And it really is.
When Nakayama Sensei began the process of making Okinawan Karate friendly to the cultural values of Japan proper, karate changed even more than it had previously.
Previously, Okinawan Karate was primarily a close-range martial art for defense against commonly occurring acts of civilian violence, and it was, well, pretty brutal, as well as effective.
Really effective.
When you watch the bunkai of Goju-ryu, for instance, you get a pretty good idea of how brutal a martial art we’re talking about. Head butts, bites, fishhooks, breaking arms, gouging eyes (out. did I mention out?) and bouncing heads off of the paving stones were pretty normal techniques that were encoded into the databases that were the Goju-ryu kata. And the Shotokan Kata, for that matter.
If you go slightly to the left and a little up, you can watch the bunkai of Wado-ryu, which has preserved a bundle of the same kata studied in Shotokan.
I recently re-visited a Shotokan kata in Wado clothing; the kata is Seishan in Wado, and Gankaku in Shotokan, but it’s the same kata.
Iain’s dvd explaining (and explaining and explaining and explaining; this guy never quits!) the bunkai of Gankaku is remarkable.
There is a consistent improvement in production values as you move along the list of his Bunkai-Jutsu series of dvds, but who cares?
The important thing is the information on the dvd, and that is far beyond first-rate.
Watching ALL of the bunkai that flow clearly and logically from the kata makes it obvious why Okinawan Karate Masters usually studied only a couple of kata.
Because most of the kata contain within them a complete martial art of self defense.
Now, the reason you get TWO martial arts when you study Shotokan is that Nakayama Sensei invented a new one. It’s a pretty good one, too.
That is the martial art designed for dueling, starting at extreme distance, and with white pajamas and referees.
It is a wonderful martial art.
The punches and kicks have been optimized for speed and power to such an extent that a good student of Shotokan can hold his own in a dust up if he’s trained with such a result in mind.
And when I say that, I mean that if you’ve been training punching and kicking techniques and you’ve never hit a heavy bag, you’re in for a fast and brutal education when you hit somebody for the first time, I think.
The lightning fast, powerful but not over-committed punches and blocks and kicks of Shotokan are useful self defense tools, because they are a little like similar techniques in boxing; they put body weight behind the percussive technique, but the body stays balanced during the dust-up.
And while Shotokan does not normally use body toughening techniques, it does use arm clashing exercises, and after a while, those desensitize the practitioner to some sorts of impact.
So a Shotokan student has techniques something like those of boxing in his toolbox.
But wait! What happens when he gets older? Don’t those techniques slow down?
Well, some; they’re still better kicks and punches than the other guys in the nursing home, but they don’t have as much smoke on ‘em as they used to.
And that’s when the wide new vista of bunkai open up!
Because the bunkai of the kata that a Shotokan student has practiced for twenty years is not for show, although it can be used for a spiffy demonstration.
And it’s not primarily for cardiovascular development, although it can be used for that as well.
And it’s not primarily for coordination and balance and flexibility, but it’s good for that also.
What it’s designed for is very effective self-defense.
Now, somebody wrote a book called Five Years, One Kata. I haven’t read it yet, because I liked the concept and the reviews but not the price tag.
On the other hand, having reviewed the dvd from Iain, I now have an opinion, although opinions are like armpits (everyone has a couple, and some stink!); my opinion is that, left to your own devices, you’ll never, ever figure out all the cool bunkai just by repeating the kata.
Ain’t happening.
Which brings me to a conclusion point; I believe that before you pick a kata to study in depth for five or ten years, you owe it to yourself to review the Iain Abernethy kata dvds, and the dvds by Morio Higaonna (particularly the bunkai dvds in his Encyclopedia of Goju-ryu Karate Series- volumes 8, 9 and 10).
Because there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many applications for anybody to become effective, if he’s trying to learn and practice them all.
After all, how many different defenses do you need to a double hand grab to your shirt?
I think the correct answer is just one.
One that works.
p.s. Like many of the thoughts I’ve had about Shotokan Karate, this one owes a debt of gratitude to Rob Redmond, who has the best Shotokan Karate blog out there; his discussion of the makiwara vs. the heavy bag is the best discusion I’ve seen on that topic, and made a believer of me.
p.p.s. While I wander, I really have a point here; no, really! The point is that each of the major Shotokan (or Wado or Goju) Kata have a huge number of practical, effective, brutal bunkai. But you can only carry around just so many techniques that you are actually able to use effectively. So when you get serious about wanting to practice karate for self-defense, you’re going to want to pick out the kata that has the largest number of techniques that appeal to you personally.
And then you’ll practice those techniques, both in kata form and with a partner.
Lots of practice.
And then you’ll have a supplement to your dueling techniques that is effective in a lot of additional situations.
p.p.p.s On the other hand, you could always build your own kata from your inventory of favorite self-defense techniques, like Bill Bryant did.
