importance of kata?

[Steel Tiger]

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.

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.

 

[cstanley]

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.

 

[Victor Smith]

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.

 

[cstanley]

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.

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.

 

[exile]

I am certainly in agreement here.

CS—glad we are on the same side on this!

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—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.

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—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.

 

[Victor Smith]

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.

 

[cstanley]

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.

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.

 

[Victor Smith]

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,

 

[chinto]

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,

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??

 

[jks9199]

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.

 

[Victor Smith]

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.

 

[exile]

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

Victor—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—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—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—a potentially dangerous life on the `Okinawan street' and the professionals' need for an effective combat system to carry out their security mission—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....

 

[Victor Smith]

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?

 

[exile]

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?

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....

 

[tshadowchaser]

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

 

[Steel Tiger]

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.

The flow of motion regardless of the interpretations applied to individual techniques are a very good indication of the thought that has gone into the construction of kata. We know that kata and forms are a mnemonic for remembering the techniques of the art, but their durability in the face of myriad interpretation shows that there is something more involved. It says to me that they are important.

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—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.

I cannot but agree with you in this regard. I also hope that there are modern martial artists putting similar thought into the structure of kata and forms, not just the interpretations of existing kata. If they are not around we may eventually find the newer arts running into the problems of knowledge dropout and loss that many older arts have already suffered from.

 

[Victor Smith]

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.

 

[chinto]

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?

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!