Free ebook from the writer of 24fightingchickens.com:

http://www.24fightingchickens.com/category/kata/

Kata: the folk dances of Shotokan

Might be of interest to people

This is fairly old material, internet wise. The following are what I wrote in 2008 on another forum. It will only really make sense after the articles have been read.

" An honest view of Shotokan pre 1990's,prior to the introduction of Bunkai to the style. And Bunkai was only introduced to shotokan in the 1990's. Remember that the introduction of both long stances and free-sparring/ Ji-Yu Kumite , as this is what he means when talking of sparring are all developments of the mid-20th century. These fundamentally altered the way Karate was and is practiced , and the source of these changes ; SHOTOKAN .

N.B. I studied Shotokan from 1973 to '76 with Billy Higgins and left to do J.K.D. and kickboxing because I thought the same and abandoned Kata.

1979 I came to realize that sparring was as flawed as any other training method . I then ended up doing Goju Ryu with Tony Christian. Still with him to this day as a 5th dan student, so I have an interesting prospective on this , and also some information form Shotokan Master M. HARADA , when I've more time.

In the late 1990's I took the opportunity to train with Master Harada , a truly great,master teacher of Karate-do. Over the weekend I was with him he told me the following tale as to how Shotokan developed and expanded it's syllabus of Kata either side of w.w.2. ; During the summer break from university, he set off for Okinawa by ferry with a letter of introduction to an old teacher on the island. It took almost a week to get there . He then spent a month learning the Kata that he'd been sent to collect. He then returned to the the J.K.A. , again another weeks travel . The next few weeks were spent demonstrating , teaching and "changing the Kata to conform". (This term sticks in my memory .) With all this to be done before he went back to university. Most importantly though, due to the demands of precision in learning the Kata , in such a limited time, it was impossible to learn any Bunkai. Thus post war Shotokan DID NOT practise or study Bunkai . Something Harada readily admitted."

Thanks for the detailed reply andym

Yeah I know it's relatively old but I rediscovered it when reading background info for the kata thread. Had read articles previously but didn't know you could get the whole thing in pdf.

That also helps to explain why none of the masters that went on to found TKD and other Korean kwans didn't do any bunkai for their Shotokan forms, or their future forms.

Excellent read thanks for sharing.

Old doesn't mean bad. Thanks for sharing.

Patrick

I've just got my copy printed. Can't wait to tear into it. Thanks, DWx! Great find.

Makes me wonder what you can learn about your karate bunkai if you dig into Kung Fu forms unless that is to lost also.

Makes me wonder what you can learn about your karate bunkai if you dig into Kung Fu forms unless that is to lost also.

Somebody came up with the bunkai for the kata. Even if its "lost", you can find it again. Perhaps it won't be exactly the same, but it will work for you.

I've been reading a bit in the book already. One note the author keyed on was the Chinese practitioner's apparent willingness to seek out any kind of form, and then alter it if they felt it needed to be altered for them to use, in contrast to the Okinawan and Japanese idea of "standardizing" the katas into having a right and wrong way of them being done.