Foreign Kata’s

[cstanley]

Thank you for the information. That goes to show that one always has something to learn. I should do more research.
I would ask you, Which are original Shito ryu kata and which were imported. I know of only a coulple that he created.

Here is the list. There are a couple of kata that get argued over whether they were in the original Mabuni list or not. It is 26 or 28 depending on who is arguing.

Pinan 1-5
Naihanchi 1-3
Matsukaze
Rohai
Sanchin
Jion
Jitte
Passai Dai
Passai Sho
Kosokun Dai
Kosokun Sho
Gojushiho
Nijushiho
Chinto
Wanshu
Seisan
Chinte
Sochin
Seipai
Seiuchin
Kururunpha
Tensho

Ten No and Chino (made by Nagamine and Myagi in 1937) were added for beginners. Some lists add Unshu and remove Tensho. But, you get the drift. Mabuni later developed a few of his own kata (Shinsei, Juroku, Nipaipo, Shihokosokun, etc) but these were not in the original group he taught. Hope this helps.

 

[twendkata71]

I have read that Mabuni Hanshi developed nipaipo from the older Chinese form of Nepai. Do you think that this was the case? I believe that I read that in one of Mccarthy's books.

 

[stone_dragone]

While I agree with the general sentiment of the thread and that you should learn as much as possible, I recommend learning what your teacher is teaching. If it happens to be Wing chun form at white belt, a TKD form at yellow, a shotokan form at Green, a Goju Form at brown and an Iado form for black belt, then go for it.

Incedentally, although I am all for eclectic curriculums, the one I mentioned might be a sign of something else entirely...

 

[exile]

I think the critical thing with kata/hyungs/[insert appropriate word for `pattern' in CMA] is that you should not just learn to perform them—something kata `collection' tends to go along with—but also learn the combat applications that they offer the practitioner. Bill Burgar, for example, spent five years studying and testing out applications of Gojushiho; his substantial book offers a detailed account of what he learned over that five year experiment. Choki Motobu made a similar lifelong study of Naihanchi. Each form/pattern has enough depth that it can be seen—and in the past, apparently, was seen by the pioneers of modern karate—as complete stand-alone fighting systems; ; from what I can tell based on the comments of earlier karateka, the original curriculum might have consisted of only a few kata, studied quite intensively over a long period, with the practitioner expected to develop an increasingly sophisticated undertanding of the uses of the various components of each kata over a long period of time. The emphasis on kata performance, as opposed to kata application, is something Burgar notes as a consequence of the shift in training from the small-class, individual-attention nature of the training system to the large-scale kihon drill methods that Funakoshi and others introduced in Japan, with kata used as a grading criterion for promotion. The modern KMAs, rooted mostly in Shotokan, took over the mass-class Japanese approach as a matter of course. But this approach to kata reminds me of an episode in a Woody Allen movie, where he's bragging to some friends about the speed reading course he took that allowed him to read all five volumes of Marcel Proust's Rememberance of Things Past over the weekend. One of the group asks him what happens in the work, and Allen's character, after considering the question for a moment, replies, `Well... it was about some Frenchmen.'

I think comparison of different variants of a single kata could probably be useful as a key to earlier forms of the kata, with possible clues there as to the intended application of certain moves, so familiary with a range of kata is useful for that kind of purpose. With TKD hyung, you wind up routinely comparing hyungs to kata, since the former so often represent `shuffled' versions of components of the latter (the Pinans show up in many places in the Palgwes, for instance). At my dojang we learn a version of Rohai which seems quite a bit more elaborate than some others I've seen, that I'm interested in comparing maybe with certain CMA forms to see if the latter have the sort of `spread/tipped wing movements and running step sequences that ours has. I know there are a number of different versions of Rohai labelled with the names of various earlier karateka who produced somewhat different versions of them, but I still haven't found one that looks quite the same as ours...

 

[searcher]

I think that karate would be better off if we went back to the old ways of not really having styles. Perhaps schools of thought.
All kata have things to teach us. Hidden treasures. And a lifetime of learning.

I think the critical thing with kata/hyungs/[insert appropriate word for `pattern' in CMA] is that you should not just learn to perform them—something kata `collection' tends to go along with—but also learn the combat applications that they offer the practitioner.

I feel there is much wisdom to be taken from these words. We have strayed so far from the masters of old and I, for one, would love it to go back to these ideals. JMHO.

 

[chinto]

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I think the critical thing with kata/hyungs/[insert appropriate word for `pattern' in CMA] is that you should not just learn to perform them—something kata `collection' tends to go along with—but also learn the combat applications that they offer the practitioner.



I would very much agree with that statement! after all the kata were not designed or developed and tought as just a collection of preformances, but to teach the combat aplications and movement and principles in them.

 

[tshadowchaser]

Learning is just that and is not or should not be placed in a cubical or sealed inviroment. But that’s just my personal thought

 

[exile]

Learning is just that and is not or should not be placed in a cubical or sealed inviroment. But that’s just my personal thought

I agree with this thought. But I also think there is such a thing as learning at various depths, and unfortunately, in the case of kata (and this is still more the case of TKD hyungs), there is some difficulty in learning at what I regard as the most fundamental level—that of the encoded combat applications that the extremely experienced fighters who created these kata found effective and reliable in violent conflicts.

We don't know what was in these pioneering karatekas' minds, of course, but we can apply robust, testable reverse engineering principles (of the sort itemized in a number of recent books on bunkai by practitioners who are serious researchers as well as advanced practitioners) to figure out some plausible interpretations that we can then `field test' for effectiveness. I've noted a number of posts by members who seem to refer to reverse engineering as though it were an obscene expression, but I have no idea why: everyone from forensic scientists to prehistoric archæologists use reverse engineering to derive (testable) hypotheses about the purposes for which certain objects were designed. So in principle, we ought to be able to supply the fundamental level of kata understanding to students in dojos in order to help them develop their ability to use their karate training (including KMAs under this heading) in the way envisaged by karate's creators.

But that's not what usually happens. Instead, depth of analysis is replaced by emphasis on kata-collecting, where the number of separate `dances' you can reproduce on command is way more important than what you can do with the sequence of movements the kata present you, and your ability to analyze those sequences to see the coherent sequence of combat moves expressed therein. That's the sealed environment that I believe has been imposed on the learning of kata/hyungs in their true depth, partly as a result of an instructional system which for the most part disconnects them from their fighting origins, and partly as a result of their incorporation in the competitive tournament model as a kind of performance art.

If that's all some want, fine. But the others should be able to get training in the understanding and combat usage of these forms, and the fact that these are still considered to be somewhat exotic, or marginal, isn't fine at all.