Application Question

[Makalakumu]

When attempting to understand the moves in a kata, when does an "application" for a movement stray too far from what is seen in the kata? I've trained with instructors who were very strict about the movements of the form and application and I've trained with instructors who allowed quite a bit of interpretation. Where is the line for you?

 

[terryl965]

When attempting to understand the moves in a kata, when does an "application" for a movement stray too far from what is seen in the kata? I've trained with instructors who were very strict about the movements of the form and application and I've trained with instructors who allowed quite a bit of interpretation. Where is the line for you?

Easy do it the right way until you have a great understanding of all principles that goes with said Kata, then and only then can one start to develope a sense of what is best for them.

 

[exile]

I also think a critical view of the movements is important. I know this is something I've posted on before, but the example is very much to the point—the Eunbi hyung, in a nutshell, systematically morphed the knee strikes of the Empi kata into mid-to-high front kicks, as part of a general stylistic kata-to-hyung translation principle that leg techs are kicks, period. As I suggested in the post I've given the link to, turning the knee strike (a very close-distance tech) into a mid/high front kick (a mid-to-long distance tech), while keeping the other 'close-in' defense moves immediately before and after the new kicking interpretation of the original knee tech, winds up leading to a kind of absurdity: you are supposed to be doing a bunch of stuff requiring CQ conditions while at the same time employing a kick which assumes distant conditions. The conclusion has to be that actual applications (which would have required confronting this contradiction) were the last thing on the minds of the people who altered Eunbi in a way that led to such combatively incoherent results.

So to recover the true bunkai for Eunbi, you have to correct the stylistic adjustment that turned the knee strike into the kick. Otherwise, nothing makes sense about the application of the subsequences where the nouveau front kick appears. In this case, the idea is that you are obliged to restore the original movement sequence after the distortion of the stylistic translation rule converting all leg techs to one or another kind of kick. The way I see it, this is no different from someone who wants to study the meaning of a very important old document, copied over many different cycles, having to first eliminate the textual errors that seem to have crept into the ms. as a result of all those errors in the copying. Not all, surely, but some of the alterations in the assumed movements presented in a form are going to be corrections of this kind, if the study of the form is carried out the right way. And this isn't just the case for what you have in going from Shotokan or other kata to KMA hyungs; it's also probably the case with kata themselves—modified over time in directions that reflected aesthetics or misconceptions, rather than the original fighting applications. We know that as time went on, knowledge of bunkai diminished steadily within the larger community of Japanese karate practitioners... so what happened in the translation from kata to hyungs very likely also happened in the generation-to-generation of kata amongs karateka.

 

[Makalakumu]

One thing that I've wondered is that if it would be possible to "know" that a knee strike is required, but perform the kata with a kick anyway. One possible interpretation of that would be that the kick would be appropriate if the technique failed and you or your opponent was retreating. At least you could stay closer to the form that was passed down to you.

The end result of reverting kata is Okinawan Karate. Is there value in practicing an art that has altered the kata if what you are looking for is the original Okinawan version? I believe there is, but then again, that's why I'm writing a book.

 

[exile]

One thing that I've wondered is that if it would be possible to "know" that a knee strike is required, but perform the kata with a kick anyway. One possible interpretation of that would be that the kick would be appropriate if the technique failed and you or your opponent was retreating. At least you could stay closer to the form that was passed down to you.

The problem with using that approach to the Empi ==> Eunbi translation is that the kick is immediately followed by movements which only really make sense in the context of a very close-in fighting range. If the story you're suggesting were the case, we'd expect to see those very-close range techs altered as well. But that's not what happens: the kick in Empi is followed by the same extremely CQ movements as the knee strike in Eunbi. That's one of the giveaways that what's involved here is a stylistic/aesthetic rule, rather than fidelity to practical combat principles: once the kick replaces the knee strike, all the follow-up techs within that subsequence of the form should reflect the alteration of fighting range that has happened in the hyung, compared with the kata. But it just doesn't happen. Instead, a long-range tech is embedded within a before-and-after context of very short-range techs.

The end result of reverting kata is Okinawan Karate. Is there value in practicing an art that has altered the kata if what you are looking for is the original Okinawan version?

Yeah, I know... this is something that miguksaram pointed out a while back in a post that I've still not come to grips with completely. Those of us in the KMAs face this question in a particularly uncomfortable way...

I believe there is, but then again, that's why I'm writing a book.

Much as I'd like to see your book, John, I'd still appreciate a condensed summary 'preview' from you as to what you see as motivating your positive answer to the question you pose: Is there value in practicing an art that has altered the kata if what you are looking for is the original Okinawan version?

 

[Makalakumu]

The short answer is that I'm recasting the curriculum so that it grows and changes with individual creativity. I am providing a methodology for reverse engineering hyung into a personal, self defense based, art that is able to encompass the individual differences in people. I believe that I can do this with my training as an educator and a martial artist. None of the martial arts techniques that I'm talking about would be unfamiliar to anyone on this board, but I think that some of the ways that teachers use to structure curriculum would completely revolutionize the practice of karate. I think learning about the past and understanding Okinawan Karate is wonderful, but we also need to move forward in exactly the same ways that the Okinawan masters did. I think the KMAs could lead the way because once we embrace our history, we'll understand that we are NOT bound in the same ways that many other ryu are bound.

 

[Makalakumu]

When I'm done, Bob, I'm going to summarize it and attempt to get Bob Hubbard to publish an article on Martialtalk's magazine.

 

[exile]

When I'm done, Bob, I'm going to summarize it and attempt to get Bob Hubbard to publish an article on Martialtalk's magazine.

I look forward eagerly to its appearance—please keep us posted when it's ready to appear.

 

[exile]

The short answer is that I'm recasting the curriculum so that it grows and changes with individual creativity. I am providing a methodology for reverse engineering hyung into a personal, self defense based, art that is able to encompass the individual differences in people. I believe that I can do this with my training as an educator and a martial artist. None of the martial arts techniques that I'm talking about would be unfamiliar to anyone on this board, but I think that some of the ways that teachers use to structure curriculum would completely revolutionize the practice of karate. I think learning about the past and understanding Okinawan Karate is wonderful, but we also need to move forward in exactly the same ways that the Okinawan masters did. I think the KMAs could lead the way because once we embrace our history, we'll understand that we are NOT bound in the same ways that many other ryu are bound.

I've worried for a long time about how to work out a complete, comprehensive, logically structured curriculum that started from the radically different bunkai-justsu premises. I think it's really important that a MA syllabus be able to articulate in a very specific, realistic fashion exactly how it offers incremental development of skills to meet increasingly serious levels of physical threat. I'd like to see, for example, a curriculum in which locks were taught as part of the core, with increasingly sophisticated (which is not the same as complex!) locking/pinning/throwing techs in progressively more challenging confrontation situation, and so on. So yes, I'm eager to see what you finally come up with along these lines... to my way of thinking, this is the most urgent need in the MAs in general, and TKD specifically, if the latter wishes to save its gritty, street-combative soul...

 

[dancingalone]

When attempting to understand the moves in a kata, when does an "application" for a movement stray too far from what is seen in the kata? I've trained with instructors who were very strict about the movements of the form and application and I've trained with instructors who allowed quite a bit of interpretation. Where is the line for you?

I suppose I'm on the open-ended side. My teacher taught me a few rules to help decipher the applications from the forms, and the #1 thing I took away from it was to not be confused or mislead by the basic choreography of the form. For example, just because the kata had two C-steps in one direction, it doesn't mean the application must mirror that exactly. In fact, the application might actually work much better if you use more of a v shaped step into and away from your opponent...

 

[Makalakumu]

I've worried for a long time about how to work out a complete, comprehensive, logically structured curriculum that started from the radically different bunkai-justsu premises. I think it's really important that a MA syllabus be able to articulate in a very specific, realistic fashion exactly how it offers incremental development of skills to meet increasingly serious levels of physical threat. I'd like to see, for example, a curriculum in which locks were taught as part of the core, with increasingly sophisticated (which is not the same as complex!) locking/pinning/throwing techs in progressively more challenging confrontation situation, and so on. So yes, I'm eager to see what you finally come up with along these lines... to my way of thinking, this is the most urgent need in the MAs in general, and TKD specifically, if the latter wishes to save its gritty, street-combative soul...

After 10 years in the arts, I was introduced to this problem by my teacher in Tang Soo Do. It was never the art that attracted me, but the mind behind it. For 12 years I've been analyzing this material and looking at different approaches. In many ways, what I'm looking at comes down to the simple question I posed above. Where does what you see deviate too far from what "is" there? Or perhaps I should say, what is "expected." Which opens up a whole new realm to explore.

The history is so important. You can't understand how the various perspectives developed without having the ability to recreate a distinct picture of your own lineage. This whole project has taught me that when it comes to karate, lineage really is important. Without it, you can't make any philosophic sense of what you are looking at, because you don't have the guidance of the people who came before you.

I suppose if we start seeing applications in kata that are radically different then what the moves in the show, then we have to change the kata. I don't see any way around it...but then, when do you get to the point where the kata you practice is no longer recognizable as the kata you learned?

Is this even a worry? When you start looking at versions of Chinto or Rohai kata, for example, it's very hard to tell that these kata have anything in common other then the name. These are classical kata practiced by various karate ryu.

Perhaps the view that kata are fluid is actually the more "traditional" view? When you stop to consider what kata actually represents, you actually begin to get dumbfounded at the way we mindlessly pass on movements we hardly understand. The whole effort to "stadardize" the practice of karate seems more like an effort of conformity rather then a feasible way of passing on a self defense art.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the way we view kata now days would surprise many of the people who allegedly founded the kata we practice.

 

[exile]

The history is so important. You can't understand how the various perspectives developed without having the ability to recreate a distinct picture of your own lineage. This whole project has taught me that when it comes to karate, lineage really is important. Without it, you can't make any philosophic sense of what you are looking at, because you don't have the guidance of the people who came before you.

Absolutely. This is one reason why the antihistorical attitudes of much of the TKD establishment seem so destructive to me. The truth may not be 'out there', but it is, in many important respects, 'back there'.

I suppose if we start seeing applications in kata that are radically different then what the moves in the show, then we have to change the kata. I don't see any way around it...but then, when do you get to the point where the kata you practice is no longer recognizable as the kata you learned?

Is this even a worry? When you start looking at versions of Chinto or Rohai kata, for example, it's very hard to tell that these kata have anything in common other then the name. These are classical kata practiced by various karate ryu.

Rohai was exactly the form that came to mind as I was reading your earlier posts. The chain of thought was: OK, clearly someone devised Rohai, at one particular point in time earlier than anyone else, and called it that. And yet we have all these different, seemingly disjoint (or nearly so) sets of movements that all call themselves Rohai, and which are all probably pretty old; so someone had to be mucking around with the original form, and produced something quite different, and someone else after them, and so on. People don't seem to have been too 'devout' in their reverence for the originals here—and back then, the only people who were constructing or altering kata would have been professionals, people who belonged to the very small expert pool. So clearly, at least some people weren't worried about changing the forms as they saw fit.

The trick is to figure out exactly why they saw fit. What was going on such that the first person to innovate and alter the original Rohai thought their final product superior to the original? Because it's hard to imagine why one would do that in the first place unless the intention was to produce something better, eh? But then, what did they see as being better about it? What were the shortcomings in the original that they were trying to correct? This is where history could tell us a huge amount, if we only knew the crucial details, because we would have some insight in just what the differences in technical thinking were about actual combat at the time, and how different people saw the strategic and tactical issues of hand to hand combat. Unfortunately, we're never going to know those details...

Perhaps the view that kata are fluid is actually the more "traditional" view? When you stop to consider what kata actually represents, you actually begin to get dumbfounded at the way we mindlessly pass on movements we hardly understand. The whole effort to "stadardize" the practice of karate seems more like an effort of conformity rather then a feasible way of passing on a self defense art.

QFT. There really has been a remarkable lack of attention to the practical aspects of kata/hyungs, accompanied by a bizarre insistance on their perfect replication from instructor to student—almost like the ancient Aztecs who figured that one tiny little mistake in their propitiatory rituals (there was always some blood-crazed god or other who needed appeasement) would doom the whole society to slow death from drought and crop failure. Even the slightest glitch, and you yourself, the priest, would be the next sacrifice.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the way we view kata now days would surprise many of the people who allegedly founded the kata we practice.

Yeah, that could well be. When people don't really grasp the function of something that they believe is important, they tend to insist on absolute fidelity to the form . This happened repeatedly in the history of Alpine skiing, for example...

 

[DavidCC]

as a student of shaolin kempo I know that he forms I practice have been through a number of layers of people changing them to suit their needs; and most of these people really were not that deeply trained to be honest.

So while I have some forms that draw a line back to something that came form an okinawan form or earlier they are often radically changed. (interesting to note that when I look at our pinan series the most similarities I find are in the way TSD does them)

So I am frequently searching for version of our forms that get me closer to the root, which is okinawa, or, china - but that last leap is very difficult to make. One of my most treasured resources is a DVD I have, a copy of a very old VHS tape, of Sensei Oyata of Kansas City executing kata and applications from them - including the pinan series. I don't think it gets more authentic that that, especially not that you will find video recorded. What I have observed regarding the "verbatim" interpretation of the kata is that there are some that are almost identical and there are some that stretch my imagination to map back to the kata movements.

I read once that there are multiple levels of application contained within kata. The process of analysing applciaitons in Bunkai, the results of bunkai reveal techniques in 3 categories: Oyo, Henka, and Kakushi.
oyo - literal interpretations
henka - variations on oyo for varying situations
kakushi - hidden application, not literal in the kata

I was told by a friend with 25+ years in CMA that in a form, the more dangerous a technique is, the more likely it is to be disguised: by seperating a sequence by interjecting some other movement, or by reversing the movements. The boundaries between applications in a kata are not obvious - although a series of movements may appear to be related, that can often be an artifact of how you learned it and not necessarily indicative of where one applicaiton ends and another begins. That is, "block-strike-turn-block-strike" may not be 2 distinct applications seperated by a turn...

So, what is the yards stick? "When attempting to understand the moves in a kata, when does an "application" for a movement stray too far from what is seen in the kata? " Clearly literal move-for-move interpretation is not required, is not the yard-stick, as Oyata demonstrates many very effective techniques that are not verbatim represented in the kata.

My opinion is that it gets down to - "will practicing the kata develop a "muscle memory", or habit of movement, that will pay-off when doing the application in question"? If the kata are intended to be practiced in order to develop proficiency in the Art; and the applicaitons are the aspect of the Art that represent the "doing" of it (when under attack); then the kata must develop the student's ability to do the correct applications. If a particular application is so far removed from the kata that it requires movements, stances or intentions that are not enhanced by the practice of the kata; then I would say that technique is not "a valid application" of that kata. I think this definition leaves room for a wide variety of interpretations while not opening it up to the whims of every student.


When I am stumped as to what a movement might be, I start searching YouTube for Judo throws that look like the movement I am confused by.

 

[Makalakumu]

When I am stumped as to what a movement might be, I start searching YouTube for Judo throws that look like the movement I am confused by.

That's not a bad strategy, considering the source arts that were drawn upon by Matsumura Soken. One of them was Jigen Ryu, of which he received Menkyo, or a teaching certificate. Jigen Ryu is a Koryu Japanese Kenjutsu school that blended aiki and ju principles into it's empty hand lists. Judo, aikido, japanese jujutsu are good places to look when it comes to kata application. Particularly throwing and joint locking.