Perhaps I should have added that kata is not PRIMARILY about fighting for those who are literalists. Mushin and zanshin have everything to do with fighting...much more than any "catalog of techniques." The techniques in kata are only the surface, the omote. Applying kata "intelligently" to actual combat means getting beneath the surface to the mindset that years of diligent kata practice, in addition to actual fighting and partner training, is supposed to develop. You don't drive your "roadmap," but you can't get to an unknown destination without it. You do not do close order drill in combat, but you can't prepare people for combat without it.
Kata is like a koan...sometimes nothing is as it seems.
I'm still having a lot of trouble following your reasoning here. Kata were certainly primarily about fighting for Matsumura, Itosu, Motobu, Egami and the other founders of linear, combat-ready karate. Exactly what does it mean to say `the techniques in kata are only the surface, the omote'? The techniques in kata—
properly understood, analyzed via realistic translations of the kind Itosu explicitly told us to seek out—are exactly what the fight is about. They inform you of how to respond to the habitual acts of violence that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, initiate a violent attack, and how to terminate that attack.
Let me give you an example, and you tell me exactly what is `on the surface' about the techs. There is an elementary form, which comes from Shotokan and was copied literally into TKD as Kicho Il-Jang. It begins in ready position, and involves a 90º turn to the left into a left front stance, with a left down block and a right fist retraction. Tori steps forward into a right front stance with a middle lunge punch retracting the left fist. Then tori pivots 180º into a
right down block/front stance, with left fist retracted, and steps forward into a left front stance/middle lunge punch, retracting the right fist. Finally, tori pivots 90º to the left, into a left down block/front stance.
OK—this is a
specific sequence of moves. You can assume they were thrown together willy-nilly, the weakest possible hypothesis, or you can assume they were put together in that sequence for a particular reason—that they contain information which is different from any other given sequence of moves, which is a much stronger hypothesis. Let's stick with the stronger hypothesis, OK? So then, why this
specific sequence? What is the point of it? Neither Itosu nor Matsumura had much time for anything but business—they were royal bodyguards forbiddent to have weapons, they were the King of Okinawa's chief LEOs. What
use would this particular sequence, or similar sequences, have been to them?
Well, if you understand the message that Itosu told us more than a century ago (and that was echoed in writings by Funakoshi, Motobu, Egami and just about every one of the karate pioneers) that the schoolchild labels `block' and `punch' were
not the actual content of the movements depicted, and if you follow the well-worked-out translations rules that people like Iain Abernethy, Lawrence Kane & Chris Wilder, Simon O'Neil and others have provided on the basis of serious research and experimentation under `live', realistic conditions—then the following corresponds to a very useful, practical application:
The assailant (A) grabs the defender (D)'s shirt, or arm/wrist/etc, standing close-up and face to face with D. D countergrabs A's gripping wrist with his right hand, turns 90º so his left side faces A's centerline, turning A's wrist to establish a lock and pulling it hard toward his own left side (`retraction') while slamming his left forearm into A's extended elbow (`chambering' to coming down `block') to establish an armlock, which D then moves his own bodyweight into (the initial `front stance') to drive A's upper body, with locks at wrist and elbow, way down so that A's head is expose. D quickly brings the locking forearm all the way up past his own right ear (maybe smashing an elbow into A's lowered head on the way) and then slams his closed right fist down into A's carotid sinus, or face, or collarbone (the `down block' itself, lol). The striking left hand grips A's ear, or right shoulder, or whatever gripping surface seems best at the moment as part of a muchimi move to anchor A while D steps forward with a middle punch to A's still lowered, trapped head, then by another muchimi move grips A's ear immediately with the punching hand and pivots 180º to throw A towards the floor—the 180º turn typically explained away as just a `symmetry' move to do the form mirror-image on the other side, and the `down block' now a crucial component of the throw—and steps forward to punch A's head at the temple, or possibly the throat with the left fist. Another 90º pivot, to D's left, corresponds to a final throw, and again, the `down block' a strike to A's neck. By now, A is probably wishing he'd stayed home.
I've used this particular bunkai for the first five-move subsequence of the form under fairly rough training conditions, and it is almost bombproof. It works with instinctive reactions, it's robust—there's plenty of room for error, because only large motor skills are involved, and it depends in no way on a compliant uke. It's a simple, `classic' sequence illustrating the huge discrepancy between the Itosu-style packaging of the kata/hyung as per my first description and the actual combat use of the sequences in a typical situation—according to Patrick McCarthy and others who've compile extensive studies of the habitual actions which attackers use in initiating assaults, the grab/punch sequence is extremely frequent and effective if no counteraction is taken. The kata gives you a principle-based approach to the problem posed by the imminent attack: go for A's weak point, pull him into close range, project your own bodyweight (the various `front stance') to force his head into striking range without him having any choice in the matter, and attack the weakest points on his head: throat, temple, face around the eyes, etc.
This is only one a number of techs that are available from these elementary kata; and the more advanced forms contain many more `atomic SD sequences'—subsequences of movements which translate into principle-driven tactical applications that take you from A's first pre-attacking moves to him lying on the ground, no longer a threat. That's what kata are about. In place of this kind of useful, specific information, your comments about mushin and zanshin have virtually no information at all, because they do not distinguish this particular sequence of movements, which replect a particular tactical application of general SD principles, from any other. Your comment about kata being all about mushin and zanshin is a generalization which fails to make it clear why we have
these movements and not some others. Itosu had specific things in mind for you to do as a result of learning the Pinan kata, or Naihanchi; Matsumura recorded the Chinto kata because he wanted a record of what the guy, Chinto, had been able to do so effectively. He didn't write down that particular sequence to teach you mushin/zanshin or anything else like that; he wrote it down because it was something he himself needed to learn to enhance his own combat effectiveness. You give only generalities, but generalities cannot explain particularities. I think, myself, that someone like Matsumura or Chotuko Kyand or Motobu would have chuckled, quietly, up their sleeve, at the thought that kata were anything but a record of effective, battle-tested combat techniques. They weren't, in those days, part of a martial art; as Abernethy and Burgar in their books amply document, they were regarded as martial arts
in themselves. Mushin/zanshin... all of that is just mystification.
