DaveB

Hi, this post raises some good questions. To the first point about different styles identifying the same kata, is because they are not really different styles in the way most people think of styles. The Okinawan teaching paradigm encourages variation by the individual once there is a level of mastery. That is why there are so many variations on the same kata. Every senior student should be doing the kata in his own way and every master should have their own unique take on things. The creation of the various ryu was a shift away from this mentality to a more Japanese way But ultimately all the styles that practice kanku dai, Naihanchi and/or Pinan/hiean are practicing Shorin ryu. That is the "style". Some could and do argue that the Japanese ryu are doing something else, but it's a long debate. The Pinan weren't changed to be more simplistic for school children, they ARE the change from koryu kata like kanku dai and Chinto. The whole taught to school children thing is a bit misleading because when it happened, school children in Okinawa were teenagers not toddlers and karate was introduced as a means of instilling discipline as preparation for military service. The students were intended to drill the Pinan but to seek out a master to understand them. The Pinan are a self defence set that are equally as fundamental and definitive of modern karate as kanku dai. That brings us on to your last point, about the individual kata consisting of a whole fighting method. By all accounts this is true, but it is the old way, pre ryu days. In those times karateka would teach 3-5 kata and study them deeply, making use of the techniques and tactics in combat. When karate entered the mainstream it was a time of cultural revolution and the old ways were being consigned to history. The trend moved to learning a form superficialy and patching together a few applications and mechanical elements from a range of kata, with general fighting concepts that gel the whole ryu together . Though not universal the method stuck in many schools. So while one could study deeply to learn Chinto's style, people are normally taught to combine this element of movement from Chinto's style and combine it with this bit of hip use from naihanchi etc etc. With this in mind one could argue that the pinan are the first modern ryu and probably the most genuinely representative kata of all the Shuri-te derived schools as they are the first conglomeration of kata that blend into something unique

The same goes for shotokan as well. The area I've highlighted is something that is often forgotten by instructors, and many practitioners go without ever learning. I have to say, I think you guys are overstating things a bit. There are blocks in karate, there have always been blocks in karate. Just about every Okinawan master ever has been photographed demonstrating blocks from karate. If there were no blocks in karate how did all the karate instructors in the world teach almost identical techniques, while next to no one learned the methods discussed until the modern Bunkai re-engineers started discussing it? If there are no blocks in karate what happened to them? Chinese martial arts all make use of blocking techniques and karate is Okinawanised kungfu, so where did they go? There are blocks; there are not only blocks, but they are there. If we abandon the basics, we are as much in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water as we are of moving beyond the artificial restrictions placed upon the art.

I tend to work from movement. I start the bag swinging and try to keep my forehead as close to the bag as possible. As it swings back I use stance based footwork combined with head movement and torso movement to slip around the bag but maintain my distance. Then I start hitting. I use a full range of striking techniques from the boxing set to knees elbows and knife hands. The force of the impacts changes the trajectory of the bag which makes the footwork required quite challenging and the angles at which you strike unfamiliar.

Can you explain why you believe that to be true? To play devils advocate: When Gichin Funakoshi compiled his original 15 kata syllabus it formed a complete system of karate education in self defense. This is one of the first attempts at a kata syllabus that goes beyond 3-5 forms and so it was designed to be studied differently. Funakoshi pioneered a method of kata study whereby you learn the forms in sequence and technique only, before returning to the start in order to study and develop martial skill through application study. Funakoshi changed the content of some forms to minimise overlap with other forms as there were more than usual, but also to minimise over-specialisation. More forms mean less time for niggling details. In understanding that variations of individual techniques are the fruit of application study, and that details like a wrist position in a form is not training that benefits the student physically. Standardised movements, easier to teach and learn and more athletic in nature were given as replacement for the more intricate techniques. As he developed this method further the order of the kata changed. He went from the old deep study method of learning core kata deeply before doing the same to peripheral forms (that had kanku dai as the 3rd form) to a sequence that takes coordination difficulty as paramount. This is what we have today, with Pinan shodan and nidan reversed and kanku dai way down the list. All this modification towards a larger syllabus produced a set of kata that built directly upon one another, the gaps in the early forms being filled in by later ones and vice versa. Shotokan's kata though retaining the material for deep study are no longer designed to be taken alone. To give examples of this is difficult though because we have so little idea of what the kata looked like originally. Funakoshi's lineage is through Matsumura over Itosu so Shorin ryu is not a strong enough comparison. Furthermore due to the development of the ryu, all of which use large syllabus's, they're kata have all been through varying degrees of the same process. Matsumura Seito Shorin ryu is the clearest example of the difference between kanku dai with standardised techniques and old style detailed in depth kata. Here's one to look at. By my assessment, at least some of the technique that is missing from Kanku dai can be found in hiean sandan. So in summary, failing to study the hiean kata prior to kanku dai means that you are missing a portion of the full application potential of the kanku dai system.

By looking at the original kata sequence published by Funakoshi, the kata are given in such a way as to signal how they are grouped. The first three kata are the core "system" kata: those that detail the methods central to the fighting strategy. The next kata are the sets that support each of these kata, so after the Pinan, the next few kata are the supplementary forms to the Kusanku fighting method. Excluding Jitte and Jion as an obvious stand alone system, that gives the supplementary kata for kanku dai as Bassai dai, Empi (Wanshu), Hangetsu (Siesan) and Gankaku (Chinto). So, at least in terms of Shotokan derived kata, the relationship between Bassai and kanku is one of alternative techniques; methods building on different aspects of kanku dai and highlighting usage in different situations. Bassai dai follows the adage given by Funakoshi, turning disadvantage into advantage I.e. retaking the initiative. Such methods can be reinterpreted into attacking methods too.

I wish I had the resources to train with him. Great videos.

Spartacus, welcome to karate, at least as it is for most of us not lucky enough to live near a Martialy focused school of Okinawan lineage. It is a bitter pill to swallow, realising that your training has gaps, but you are one of the lucky ones. You have been able to walk into a school where your needs are met. When I had the same realisation Geoff Thompson and Iain Abernethy had not published anything on the subject, there was no band wagon to join. By and large the schools around me are still focused on standard sport or budo based Karate to this day. The only option when I was going through it was to train other styles and take the lessons back to karate myself. The thing to bear in mind is just that you have not trained in two different schools with a break in between. You are one person training on one path continuously. Everything you encounter adds to that journey because it is all experience. What you are learning now may seem a million miles from the training before, but unless you used a different body it will all gel together in you in the end.

WH, you're writing above was particularly interesting to me because while it seemed we come at the kata from different angles as I read on I found myself concurring with your thoughts based on my own study. Would you mind going into more detail/giving examples regarding the bold text above?

There is no confusion on my part. You argue that the inclusion of the heian as a component of learning kanku dai offers the chance to compartmentalise lessons that come together in the final kata. These lessons are in movements similar to those in the longer kata. However if training in this way is beneficial, there is nothing stopping you from doing this to kanku dai. Split the kata into six sections, train them sequentially and revise the older lessons as the themes recur in the later parts. As I said, the lack of an answer is answer enough. I appreciate your efforts.

Kanku, I appreciate the effort that you and Wado heretic put in, but honestly such confusion over a question is answer enough. I recommend you look at Bill Burgars book, 5 years one kata. It gives a good guide on how one can develop a single kata into a whole fighting system. I take a different approach but it's a very good book.

I'm not looking for a perfect answer, just one that supports Pers's assertion that it is vital to learn the hiean before learning kanku dai, and though eloquent, it still falls short. The context of the question was the assertion Pers made. I would argue that it is not the different movements that contribute to a students kanku dai but the movements that are most similar. The assertion Pers has made rests on whether or not you measure the quality of a kankudai performance after giving the student the equivalent amount of training time as they would have allotted to learning the heian kata. I.e. Spend two years doing heian then 3 months on kanku dai vs two years and 3 months doing kanku dai or 2 years doing some other kata before kanku dai. What Pers effectively said was that the person using the heian would look better/know more/fight better, (pick your preference) than the others. I am trying to grasp what Pers feels he gets/gives through the hiean that make this the case. The possibility exists that Pers was comparing a raw beginner being taught kanku dai vs the guy who has 2+ years of training after learning the heian kata. But that would be a pointless comparison because one has training and one does not.

Interesting stuff but all very beside the point. My point was not that the hiean are inferior or not needed, quite the contrary. I am just asking for a little more detail to support a vague but much repeated assertion. Saying that something is a step, doesn't tell me what you gain from taking that step, which is what I asked. You're confusing me with Mark B.

I base my opinion from my 30 years experience in shotokan karate , I have no experience in other schools of karate . shotokan karate is based on building a strong foundation from start , hian katas are part of that building block that take a novice student step by step further up the ladder ,it is a long and slow process as there are no short cuts in achieving a higher level . Now if there are schools that don't do it this way and skip hian katas and go straight into brown belt katas like kankudai ,Basai dai and so on then so be it . I don't agree with it but good luck to those who do it that way . I don't think they can understand or perform it the way a student who has gone through rigorous training in hian katas for two or three years before doing brown belt katas . You didn't answer the question being asked. I am trying to understand what precisely a student gains from going through the hiean kata, that he cannot gain from spending the time studying kanku dai? You state that things are done a certain way in Shotokan and that Kanku dai is a brown belt kata. But Gichin Funakoshi, the Shoto in Shotokan, published a syllabus in 1925, in which kanku dai was the third kata. Why would he have done that if what you say is correct. We also know that Kanku dai was created some decades before the heian kata were created. If what you say about the necessary progression is correct, how did they manage? Please don't see this as an attack. These are three questions that I genuinely am curious about your answers to.

Funakoshi was an old man when he started teaching in Japan. Most of those who spoke about training under him caught him not long before death. It's not surprising he'd slowed a bit. If you want to hear real criticism of Funakoshi, track down the more zealous students of Shorin ryu who base their argument on how different Shotokan is to their Itosu derived karate. Where Itosu became more famous because of his expansion of karate into schools and creating a wave of new teachers who spread his art, everyone assumed that he was Funakoshi's main teacher. If you read carefully GF's words and compare his karate you see actually he was Anko Azato's student and he picked up some stuff from Itosu as he was his masters best friend. Azato was a student of Bushi Matsumura which is why there are differences between how Funakoshi does Itosu kata like pinan and naihanchi and how mabuni did them, most notably the lack of cat stance. Motobu calls cat stance "floating foot" and says it is bad budo, for dancing not fighting. This is obviously something he learned from Matsumura as cat stance is also missing from the Matsumura family style. You are right, you can be a good teacher without great fighting ability, but that doesn't mean the person teaching you well, isn't teaching you a pile of excrement while teaching you well. Look again at what I wrote and what's in the article. The divide being drawn is between the old and the new. Funakoshi in particular was very explicit on how different karate had become as he aged. What you think of as the great skill of these mens' martial descendants is great skill in the only karate we know. True old school karate may have involved the ability to weave baskets while fighting and it is the lack of a finely crafted basket that these elders were so against. Sadly the indicators suggest it wasn't basket weaving that was lost, but real combat relevant elements. Possibly much of the locking methods, bone crunching conditioning and close in fighting methods. But honestly we all knew that. Bunkai has only been a big deal for most karateka in the last decade or so. But what we have in the now corroborated view of Itosu as a bit not good, is the idea that the new karate wasn't just a development by someone who knew the old stuff but saw the need for change but someone who had never quite got to grips with the old stuff and taught others his way that cut out those bits he'd fallen down on. So what do we do with this? Get all defensive about the style you love and deny everything? After all the old masters were demi gods, totally infallible. We could, but what do we gain except a chip on the shoulder against history. I propose going forward with eyes open. Acknowledging why we each train and looking honestly if the art we follow matches our goals. If you want self defense that can be hard because we might not know what it looks like, but in the information age it's not too hard to find out. Ultimately it is how we train now that determines whether we reach our goals or not. What some dead Okinawan dude did or did not do is neither here nor there, but the lesson of history is always be mindful of the now. Don't just follow blindly for a decade before bothering to ask, "will this fulfil my goals?". Understanding that those who laid the path were just people and that they do not have to walk it or live with the results. That is what I take from this. ...and a cool comeback against over-zealous Shorin guys B-)

We karate folk get very caught up in the idea of foundation development, but I think that often it is unnecessarily over simplifying things. It causes us to spend a long time on low value exercises and much less time learning to be functioning martial artists. I think these exercises you show have the same symptoms. The attack from an angle is an unnecessary step; you can go straight into moving. In fact I think a better path would be to move around the attack without any block, showing how to use various stances for pivoting and body shifting. After showing this formally, the students can learn to be more natural in their movements by making the attacks continuous for a minute using various kicks and punches. As the attacker speeds up and starts to try and make contact and the students begin getting tagged, you can then introduce parries: using the palm to deflect, and counter strike with the other hand. As the blows become stronger you switch to using the forearm to make contact with the more forward pressure/contact with the upper arm, remaining closer and either controlling the attack with the block or building a counter strike off it. A progression like that will get your students developing evasive footwork, balance, an understanding of stance as natural dynamic techniques instead of static unnatural positions, how and when to use parries and forearm blocking, application of angles... And it will probably be much more fun. If any one stage is too difficult just stay on it until they develop. Honestly though, most people will be at the top end within 3 months. A drill like this can be cycled through over and over. At each stage of development the different parts of the drill will offer greater challenges. After all, which of us can avoid being hit using only reactive body shifting against a genuinely aggressive full speed opponent? Yet that is just stage 1 revisited. You can focus on technique over function whenever you wish. You can alter the focus to work on range, counter striking angles or strike selection, but you will always be practicing and developing functional useful skills.

Hi Mark, I generally agree, but it's always worth hearing the other side of the argument. If we always agree we never learn anything. If we keep silence in the face of disagreement we can never divine what part of our own belief is truth and what is fiction.

What is it that one gains in the hiean kata that they can't do without for learning kanku dai?

Unlimited application is usually an excuse for training no applications consistently. When looking at kata we only see techniques we already know so really there is limited value in stringing together endless variations. What it does give is a continuous avenue of skill development for more experienced players. We don't need kata to do that though, just a library of techniques. Also doing so gives no explanation for the specific sequences that were preserved in the forms. If we avoid either compromising the form or assuming starting positions or circumstances not supported by the preceding movements, we can quite quickly come to a set of relatively simple effective pragmatic applications for the kata movements. The most controversial method to get to this is to use blocks and strikes as blocks and strikes except where the sequences don't make sense in that way. Once you have one or two "primary" applications you have all the tools you need start hunting for the strategy built into the form. Supplement with a "feel" for the kata: the flow of momentum and power that comes from a flowing natural performance of the form (moving as if you're fighting). Your strategy will stem from and incorporate this flow.

Shotokan's core kata should be kanku dai, but one look at Shotokan fighters is enough to see that they don’t use kanku dai, not a back stance in sight. "Traditional" Japanese Shotokan is almost exclusively based on Taikyoku shodan aka Kihon kata. That is not a criticism mind; I think TS is a great kata, on a par with Sachin as a foundation.

Learning to move is an important part of kata, but it is just one component of what one is supposed to learn from kata study. The sequences of techniques teach skills in terms of specific moves such as locks throws and more specialised strikes. But as I've said many times before the real useful part that let's you go from dead kata to live fight, is the strategy and tactics that each kata sequence teaches. It's like looking at a morality tale: the story of the prodigal son is a straightforward story of a dumb kid wasting his money and coming home with his tail between his legs. But looking deeper it has several key ideas about how to treat others that we are meant to take into everyday life, not just the precise circumstances laid out in the story. Kata is the same. A big forearm block, into a throw with no intervening strike is telling us that in certain circumstances it is advantageous to go straight into the opponent and use his attack's momentum to maximise the throw. What we have to do is work out (if our teacher can't explain it) what that situation is and how to recognise it early enough to take advantage. Training a variety of throw variations builds skill and helps us learn more about the mechanical aspects of throw entry. Finally practicing a variety of entry's and throws against a variety of attacks in progressively more free form drills will cement the fact that the tactic of entering and using the opponents force is what you apply not the specific movements of the form. Understanding from the kata as a whole when and why to use the above is the called the strategy and this is the truly key lesson a kata can give us that shows us how to win fights. To continue the parable analogy, if you have enough Bible stories you can work out what Christianity is all about. So too if you have enough kata sequences you can work out how the kata recommends winning fights and apply that to all situations.

One of the most interesting points raised is towards the end of the article where it is suggested that by the standards of old karate, Itosu Anko, the guy credited with founding all of Shorin ryu, was a bit crap. This echoes Motobu, who says that Itosu was so bad that Matsumura stopped teaching him. What is interesting is that this article quotes a separate source for this idea that Itosu sucked and goes further in saying that the karate that followed him was full of holes.

The technique is a throw, dropping the opponent by driving his shoulder down as you kneel behind him. The initial kamae with the stacked fists on the hip, tell you that you are holding someone from their flank. You can take the principle of suddenly dropping your weight to effect a strike but this is not demonstrated in any effective way by the form it's self. Only the throw works if you are sticking to the kata.

I think that Funakoshi's rename of the kata to "viewing the sky" was emblematic of the two main elements of the system: evasion, letting your opponent see only air where you once were; and the high volume of throwing techniques that also cause the opponent to "view the sky" when they land on their backs. Consequently I view the whole kata through the lens of the air element. Strikes like shuto whip with speed and no weight to set up big gale force "gusts" that hit with the whole body like the elbow strikes. As stated, the kata implies whole body evasion and body shifting, so one never takes the force of a blow directly and uses tight spins and height changes to drop opponents on the ground.

If I have misunderstood you I apologise, but it read like you were suggesting that your philosophical description was the right one, when really they are all as unnecessary and disingenuous as each other.

Boxers manage to have whole careers, knocking out top notch athletes as they go, with punches they learned in the first month of their training, in the time being advocated as required tenure in a martial art to master the basics. Who in their right mind would make a self defense system that took a decade plus to get good at? Someone with servants to fight for him maybe? If you want to be a better person, volunteer at a charity. Help someone else, don't navel gaze while you punch.