Here’s a nice series of drills for use with the sequences in Kanku-dai, by Iain Abernethy, a generous teacher.

I like it when Shotokan adopts kata from other schools. Now I’m waiting to see the Goju version of Kanku-dai!

Sensei Ohta has inhumanly good technique. Now, most of the high level Shotokan Instructors have remarkable technique. His is remarkable even in that exclusive group.

Here Sensei Kanazawa in his prime demonstrates Unsu; and I am impressed with his skill.

I strongly recommend his dvds on Amazon, by the way. And you can see my reviews of them on Amazon, here.

Jion is a tranquil kata. I like it very much. It has no athletic, flashy movements, so it’s not as popular for tournaments as Unsu, which has flashy, athletic movements, and is also a wonderful kata.

Not as tranquil, though!

It’s called ShotokanKarateAZ.

Enjoy!

This is the Kata Enpi, performed by Sensei Yahara, formerly JKA.

He has a reputation as a serious customer in a real fight, and I suspect that reputation is well deserved.

Hope you enjoyed this message. Back again soon!

• Question –    Why does a soccer player learn to dribble the ball around cones in practice?

• Answer -  Not to enter a dribbling around a cone competition but to dribble around an opponent so he can hopefully win the match.

• Question-     Why do we learn Kata?

• Answer   -    Not so we can look good at competition or get a new belt but to learn to fight. Yes Kata is teaching us how to fight

In Shotokan Karate and any other style of Karate there are mainly to forms of opinion floating around regarding Kata Bunkai – I would like to share my thoughts on it with you here and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Firstly for those who are new to Karate lets start with an explanation of what Bunkai means. Bunkai literally translates to “analysis” or “disassembly”. So when it is used in relation to Kata it means basically breaking the Kata down into smaller chunks. When it is broken down into smaller chunks, say 2 moves at a time, the idea then is to work out how you could apply those 2 moves to create either a defense/attack or attack/defense technique.

The 2 main trains of thought regarding Bunkai are that they are an essential part of Karate training or that they are a waste of time and effort as Katas were not meant to be applied to real fighting scenarios and were only meant for practice.

My belief is that they are an essential part of training but are rarely taught in Dojos as they don’t tend to be a part of the grading curriculum nor are they popular in competition Karate.

When Karate was an underground Art centuries ago on Okinawa island Katas were used as a way of teaching the basics however as they could not practice free flowing kumite techniques they used Bunkai as a way of applying what they had learnt to real fighting scenarios. Bunkai was the “Secret” weapon of Karateka. The Karateka of the day knew that if they mastered Bunkai they would then be able to defend themselves in the street if they were attacked.

Fast forward to the present day and what do most Dojo and Karateka focus on now, I would say the biggest emphasis is on competition Karate and on grading. The “Secret” weapon of karate has been forgotten and therefore one of the crucial pillars in the foundations of Karate is being left out.

Imagine a building if you forgot to install a pillar under one corner, it wouldn’t be very strong

I believe it is essential to practice, understand, discover and apply Bunkai in your training. In so doing you open your mind up to the literally hundreds of possibilities that the seemingly basic techniques can be used for. You build confidence in your ability to apply them and to defend yourself.

You build massive strength in your stances and in your techniques by actually applying the techniques with speed, power and precision in a manner that ensures they actually work. I mean what is the point in doing a Kata that just looks good – well there is no point other than looking good.

Every Kata has so much more meaning to it than just doing the movements. As I mentioned in my blog on Taikyoku Shodan (Kihon Kata), there are “Secrets” within each Kata, secrets that aren’t really secrets, you just have to open your mind up to what the Kata is teaching you. In the case of the Bunkai, each Kata is teaching you a number of very powerful fighting techniques, you just have to practice them.

For those who say they prefer Kumite to Kata, I say practice Kata with Bunkai in mind. When you can take down or score on an opponent from a Kata stance just think about how fast and affective you will be when you come to use a similar move in your Kumite. The unfortunate thing is that most people solely focus on Kumite as that is the exciting stuff, I mean they come along to a Dojo to learn to fight instead of this boring Kata stuff, uhm if only more emphasis was put on Bunkai the Kumite fighters would be so much better.

So don’t just go along to class next week and run through the movements because your Sensei said to. Don’t just look in the mirror and think you Kata looks good. While you are doing your Kata have the mindset of actually applying the moves. Ask yourself how affective they would actually be. If you aren’t learning and practicing Kata with this kind of mindset then you are only cheating yourself.

Put in some extra effort, if you aren’t practicing Bunkai in class then grab a partner after class and just take 10 or 15 minutes to start breaking down a Kata and seeing how you can apply the moves. If you do this after every class or even just once a week you will see a vast difference to your Kata and your over all Karate. Who knows if you get really good at it you may even be able to defend yourself some day if someone does actually attack you in the street.

Karate Del

P.S. As always I invite you feel free to contact me with your thoughts or feedback regarding this or any of my Karate Kata Blogs. I am neither a master nor an expert I am merely a student of Karate and I always will be but I enjoy sharing my ideas, learning from others and hearing your views.

When studying Bunkai of kata we need to keep in mind what the originator of the kata was wanting to teach us. The originator spent much more time examining and creating the moves then we realize. We live in a much too fast paced world, where everything is now now now. We also feel we are vastly superior to our past generations in all aspects.

My point is that someone in the 1600′s, or 1800′s, spent a great deal of time creating these kata, and they are very intricate and sophisticated, if you take the time to really study them (for example: Tekki is NOT about someone riding a horse or standing in a rice field – study the bunkai and see how devastating it really is!), you will see just how genius these old timers were. They fought for real, it was life or death back then, which is a point I think we miss. In addition, there are just so many ways you can take someone who grabs you, strike them and throw them to the ground. Why do we assume we know better?

Are we able to come up with something else, something better for this day and age? Absolutely. And we should be doing this! I am not stating that we are inept and can not come up with our own items for the here and now.

However, we need to honor the past and also really learn what our past masters meant to pass down to us by diligently studying bunkai. If you have ever created a form, and really put time and energy into it (and not just make up something on a whim), you will understand more about what I am trying to say We need to really learn what was passed down, and the “original concepts” are encapsulated within the katas.

To begin with, the kata was originally named “Passai” and was named after an Okinawan family. Where they came into possession of the kata is a mystery, however, it most definitely came from China, and it has at its roots elements of the Leopard and Lion forms. This kata is over 400 years old, as they found a tapestry with figures doing the kata and has been carbon dated.

The Passai kata was taught to Sokon Matsumura who taught it to K. Oyadomori and Itosu, however, the Oyadomori family claims to have learned it from a Chinese man living in Okinawa at the time. Matsumura kept the form in its “Chinese” state, and it eventually found its way to the Shorin-Ryu (Goju-ryu) disciplines.

Itosu, on the other hand, “Okinawan’ized” it (as if there is a word). Itosu also supposedly created the “sho” part (Passai-sho) and taught both to Shotokan founder G. Funakoshi. It was Master Funakoshi who changed the name to Bassai – in order to please the mainland Japanese who wanted nothing to do with Okinawan or Chinese sounding names. Funakoshi chose the name Bassai because it was similar to Passai, but the exact meaning of Bassai is to “Extract from a fortress” (and not penetrate as is commonly mistaken), where as Passai is a family name with a different meaning.

Two other interesting tidbits are that the kata was created by a left handed person (which is good to keep in mind when working on the bunkai), and also the beginning of the kata is very similar to the Kung Fu bow (right fist in left palm).

The the movement in Pinan One – the high block followed by the 135 degree turn – this move is really just a grab and spin with your leg stuck out to trip them down.

I need to get some videos made – I promise to do it Saturday provided I can get my camera working!

If not, you will hear my apologies on Monday…..

The following passage is taken from Iain Abernethy’s “What are the true applications of Kata” and there is a similar passage in the book “The Way of Kata”:
4. The angles at which the techniques are performed are important. You are never turning to face a new opponent. Most fights do not just ‘start’; they are normally preceded by some kind of heated verbal exchange. The vast majority of kata techniques are designed to deal with an opponent who is in front of you. The main reasons that kata techniques are performed at angles is to instruct the practitioner that they need to be at that angle, in relation to their opponent, in order for the techniques to work, or that by moving in that direction the transfer of their body weight will aid the technique’s execution.

With that stated, we have to fall back to one of the great masters (Master Itosu) who wrote:
“There are many movements in karate. When you train you must try to understand the aim of the movement and its application. You have to take into account all possible meanings and applications of the move. Each move can have many applications.”

So while it is not 100% certain that you must always be facing an opponent while looking at/studying the bunkai, it would be a good general guideline to use (as Iain stated in his article).

And to take in “all possible meanings” would certainly imply someone coming at you from behind/right/left.

The third high block followed by the 270 degree turn is where I will focus on first. The bunkai, IMHO, is this: an attacker grabs your shirt. You step into the rising block with the rising block hitting under the attacker’s armpit and lifting up grabbing onto the shirt or arm, while grabbing the attacker’s arm/shirt sleeve with the other hand.

Take your back leg and begin the turn for the 270 turn while positioning your hips unto the attacker’s waist and then execute the turn. You will find it a very effective throw!

For the beginning of the kata, where you turn and downblock (gedan barai) and follow with a punch, then a 180 degree turn, I have thought of a new bunkai. Using just one attacker, you turn and block a kick or strike (yes I know the attacker should be in front of me but just humor me on this), then step and punch to the mid-section. Grab on to the attacker, move your back foot up to your front, then step back for the turn sticking your front foot out (which the attacker will trip on).

I will try to make a video of this on Saturday.

After giving it much thought, I decided to develop a Bo staff kata for children, that would teach them the basics of working the bo staff, and repeat the motions to help imprint the techniques. I chose a series of movements that is found in our advanced bo kata that give students learning it a hard time.

My thought was if I broke these movements down, repeated them over and over in a kata, it would help the students when they began to learn the basic and advanced bo katas as they will have already mastered the more difficult techniques in this new children’s bo kata.

Which really was not so different than what we were doing in class when we were teaching the bo katas to our upper belts. We would repeat the more difficult parts of the kata over and over to help them learn and memorize it.

So I began working on the development of the children’s bo staff kata. I soon realized that it was not as easy as I thought it would be! I had to give careful attention to the details of each movement, to ensure that what they were doing was technically sound and the bunkai was there.

The end result was a working children’s bo kata. It actually proved quite popular, and the repetition of the movements made it easy for all students, not just the children, to memorize and since it was easy to memorize in the class room, they would practice it at home.

The icing on the cake was when Master Barton told me that he wanted to include it in the official King Cobra curriculum, how great is that! I am working on the video now. I may post it if anyone is interested.

Children's Bo Staff Kata

This explains why Gichin Funakoshi spent so many years learning kata only, and once the kata was completely memorized and the bunkai understood, he was given a certificate and was permitted to teach the kata to other students. This is very similar to the way some Kung Fu schools operate.

This leads me to wonder if we are in such a rush to learn as many kata as we can these days if we are not hurting ourselves by gaining just superficial knowledge of the kata so we can pass a test or meet a requirement. I remember during my Kung Fu training that I only ever learned one form (Iron Eagle).

Don’t get me wrong, I love kata, and the more the better! But thinking about the other night with the Sanshin practice, what made me really notice things during the practice while doing it were the small things that I was not doing right, or was weak at.

Anyway, just some thoughts, don’t know where I am going with this right now….

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy modern Karate just as much as everyone else. It was a nice change of pace though and like I said, it was really intense.

I got the idea for the class after reading an article about Master Shinyu Gushi of Uechi-Ryu Karate in the Dragon Times. I met Master Gushi on more than one occasion both in Okinawa and Los Angeles. After reading the article my brain was kick-started back to life and I remembered watching his workouts (which were extremely intense!), and so I jotted down some notes and prepared for tonight’s class.

I think it went over very well. While I don’t think it is something I would want to do every night, still, it should be incorporated into curriculum and utilized more.