I love it when I’m right. Doesn’t happen all that often, but it feels good.
Here was my hypothesis: the kata of Shotokan karate, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu are all databases of self-defense techniques. They were not, in Okinawa, primarily spiritual exercises or aerobic exercises.
They were lists of how-to-kick-behind exercises. With variations, of course.
And the fundamental self-defense techniques encoded in all of the kata of those karate styles are and were the same, because there are only so many effective self-defense techniques against commonly-encountered attacks (like roundhouse punches, tackles, eye/throat/groin grabs, and kicks to your huevos rancheros).
And I was right!
Not just right. Really, really, really right!
How do I know?
Well, it might have been possible to keep the real bunkai secret when karate moved uptown from poor oppressed Okinawa to rich oppressing mainland Japan, as has been suggested by some writers, but it’s hard to keep info down on the farm in the age of the internet and dvds.
So, for instance, there are bunkai dvds available for sale to anybody who has the price on the Dragon-Tsunami website, and one of the guys who knows more about the bunkai of Goju-ryu kata than anybody else in the world has made his knowledge available there.
Mario Higaonna has been described as the most dangerous man in Japan in a real fight by Don Draeger, who was himself a little on the scary-guy side. But that’s not important. What is important is that Mario Higaonna studied with the guy who studied with The Guy in Goju.
And I recently had the pleasure of screening for the first time the last three volumes of the dvd series, The Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu, by Mario Higaonna.
And the three volumes I watched were swell!
In fact, Mario Higaonna reminded me of another master of bunkai, Iain Abernethy. Both appear to be very nice guys, both have deep and wide knowledge about bunkai, and you can tell that they’re teaching because they’re talking.
Some guys who do dvds are stingy with their knowledge. Not these two.
And Iain speaks for Wado and Shotokan and Shito because the Itosu lines of kata are taught in those styles, and Higaonna speaks for Goju, which has a different buncha kata. Note that Shito uses a buncha kata from both of those styles.
But we can now all be friends and sing Kumbaya around the campfire.
And that’s because it doesn’t matter if the kata are different.
The fundamental information contained inside the kata are substantially the same.
And that makes sense, as it should.
The cities in which karate grew up have grown together. The Big Guys who taught karate in Okinawa all studied with the same masters, or students of the same masters.
So everybody knew what self-defense techniques were encoded in the various kata.
And since the purpose of kata was to preserve effective self-defense techniques from loss because of memory lapses, the kata of all those styles contain the same bundles of self-defense techniques.
And that makes sense. Because there are only so many common attacks, and there are only so many common, effective defenses that were being taught in back rooms in Okinawa in the days before Funakoshi took Shotokan karate uptown.
But don’t believe me (and, sadly, so few do!).
Get yourself every dvd made by Iain Abernethy and take a look at the bunkai he teaches (and teaches and teaches and teaches; he has more energy than a potful of jumping beans)on his bunkai series, and you’ll say to yourself: I knew those kata were good for something!
And then get the last three dvds in The Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu series, and buy yourself some popcorn.
You’re going to enjoy the show.
Because there are, certainly, differences in emphasis in the self-defense techniques being taught, from time to time. And there are small stylistic differences (Goju makes more use of shiko-dachi, while the others favor kiba-dachi, for instance. Big deal.).
As a practical matter, on the other hand, if you were to study only the self-defense techniques demonstrated by Abernethy and Higaonna, with all the wrist grab defenses, and defenses against punches, and defenses against tackles and bearhugs and headbutts, you’d have two classes that mirrored each other very closely.
By the way, all of the dvds produced by the two men are wonderful. My favorite so far in the Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu series, so far, is volume 8. It teaches a couple of angles in connection with the rising block and downblock and an upper level punch in Gekki Sai Kata that were very, very interesting to me. And there are a couple of small points that Higaonna doesn’t even mention, but show up in the demonstration, like stepping on his opponent’s foot before the technique is executed.
I would not, I think, want to toss a cup of saki in his face, or dump fertilizer in his beanpatch just before harvest-time. He looks like a warm, supportive, helpful guy, who practices how to grab faces by the eye-sockets and chin, to pull those faces down into elbow strikes. Sort of a “bowling ball grab”, if you will.
So no barfights with him, thank you very much!
And Iain is cut from the same cloth; he is very concerned about safety in practice, because it’s so clear to him how to be, you know, unsafe! My favorite in his Bunkai-Jutsu series is also Volume One, which discusses the uses of the Heian Series of Katas, which contain a sort of Swiss Army Knife series of self-defense techniques.
So get your dvds and your popcorn, and watch in amazement as you see how similar all of the kata applications are, and how effective they are as self-defense techniques.
And you’ll also figure out (heck, Iain tells you outright!) why there are SO DARN MANY defenses against wrist grabs in the kata. When I understood it, I slapped my forehead and said, and I quote, “Duuuuhhhhhh!”
