Since 2006 I decided to look at the root of what we now call Shotokan Karatedo. This journey took me to a world that many Shotokan practitioners never see.
I wanted to know what we are really doing. Obviously I knew Kihon, Kata and Kumite, but that was about it, until I took the time to search back in time.
The first thing I found is that Kihon, Kata and Kumite work in a trinity and can never be separated. So I took a further look into this and found that our “Karate Fathers” used to train kata 99% of the time until they had it perfect. This obviously only allowed for each person to learn about three to five kata in their life time.
The method they used was repetition of kihon techniques found within kata, until the technique was perfect, then by adding the feeling of kata to it made the techniques come alive, until they were so perfect, delivering them to a human would have surely caused death.
The end result that kept popping up from this training was that “kata is kumite”. Kata is in fact just a dictionary for ancient fighting techniques. Put together so that the knowledge could be passed down to newer generations.
The people who developed each kata would decide on what kumite techniques should be grouped and which should not and the end result was the kata people like Gichin Funakoshi trained.
After all this study I found myself questioning the karate which I had learned over the years. What came out of it was that Karatedo and Karatejitsu should work hand in hand, “when the body suffers, the spirit flowers”.
As Yahara Sensei says: “When karate is done to the maximum, then everyone is equal, just like God made us.” It is through true jitsu training that one becomes humble and finds the good in the world, when everyday life does not allow us to be as such.
I found kata is a personal journey, which forces us to keep to a system, but adapting it to our own needs. Technique can be shared, but the feeling you put into kata, the energy you put into kata and what the result is, will always remain a personal thing.
Recently I came across a passage of Shaun Banfield which was an amalgamation of Gichin Funakoshi, Masatoshi Nakayama and Mikio Yahara Sensei, which I have adopted as my guide when doing karate:
I execute kata to put a silence to the chaos of conflict. I push to make my kata more violent, not careless or reckless, but intense with lethal intent and result! It is my goal to live through kata. No longer do I look for form. I am not concerned with executing the techniques accurately, but instead I supply them with my entire being and existence from bow to bow. This undying energy and commitment is what I believe turns dangerous techniques in killing techniques. Ichi Gekki Hisatsu!
As we all know the ultimate physical goal of karatedo is to be able to disable ones assailant with one blow, as I studied further into Okinawan history I found many stories of fights which lasted one or two techniques, and they were not the nice versions as we see fights today, but nevertheless, it was a fight and the techniques they used worked.
Over the years Shotokan has changed and will continue doing so, therefore I did my thesis on Kata is Kumite, as it could have been interpreted many years ago before the name Shotokan came about.
The kata I chose for this thesis are those needed for practical Yondan grading, including Bassai-Dai, that being the signature kata of the Karate Academy and also Jion, which is the kata Sensei Soon Pretorius chose for me as a grading kata.
None of the techniques found in this thesis are “written in stone”, as every situation differs and so does the application of technique.
Anyway, wish me luck!!!
