Karate without Kata?

[Dobbersky]

Today, people can make great sounding music without having to know how to play any musical instruments.

If you view Kata based Karate - purely as a combat skill, or self protection system, then there are far more efficient methods to achieve your end goal.

However; people learn how to play a piano, for example, not merely to make a nice sound, but as part of the challenge and sense of achievement that goes with acquiring the skills required to play.

Although kata may have existed as the most functional way to transmit and preserve fighting methods (at the time), they have evolved into what we see today as a “discipline” that goes way beyond it surface level combat effectiveness. Kata is very much part of "budo" in this respect.

The thing about practicing kata is that you can always improve on it and as such this famous quote springs to mind:

“It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.”

I can fully understand why that way of thinking isn’t everyone cup of tea and I am not saying practicing non kata based martial arts can’t yield similar rewards, but I can’t help feeling that kata is what makes karate complete as a martial art - rather than just a codified method of violence.

Sojobo

SOLID POST!!!!!!!!!

[Liver Punch]

I can’t help feeling that kata is what makes karate complete as a martial art - rather than just a codified method of violence.

Sojobo

I've never before in my life even entertained the idea that someone would be interested in something wasn't a codified method of violence. Wow...my mind is blown.

[brickshooter]

The thing about practicing kata is that you can always improve on it and as such this famous quote springs to mind:

“It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.”

Sojobo

IMO, here lies the greatest benefit of Kata. To strive to achieve artistic perfection, one has to repeat that pesky Kata thousands of times. Resulting in repeating techniques tens of thousands of times.

[andym]

Lets use the analogy of dance. Dance = martial arts. Ballet= karate, a style within the over all art. Ballets defining characteristic is to dance up on the toes/points. So if you produce a 'ballet', were no one goes up on their points, but stays flat footed , it is no long ballet, it is dance. Also, being simplistic, kata translate as form. Form means , the way something is. Enough said !

[sojobo]

Enough said !

Well... not really, is it?

Ballet is not defined by whether or not the dancer is "En Pointe".

Sojobo

[tallgeese]

I like the idea of a "codified system of violence". Props there. However, it goes to my whole idea of martial arts. That's exactly what they are at the core. No more or less.

Kata was simply a part of training so one could do more efficient violence. I've never said that one shouldn't do kata. There are plenty of good reasons for doing it. However, if you're learning a codified system of violence (I'm stealing that by the way ) then there are better methods to use that more adequately prepare you for a fight.

If you want to do kata, and ma's for that matter, for other, non-combat related reasons then they serve any number of purposes. I just think that too much emphasis gets placed on them for no other reason than habit and a failure to adequately assess the realities of combat.

[SAAMAG]

I read an online blog about a nidan black belt...who looked great in his kata, bunkai, and ippon/sanbon kumite.

But what was odd was that he'd never done jiyu kumite. Upon his first experience doing it with another school, he was literally destroyed by lower ranking belts. True story.

He said that his prior school always focused on kata. So where does the value lie? In historical value? Because this example seems to illustrate that the value of Kata stops once someone has internalized how to do the basic techniques.

Interesting that the dichotomy so far seems to be that it is the essence of karate, but that it's not necessary to "karate" from a skills standpoint. Seems to fall in line with what most experience.

[tallgeese]

I am one of those guys who really think that it is in no way the "essance" of karate. The essance of karate is unarmed combat. I view it as a training modality that has become more in the minds of many practitioners. But that's just me.

[sojobo]

I like the idea of a "codified system of violence". Props there. However, it goes to my whole idea of martial arts. That's exactly what they are at the core. No more or less.

Kata was simply a part of training so one could do more efficient violence. I've never said that one shouldn't do kata. There are plenty of good reasons for doing it. However, if you're learning a codified system of violence (I'm stealing that by the way ) then there are better methods to use that more adequately prepare you for a fight.

I disagree, Karate is NOT a codified system of violence, because by definition that would make it an unwarrented, extreme form of aggression.

Karate is a martial art that includes the practice of combat skills, but eventually goes way beyond. Kata is part of that process, but if that's not where you want to go then fair enough.

sojobo

[tallgeese]

I like the idea of a "codified system of violence". Props there. However, it goes to my whole idea of martial arts. That's exactly what they are at the core. No more or less.

Kata was simply a part of training so one could do more efficient violence. I've never said that one shouldn't do kata. There are plenty of good reasons for doing it. However, if you're learning a codified system of violence (I'm stealing that by the way ) then there are better methods to use that more adequately prepare you for a fight.

I disagree, Karate is NOT a codified system of violence, because by definition that would make it an unwarrented, extreme form of aggression.

 

Karate is a martial art that includes the practice of combat skills, but eventually goes way beyond. Kata is part of that process, but if that's not where you want to go then fair enough.

sojobo

I don't think that simply looking at karate as a systematized form of violence is unwarranted at all, or that this is in some way negative. It's a spelled out method of teaching someone to fight. One can add all they want to it, but before all the connotations with karate came to be in the modern era, it was a method of fighting, codified and systematized by the soldiers using it so they could be better at it. We added everything else to it later.

As to it be extremely aggressive, well, maybe but that doesn't really make it unwarranted. Violence, like most things, can get used for ill or good. It's another tool to achieve a goal. If your goal is defeating another for a purpose that defends your life (as the soldiers who developed the origins of what we're talking about here did, or we do in response to high levels of unprovoked aggression against ourselves) then there's no reason not to treat it as such.