out that it's more of an aide memoire they tend to undrstand a little better. I tend to use the analogy of when we have new people who come to learn the stand up fighting we teach and drill them with a combination of jab, cross, uppercut and uppercut. Of course in a fight they aren't used in that order but it enables the student to learn them properly, it's a very basic 'kata'. It's very over simplified of course but gets the point across.

Reading a book about Geishas recently and they have dance katas to learn.


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## exile (Sep 2, 2007)

Danny T said:


> Thank you Exile.



My pleasure, Danny; your questions are exactly the right ones to ask. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner; I kind of cross-posted with you and missed this message.



Danny T said:


> This helps me greatly. In my training we have forms which are the catalogs of our tools. These catalogs contain the movements of the body, the positions & presentation of the tools, the structure of body when presenting the tools. All available usage is within the movements, positions, and most importantly the transitions from movement to movement. We then have specific drills to unlock some of the &#8220;techniques&#8221; available within the forms and to make one aware of some of the possibilities. Then there are the applications based upon one&#8217;s understanding & ability as well as the spatial & physical relationships between combatants. In other words the Striking, Clinching, Joint-locks, Chokes, Throws, Takedowns, Ground-fighting and Weapons work are all within the forms, the drills & exercises build the attributes needs to be able to function and the application process is where we actually function within the possibilities. (Sparring)



Right, that's the general idea of kata. There's one additional factor, which some people I think minimize (out of a well-motivated desire to minimize the `secret esoteric hidden technique' mystique that tends to pervade a lot of MA self-promotion), but which was probably genuinely important: the need to keep certain tactical skills and specific combat moves secret, especially important in cases where MA knowledge was kept within particular families, as was definitely the case in China and, as I understand it, in Okinawa as well. Something as simple as a strike to the face followed by a potentially lethal neck twist could be concealed as a series of movements plausibly labelled block-retract-punch, where the `block' is in fact a knifehand strike that via muchimi becomes the takeoff point for a hair/ear grab and twist that breaks the assailants neck or at least traumatizes his spine to the point where he can't move, let alone fight; the use of this technique could easily be concealed in the apparently harmless vocabulary of blocking, striking and stance change that Itosu introduced. So when you look at kata, you have to bear in mind that the people who put them together didn't necessary want you to see everything that was in there. That was for the instructor to reveal, in his own good time, to some select group of students who were ready for and worthy of that knowledge.




Danny T said:


> From what I see and what you have explained katas contain a vast amount of martial knowledge; Striking techniques, Attacking vital points, Grappling, joint-Locks, Strangles, Ground fighting techniques, Chokes, Throws, Takedowns etc. The amount of martial knowledge contained within the katas can be overwhelming but only when one understands otherwise it is only movement for the movement sake. From my experience with persons of some or limited Karate training I can see why many don&#8217;t like kata as well as those of us looking in. When asking about kata  I am usually greeted with very passionate quips such as &#8220;Kata is very important;, if you don&#8217;t understand what you are doing then do your kata&#8217;s; kata is the essence of karate if you are asking these questions then you don&#8217;t understand kata; continue to do your kata&#8217;s and your weakness&#8217; will be revealed to you.
> 
> How is one to understand if one only gets these kinds of answers? As passionate as they are it provides no answers for understanding.



Yes, absolutely. And often you get that answer, I suspect, from people who themselves are none too sure of just what information kata contain. You should be aware, though, that this is changing very rapidly, as a result of the kind of experimental investigations of kata applications that people like Iain Abernethy, whom Tez mentioned in her reply to you, have been carrying out. The single best source I know of on the realistic combat interpretation of kata is IA's book _Bunkai-Jutsu: the Practical Application of Karate Kata_, but he also has a website where you can download, for free, no strings attached, a huge amount of terrific material on kata history, bunkai, and combat strategies inherent in traditional karate. If you go here and take the link at the top of the window to `Articles', you can access to some terrific stuff; in particular, these will answer pretty much any general question you might have about bunkai methods, the role of kata in realistic combat training, ans the like:

http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/BasicBunkaiPart1.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/BasicBunkaiPart2.asp
.
.
.
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/BasicBunkaiPart8.asp

http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_3.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_7.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_14.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_9.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_9.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_19.asp
http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/Kataalockorkey.asp

And the other articles you'll see there, both by IA and his guest writers, are terrific as well. The point is that the claim that kata are the heart of karate isn't a mystification of obscure choreography that people have been mindlessly teaching and mindlessly learning when they should've been focusing on effective combat techniques: the techniques are there _in_ the kata, but you have to learn to read them. 



Danny T said:


> Bunkai then the key one uses to unlock the meanings of the movements and possibilities contained with in kata. This is a great help!!
> 
> Now is Bunkai a specific part of training or is it something most express as a part of kata? I ask this because in my very early martial art training I had some &#8220;karate&#8221; training (quite limited) and most karate BB&#8217;s I have spoken with or trained with never talk about or use the term bunkai. I can only assume those I have been associated with don&#8217;t understand because they didn&#8217;t stay in the system long enough or were never taught bunkai.



The decline in the study of bunkai is probably due to the increase in the scale of participation in karate that really took off when Funakoshi and other Okinawan karateka brought their martial art to Japan and started teaching the techniques to large classes. This is what Burgar in his book has to say about the change:

_Originally, the heart of karate was individual kata training with one-on-one instruction being a central feature. However, when karate was introduced into the school system on Okinawa (in the early 1900s) the emphasis started to change. Instruction became one-to-many and classes took the form of performing kata synchronized by count. The use of training kihon (basic techniques) in lines advancing up and down the dojo then became widespread. By the time karate was introduced into Japan from Okinawa this practice was already well established and then built upon. _​
Another important aspect of the bunkai issue, though, is the very interesting suggestion in Gennosuke Higake's book _Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi_ that, as he was told by Shozan Kubota, one of the last of Gichin Funakoshi's senior students (4th Dan from GF, 1944), there was a `secret pact' between GF and the other Okinawan expat instructors, on the one hand, and the senior Karateka then alive in Okinawa, to the effect that the former would _not_ teach the true bunkai for the kata they taught. As he writes (pp.65&#8211;66), Sensei Kubota told him that

_When Master Gichin Funakoshi introduced Okinawan karate to the mainland, there was a `secret pact' made amongst the practitioners of Okinawan karate. Karate was primarily spread at universities, and the explanation, which Sensei Kubota learned, was about the same as today.

It was, however, completely different than what he was taught at night by Master Funakoshi at his house. When asked, `Why did he teach something different than in the day time?', his answer was that `Master Funakoshi was actually not suppose to teach it.' 

In other words... when he taught his ordinary students [`yomatonchu' (the slang for Japanese mainlanders)], he taught them katas, which they would not be able to use.

Sensei Kubota also learned from Master Kenwa Mabuni. Master Mabuni also divided the teaching into `the original form' and `the other form'.... There is a well-known saying in karate that goes, `Even if you teach the kata, don't teach the actual techniques'. I believe this phrase expresses well the contents of the `secret pact'._​

In view of these kinds of factors, it's not surprising that the study of `true bunkai' and the teaching of the general method of _kaisai no genri_ to systematically decode applications, became less and less part of the core karate curriculum, with emphasis shifting to kata performance, rather than analysis and application, mastery of individual techniques, and point-scoring competition.



Danny T said:


> I presently have 4 BBs from 3 different Shotokan schools and 5 from TKD schools training with me. In conversation with them only one knew the term bunkai and his explanation was he never used it but that it was a part of kata. He is a BB but left before learning bunkai.



What I've said to this point probably goes at least a bit of the way to making it clear why bunkai training has become something of a lost discipline in a lot of karate dojos (and that much more so in the KMAs which the Kwan founders developed on the basis of their karate training in Japan), though this seems to have started being reversed quite rapidly in the past decade, as Abernethy's work and that of his colleagues makes clear.



Danny T said:


> Now this isn&#8217;t a slant so please don&#8217;t take it that way, I am only trying to understand the usage of kata and its importance in training. There seems to be far more importance on kata in the karate systems over the Chinese, Filipino, and Silat systems I am far more familiar with. I believe all the training systems are good just different but in order to be effective the participant must have an understanding of what they are training and why.



Well, one thing I was told in a discussion of this point on another thread is that in some of the CMAs, at least, the forms are much more transparently related to their applications than is the case in the Okinawan/Japanese systems. This would be worth exploring as a separate issue, maybe in its own thread...


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## Tez3 (Sep 2, 2007)

This is only anecdotal, I was told it years ago but it ties in with the secret pact that Exile was talking about, I have found no basis for it though perhaps other can. I was told that at the end of the last war when Japan was occupied by the Allies many Allied soldiers, Americans in particular became interested in karate. The Japanese instructors made a point of teaching them as little as they could and what they did teach was suitable for, in their eyes, only children. This is why we punch when doing Junzuki with the palm facing down when it should be palm facing to the side, a more lethal punch. It's also why we do kata without knowing why! It seems the Japanese instructors just told the Western students that Japanese students don't question the instructors and all would be revealed at some mysterious future when the student was 'ready' for the magical techniques. Of course with the Western students that time never came but they had gained a fair knowledge and this was what they took back to the States. I'm not so sure about the UK as I believe there were few British troops in Japan at the time.
As I said, I have no basis for proving if this could be true but in light of Exiles post it sounds very feasible.

Exile I think you will enjoy that book, it's by far my favourite martial arts book. I read it regularly as it takes a long while for me to take in what he writes, especially the equations! Imagine them in kata! He can also show you far better than I Wado Ryu.


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## exile (Sep 2, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> This is only anecdotal, I was told it years ago but it ties in with the secret pact that Exile was talking about, I have found no basis for it though perhaps other can. I was told that at the end of the last war when Japan was occupied by the Allies many Allied soldiers, Americans in particular became interested in karate. The Japanese instructors made a point of teaching them as little as they could and what they did teach was suitable for, in their eyes, only children. This is why we punch when doing Junzuki with the palm facing down when it should be palm facing to the side, a more lethal punch. It's also why we do kata without knowing why! It seems the Japanese instructors just told the Western students that Japanese students don't question the instructors and all would be revealed at some mysterious future when the student was 'ready' for the magical techniques. Of course with the Western students that time never came but they had gained a fair knowledge and this was what they took back to the States. I'm not so sure about the UK as I believe there were few British troops in Japan at the time.
> As I said, I have no basis for proving if this could be true but in light of Exiles post it sounds very feasible.



This is very interesting, Tez, because it ties in with something that Rob Redmond has in one of his essays at his _24FightingChickens_ Shotokan web site (_very_ heartily recommended, btw!) Redmond isn't professional MA historian, the way Dakin Burdick, Stanley Henning and Harry Cook are, but he's very well informed on Shotokan history and has spent a good deal of time in Japan observing the local MA culture there. What he writes in that essay&#8212;can't remember off the top of my head which one it is now, I think it's the one of Funakoshi&#8212;is that at the end of the war, karate was one of the prospective targets on the American's list of things to suppress as part of their demilitarization program for Japan. Funakoshi was well aware of this and through his senior students and his own contacts with US military personel, initiated a kind of charm offensive which had the goal of depicting karate as an autere tool for perfecting character in the service of peace&#8212;this from a man, as Redmond notes, stated in one of his books (_Tote Jutsu_) that `War is a method which God gave humans to organize the world'. Now clearly, it wouldn't do any good for this (ultimately successful) effort to save karate from the chopping block to refuse to teach American military personel who wanted to learn karate; that contact with such personel would have been a powerful inducement to allow karate to continue to be taught in Japan. On the other hand, given the the considerable ongoing hostility towards the American occupiers&#8212;agents, after all, of a power which had humbled the shame/honor-based `mother country'&#8212;it also seems very unlikely that the Japanese would be interested in giving away any more than was absolutely necessary to the Americans, just as the Okinawans were apparently determined to give nothing away to the Japanese. At each stage of the game, the knowledge, technical content and depth of application get progressively more diluted...



Tez3 said:


> Exile I think you will enjoy that book, it's by far my favourite martial arts book. I read it regularly as it takes a long while for me to take in what he writes, especially the equations! Imagine them in kata! He can also show you far better than I Wado Ryu.



I'm looking forward to it very much, Tez&#8212;thanks again for the tip!


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## chinto (Sep 3, 2007)

I dont think I buy that they had a secret pact not to teach GI's properly. I do think that some cultural assumptions may have coused some things to be missunderstood, and then again some instructors, especialy in japan proper may have withheld what they thought they could.  On Okinawa at least it is my understanding that this was not the case. meany were tought to use at a highter rank the 45 degree fist ( a more effecent and effective placement of the fist rather then the flat 90 degree one.)  but the flat fist was tought to Okinawans initialy to get the rotation down at the end of the strike.  meany GIs did not really pay a lot of attention to some of the details I think.  and well there were cultural assumptions and the fact that most GI's did not speak either japanese or hogan... so some things were lost in translation as well i think. but there are karateka who have been tought properly and brought that back to the US with them. others didnt pay attention to detail or perhaps did not have an attitude that lent its self to the instructor teaching some of the more advanced and effective stuff.  I Know some of the same things have been said about some of the TKD people who trained in Korea in the 1960's...  I guess I just do not buy conspericy theirys .. about MA or about the JFK assasination..  achoms Razer .. simplest strait forward explinataion will usualy prove true, and extrodanery explinations requier extrodenary proof.


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## Tez3 (Sep 3, 2007)

I don't think it was a 'conspiracy' as such more human nature as anything else. Japan, a very proud country, had just been defeated by the Allies in quite a brutal fashion if you think of the atom bombs dropped and was then occupied by, to them, foreign invaders. In that situation I think it's natural not to co-operate fully with the occupiers. I would think it was probably the same with many things not just martial arts which may have been secretive in the first place. I can imagine Geishas would have been the same and I think their function in society was grossly misunderstood. 

Sometimes I think we place the martial arts masters of the past on pedastals and we leave human emotions out when trying to fathom out what went on.I suppose it's more glorious to think a move was changed for some lofty reason like a superior killing strike than think it was changed because the master had lumbago or had a row with his wife that morning and was grumpy!!!


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## exile (Sep 3, 2007)

chinto said:


> I guess I just do not buy conspericy theirys .. about MA or about the JFK assasination..  achoms Razer .. simplest strait forward explinataion will usualy prove true, and extrodanery explinations requier extrodenary proof.



You have to be more specific when you call something a `conspiracy theory'; for that description to constitute a strong claim about something, it has to refer to an elaborate scheme involving many people, whose complex coordinated actions were successfully concealed and never came to light. What's at issue, in the case of both the Okinawans who Master Kubota mentions as party to the secret pact, and the Japanese karateka during the immediate postwar era, was nothing like that, but much closer to what we might call a `gentleman's agreement'. There is nothing in the least `extraordinary' about a `gentleman's agreement'; if you have a few like-minded individuals who all happen to be acting as gatekeepers for membership in some group, or some specialized bodies of knowledge, there is nothing more natural and even expectable than that they will tend to act in tandem to effect a result consistent with their own values and agendas. The Okinawans, for example, deeply resented the racist Japanese attitudes towards them (manifest, for example, in the infamous 1903 `Academic Human Museum' incident in Osaka in which Okinawans were depicted as members of an inferior aboriginal race). The logic is well-explained by Higaki, who notes that 

_It is easy to imagine the ideological background in which, with respect to the exportation of Okinawan karate to the mainland, the Okinawans were anxious to actively progress toward assimilation into Japan in order to improve their social standing. At the same time, one can imagine that they felt some antipathy towards the Japanese who had dominated them... It is not curious in the least that there would have been a conscious effort toward `not teaching the essence of Okinawan karate to the mainland Japanese'._​

By the same token, Japanese karate instructors had a parallel incentive of keeping their American military clients happy without teaching them the advanced techniques that, after all, they withheld from all but a small number of _Japanese_ students. Given that these attitudes would have been the default, it's hard to justify the description `extraordinary claim' for the idea of both of these `gentleman's agreement' situations.



Tez3 said:


> I don't think it was a 'conspiracy' as such more human nature as anything else.



Yup, I agree. What _I_ would have found bizarre is either the Okinawans or the Japanese going out of their way to reveal the deeper side of their combat arts to the respective dominating group they had to deal with...


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## chinto (Sep 25, 2007)

exile said:


> You have to be more specific when you call something a `conspiracy theory'; for that description to constitute a strong claim about something, it has to refer to an elaborate scheme involving many people, whose complex coordinated actions were successfully concealed and never came to light. What's at issue, in the case of both the Okinawans who Master Kubota mentions as party to the secret pact, and the Japanese karateka during the immediate postwar era, was nothing like that, but much closer to what we might call a `gentleman's agreement'. There is nothing in the least `extraordinary' about a `gentleman's agreement'; if you have a few like-minded individuals who all happen to be acting as gatekeepers for membership in some group, or some specialized bodies of knowledge, there is nothing more natural and even expectable than that they will tend to act in tandem to effect a result consistent with their own values and agendas. The Okinawans, for example, deeply resented the racist Japanese attitudes towards them (manifest, for example, in the infamous 1903 `Academic Human Museum' incident in Osaka in which Okinawans were depicted as members of an inferior aboriginal race). The logic is well-explained by Higaki, who notes that
> 
> _It is easy to imagine the ideological background in which, with respect to the exportation of Okinawan karate to the mainland, the Okinawans were anxious to actively progress toward assimilation into Japan in order to improve their social standing. At the same time, one can imagine that they felt some antipathy towards the Japanese who had dominated them... It is not curious in the least that there would have been a conscious effort toward `not teaching the essence of Okinawan karate to the mainland Japanese'._​
> By the same token, Japanese karate instructors had a parallel incentive of keeping their American military clients happy without teaching them the advanced techniques that, after all, they withheld from all but a small number of _Japanese_ students. Given that these attitudes would have been the default, it's hard to justify the description `extraordinary claim' for the idea of both of these `gentleman's agreement' situations.
> ...


 
I think like any other student at first they would teach the basics and not any more.. over time they would teach more just as with any one else. 
I do not thing the Okinawans have quite the same ethnic prejidecses that the japanese do.. Historicaly the Japanese are some of the most racist people and culture in the world.. the okinawans do not have quite the same history as the Japanese.


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## seasoned (Sep 28, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> I don't think it was a 'conspiracy' as such more human nature as anything else. Japan, a very proud country, had just been defeated by the Allies in quite a brutal fashion if you think of the atom bombs dropped and was then occupied by, to them, foreign invaders. In that situation I think it's natural not to co-operate fully with the occupiers. I would think it was probably the same with many things not just martial arts which may have been secretive in the first place. I can imagine Geishas would have been the same and I think their function in society was grossly misunderstood.
> 
> Sometimes I think we place the martial arts masters of the past on pedastals and we leave human emotions out when trying to fathom out what went on.I suppose it's more glorious to think a move was changed for some lofty reason like a superior killing strike than think it was changed because the master had lumbago or had a row with his wife that morning and was grumpy!!!


I would agree, maybe not a "conspiracy", but maybe a willingness with some Okinawans to hold back. Karate is considered a national treasure in Okinawa. Why would they just give it away? I will concede that there were some Americans that did earn the respect of some Okinawans and were given a glimps. " I like the lumbago thing"


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## Ray B (Oct 3, 2007)

I have often wondered about the differences in Itosu no Passai and
Matsumura no Passai. I mean, there are 2 Passai within 2 generations.
Why? Then it hit me last night while talking to a Judoka. Seems he has
something called frozen shoulder. He cannot move his left arm much higher
than his head. Matsumura's Passai begins with Jodan age uke where
Itosu's starts with Chudan soto uke. Could it be that Itosu may have had
a shoulder injury at one point? Okinawan Te-gumi (Kumi-te) was known to
be alot like Jujutsu and left many practitioners with injuries. Itosu no
doubt, would have practiced this and may have injured himself.

Just my thoughts...

Today I practice the Karate that my teacher and his teacher learned.
I know it is the same because I have compared it to the Seito groups.
I will not change it because I am preserving history. I teach the kata
as is, but the ohyo must fit the person, so that can change from
person to person. Primary ohyo, (block, puch) is kept to keep the shape
of the kata, but Secondary ohyo varies because you cannot use the move
for a small man against a big man.

This does not mean kata cannot be changed. For those who are only
concerned with effectiveness, they should change it or even abandon it.
We have media that can document all of the moves they need. Kata is like
vebal history. At a time where writing was a skill of the rich and
drawing was not a luxury for many who had to work, kata was the
easiest way of documenting it.

Do we still need kata? I liken it to technology.
In the old days, we used to listen to LP's.
Today , CD's are the way to go. Still, there are some hardliners who
insist that the old LP's have a quality to them that is not replicated
on the CD's. CD's do not have the complete sound. They are like
a dashed line. From a distance it looks whole but as you get closer
you can see the spaces. Same with CD's. The complete sound is not
recorded. Instead what you hear is partial and your mind strings it
together. Same with Kata. Sure, you can document all of your moves on
DVD and review them in you leisure, if that's what you want. Kata creates
a bond between you and your teacher and to the past for that matter. It
will continue to give to you as applications are discovered. You may learn
a few apps from just one move. This you cannot get from DVD's of just
applications. Not better, just different.

Peace.


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## exile (Oct 3, 2007)

Excellent post, Ray, with many valuable insights. 




Ray B said:


> Matsumura's Passai begins with Jodan age uke where Itosu's starts with Chudan soto uke. Could it be that Itosu may have had a shoulder injury at one point? Okinawan Te-gumi (Kumi-te) was known to be alot like Jujutsu and left many practitioners with injuries. Itosu no
> doubt, would have practiced this and may have injured himself.



This is one big side of the coin: a lot of people practice kata as though it were a magic incantation, where a slight mistake in the text of the charm (or even the intonation: remember Ron's trouble with `Wingardium Leviosa' in the first Harry Potter novel, where he got the stress wrong on `leviosa' and nothing happened?) Whereas we have a good deal of reason to believe that the kata were changed from master to master depending on factors such as height, build, or even the dimensions of the training hall. If we think of the kata as living records of combat technique, as they were clearly intended to be, then it wouldn't be surprising that a karateka with short legs and very long arms might well teach slightly different moves from one with the opposite skeletal situation.

Take Bill Wallace, for example. He only kicks from one side, because one of his legs isn't any good as an attacking weapon, due to an old injury, I believe. Suppose he were to create a kata. Would anyone be surprised if it sacrificed the typical pattern of symmetry in many kata to display only kicks to the one side, the side he's (super)strong in? Thinking of kata this way is an important step in demystifying them, so that their use as instructional tools is emphasized and the almost fetishistic link between them and some legendary heroic past is put in in its proper place (the trashbin, IMO). 



Ray B said:


> Today I practice the Karate that my teacher and his teacher learned.
> I know it is the same because I have compared it to the Seito groups.
> I will not change it because I am preserving history. *I teach the kata
> as is, but the ohyo must fit the person, so that can change from
> ...



Right on all counts, I believe.



Ray B said:


> This does not mean kata cannot be changed. For those who are only concerned with effectiveness, they should change it or even abandon it. We have media that can document all of the moves they need. Kata is like vebal history. At a time where writing was a skill of the rich and drawing was not a luxury for many who had to work, kata was the
> easiest way of documenting it.
> 
> Do we still need kata? I liken it to technology.
> ...



Yes, there's an emotional side to kata, and there's nothing wrong with that. My own interest in seeing kata preserved is a little different though. My feeling is, there is an enormous depth in the kata that have stood the test of time, that they haven't yielded all their riches to the combat-oriented MAist yet! They'll reward deep, long, patient study, and jettisoning them in favor of extended linked kihon drills (as people have suggested at one point or another on MT) is a mistake, I think, simply because if you dump them, you'll miss applications that you might othewise have learned from them if you still had them around in their original form. Just because one generation thinks it's extracted all the combat wisdom locke up in the kata doesn't mean they really have. Much better to preserve the original for periodic re-examination... who know what gems of self-defense wisdom a later, more sophisticated generation of MAist, pondering these same kata, may turn up?


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## cstanley (Oct 4, 2007)

Kata is not to be thought of as a linear development, with the traditional kata being stepping stones to more "modern" times and techniques. They are more like koans, with concepts and lessons to teach that are self-contained. I do not believe they should be tampered with. Like exile said, keep the originals and play with (by) yourself if you think you are Itosu or Mabuni or somebody with really rare insight (not).

Remember, there were no left-handed samurai. You learned to use the sword right handed. If you were left-handed, too bad...you still learned to use it right handed. Likewise, kata does not change to suit the individual, otherwise, you get more of the nonsense we see all the time from wannabee "soke's." Structure, history, and discipline are a ***** aren't they?


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## FieldDiscipline (Oct 4, 2007)

Well said Cstanley.


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## exile (Oct 4, 2007)

FieldDiscipline said:


> Well said Cstanley.



Indeed!


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## kidswarrior (Oct 4, 2007)

aplonis said:


> I remember in the TKD form Palgwe 4 a spear hand/180 degree turn/hammer fist combo which made no sense to me at the time. GM Beghtol was visiting on that day, so I asked. He demonstrates that bar, getting to the spear hand part, and says, "Grab my wrist as if you're going to try a throw or wrist lock." I do that. Then his spear hand shifts to a counter-grab of my own wrist, he does the twist, and I am arched painfully backward as he does the spin still locked onto my own wrist and next thing I know I'm looking at his descending hammer fist. Hey...it was a jujutsu-like move, and worked perfectly. All I needed was the right vector for that grip. I love that move now. It was only in the form, not anywhere else. GM Beghtol has an explanation for every move in every form. *Nor does he insist that you accept his. Every student is free to make up their own explanation. That is how forms come alive in the mind of every student. *Without these mental scenarios the forms are just a stupid shadow dance. Maybe that's the problem?


This is what transformed my view from one of just tolerating forms, to seeing them as central to my art and practice.


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## kidswarrior (Oct 4, 2007)

Tez3 said:


> I was introduced to Iain Abernethy's teachings early on and *am going to one of his seminars hopefully next month.*


I hate you, Tez. :lol:


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## kidswarrior (Oct 4, 2007)

exile said:


> This is one big side of the coin: a lot of people practice kata as though it were a magic incantation, where a slight mistake in the text of the charm (or even the intonation: remember Ron's trouble with `Wingardium Leviosa' in the first Harry Potter novel, where he got the stress wrong on `leviosa' and nothing happened?) Whereas we have a good deal of reason to believe that the kata were changed from master to master depending on factors such as height, build, or even the dimensions of the training hall. If we think of the kata as living records of combat technique, as they were clearly intended to be, then it wouldn't be surprising that a karateka with short legs and very long arms might well teach slightly different moves from one with the opposite skeletal situation.


A good reality check, exile. 



			
				exile said:
			
		

> ]Take Bill Wallace, for example. He only kicks from one side, because one of his legs isn't any good as an attacking weapon, due to an old injury, I believe. Suppose he were to create a kata. Would anyone be surprised if it sacrificed the typical pattern of symmetry in many kata to display only kicks to the one side, the side he's (super)strong in? Thinking of kata this way is an important step in demystifying them, so that their use as instructional tools is emphasized and the almost fetishistic link between them and some legendary heroic past is put in in its proper place (the trashbin, IMO).


Now a Bill Wallace kata, hmmm.... that creates some interesting scenarios.


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## Victor Smith (Oct 4, 2007)

Hi Ray,  

It would seem that the most consistent Okinawan Karate constants are 1: Instructors tell their students never to change the kata and 2: all of the kata continually keep changing.

In 1977 a book was published with 15 different versions of Patsai (including Funakoshi's Shotokan version), and it is by no means incomplete.

Still there is a common core that remains, the embusen or pattern. While the technique sequences flow from instructor to instructor, the shape of the form on the floor remains essentially unchanged.

I believe a lot of this happened before karate became a system of study, and things were directed to what was necessary to develop the student's karate.  There was no time binding mechanism (books, movies) in place and all anyone had to rely on was their own practice and memory.

Change might be because of physical differences, becuase of different applictation potential being explored, because of memory loss,and other reasons. Yet another factor was incomplete training of foreign students who didn't spend decades working on the kata under their instructor, so as they continue training other changes occur, such as different power generation in techniques, etc.

Lots to explore, but without kata it isn't karate.


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## Ray B (Oct 4, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> Lots to explore, but without kata it isn't karate.


 

I am with you Victor. You won't find an argument here.

Just to clarify, my statements were directed towards those who have
no interest in what you and I would term as Karate. These are the
nay sayers. Really, to do battle, you do not need kata. Look at the
Special Forces of just about any nation. I don't have any experience
here but, I am pretty sure they don't do kata. I believe the Navy Seals
are a pretty dangerous lot. They have modern media to document
thier syllabus. For those of us who are in it for other reasons, Karate
and Kata fit the bill. 

I am old. I don't fight anymore. I stay in it because I fell in love with the
tradition. I have a panic button on my home and business alarm. The 
police will show up with in minutes. I know, I have accidently hit it,
TWICE. I keep my pistol near my bed and a Kukkari knife next to my pillow.
I don't engage in activities that expose me to physical threats.
My karate is for my amusement and the off chance that something might
happen.

Just my opinion...


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## Victor Smith (Oct 4, 2007)

Ray,

Perhaps its just a matter of perception. The recent show  Human Weapon on the history channel showed MA practices of the Phillipean military with their wepons, of the Israel self defense forces and the USMC.

They all practice short sequences over and over, and for all intents and purposes those are kata. It's just their missions, in today's world, don't primarily focus on hand to hand combat.

Kata (Okinawan) while a movement warehouse (that can be mined for application potential and application relization) are not primarily a tool for expresss fighting, rather follow the Chinese priciple of segegments of movement to increase one's energy potential. 

Then the kata application studies are to learn how to merge the energy developed with the applications.

Any kata sequence can be seen in multiple ways. Nobody has to pursue even a fraction of those potentials for effective useage, but a lifetime is not enough to get into the full potential of kata. It's much more than just what you 'need', rather it provides continuing challenges to keep your training fresh.

Yes the 'jonny come latelies' trying to make their current reputation start to discount kata, but there is no question practice makes any movement more effecient. it's just how you want to scope things.

IMO what you see today is really very old, arts have been dissing other arts practices for eternity. In the 70's it was boxing dissing karate, then wrestling, etc. Absolutely nothing new and it gets booring seeing it time and time again.

I'm with you, I'm stretching out age wise too. 

But I just keep a book by my bed, if anyone breaking in is incompetent enough to let me get my hands on it, I can do enough with it to make things interesting. Sure I have other things around the house but I'm not going to mention them, something to be said for secrecy after all.


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## Ray B (Oct 4, 2007)

Victor,
I didn't know about the sequences in Special Forces and yes,
I agree with you, they are a form of kata. I think the key here is
that they also pair it with live training (yakusoku kumite), just
as karate was ment to do.

I have only cracked the seal on my kata. I have a lifetime
of learning ahead of me. This does not mean I do not know
how to read bunkai or do ohyo. I may be bad at it, but I
feel comfortable with what I know.

Here's to getting to the bottom of that bottle and eating the worm of knowlege.
May it be a good long run...:cheers:


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## cstanley (Oct 4, 2007)

The "short sequences" of military self defense/combat sets are not kata in the traditional understanding of karate kata. Maybe they are kata-ettes. The purpose is not really the same, and the long history of the traditional kata with their associated oral tradition, varying streams of bunkai, and commonality across the traditional ryu give them a "canonicity" and depth that goes far beyond those little fighting ditties you see.

There is a uniqueness to the traditional kata that is a treasure for those with eyes to see. The historical period, culture, and people that created them cannot be reproduced. Neuro-scientists tell us that certain cultural and racial traditions and creations may actually be based upon a difference in neuronal structure and brain "wiring." If that is true, the traditional kata were born out of the very cellular structure of the originators. That is why most of what you see after Mabuni and Myagi just doesn't look the same...it doesn't have the ring of authenticity, especially the stuff Western wannabee's come up with. Some things are just unique. Rather than try to bend them to our modern Western understanding or attempt to make up something better, why not just practice the damned things for what they are.


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## exile (Oct 4, 2007)

cstanley said:


> ...why not just practice the damned things for what they are.



I think this is in a way the soundest advice, though I have to make my own agenda clear, because it's not one most people will share, I suspect. But to me, one of the great appeals of kata is precisely the fact that they do not yield their secrets readily, that you have to work to understand the combat strategies and tactics they encode&#8212;that's what bunkai is for!&#8212;and that your reward is not a single, take-it-or-leave-it answer, but a whole palette of possible applications. Take (yet again) the Pinan kata. Yes, they've been done to death&#8212;but at the same time, I get the sense that we're just starting to recover some of the very deep thinking that went into them. I have, sitting on my desk, four separate `volumes' containing bunkai for the Pinan set: three books and one DVD. The books are by Keiji Tomiyama (_Pinan Kata Karate_), Ashley Croft (_Shotokan Karate: Unravelling the Kata_), Gennoke Higaki (_Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi_), and then there's Iain Abernethy's DVD _Bunkai Jutsu: Practical Kata Applications, Volume1_). All four volumes present interesting and often persuasive accounts of the optimal oyo for the Pinan/Heians... and they're all different, at times very markedly so. I'm not a relativist in this domain; I don't think any given bunkai result is as good as any other; but there's at least a year's worth of serious research to be done in comparing just these four proposed bunkai sets and testing them out experimentally, under seriously realistic conditions (which is the only way we're going to get any useful assessment of how they stack up against each other, IMO). And there are many very experienced karateka and Tang Soo Doists on MT who probably have still different stories on how the Pinan/Heian/Pyung Ahns are best interpreted for realistic combat use.

To me, this proliferation of different possibilities, and the challenge of evaluating them against each other, is one of the great things about kata, and at the same time is a sign of something that I think is both characteristic of them and a source of frustration to many MAists (at least some of whom, I suspect, are the ones who write public hate mail to them, with OPs that begin `Why does anyone bother with kata? They're totally useless!!!!', etc.) The fact is, kata have _depth_. They keep their own counsel, so to speak, and you have to go to them, learn them and think hard about just what it is you're doing when you perform them, if you want to derive any benefit from them. They reward sustained study, and unlike an engineering textbook which has the answers to selected problems in the back, you aren't guaranteed anything that you don't test out for yourself. This is why you have the `fourth stage' of Abernethy's bunkai jutsu method, widely adopted in the British Combat Association: the `all-in' close-quarter combat use of the methods encoded in the kata against non-complaint attackers simulating, to the best of their ability, violent street thugs. You have to take responsibility for the real-time evaluation of the possibilities that the kata lay out for you. 

I happen to like formal systems where there's a systematic relationship been structure and interpretation: the way complex macromolecular chains like RNA get translated into protein assemblies that build up into tissue, or the way natural language syntactic structures systematically map into truth conditions expressible in one or another version of higher-order logic (corresponding to the fact that a given natural language sentence has a particular range of meanings, and only those). These systems too hide their interpretation, and you have to crack their code to find the solution. That's why I mentioned my agenda earlier. I think kata are the same kind of entity: complex formal objects that are related to a set of interpretations by certain rules (in the case of kata, usually included under the rubric _kaisai no genri_) that you have to discover for yourself, if you weren't given the `skeleton key' by the original masters. And some of the results of this interpretation process are probably more combat-effective than others, and it's up to you to work out which those are. Kata are not _easy_&#8212;that's a lot of what I think is so great about them....


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## Steel Tiger (Oct 5, 2007)

exile said:


> *All four volumes present interesting and often persuasive accounts of the optimal oyo for the Pinan/Heians... and they're all different, at times very markedly so*. I'm not a relativist in this domain; I don't think any given bunkai result is as good as any other; but there's at least a year's worth of serious research to be done in comparing just these four proposed bunkai sets and testing them out experimentally, under seriously realistic conditions (which is the only way we're going to get any useful assessment of how they stack up against each other, IMO). And there are many very experienced karateka and Tang Soo Doists on MT who probably have still different stories on how the Pinan/Heian/Pyung Ahns are best interpreted for realistic combat use.


 


exile said:


> *The fact is, kata have depth*. They keep their own counsel, so to speak, and you have to go to them, learn them and think hard about just what it is you're doing when you perform them, if you want to derive any benefit from them. They reward sustained study, and unlike an engineering textbook which has the answers to selected problems in the back, you aren't guaranteed anything that you don't test out for yourself.


 

I have singled out these two quotes because they resonate very strongly with me.  The simple fact that there can be so many different interpretations of the same movements is vital to the understanding of kata.  My own experience is in CMA, Daoist CMA at that, where the concept of the uncarved block was drummed into me.  With this concept one does not give to a movement a single interpretation, but one lets different interpretations flow from the specifics of the situation.

The fact that you can actually do this with kata is an indication of their depth.  Without that mysterious depth such a thing would not be possible.  i think that this is why so many 'new' kata look kind of lame when compared to older, traditional ones.  Modern creators have not put the thought into the process of invention that the old masters did.  They are standing on the shoulders of giants and it shows.


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## cstanley (Oct 5, 2007)

exile said:


> I think this is in a way the soundest advice, though I have to make my own agenda clear, because it's not one most people will share, I suspect. But to me, one of the great appeals of kata is precisely the fact that they do not yield their secrets readily, that you have to work to understand the combat strategies and tactics they encodethat's what bunkai is for!and that your reward is not a single, take-it-or-leave-it answer, but a whole palette of possible applications. Take (yet again) the Pinan kata. Yes, they've been done to deathbut at the same time, I get the sense that we're just starting to recover some of the very deep thinking that went into them. I have, sitting on my desk, four separate `volumes' containing bunkai for the Pinan set: three books and one DVD. The books are by Keiji Tomiyama (_Pinan Kata Karate_), Ashley Croft (_Shotokan Karate: Unravelling the Kata_), Gennoke Higaki (_Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi_), and then there's Iain Abernethy's DVD _Bunkai Jutsu: Practical Kata Applications, Volume1_). All four volumes present interesting and often persuasive accounts of the optimal oyo for the Pinan/Heians... and they're all different, at times very markedly so. I'm not a relativist in this domain; I don't think any given bunkai result is as good as any other; but there's at least a year's worth of serious research to be done in comparing just these four proposed bunkai sets and testing them out experimentally, under seriously realistic conditions (which is the only way we're going to get any useful assessment of how they stack up against each other, IMO). And there are many very experienced karateka and Tang Soo Doists on MT who probably have still different stories on how the Pinan/Heian/Pyung Ahns are best interpreted for realistic combat use.
> 
> To me, this proliferation of different possibilities, and the challenge of evaluating them against each other, is one of the great things about kata, and at the same time is a sign of something that I think is both characteristic of them and a source of frustration to many MAists (at least some of whom, I suspect, are the ones who write public hate mail to them, with OPs that begin `Why does anyone bother with kata? They're totally useless!!!!', etc.) The fact is, kata have _depth_. They keep their own counsel, so to speak, and you have to go to them, learn them and think hard about just what it is you're doing when you perform them, if you want to derive any benefit from them. They reward sustained study, and unlike an engineering textbook which has the answers to selected problems in the back, you aren't guaranteed anything that you don't test out for yourself. This is why you have the `fourth stage' of Abernethy's bunkai jutsu method, widely adopted in the British Combat Association: the `all-in' close-quarter combat use of the methods encoded in the kata against non-complaint attackers simulating, to the best of their ability, violent street thugs. You have to take responsibility for the real-time evaluation of the possibilities that the kata lay out for you.
> 
> I happen to like formal systems where there's a systematic relationship been structure and interpretation: the way complex macromolecular chains like RNA get translated into protein assemblies that build up into tissue, or the way natural language syntactic structures systematically map into truth conditions expressible in one or another version of higher-order logic (corresponding to the fact that a given natural language sentence has a particular range of meanings, and only those). These systems too hide their interpretation, and you have to crack their code to find the solution. That's why I mentioned my agenda earlier. I think kata are the same kind of entity: complex formal objects that are related to a set of interpretations by certain rules (in the case of kata, usually included under the rubric _kaisai no genri_) that you have to discover for yourself, if you weren't given the `skeleton key' by the original masters. And some of the results of this interpretation process are probably more combat-effective than others, and it's up to you to work out which those are. Kata are not _easy_that's a lot of what I think is so great about them....


 
I am certainly in agreement here.


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## Victor Smith (Oct 5, 2007)

cstanley,

I think it is our ponits come where you're starting from.

I only see kata as a way to develop specific energies and the application of kata technique as a way to release those energies into the application.

I do believe the military sets are 100% what kata were originally developed for. There is a difference for the military is looking for quick answers for specific situations, not the long term study of technique potential. (that is left for individual military specialists who find the bug).

Butwhen you consider how much of kata's application potential was not passed on, in the end there is often little difference.

The real difference is karate was not designed for use, it developed in a peaceful culture where few practioniers had any reason to use it ever, and was not passed along as a martial study. Consider that in the mid 1850's when 'karate' was roughly created, the worlds military had absorbed the lessons of the USA Civil War and was moving into an entirely different level of warfare. The hand to hand aspects still remain a little, but no longer with long term emphasis.

So karate's usage was less important than the social values of friends sharing time with seniors, and hard training for its own sake.


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## cstanley (Oct 6, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> cstanley,
> 
> I think it is our ponits come where you're starting from.
> 
> ...


 
You say kata "was not designed for use," then say the military sets are 100% what kata was originally developed for." I don't think you know what you are trying to say. 

You cannot assign an arbitrary date to when karate was "created." We know that some kata go back considerably further than 1850.

"Develop specific energies," "release those energies".... that is gobbledygook talk. Next thing you'll be telling us about the mysteries of ki.


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## exile (Oct 6, 2007)

cstanley said:


> I am certainly in agreement here.



CS&#8212;glad we are on the same side on this! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			







Steel Tiger said:


> My own experience is in CMA, Daoist CMA at that, where the concept of the uncarved block was drummed into me.  With this concept one does not give to a movement a single interpretation, but one lets different interpretations flow from the specifics of the situation.



Exactly. What is so remarkable is not just that any given move in a kata can have a variety of plausbile combat interpretations (a punch, a deflection, part of a throw, or something else), but that, no matter which of these turns out to be situationally advantageous, the next movement almost always has a completely appropriate interpretation available that continues the defensive response in a tactically effective way. Thus many, many combat scenarios are built into the same set of movement, and it becomes clear why the old masters generally practiced only a limited number of kata in depth over their lives&#8212;they didn't _need_ a huge number of them; they could mine a few of the great classics for all the resources they would ever need. 



Steel Tiger said:


> The fact that you can actually do this with kata is an indication of their depth.  Without that mysterious depth such a thing would not be possible.  i think that this is why so many 'new' kata look kind of lame when compared to older, traditional ones.  *Modern creators have not put the thought into the process of invention that the old masters did.  They are standing on the shoulders of giants and it shows.*



I think it's problem-solving on the highest order that allowed the great Chinese and Okinawan masters to carry out that packaging of multiple applications&#8212;like getting three closets' worth of clothes into a modest-sized suitcase; I don't think it's an exaggeration to talk about the _genius_ that went into solving that problem. Lucky for all of us that those giants were there in the first place to leave us these true works of (martial) art to explore in as much depth as we're capable of.


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## Victor Smith (Oct 6, 2007)

No CStanley,

I did not say kata was not designed to use, I said karate was not designed to use.  There was no real reason to develop karate on Okinawa, a generally peaceful place. If you did some research into the arrest records around 100 years ago there was little violent crime. Just kids messing around and some bar fights perhaps.

While no one can point to anything directly because the transmission as kept secret and there are no records, it is likely that a few members of the elite families worked to develop karate to parallel the Chinese sytstem of meritocracy, you earned rank through scholarship and martial prowness.d

While there are a few stories of karate's use, and some of them became police officers, karate wasn't really developed because of direct need as the military would define need, ie make sure you can defeat someone who grabs you from behind while on sentry duty.

We know in the mid 1800's karate was demonsrated at public festival on Okinawa, including kata such as Seisan. We also know various familes sent their youth to China to avoid the draft into the Japanese military and some of them returned with their studies and developed them into Okinawan arts, and all the rest.

But it's not a thing of date, its a thing of function. Karate developed as a set of training, and it did borrow concepts from the Chinese, whether from the original 36 families or from travels in China.

And the function of forms in China is and was to develop energy.

Now you need to study some physics. Energy is not ki, its how your body effects movement.

Generating more effective energy release isnt' a movie stunt, it's that some use their bodies to hit, kick and run more effectively than others. In part its genetics and you have little to do with what you're born with unless you choose to enhance it through work.  But effective energy release is the key elsewise we'd all run the same speed, hit as hard as each other, etc.

The study of karate through kata is to work out excess movements, focus the energy you can release more effectively. IF you seriously trained you'd see that beginners cannot do what people 5, 10 or 20 years into their training can do.

And the CHinese have multitudes of arts using that knowledge. The didn't need forms to teach techniques, nor does the military, but the military isn't intersted in teaching hand to hand with a 20 year time frame for effectiveness.

The use of form, kata, etc. under instructors who know how to shape the students movement, to continue to gain effectivness, even to eventually counter the other effects of aging.


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## cstanley (Oct 6, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> No CStanley,
> 
> I did not say kata was not designed to use, I said karate was not designed to use. There was no real reason to develop karate on Okinawa, a generally peaceful place. If you did some research into the arrest records around 100 years ago there was little violent crime. Just kids messing around and some bar fights perhaps.
> 
> ...


 
I know what energy is. I don't think you can presume to know how the originators of kata understood them...neither can you presume to know anything about the seriousness of my training. My Japanese instructors, as with many Japanese/Okinawans, did not engage in discussions of physics or "energy release." They just practiced and taught the kata. They were much more interested in THAT something worked rather than in WHY it worked. We in the West tend to talk things to death and over-analyze. Now, go release some energy...or whatever.


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## Victor Smith (Oct 6, 2007)

O I do a bit more than just practice the kata we work hard to study how to drop someone with each nuance of its being. 

Except for general observation I don't spend any time teaching history,  that's my personal observation and study. The dojo floor is solely for sweat equity.  Nor do I particularily care about what  the orginators meant with the kata, I'm more concerned with what we do with them. 

As far as the use of energy release that's how I describe what my instructors impressed in my actual training. It's not a generic usage, but a entire series of body alignment practices that prove to the student how their technique becomes more effective. The core is nothing exceptional, just a way of understanding what goold technique execution is and why and how to improve. It also has a side benefit, for you can see what an oppenent is doing incorrectly and attack those openings.

As I said the core is to drop one's opponents effectively.

pleasantly,


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## chinto (Oct 6, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> O I do a bit more than just practice the kata we work hard to study how to drop someone with each nuance of its being.
> 
> Except for general observation I don't spend any time teaching history, that's my personal observation and study. The dojo floor is solely for sweat equity. Nor do I particularily care about what the orginators meant with the kata, I'm more concerned with what we do with them.
> 
> ...


 

To me you have not stated in this or several previous postings a reason why any one would put the huge amount of energy and effort to develop and refine a system of combat that is geared towards LETHAL COMBAT with out a threat of some kind that was imenent and lethal in and of its self. 
A huge amount of effort and study and refinement that combined what they learned from the Chinese, and from others and their own native arts, were combined and refined by actual use from what has come down through the historys. Now why in the world would you put that kind of effort and resorces into something that was just a thing? why would you have men who worked hard in things like farming, and fishing, and merchents, who had enough on their plates to be working hard to make a living be then adding training for combat if there was not a reason to do so that was practical??


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## jks9199 (Oct 6, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> I did not say kata was not designed to use, I said karate was not designed to use. There was no real reason to develop karate on Okinawa, a generally peaceful place. If you did some research into the arrest records around 100 years ago there was little violent crime. Just kids messing around and some bar fights perhaps.


 
Little violent crime where?  What arrest records?  Not everywhere maintained records in the same way we have... and even here in the US, 100 years ago, policing and the formal criminal justice system was rather in its infancy.

Why would what is recognizably an effective combative system have been developed without need?  Why would anyone have invested the hours and years in developing and passing on the systems if there wasn't some sort of demand?  Until very recently, few people had the leisure time to invent fake combat; if they practiced combat, it was because they expected to fight at some point.  

Now, that doesn't mean I buy the stories about karate being developed because the Japanese disarmed the Okinawan peoples.  I think the idea of some unarmed peasant (or even unarmed upper class person!) attacking an armed and armored samurai with their bare hands -- or even weapons improvised from mortar handles and rice flails -- is more than a little unlikely.  It seems much more reasonable to me that the unarmed combat methods were preserved because there was a need for unarmed combat, in a number of circumstances.  Why, we've even preserved Western unarmed combat as sports like wrestling and boxing!

I also think you're rather over-reaching when you say that Chinese martial arts forms were created for energy development, and not to preserve combative techniques.  First -- there's simply too many Chinese styles to generalize that widely.  Second -- several Chinese styles do explicitely preserve combative sequences in their form training.   Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're meaning by "energy"...

I personally think it's clear that kata/forms were developed for many reasons.  These include, but aren't limited to, preserving proven combative strategies and principles, teaching methods of movement or body alignment, solo practice of the principles of the style, moving meditation, and even as simple exercise & conditioning.  Kata remain important in martial arts training, in various iterations.


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## Victor Smith (Oct 7, 2007)

It is confusing to try and really talk about a past that you cannot document. Logic only goes so far.  I am only working to try and understand what we can see.

Without any supporting documentation how can we really talk about say pre-1850 training and stuides. All we have is oral history filtered through too many indvidiuals to readliy accept any of it. And does it make a difference then was then?

It seems the most we can talk about is post 1850 or so when our current karate seems to have taken shape (based on earlie core arts). In that time it seems we're only talking about a handfull of practitioners in any case.

I've see so may curious claims, such that it was imported from China to prepare for guerilla action against the Japanese, etc. But I think its clear at that time it wasn't really developed for street necessity.

Yes Karate technique is lethal and effectively damaging, and all of the kata have hundreds of potential applications to tap those techniques in that way. But kata wasn't necessary to learn lethal technique, especially as every home had kama for gardening. It is through the complexity of kata practice that movement skill can be moved to higher levels, which is the same thing that many, many of the Chinese arts do, of course differently in all their diversity.

I believe it is literally impossible to know why those indvidiuals studied the arts, except then as today, they likely found personal satisfication doing so.

Then in the 1900's change began occurring. THey saw value sharing a piece of the arts in school for the elite youth to prepare for military basic training in the upcoming draft. They saw karate as a way to shape some influence in Japan during the terrible world wide depression, to try and find some favor for their homeland. Those that survived the war in turn found karate as a way to help survive the more horrible devistation of those times.

Energy is the simple release of mechanical energy in our technique. Energy development is simple training (or not so simple) to do so more effectively, working with resistence, working to eliminiate any extranious motion, working to unify your will and technique.


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## exile (Oct 7, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> But I think its clear at that time it wasn't really developed for street necessity.



Victor&#8212;I think the issue of whether daily life in Okinawa was a relatively dangerous proposition is indeed important to the discussion and we need to establish what the facts are. One of the few well-documented claims about early martial artists in Okinawa is that Satunushi Sakugawa, Bushi Matsumura's teacher, began his study of tode under Peichin Takahara as a reaction to his father's violent death&#8212;beaten by a gang of drunken thugs, resulting in massive internal damage. This would suggest that street crime wasn't exactly unknown in late 18th century Okinawa, and my impression is that the country wasn't what you'd call prosperous&#8212;the Satsumas sucked it pretty dry, one of the prerogatives of their overlordship. Poor countries under a brutal occupation are not generally the happiest and most tranquil places to live, and anything which could give someone an advantage in the crunch would be well-received, you'd imagine.

Bruce Clayton is the best known, but not the only, proponent of the view that modern linear karate developed in the context of training regimes for  the royal bodyguards in the Okinawan court, who were forbidden to have weapons yet had to provide security for their king under fairly dicey conditions (this is a view also defended, for example, in Richard Kim's _Weaponless Warriors_). Given these two factors&#8212;a potentially dangerous life on the `Okinawan street' and the professionals' need for an effective combat system to carry out their security mission&#8212;it wouldn't be surprising if at least some of the population actively sought, and experimented with, effective fighting techniques and devised a systematic basis for training them. I'm not saying other factors may not have played a role, and obviously we want much more investigation of these hypotheses before we accept them as absolutely established, but they remain possibilities with some basis in documentation, and so I suspect it's premature to dismiss combat effectiveness as a major raison d' être for karate....


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## Victor Smith (Oct 7, 2007)

It is very difficult to come to brook with the resources avaiable.

I always liked Richard Kim's book 'The Weaponless Warriors' until I learned it was simply plagarized from Shimabuku Eizo's book which hadn't been translated into English. That spikes things a big way for me. Perhaps because I paid attention in school that plagerism is wrong!

The best those tales can be taken is oral history where even if true, how does one take them historically. It would be like writing a history of the United States based on acts of violence over 200 years leaving the impression that was the common state of affairs, where the reality was most people have lived quiet lives.

I would suggest we don't have enough factual information to make any claims from that book, or even from other sources.  

Even Japanese historical sources come into question.  Harry Cook in 'Shotokan a Precise History' wrote on page 6 "The theory that the Okinawans were forbidden to own weapons canbe traed to a mis-translation....According to the historian Mitsugu Sakihara; "In 1926 the Fuyu misread the passage... to read 'this country used the armour for utensils', and assumed that the king had confiscated all arms which were then made into practical tools such as farm implements. THus originated the fallacy that of a disarmed peace=lovi9ng Ryukyu.....King  Sho Shin, far from abolishing arms accumulated them and was proud of his superior weapons. The truth is that Ryukyu has never been officially disarmed.""   <Mitsugu sakihara 'A Brief History of Early Okinawan Based on the Somoro Soshi.'>

As for Bruce Claton's book, I find it special pleading. The central premise that he can understand Kyan Sensei's karate by looking at Isshinryu (clearly a derivative in part form Kyan's teachings) instead of taking the time to look at other closer Kyan derivatives was poor scholarship, just becase some Isshinryu material was on hand. He wanted to make a case and used convenience instead of scholarship to make his point.

That is such a fundamental flaw, IMO, I find little reason to take the rest of his writing as serious scholarship.

He may be right, he may not be right, but when you go out of your way to make the wrong argument, well everything is in doubt.

I have a surgeon in my program. Years ago he was visiting me and we were looking at several books when he picked on on PaKua up and threw it in the trash. I was astounded and asked him why. He replied the anatomical drawings had the liver on the wrong side of the body. If they can't take the time to get any of the technical details correct how can you trust anything else they've written.

He had a solid point and I tend to look at things that way too.

On the whole, outside of personal interest, does any of the reason why karate came into existence have any real impact on today's arts?


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## exile (Oct 7, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> It is very difficult to come to brook with the resources avaiable.
> 
> I always liked Richard Kim's book 'The Weaponless Warriors' until I learned it was simply plagarized from Shimabuku Eizo's book which hadn't been translated into English. That spikes things a big way for me. Perhaps because I paid attention in school that plagerism is wrong!
> 
> ...



Victor, this is interesting indeedI'd no idea about the source of Kim's book; very disturbing! And yes, I know that some of Clayton's book at least needs to be taken with a certain amount of salt (though several of his major sources on Japanese cultural history and world-view are themselves impeccable); that's why I was a bit cautious in characterizing the grounding of his claims about the development of linear karate.

I missed the first edition of Cook's book on Shotokan history; I'm waiting for the second edition to be announced, and I've preordered his _Karate Chronicles_, which promises to be a similarly authoritative history of karate more generally. And I also am skeptical of oral traditions without documentary support... 

...all this is food for more thought....


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## tshadowchaser (Oct 7, 2007)

> Why would what is recognizably an effective combative system have been developed without need? Why would anyone have invested the hours and years in developing and passing on the systems if there wasn't some sort of demand?


 
gentelmen.
I would suggest that we can equate this to the development of modern weapons of warfare when no war is happing in the country developing them. It never hurts to know how to do something or to ready if the need come up.
Being able to defend a royal family or your personal home against something that might happen is a good reason to learn a martial art or to develop one (as may have been the case).
Now if the only way I could practice a martial art was through dance or prearranged moves again the air then that is most likely how I would do it to stay out of jail , it would also be a good way to pass on my knowledge


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## Steel Tiger (Oct 7, 2007)

exile said:


> Exactly. What is so remarkable is not just that any given move in a kata can have a variety of plausbile combat interpretations (a punch, a deflection, part of a throw, or something else), but that, no matter which of these turns out to be situationally advantageous, the next movement almost always has a completely appropriate interpretation available that continues the defensive response in a tactically effective way. Thus many, many combat scenarios are built into the same set of movement, and it becomes clear why the old masters generally practiced only a limited number of kata in depth over their livesthey didn't _need_ a huge number of them; they could mine a few of the great classics for all the resources they would ever need.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Victor Smith (Oct 7, 2007)

It just occured to me that I can show an example of how form/kata/kune are used to develop energy. If you look at the following clip of a form of Nothern Chinese kicking techniques you'll see one of the best examples I've seen lately.

Yanqing Tui





Its not just that this is a super presentation of a range of basic Northern Chinese kicking techniques, but the performance shows how they are shaping the energy of each technique to keep perfect balance to flow from technique to technique, stance to stance. If any portion of the performance was unbalanced they would open to larger movement and eventual lack of control, but in this execution it's about perfect, for this performance. 

Of course they can always work to have a higher, faster energy release for more challenge, but this is the point I'm making about all forms.

The use of form develops a way to move with focus from one set of energy release in technique execution to the next set, and so forth. Far more complex and developing than just executing a perfect single technique.

The really hard thing is to find relatively perfect performances. IMO the younger Hiagonna Morio, and some of the Okinawan Uechi folks are other good examples. Of course many of the best are likely never filmed too.

I don't see it as one system over another, but if the system execution is crafted correctly the energy release is studied at higher levels.


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## chinto (Oct 8, 2007)

Victor Smith said:


> It is very difficult to come to brook with the resources avaiable.
> 
> I always liked Richard Kim's book 'The Weaponless Warriors' until I learned it was simply plagarized from Shimabuku Eizo's book which hadn't been translated into English. That spikes things a big way for me. Perhaps because I paid attention in school that plagerism is wrong!
> 
> ...


 

I have never read or seen the book mentioned, but the left side has the spleen under the floating ribs, and rupture that like the liver on the right side is leathal with out surgery that was at leat not gerneraly available before about the mid 20th century.
So as far as leathality both sides under the floating ribs are organs that are lethal to damage.
that said You do have to wonder if the printer messed up the drawings in printing?....either way I know that the Okinawans the Chinese and the Japanese and meany other cultures knew that to damage either the liver or the spleen was more often then not fatal .. still is if you do not get difinitive medical care, and often that care must be with in what is known as the 'Golden Hour'!  ( as an Ex-E.M. T. I can tell you that a ruptured liver or spleen will result in a fatal internal bleed with out surgical intervention.)
I would say that  they knew from imperical data over the years and from their predisesers in the martial arts that some injurys were with out a doubt lethal, some not as fast as others, but lethal none the less!


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