I only have marginal experience with the Taeguk's and almost none with the Palgae's so I realize that I did (and still do not) have much room to talk about those two forms sets. I am glad to have the opportunity to discuss it on here. Allow me to clarify my earlier statement. I did not see as much of the hidden application in the WTF forms, that most of it seems more overt, however, that obviously does nto mean that it is not in there. I also have not picked them apart move by move.
It's actually only been very recently that anyone has been doing that, WMKS-Sh---the stuff by Simon O'Neil is only a couple of years old. I figure, given the historical rootedness of the WTF forms in the Okinawan/Japanese kata, and the tremendous attention to combat-effective kata bunkai from people like Abernethy, Kan & Wilder, McCarthy, Clark, Martinez, and Craige & Anderson (whose book on `hidden' bunkai,
Shihan Te: the Bunkai of Karate Kata, I found almost totally opaque---anyone else have this experience with them?), it was only a matter of time before someone turned to the WTF forms and did the same thing.
There was a thread a few weeks back in which Upnorthkyosa noted that a lot of the old Kwan masters themselves almost certainly did not know the most advanced combat bunkai for the kata sets they learned as students in Japan---and interestingly, Stuart Anslow, in his new book on interpreting the ITF tuls, expresses just this view very emphatically, with good arguments in support. But one of Anslow's points is, the fact that Gen. Choi didn't necessarily know the really rough stuff that is latent in tul sequences which go back, ultimately, to Itosu and Matusumura (who knew the rough stuff inside out) doesn't matter---because those applications are implicit in the moves, in the sense that the moves only make sense as fighting techniques on these `harsh' interpretations.
The way I have been thinking of it, let's assume that UpNKy and Anslow are right. Then what the guys who founded the kwans did, in adopting kata they learned as students of Shotokan or Shudokan into TKD as hyungs/tuls/poomsae, etc, was not in principle different from someone who copies a written message in a language which they don't understand. The information is still present in the note even though the copyist doesn't know the language, and is available to you---as long as you yourself have a reading knowledge of the language. Now if, in the course of copying, the scribe garbles the note somewhat, gets a couple of paragraphs switched around, or even a few sentences, it's still possible to analyze the text in a way which allows you to extract the intended meaning, as long as it's not garbled too badly. So whether or not Gen. Choi or GM Rik knew what the full range of fighting applications might be in the patterns they adapted as TKD forms, those applications are still there, waiting to be decoded, and that's what O'Neil and Anslow and probably various other people have been doing lately.
But I look forward to continuing in this thread.
Me too, WMSK-Sh...
