Bunkai, history, and "authorities"

[clfsean]

Yeah that's Tai Cho (Tai Zu). I don't know if that's Tai Cho alone or the Tai Cho from Ngo Cho. Either way, straight up Fujianese CMA. No dilution there.

The guy who filmed it was or is affiliated with a guy named Eric Ling from Singapore. He's big into cataloging & trying to preserve the southern arts found in Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia before they are lost. Those areas carry on the old traditions, not the new. He was a big part of a documentary I watched on Hulu called "Needle through Brick".

As far as the uniform, there's a group in Taiwan that has been wearing a Japanese style gi for years doing White Crane, Xingyi & Bagua. Then again, they are all about the contact & the cotton gi's are more durable than the "traditional" CMA type wear.

 

[SahBumNimRush]

Digging some more, it looks like it is Master Teo Choon Tek of San Cheen Do, and yes he is from Singapore.

http://www.sancheendo.org/

 

[dancingalone]

I also ran across this video, claiming to be Southern Fukien Grand Ancestor Boxing. I'm not well versed in CMA's, but he's wearing a wrap uniform, which I've not seen in CMA's. However, the movements are very familiar to me from many forms that I practice.

Thanks for the clip. I can really see the kinship there with Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu. Fascinating.

 

[SahBumNimRush]

Thanks to clfsean's identification of the prior mentioned art, here's another Tai Zu Quan (Southern Grand Ancestor Boxing) form:

Little Lohan form (I don't think it's referring to Ali Lohan ):

However, I see less off a similarity in this form compared to the one from Master Teo Choon Teck (Particularly the second set of movements Master Teck performs; from 1:23-1:56).

 

[ninjanoir78]

This question of the origins of bunkai is fascinating to me. I'm pretty convinced that the whole concept of useful applications is something quite recent in the history of kata. There are two issues here. One is the lack of reality of so much of what passes for "bunkai" and second is the entire question of what bunkai may have been handed down 100 to 150 years ago.

Regarding the first issue, (reality of applications), if one looks at a broad cross-section of bunkai associated with older traditional systems, one typically finds that these applications are simply not modelled on the way fighting actually occurs. Attackers routinely step in with on long step, freezing is a stance and striking to the mid-section. Second, there is just an overwhelming amount of bunkai where the self-defense application utilizes a single counter strike, often to the abdomen. There are dozens of examples of this in youtube.

The second issue regards what, if any, bunkai was passed down 100-150 years ago and earlier. I would argue, not much. Since everything was so secret, airtight conclusions are impossible. We have to look at hints here and there. A good example is the reference to Oyata. Yes he did study with two men after the close of WWII who taught him ti and kobudo. However, I do not believe there is a record of him learning kata from these two men. He learned kata from Nakamura.

The question should be not whether Oyata has good bunkai for a variety of movements in the kata that are part of his system. The real question is what Nakamura (and perhaps his senior students) passed on to Oyata. A related question is what percentage of movements of kata in the Nakamura system, does Oyata teach to his top students? I have had an opportunity to have discussions with a couple. And the simple answer is that Oyata has not taught bunkai, at least in any meaningful way, for a broad cross-section of kata movements.


-Cayuga Karate

Hi, oyata learnt from nakamura kata.. many kata but he kept just 12.. from his 2 main instructors (bushi) he learnt weapons, kyusho and how to analyse kata.. so he received kata fron nakamura but not bunkai. Anyway their bunkai were not good, just basic karate. .

Envoyé de mon SGH-I747M en utilisant Tapatalk