Kata Questions

[aurik]

Uechi-Ryu originates from Pangai-Noon kung fu; when Kanbun Uechi (the founder) trained in China, he learned 3 kata: sanchin, seisan, and sanseiryu.  In terms of modern day Uechi-Ryu, these kata are now required at white belt, black belt (shodan), and yondan.  I would not say that "sanchin" is a beginner's kata, though.  It *is* the foundation of our style.  You can learn the basics of Sanchin fairly quickly, but we train it everyday, and we are tested on it at every level, from kukyu to judan.  One of our sayings is "all is in Sanchin", or "always return to Sanchin".  We can always describe a stance or kamae by "start with Sanchin, and then do this".  It isn't so much a beginner kata for us; it is the foundation of our style.

After Kanbun Uechi passed and his son Kanei took the reins, he realized that the leap in required understanding from Sanchin to Seisan was too great for many students to handle.  Therefore, he and some of his senior students created 3 new kata: Kanshiwa, Kanshu, and Seichin.  These "bridging kata" each introduce a small set of concepts which are then assembled into Seisan.  Each kata adds a few new techniques to a student's repertoire.  Therefore, when a student starts to learn, say, Seichin, there are only 3 new techniques they haven't already seen.  Likewise, Seisan only introduces 3 new techniques as well.

Once a student earns his black belt rank, there is still quite a gulf in understanding from Seisan to Sanseiryu.  Therefore, Kanei introduced two additional bridging kata; Seiryu and Kanchin.  Again, each of these kata only introduces 2 or 3 new techniques.  And once the student is proficient in Kanchin, there is really only one new technique introduced in the final kata of the system (sanseiryu).  However, Sanseiryu is a very long kata, and involves moving in eight directions, instead of just four.  So trying to learn new techniques AND learning the movement patterns would most likely be considered overwhelming (I don't yet know Sanseiryu).

So to circle back to the original question, in Uechi-Ryu, the kata are sequenced such that each kata introduces a new set of techniques, and each kata builds on the knowledge of previous kata.  For example, Sanchin introduces the basic stance, fundamental posture, fundamental striking techniques.  Kanshiwa introduces the idea of stepping off the line of attack, receiving and countering a strike, and a few other things.  One thing that is fundamental in Uechi-Ryu is also that anything you learn at one rank/kata level is supposed to be performed at *all* of your kata.  For example, at shodan, students are expected to start using hip pivoting to generate power.  This is expected to be included in *all* of their kata.