Which Kata Best Demonstrate the Core of your Practiced style

[DaveB]

Interesting discussion.

Quite a few people have said Kushanku / kanku Dai is representative of there style because its made up of the Pinan / Heinan series.

These series of kata are shared between many styles or karate so how does one kata define style when shared between many styles?

Is it not more accurate to say the performance of the kata in my style represents that style?

As said already its all a bit misleading as there is discussion that the pinan/heinan were changed to be more simplistic to teach to school children so they have no style.

Also as said already a kata can represent a whole style in itself.

Take Chinto/Gankaku as an example. The story for this is about a pirate washed up on the shores of japan stealing food from local farms. The local lord sends his best fighter to dispatch the pirate from the lands. The Pirate fights the lords champion and wins easily. In defeat the champion asked the pirate how he won and in exchange for a bed and food he would like to be taught by the pirate in his ways of combat. The pirate agreed. His name was Chinto.....the kata represents how he fights. hence the introduction of things like craine stance not previously seen in the lead up katas. Therefore it is chinto's style....not Wado Ryu's or Shotokans...

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