Shorin Ryu Katas

[harold]

I began training in the martial arts in 1971 studying Shorin Ryu. I was wondering if anyone could recommend any sites that have still photos and descriptions of the Shorin Ryu katas.

 

[Andrew Green]

There are videos of a few branches here: http://kata-reference.com/

 

[harold]

Thanks.

 

[dancingalone]

I know you asked for an online source, but the best shorin-ryu (matsubayashi) book I have seen is Okinawan Karate: The Teachings of Eihachi Ota. In my opinion, it's even better than Nagamine's book.

 

[chinto]

I know you asked for an online source, but the best shorin-ryu (matsubayashi) book I have seen is Okinawan Karate: The Teachings of Eihachi Ota. In my opinion, it's even better than Nagamine's book.

i do not have that book but the book "Okinawan Karate, teachers, styles and secret techniques" by Mark Bishop is excellent.

 

[Drac]

I know you asked for an online source, but the best shorin-ryu (matsubayashi) book I have seen is Okinawan Karate: The Teachings of Eihachi Ota. In my opinion, it's even better than Nagamine's book.

Yes..A very good book ..Purchased both during my Shorin-Ryu days, like the one by Ota beter...

 

[Kennedy_Shogen_Ryu]

I have never seen the Ota book though I have studied Nagamine's book. What are the major differences between the two that makes Ota's so much better? Would be interested in finding a copy, is it easily findable?

 

[dancingalone]

It just came out this year and you can easily buy it from Amazon. The book is actually authored by Michael Rovens and Mark Polland, but it's heavily illustrated with pictures of Ota Sensei performing the Matsubayashi kata. What makes this book better than the Nagamine classic is the inclusion of some transition photos - the Nagamine book only has photos of each ending position. The new book also has many notes from Ota Sensei, giving some basic bunkai or performance tips.

Here's a passage from Pinan Sandan: "Sensei Ota argues that this sequence (the opening simultaneous blocks) is not intended to be a fighting techinque because the simultaneous blocks are executed in a standing position or natural stance, instead of the lower stance that is typically used when blocking....

In kata, not every move has to have a practical fighting application. Some moves are valuable specifically as training exercises to condition the body."

 

[Tez3]

It just came out this year and you can easily buy it from Amazon. The book is actually authored by Michael Rovens and Mark Polland, but it's heavily illustrated with pictures of Ota Sensei performing the Matsubayashi kata. What makes this book better than the Nagamine classic is the inclusion of some transition photos - the Nagamine book only has photos of each ending position. The new book also has many notes from Ota Sensei, giving some basic bunkai or performance tips.

Here's a passage from Pinan Sandan: "Sensei Ota argues that this sequence (the opening simultaneous blocks) is not intended to be a fighting techinque because the simultaneous blocks are executed in a standing position or natural stance, instead of the lower stance that is typically used when blocking....

In kata, not every move has to have a practical fighting application. Some moves are valuable specifically as training exercises to condition the body."

That's interesting! I was taught they are CMA type of blocks, used for blocking punches whch they do very well.That's Wado Ryu though and we have a few techniques done from either standing or a short fighting stance where one foot is slightly in front of the other.

 

[chinto]

It just came out this year and you can easily buy it from Amazon. The book is actually authored by Michael Rovens and Mark Polland, but it's heavily illustrated with pictures of Ota Sensei performing the Matsubayashi kata. What makes this book better than the Nagamine classic is the inclusion of some transition photos - the Nagamine book only has photos of each ending position. The new book also has many notes from Ota Sensei, giving some basic bunkai or performance tips.

Here's a passage from Pinan Sandan: "Sensei Ota argues that this sequence (the opening simultaneous blocks) is not intended to be a fighting techinque because the simultaneous blocks are executed in a standing position or natural stance, instead of the lower stance that is typically used when blocking....

In Kata, not every move has to have a practical fighting application. Some moves are valuable specifically as training exercises to condition the body."

I am a student of Shobayashi Shorin Ryu, and I would disagree with you. there are at minumum 5 combat applications for every movement in our Kata.. in most Kata there are provably more... but then some of the Okinawan stances are much higher then the Japanese styles use. ( the Japanese styles were derived Obviously from the Okinawan as Okinawa is where Karate is from)

 

[exile]

I am a student of Shobayashi Shorin Ryu, and I would disagree with you. there are at minumum 5 combat applications for every movement in our Kata.. in most Kata there are provably more... but then some of the Okinawan stances are much higher then the Japanese styles use. ( the Japanese styles were derived Obviously from the Okinawan as Okinawa is where Karate is from)

Gotta say, I think Chinto's take here is probably the methodologically sounder one. Start from the assumption that there was a combat application and see if you can find it. If you assume that there wasn't one, then if there actually was, you'd never find it, because you're starting from the premist that there's nothing to find. In contrast, if you assume there was one, but in fact there wasn't, it'll probably become evident that the move in question just can't be given a plausible combat explanation.

I see how this works with the way in which an old Tomari-te form, Empi, was `massaged' into a more stylistically Korean form, Eunbi, with consequent reduction of CQ practicality. There are a series of moves in Empi which involve a down block followed by a straight reverse punch and then a raised knee on the same side, followed by what looks like a low X-block in a lowered upper-body position. In TKD, this knee raise has been modified to a front snap kick. But the good bunkai for Empi I've seen suggest that the raised knee is a very hard knee strike to the abdomen, and the X-block a grab by the defender to immobilize the now bent-over attacker combined with a simultaneous strike to the groin with the other fist in the so-called block. The TKD version, in turning the kick into a high-mid front snap kick, winds up assuming a distance between attacker and defender much greater than that in the Okinawan version, and thus renders the former less practical for the CQ situation which most street violence involves. You could look at the Eunbi moves and say, hell, that must be a balance exercise, it couldn't be a combat tech... and in a sense, you'd be on to something, but the point is, the solution is not to reject the combat utility of the move, but rather to define correctly just what the move at issue originally consisted of. I suspect something similar has gone on between the Okinawan and Japanese versions of the same kata in many instances, but here I'm glad to be able to defer to Chinto and others who can point to real examples!

 

[Ray B]

Kata bunkai (analyizing) can reveal many applications (ohyo) to one
movement. There is a book out, I can't remember the author, called 75
down blocks. In it, the author shows 75 different applications to the down
block. If you take this theory and apply it to all/most of what you are
practicing, you will have enough to spend your life discovering.

I agree that you can find 5 or more applications to a set of movements,
but IMO, if you train too many, you will not have the conditioning for
an automatic response. Your mind will be going through too many
senarios. Find a few that work against large and small opponents and
drill them until they are second nature.

You should not have to change the kata to do this. Think of kata as
the framework and your ohyo as the body. Everyone has the same
basic skeleton, but we all have different bodies. Some more than others.
:jaw-dropping:

These may not be the ohyo that Itosu/Higoanna/Chibana/etc. have
handed down, but at least your kata will have meaning to you.

Peace.

 

[exile]

Kata bunkai (analyizing) can reveal many applications (ohyo) to one
movement. There is a book out, I can't remember the author, called 75
down blocks. In it, the author shows 75 different applications to the down
block. If you take this theory and apply it to all/most of what you are
practicing, you will have enough to spend your life discovering.

Rick Clark. Incredibly good MA book, one of the best ever written.

I agree that you can find 5 or more applications to a set of movements,
but IMO, if you train too many, you will not have the conditioning for
an automatic response. Your mind will be going through too many
senarios. Find a few that work against large and small opponents and
drill them until they are second nature.

The Hick's Law thing. I agree. But the alternatives are in there, even if you strive (as you should) to keep your options few, simple, robust and easily retained...

You should not have to change the kata to do this. Think of kata as
the framework and your ohyo as the body. Everyone has the same
basic skeleton, but we all have different bodies. Some more than others.
:jaw-dropping:

These may not be the ohyo that Itosu/Higoanna/Chibana/etc. have
handed down, but at least your kata will have meaning to you.

Peace.

I agree again. Understand as many of the different bunkai as you can, but be selective, stick to what works for you, and train it hard and realistically. I can't imagine going wrong, following that prescription.

 

[Ray B]

By all means, never be content with what you have worked out.
Always strive for better. Never believe your ohyo is the end all.
Sometimes it's just learning how to execute it better.

Parter training with different sized partners with different abilities.

Peace.

 

[dancingalone]

Gentlemen, I love kata applications as much as any of you, but I certainly won't ignore someone the stature of Ota Sensei when he claims certain moves in his lineage aren't meant to have an application to them.

My lineage in goju-ryu karate shares the same opinion as Ota. Sometimes a movement is strictly to practice balance or strength or <gasp> even for artistic merit. Nagamine, the founder of matsubayashi shorin-ryu, was an Okinawan folk dance enthusiast. His line, of which Ota is a part of, certainly believes in kata as a transmission of fighting techniques and concepts but from their viewpoint, it's probably overdoing it to say EVERYTHING (as designed by the pattern's creator) has a martial purpose to it.

Of course that's just what our lines think. Your system or ryu-ha may say differently and that's fine. I just wanted to express the opinion from this side of the aisle.

 

[exile]

Gentlemen, I love kata applications as much as any of you, but I certainly won't ignore someone the stature of Ota Sensei when he claims certain moves in his lineage aren't meant to have an application to them.

My lineage in goju-ryu karate shares the same opinion as Ota. Sometimes a movement is strictly to practice balance or strength or <gasp> even for artistic merit. Nagamine, the founder of matsubayashi shorin-ryu, was an Okinawan folk dance enthusiast. His line, of which Ota is a part of, certainly believes in kata as a transmission of fighting techniques and concepts but from their viewpoint, it's probably overdoing it to say EVERYTHING (as designed by the pattern's creator) has a martial purpose to it.

Of course that's just what our lines think. Your system or ryu-ha may say differently and that's fine. I just wanted to express the opinion from this side of the aisle.

OK, this post seems a good point to try to crystallize the discussion around some more general issues about the interpretation of kata. The question of whether there are non-combat moves in various kata has been bothering me for a long time, and I've been trying to see the question in terms of the kind of system that kata correspond to, which is part of a more general family of systems in which units of form are combined by certain rules, applying to such units, to yield interpretations (which are of various kinds, depending what kind of system we're talking about). Two other systems of the same kind are genetics and human/artificial languages. And in all such systems, there are elements of form which don't correspond to parts of the interpretation. Here's what I mean:

(i) Genetics

The formal units are certain large molecules; the rules of combination are determined by chemical valence and the physics of the molecular bond; the interpretation of these combinations of macromolecules represent sequences proteins (= tissue), and, at a larger scale, whole organisms.​

(ii) Natural and artificial languages

The formal units are words in NLs (such as human languages), or logical symbol types in ALs (such as logical constants and variables); the rules of combination are defined by the syntax of the language; the interpretation of these combinations of terminal symbols corresponds to truth conditions in human languages and logic, and computational operations in computer languages.​

(iii) Kata

The formal units are specific movements (labeled 'down block', 'double knife-hand block', 'middle punch' etc.), the rules of combination are... well, that's part of what's at issue here.... and the interpretation of these combinations corrends to the fighting moves a defender uses in responding to a violent attack. Basic to this way of putting is the well-known fact that Itosu repackaged karate for school use in a way that deflected attention from the extremely brutal effect of some of the movements Okinawan karate consisted of, using misleading labels such as `pivot', 'punch', 'stance' and 'block' for combat elements that might be more accurately described, respectively, as 'throw', 'neck twist', 'joint break' and 'damaging strike'.​

Think of chromosomes, languages, and the kata of a given karate style (including TSD/TKD, i.e., Korean karate) as made up of certain terminal elements, where only certain combinations of those elements are allowed by the system. In each case we have a set of strings of elements&#8212;of certain large molecules, terminal symbols and movement types respectively&#8212;which are allowed, whereas others are disallowed, i.e., not part of the organic possibilities, forms of the language, or kata set. Each such string corresponds to a particular interpretation in the semantics of the system (tissue, meaning, combat action). Now the question is, do we know of any elements in the first two that are semantically empty&#8212;that play no role in the interpretation?

The answer is, yes, definitely. We know that there are sequences of macromolecules on many chromosomes which appear to do no work: they may contain subsidiary information for the genetic 'readers', the ribosomes, which translate RNA/DNA into protein sequences, but we do not know just what it is they're there for, and it looks as though the tissues the chromosomes in question would encode would be same without these sequences. We know that there are expressions in artificial languages like prop logic which contain parts that are irrelevant to the final interpretation: if p,q are propositions, then pVpVq has exactly the same truth conditions as pVq, so that one of the iterations of p here does no work. And in natural languages, the word there in

There's a lion in the closet.

does no semantic work, because the conditions under which this sentence is true are exactly the same as those under which

A lion is in the closet.

are true. There adds nothing. It seems to be true that in mapping from units of form, combined by syntactic rules, to a semantic result, there is plenty of room for semantically empty forms. Notice that the first of these sentences contains exactly one more word than is present in the second, yet the meanings are the same (there is no state of affairs in which the first is true in which the second is false, or vice versa). It follows that there contributes nothing to the meaning of the sentence in which it appears; syntacticians call such semantically empty forms 'dummy elements'. They take up space according to the formal rules of combination of the language, the syntax, but contribute nothing to the semantics.

Kata are similarly a formal system&#8212;basic elements combined by rules to yield strings or sequences which denote something in a specific domain (in this case, combat actions). So it would not be especially strange if we encountered dummy elements in kata as well, like the there in the above sentence, or the that in I believe (that) Robin is a spy. But it's an empirical question, not something that you can decide in advance.

The syntactic rules which govern English requires the appearance of an overt subject for each declarative sentence (as vs. languages such as Spanish, Italian, Greek or Mandarin). In the same way, the syntactic rules which govern certain classes of TKD forms require an H-shaped performance space, with symmetrical movements on the right and left of the 'crossbar' and the movements along each crossbar being mirror images of each other. Things like the embusen rule, the requirement that the performer of the kata ends up facing the same direction as the one in which s/he did when the kata began, and various other formal conventions, are all part of the rules for stringing movements into kata; they come with the territory, so to speak, in much the same way that English sentences require an overt subject.

Given this basic framework&#8212;that kata are governed by certain rules of combination which put basic elements (kihon movements) together to form sequences which have certain combat meanings (typically, each such combination has five or six or so 'meaningful' subcombinations, each of which represents a complete attack-initiation/defense-completion scenario)&#8212;one of the big problems with interpreting kata is to decide when a given movement or movement sequence is just part of the formal requirements, vs. being 'meaningful' (in terms of combat content). Take, say, taikyoku shodan. You can think of the first four moves (downblock+lungepunch&#8212;(180º turn)&#8212;> downblock + lungepunch) as simply a two sequence combat scenario to the left followed by the same movement to the right. A plausible bunkai for the downblock+lungepunch sequence would be:

(A)

(i) Attacker, face to face with defender, grabs defender's forearm, shirt, etc. with his right hand; defender closes right fist over attacker's right hand, pivots 90º away from attacker pulling attacker's right arm straight, pinning attacker's arm by thrusting left forearm into attacker's right arm above the elbow and driving bodyweight into the pin to hyperextend the elbow joint, forcing attacker's upper body down.

(ii) Defender pulls left forearm out of the pin and delivers left-arm elbow spear-thrust strike to attacker's face, immediately followed by downward striking knifehand or hammerfist strike to attacker's lowered larynx, exposed by preceding elbow strike.

(iii) Defender applies muchimi-shift of striking left hand to gripping left hand, immobilizing the injured attacker's head by gripping his hair or ear, and steps forward to deliver finishing righthand punch to attacker's lowered head (strike to jaw or, pulling his head backward, again striking and damaging exposed throat).​

The same bunkai are supplied in moves 3 and 4 of the kata, for a grab by the left-hand, i.e., the sequences 1/2 and 3/4 are just mirror images.

But it is entirely possible and realistic to see moves 3 and 4 as continuations of the the scenario depicted in (1), as follows:

(B)

(i) Attacker, face to face with defender, grabs defender's forearm, shirt, etc. with his right hand; defender closes right fist over attacker's right hand, pivots 90º away from attacker pulling attacker's right arm straight, pinning attacker's arm by thrusting left forearm into attacker's right arm above the elbow and driving bodyweight into the pin to hyperextend the elbow joint, forcing attacker's upper body down.

(ii) Defender pulls left forearm out of the pin and delivers left-arm elbow spear-thrust strike to attacker's face, immediately followed by downward striking knifehand or hammerfist strike to attacker's lowered larynx, exposed by preceding elbow strike.

(iii) Defender applies muchimi-shift of striking left hand to gripping left hand, immobilizing the injured attacker's head by gripping his hair or ear, and steps forward to deliver finishing righthand punch to attacker's lowered head (strike to jaw or, pulling his head backward, again striking and damaging exposed throat).

(iv) Defender applies muchimi again, gripping the attacker's ear with his right hand, and attacker's right shoulder or arm with his left hand, and pivoting 180º to throw the attacker to the defender's right,

(v) then stepping in to deliver a third strike to the attacker's head with the left fist.​

In other words, in Taikyoku Shodan, moves 3 and 4 can simply be the mirror of moves 1 and 2, as in (A), or the four moves 1&#8211;4 can constitute a single longer fighting sequence as per (B).

I see this as a kind of 'parsing problem': in working out bunkai for maximally effective oyo, how should you group the separate movements recorded in the kata so that the result gives you the best applications? The problem is that kata, like natural languages, are ambiguous: a single string can have several different structures (e.g., I saw the student with the telescope). A similar problem arises in genetics, where it turns out that a single string of chromosomal molecules can be read by the ribosomal 'translator' in one of two or more different ways, yielding very different results depending on where the ribosome starts the reading operation that maps the chromosome into protein tissue.

Even in Okinawa, where the bunkai analysis traditions are unquestionably the best-preserved, it seems possible that different lineages could have interpreted the parsing of a given kata in two different ways, along the lines of (A) vs. (b). In the interpretation (A), the 180º pivot is a purely formal element, a part of the syntax of the kata but semantically empty (devoid, that is, of fighting content, only present as part of the 'display', as a transition to repetition of moves 1/2 on the opposite side); in this sense, it's like the empty pronoun there in my example above from English. In the interpretation (B), though, the pivot has very definite combat content; it's a crucial part of the throw which, in (B), is a continuation of the counterattack following (iii). Two different interpretations, each of which might have gone with one of two different karate lineages. Neither is right or wrong, but the founders of the '(A)-lineage', as we can call it, and of the '(B)-lineage', simply had different takes on the matter. This wouldn't be surprising. We know that Motobu vehemently disagreed with some of Funakoshi's bunkai for Niahanchi, and, without taking sides, it seems possible that they came to different respective conclusions without ever having gotten formal directions from Itosu, who I can well imagine might have been less than explicit about the bunkai that he taught (Motobu certainly thought that Itosu had concealed the 'true' bunkai from Funakoshi, but then, he seems to have had a strong personal dislike for GF, so... ?)

My point is just that unless you've gone out of your way, as logicians and computer scientists have, to eliminate ambiguity from your formal system, it's entirely possible to have ambiguous parses of some given sequence in your system, with people deriving different views of the way in which the syntactic rules have combined the basic elements to yield complete structures, and therefore holding different views of how those structures should be interpreted. And even the most distinguished practitioners might take different perspectives on the right parsing, in the case of such ambiguity....

 

[Victor Smith]

Hmmm, I see things in simpler light.

When I studied Isshinryu there were no applications studied for the kata, and several of my instructors trained on Okinawa.

Having no rules, after long training I worked out my own rules about what a technique might be and the principles in which any technique application might be applied.

Then I met the late Sherman Harrill, who returned from Okinawa with 45 self defense techniques that he worked out came from our kata. Over the next 40 years he worked out thousands of others. I know because the notes I kept from our brief clinics together were for 800 applications from Isshinryu's 8 kata.

One of the first principles I worked out was any technique sequence can be used to drop anyone with work. So 'pose' kamae, pause points when inserted into someone's attack just as executed in the kata can drop people and do.

Of course I don't have any rules telling me that it won't work.

Of course too, I also work at using each potential in Sanchin to drop people too.

Works for me,

 

[exile]

Hmmm, I see things in simpler light.

I don't really think what I was saying was all that complex; if you think of kata as a code—like languages, or the genetic code, or any other—then what I was talking about comes with the territory. It was really Anko Itosu who set up kata that way: rather than an explicit description of actual combat actions, he structured the 'delivery' of kata so that you have to decipher those actions on the basis of how simple basic moves are combined. My point was just that any time you have a body of knowledge which is, in this specific sense, encoded, you are going to wind up facing the same kinds of problems—which includes, in many cases, the problem of ambiguity: multiple interpretations of the the 'same' sequence.

The reason it's useful to think of kata in terms of other code-types is that, like them, you don't get very far at all if you try to take them literally. People who say they don't think kata have combat utility routinely fall into this trap....

When I studied Isshinryu there were no applications studied for the kata, and several of my instructors trained on Okinawa.

Having no rules, after long training I worked out my own rules about what a technique might be and the principles in which any technique application might be applied.

Then I met the late Sherman Harrill, who returned from Okinawa with 45 self defense techniques that he worked out came from our kata. Over the next 40 years he worked out thousands of others. I know because the notes I kept from our brief clinics together were for 800 applications from Isshinryu's 8 kata.

One of the first principles I worked out was any technique sequence can be used to drop anyone with work.

This is my impression also—at least, for the technique sequences that make up the classic kata. There's a very good reason, I believe, why it was those sequences which endured and became the foundation of a whole family of TMAs, and why others that might be formally possible were never put together or didn't survive...

So 'pose' kamae, pause points when inserted into someone's attack just as executed in the kata can drop people and do.

Can you elaborate on this a little bit more, Victor?

 

[dancingalone]

So 'pose' kamae, pause points when inserted into someone's attack just as executed in the kata can drop people and do.

I've been taught that sometimes the more posed positions (like the swastika block in pinan godan) are interrupted attacks. Only the starting position or even a transition is shown in the kata, and you have to have your sensei teach you the rest. The example I give is an obvious entry into an over/under throw like aikido's shihonage...

 

[dancingalone]

Excellent post, by the way, Exile. I enjoyed the explanation using the language metaphor. The premise you make explains why I always enjoyed trading kata and kata bunkai with other karate-ka particularly if they come from a different system than I do.