When I watch a serious karate exponent demonstrate, I tend to sigh, and say “I could do that, with a lot more practice!”

But, you know, there aren’t enough hours in the day!

And Sensei Kanazawa has always had good technique, and also spars very well. He bested Enoeda in the first All-Japan Karate Tournament, and Sensei Enoeda was very capable indeed.

This is the old black and white film shot with Sensei Nakayama and early karate students, who transmogrified into Senior JKA Instructors.

It looks a little rough by today’s standards, but for a world that had never seen Shotokan Karate, it was remarkable.

I like watching enthusiastic Shotokan Practitioners demonstrate sparring.

It reminds me why I don’t spar much!

Note: this isn’t very much like a real fight at all. Bad guys really never learned to attack properly!

They attack effectively, but not very well at all. In fact, I give most muggers very low points for correct form.

Some approaches to studying the techniques embodied in Shotokan Karate are more intense than others.

University Karate Clubs in Japan are notoriously  hard-core, and sometimes involve more contact than other places you might study Shotokan Karate (was that politically correct enough?).

Japanese Military Karate is another venue that does not appear to be for the faint of heart.

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

Lyoto Machida has trained in Shotokan Karate since he was a small boy. These punches don’t look like Shotokan techniques, but they worked just fine.

Lyoto Machida is a lifetime trained Shotokan Stylist. Machida can get away with jump kicks against a fell opponent like Randy Couture. You cannot get away with such kicks in the local Bucket of Blood on Saturday Night.

In general, in a bar, you can always tell which guy is about to be examining the tile between the bar stools by watching who is attempting a kick in a fistfight.

This is a nice series of defenses. My guess is that they’d work just fine in the real world.

There are plenty of throws embedded in the kata; here, some of them are demonstrated by Taiji Kase.