Pine Tree Practical Karate

Want to learn the basics of understanding your kata? Here you go!

NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO: Speaking the Language of Kata! In this video I discuss how to speak the language of kata i.e. how to understand what the traditional kata are showing us. Please follow this link or visit the “practical kata bunkai” YouTube channel to watch: https://youtu.be/5ZWmqofxqGo

Is Motobu’s karate self-taught? There is a slander against Motobu Chōki that has been around for a long time, such as the following:

https://youtu.be/GvtsYnTvFPE
Understanding WHY we practice kata and WHAT it is for is very important. Consensual violence is very different than non consensual violence.

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The more we can learn about differences in how a kata has been ran, the more likely we are to come closer to the true original version. Here is more information on the foundation kata of shuri-te based systems.

A Prototype of Naihanchi? Written by Motobu Naoki, translated by Andreas Quast

We will probably never know what the true “original” version of any traditional kata looked like. Any school, dojo, style, system that claims they teach the original is either knowingly lying, or has bought into the look aid being told them by their teachers. There’s just no way to know for sure.

The only thing we can theorize with any certainty is when a move is present in EVERY version of the form, it was likely present in the original - but then there can be variations of that movement as well (is it an uppercut or a back fist and how to you execute the back fist; do you bring your foot in front of the knee, to the side of the knee) so all we can theorize is that the movement was in the original, not necessarily exactly how it was done. Another issue is when was the kata taught to the student? As we age our bodies change, sometimes in shape and sometimes because of injuries or just age. This affects how we are able to move. So a student taught the kata when we are on our prime may learn the movements very differently from a student who learned them 30 years later when we had a large gut, could squat as low, couldn’t kneel to the floor, couldn’t twist our body as far, or couldn’t rotate our shoulder or kick as high. But we still taught the same kata even though it might look very different overall.

As a student of the martial arts, if you are wanting to learn the history of them, trying to find the earliest versions of a kata is a great way to trace history. If you are looking for practical application it’s an even better way given how the forms have changed to be added to school curriculum. The changes made by different systems often make seeing applications hard, so looking at other versions will open those doors to seeing the various techniques you never saw before. But sometimes it’s also fun just learn a new way to run a favorite form. It can get boring if you run the same form and never change it up at all. Maybe you need another way to run the same form. But whatever your reason, just realize your version of a kata is probably not the original version, and neither is mine.

The Difficulty of Determining the Original Kata Written by Motobu Naoki, translated by Andreas Quast