Bunkai Jutsu

[Yeti]

Has anyone read Ian Abernethy's "Bunkai Jutsu"? If so, IYO, how does it fare at interpreting the WTF Taeguk patterns? I would expect that since the basic building blocks or individual techniques of each form are fairly universal from style to style (i.e. everyone's got a down block, front kick, etc.) that it would be a useful tool in helping a TKD-ist find applications from each form, but I'd love to hear your input.

Thanks.

Taekwon!

 

[Makalakumu]

I was under the impression that the taeguks weren't designed with bunkai in mind like the okinawan kata. I'm sure you could "find" lots of things, but wouldn't that miss the point that the creator of the form wanted to get across?

 

[SFC JeffJ]

I'm not to be inflammatory here, but without bunkai, what are the purpose of the taeguks? Just to make myself clear, I'm only familiar with the Ch'ang Hon forms in TKD so I could me missing something easily.

I think I'll be looking into getting that book. Sounds interesting.

Jeff

 

[Yeti]

I was under the impression that the taeguks weren't designed with bunkai in mind like the okinawan kata. I'm sure you could "find" lots of things, but wouldn't that miss the point that the creator of the form wanted to get across?

I don't think I agree with that. The Kukkiwon website shows "typical" self defense applications for each Poomse which is contrary to your opinion and suggests that self defense was intended to be included. You could argue that those are "found" techniques as you suggest, but as I understand it, the Taeguks were formed in an attempt to "Korean-ize" the formal patterns used in training as well as to foster a more upright fighting style.

Additionally, since the majority of techniques stem from the various styles of Okinawan karate, self defense application is inherent within each form. If not at least to some degree used as a self defense tool, then to what purpose were these forms constructed? What is your understanding as to why they were created?

 

[Makalakumu]

I'm not to be inflammatory here, but without bunkai, what are the purpose of the taeguks? Just to make myself clear, I'm only familiar with the Ch'ang Hon forms in TKD so I could me missing something easily.

Sometimes forms teach movement, balance, and coordination as well as certain philosophic principles. There are a couple of threads in the TKD section that break down the taeguks along these lines.

Here's one...

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27847&highlight=Taeguk+philosophy

 

[exile]

I've read Abernethy's book a couple of times and am in the middle of a third reading---it really does have that much information in it. Abernethy is concerned with karate kata, not TKD hyungs. But if you think of kata as a sequence of more basic two-to-four move sequences, then it turns out that a lot of those sequences, which show up in the various generations of colored-belt hyungs (Pyang-Ahn--->Palgwe--->Taegeuk) are there intact in the Taegeuks, and everything Abernethy has to say about the rules for decoding those sequences into fighting applications applies to them.

Abernethy's rules have been in fact applied to TKD on a fairly systematic basis by Simon John O' Neil, who had an article in TKD Times sometime in the past year---will look it up and post it later---which alerted me to his site combat-tkd.com---check it out at

http://www.combat-tkd.com/Ctkd1/home.php

O'Neil's thing is basically the application of the Abernethy rule system of bunkai (or Korean boon hae, as Iceman pointed out in a TKD forum thread) to the Taegeuks and a number of dan-level hyungs---his newsletters are about 15pp long on average and in each one he gives (i) a compact, and from what I can see meticulously researched, detailed commentary on some aspect of the history of TKD hyungs and their relation to Okinawan and Japanese forms and to each other, and (ii) a careful analysis, with good photos, of a series of sequences from some hyung, laying out the `textbook' description and then showing boon hae for those sequences which is very much in the spirit of Abernethy's analysis---clearly he's been strongly influenced by the way IA looks at pattern application---shows lots and lots of cases where what look like blocks are strikes or components of
throws, apparent punches are grappling moves, stances are weight transfers anchoring the assailant as part of controlling moves setting up strikes, and so on.

I shelled out thiry-five bucks, I think it was, downloaded the 12 available newsletters and spent much of this past summer reading what is in effect a reasonable-sized book on poosae history and analysis, and some other good stuff relevant to TKD. Worth every penny, I found. Unfortunately, SJON isn't putting out new newsletters, because he's doing an `real' book on the poomsae, concentrating heavily on the Taegeuks, apparently (no Palgwes, alas---not enough of a market, he says). When it comes out, it should be the state of the art on combat-usable applications of TKD forms (he gives his own decoding rules for boon hae, which are similar to IA's but not quite the same) and the Taegeuks will figure prominently in it.

You might check out his site---I read him before I read Abernethy, and after reading IA's work, which was published a few years before O'N started his newletter, could definitely see the latter's influence in O'N's interpretations---their work really opened my eyes to what's lying just under the surface of those movements.

One other thing: neither of them makes much of `hidden moves', to the degree say that Kane & Wilder do. I kind of like that, because minimizing appeal to movements that have no manifestation at all in the kata/hyungs in effect forces you to think a bit harder about what's really going on just on the basis of the `documentary evidence' offered by the forms themselves. Get too creative with hidden moves and you're in effect making up your own hyungs...

I've tried applying the IA/O'N style of analysis to the Palgwes, which is what my instructor teaches rather than the Taegeuks, and it is a real revelation... hope all this proves useful.

 

[SFC JeffJ]

Sometimes forms teach movement, balance, and coordination as well as certain philosophic principles. There are a couple of threads in the TKD section that break down the taeguks along these lines.

Here's one...

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27847&highlight=Taeguk+philosophy

Thanks!

JeffJ

 

[Makalakumu]

I don't think I agree with that. The Kukkiwon website shows "typical" self defense applications for each Poomse which is contrary to your opinion and suggests that self defense was intended to be included. You could argue that those are "found" techniques as you suggest, but as I understand it, the Taeguks were formed in an attempt to "Korean-ize" the formal patterns used in training as well as to foster a more upright fighting style.

I didn't mean to imply that "self defense" wasn't intended in the creation of the forms. I only meant to say that these Korean forms have a distinctly different way of looking at technique when compared to Okinawan forms.

Additionally, since the majority of techniques stem from the various styles of Okinawan karate, self defense application is inherent within each form.

The reinterpretation of these techniques poses some problems. The okinawans designed certain moves in the forms to represent a number of things and they strung them together in very specific ways in order to teach self defense technique. When the people who founded TSD and TKD looked at the finished product, they didn't fully understand what they were seeing. The forms were split up into disjointed peices and those chunks became basic techniques.

Lets take low block, for example. This move is ubiquitous in the okinawan and korean forms. There are two distinct inpretations for it though. The korean interpretation uses it to block something aimed at the midsection. The okinawan interpretation is manifold. It can be a block, if you understand how the form is teaching you the footwork. I can be a throw if you understand how it blends with the techniques around it. It can also be a series of strikes if you understand the various peices of the move.

From what I know, the korean forms were not designed with this complexity in mind and I think that some of the efforts to reinterpret this complexity back into these forms is misguided.

If not at least to some degree used as a self defense tool, then to what purpose were these forms constructed? What is your understanding as to why they were created?

The forms were created for a variety of purposes. See the link I posted above. These purposes also included a need for the Korean's to separate themselves from the Japanese (and Okinawans by default). Thus, the new forms came about in a very political way.

When you combine this with the korean interpretation of the techniques one is left with the impression that the creators of these forms would not want them to be "okinawanized".

And, in reality, I don't think they can be interpreted like that. There are two many missing peices...

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.combat-tkd.com/Ctkd1/home.php

My question is this...when does what you are doing stop being TKD? None of this was originally intended for those forms. Throws, joint locks, sweeps, trapping, etc. Thus, it is impossible to "rediscover" it.

One can look at the form like an inkblot and see what they want to see, but I think they are going to lose what the form was originally intended to show.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want the type of forms that are used in okinawan systems, use those forms. Don't try to make the korean forms something they are not.

 

[exile]

My question is this...when does what you are doing stop being TKD? None of this was originally intended for those forms. Throws, joint locks, sweeps, trapping, etc. Thus, it is impossible to "rediscover" it.

But since the TKD forms are based so heavily on the Okinawan forms, why would the same applications cease to be relevant simply because the forms were being taught by Korean MAists?

The Pyang-Ahns were just the Pinan/Heian forms, and the Palgwes are vey similar to the Pinans in the sequences they contain. Every one of the early Kwan masters had studied with Funikoshi or Kanken or with some other master in Japan and learned the bunkai for the forms they taught---and those bunkai contained many grappling techniques as set ups for strikes as well as applications on their own---Abernethy shows a takedown, a double leg grab and throw, which Funakoshi explicitly identifies as a bunkai from the Bassai-Dai kata in his 1925 book, and in several places in his writings makes it clear that grappling moves are crucial components of kata applications for real fighting situations. I have a hard time believing that Lee Won Kuk (CDK founder), Ro Pyung Chik (SMK), Yoon Pyung In (CMK founder) and Gen. Choi himself, all of whom studied with Okinawan masters in Japan, were not taught at least some of the basic `hard' applications of these forms and were uninfluenced by the Okinawan way of viewing the relations between kata form and combat technique.

One can look at the form like an inkblot and see what they want to see, but I think they are going to lose what the form was originally intended to show

But wait---a lot of the TKD forms that were commonly practiced as late as the 1960s are literally identical to well-known Okinawan kata---SJO'N notes the Chulgis (= Okinawan Naihanchi), Gicho (= Ok. Taikyoku), Balsek (= Ok. Bassai), Kang San Koon (= Ok. Kushanku), Eunbi (= Ok. Wanshu). The fact that these were `replaced' by Chang Hon is a political fact, not a fact about the way in which the logic of combat---connecting techniques to damage an assailant---is reflected in the stylized sequence of kata/hyung movements.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want the type of forms that are used in okinawan systems, use those forms. Don't try to make the korean forms something they are not.

But again, why take such a strong position---that the shorter 2-4 move sequences arranged according to certain conventions into the longer pattens, don't have the same combat applications as the same or very similar moves in the Okinawan kata that these short sequences are often literally taken from? Since the subcomponents of the Korean forms are in so many case so similar to the components of kata---and sometimes the entire forms themselves, e.g., the Kichos we studied in my school are identical to Shotokan forms---it doesn't seem warranted to say that, in extending the Okinawan style of bunkai analysis to them,we're making them into something they're not.

It seems pretty clear that many of the hyungs, just like many of the katas, make no sense if you try to apply them to combat literally. If you then interpret the hyungs along the same kinds of lines as IA or Javier Martinez do for katas, the combat utility of the movements involved suddenly becomes much more plausible. Isn't that reason enough to consider this style of interpetation for the hyungs?

 

[Makalakumu]

But since the TKD forms are based so heavily on the Okinawan forms, why would the same applications cease to be relevant simply because the forms were being taught by Korean MAists?

It could be relevant, but it would change just about everything about the way TKD is taught. The entire curriculum would have to be reworked so that it would make sense and all tie together.

The Pyang-Ahns were just the Pinan/Heian forms, and the Palgwes are vey similar to the Pinans in the sequences they contain. Every one of the early Kwan masters had studied with Funikoshi or Kanken or with some other master in Japan and learned the bunkai for the forms they taught---and those bunkai contained many grappling techniques as set ups for strikes as well as applications on their own---Abernethy shows a takedown, a double leg grab and throw, which Funakoshi explicitly identifies as a bunkai from the Bassai-Dai kata in his 1925 book, and in several places in his writings makes it clear that grappling moves are crucial components of kata applications for real fighting situations.

The fact that a technique in a certain form look similar to that in another form does not imply that both are showing the same thing. In fact, I would say, based on the curriculum of TKD as it stands now, the move was probably not similar to Bassai.

This doesn't mean that you can reverse engineer the technique so that they are the same. I think you just need to be honest about it. Don't claim that it was always part of TKD. It wasn't.

And again, if you start reverse engineering some of this stuff, its going to change just about everything about how TKD is taught.

I have a hard time believing that Lee Won Kuk (CDK founder), Ro Pyung Chik (SMK), Yoon Pyung In (CMK founder) and Gen. Choi himself, all of whom studied with Okinawan masters in Japan, were not taught at least some of the basic `hard' applications of these forms and were uninfluenced by the Okinawan way of viewing the relations between kata form and combat technique.

From what I have seen of TKD curriculum, I would say that they did not know the applications to the forms. The basics that are practiced are disconnected from the forms. They are little chunks of them practiced over and over, completely missing the point. Take low block as an example. The most useless thing (from an okinawan POV) you can do with it is practice it up and down the floor. When it is removed from the form it loses the original meaning.

Now, you may be implying that the old masters knew this stuff but didn't teach it for whatever reason. I, however, refuse to believe that they consciously taught everyone wrong.

But wait---a lot of the TKD forms that were commonly practiced as late as the 1960s are literally identical to well-known Okinawan kata---SJO'N notes the Chulgis (= Okinawan Naihanchi), Gicho (= Ok. Taikyoku), Balsek (= Ok. Bassai), Kang San Koon (= Ok. Kushanku), Eunbi (= Ok. Wanshu). The fact that these were `replaced' by Chang Hon is a political fact, not a fact about the way in which the logic of combat---connecting techniques to damage an assailant---is reflected in the stylized sequence of kata/hyung movements.

In TSD we still practice those forms. They are almost identical to the japanese versions of Okinawan forms, but some changes were made. And these changes messed up a few key things. Its like taking a word and flipping around a pair of letters. Now imagine if you completely scrambled the letters entirely?

But again, why take such a strong position---that the shorter 2-4 move sequences arranged according to certain conventions into the longer pattens, don't have the same combat applications as the same or very similar moves in the Okinawan kata that these short sequences are often literally taken from? Since the subcomponents of the Korean forms are in so many case so similar to the components of kata---and sometimes the entire forms themselves, e.g., the Kichos we studied in my school are identical to Shotokan forms---it doesn't seem warranted to say that, in extending the Okinawan style of bunkai analysis to them,we're making them into something they're not.

This is where the conversation gets interesting. What are the subcomponents of the Korean forms. Hadan Mahkee, Sangdan Mahkee, Choong Dan Kun Kyuk, Etc...

What are the subcomponents of the Okinawan forms? Ogoshi, Deashi Barai, Ude Tori, Koto gey osh, etc...

See the difference? It all comes down to what basics you are practicing, this is how you see the form. And this is why the TKD curriculum does not allow these types of interpretations. And this is why reinterpreting these forms would change everything about what TKD is and was supposed to be.

If you decide to look at the TKD forms in the way being presented by the OP, you aren't rediscovering anything. That stuff wasn't there in the first place. You are, however, inventing something...and if you are looking to the Okinawan forms for guidance, you are reinventing something...namely Okinawan Karate.

So I say again, at what point does what you are doing cease to be TKD?

It seems pretty clear that many of the hyungs, just like many of the katas, make no sense if you try to apply them to combat literally. If you then interpret the hyungs along the same kinds of lines as IA or Javier Martinez do for katas, the combat utility of the movements involved suddenly becomes much more plausible. Isn't that reason enough to consider this style of interpetation for the hyungs?

This is the rabbit hole that all TSDists and TKDists eventually stare at. Why are the basics, the forms, and the fighting totally disconnected? Some people are attempting to answer this question by inventing or reinventing something that already existed and claiming that it was always part of TKD. They are looking in the right direction, but are wrong on many levels. The truth is deeper.

 

[exile]

The basics that are practiced are disconnected from the forms. They are little chunks of them practiced over and over, completely missing the point. Take low block as an example. The most useless thing (from an okinawan POV) you can do with it is practice it up and down the floor. When it is removed from the form it loses the original meaning.

We agree completely on this. My take on low blocks is that they have to be intepreted as part of what I think of as `minimal fighting units'. So a `chambering' retraction gripping a trapped wrist, with the defender at a 90 degree (establishing a lock at the wrist end), and a `chambering' movement of the left hand to the defender's left shoulder (imposing a lock at the elbow) allows the `down block' to strike at vital point on the arm, or by pressing the arm lock so the attacker's head is lowered, allows an arm bar across the throat forcing a takedown, or a strike to the carotid sinus, or... and if you follow up the throat strike with a punch to the base of the skull (gripping the attacker with the now-retracting left hand), and then use the punching hand to establish a hair grab using the right hand and a 180 turn, you've got a twisting throw imposed on a pretty crappy-feeling assailant---and another forward weight shift and punch for good measure pretty sends him home to bed to rest for a while. That's just the first four moves of Kicho Il-Jang, and there's not a single block in the lot.

If you teach that Kicho as part of the fighting methodology of TKD, you won't be getting your students to line up and routinely apply the move called a down block up and down the floor of the dojang---absolutely, that's true. But aren't you really talking about the continuing `disguising' of the bunkai that began with Itosu? Funakoshi continued it but always reminded students there was more there to be discovered than the `children's' level of application. Many people who teach TKD don't get beyond that, but isn't that also true in many karate dojangs? From what I read in some of the stuff written about it, it certainly seems that way.

What I'm saying is, you're talking about people teaching TKD moves independent of their realistic combat applications and you've observed that if you see it in the context of a realistic application of the form, the last thing you want to be doing is mindlessly repeating it en mass as a block. But this isn't incompatible with anything I was saying, is it?

Now, you may be implying that the old masters knew this stuff but didn't teach it for whatever reason. I, however, refuse to believe that they consciously taught everyone wrong.

I don't think one needs to assume that they were teaching everyone wrong... just that they were continuing the same practice of concealing whatever the useful fighting apps were that their own instructors, following Itosu's lead, were doing. I don't think they got the full system, no---but I think that they probably knew that a down block was only very rarely, if ever, a block.

In TSD we still practice those forms. They are almost identical to the japanese versions of Okinawan forms, but some changes were made. And these changes messed up a few key things. Its like taking a word and flipping around a pair of letters. Now imagine if you completely scrambled the letters entirely?



This is where the conversation gets interesting.

Absolutely. Can you please walk me through some of the crucial rearrangements and indicate just what effect those changes had? That has got to be an important part of any attempt to extract meaning from the current hyungs...

What are the subcomponents of the Korean forms. Hadan Mahkee, Sangdan Mahkee, Choong Dan Kun Kyuk, Etc...

What are the subcomponents of the Okinawan forms? Ogoshi, Deashi Barai, Ude Tori, Koto gey osh, etc...

See the difference? It all comes down to what basics you are practicing, this is how you see the form.

But the fact that the Mahkee-type moves can be interpreted as concealed strikes or locking/throwing components, as vs. the Okinawan hip throws and sweeps and other Tuite moves you're getting at, doesn't mean that it's a mistake to apply the same kind of principles of bunkai analysis to discover, for example, that a rising block is actually a forearm strike to the throat of an attacker's forcibly lowered head. The main question---what does the form tell you about how to move in combat and what to do---seems to yield a productive answer when you take the Abernethy/O'Neil approach. I'm not saying you're going to get the same answers from the Okinawan kata as from the TKD hyungs by any means!

And this is why the TKD curriculum does not allow these types of interpretations. And this is why reinterpreting these forms would change everything about what TKD is and was supposed to be.

Well, I don't know about `supposed'. But what, apart from conventional practices, would prevent a TKD curriculum from being build around the combat tactics and techniques of the TKD hyungs?

If you decide to look at the TKD forms in the way being presented by the OP, you aren't rediscovering anything. That stuff wasn't there in the first place. You are, however, inventing something...and if you are looking to the Okinawan forms for guidance, you are reinventing something...namely Okinawan Karate.

I think I probably expressed myself poorly in my earlier post. I'm not using the Okinawan forms for guidance per se, nor so far as I can see is O'Neil. What I'm talking about is using the same principles of interpretation that people like Abernethy, O'Neil, Rick Clark and others have offered as ways to decode the moves in karate-based MAs that are packaged as punch-block-kick sequences and extract the actual use of the actions that are given these misleading labels. To see in a bakkat mahki part of a throwing move setting up a finishing attack on an attacker's vital point, or to recognize that the chambering phase of arae mahki can correspond to an elbow strike in a series of techniques, doesn't require you to copy the Okinawan interpretations slavishly. No one would advocate that---the intention is just to use the same general principles that seem to underlie the relation between kata form and combat technique (chambering retraction often correspond to trapping grips, etc) to the TKD forms as well and see if they make sense in terms of combat. From what I've seen of O'Neil's interpretations, they do...

So I say again, at what point does what you are doing cease to be TKD?

Does what I've said above suggest that I'm no longer doing TKD? If I think the TKD forms have combat utility and attempt to extract that using general rules of interpretation that seem to yield good results applied to other similar combat systems, does that mean I've abandoned TKD? It doesn't seem to me that I have...

This is the rabbit hole that all TSDists and TKDists eventually stare at. Why are the basics, the forms, and the fighting totally disconnected? Some people are attempting to answer this question by inventing or reinventing something that already existed and claiming that it was always part of TKD. They are looking in the right direction, but are wrong on many levels. The truth is deeper.

Well, if you still think I'm mistaken in what I've said, can you be more specific about where you think that truth lies and what it consists of? I don't mean this query in the least disrespectfully or rhetorically, UNKy---I really want to hear what your thoughts about this fundamental question are in greater detail. I joined MT to learn, that's why I think this line of discussion is so interesting and important.

 

[Makalakumu]

You are asking alot of good questions about this stuff and I think the answer lies in taking a look at the TKD curriculum. You can see what the founders and other various higher ups are thinking based off of the selection of materials and their arrangement in the syllabus.

Based on the core of how you practice TKD I think that you can come to a couple of conclusions.

1. The founders of TKD and TSD did not inherit full systems and did not understand fully what they were taught.

2. Reinterpreting the TKD hyung with the same methodology that an Okinawan karateka uses goes far beyond the creator's vision of that hyung.

3. The reinterpretation (based on Okinawan kata principles) of TKD hyung will radically change how TKD is done.

The simple fact that the basics, the forms, and the fighting are disconnected points to the fact that the people who designed the curriculum didn't know what they were doing. I do not believe that they were passing on the "children's art" at all. Why would these people protect secrets they viewed as Japanese? They hated the Japanese! And why would they withhold this information even from their most senior students? I've had the opportunity to train with folks that were either direct students of the GM or they were one step removed. NO ONE and I'm talking about eighth and ninth dans, knew any of this stuff unless they trained in an Okinawan system.

With that being said, I don't think there are any "secret" moves in the TKD hyung. How could there be? And if there were, why wouldn't we see them expressed somewhere else in the curriculum, perhaps to give us hints at what we are looking at? Instead, the old masters had us marching up and down the floor. Front punch, reverse punch, low block, high block, it all was exactly what it was presented as.

Look at the Ill Soo Shik, this is where one is supposed to be using the basics in the context that they were meant. In TSD and early TKD these patterns were/are completely disconnected from the forms. This was because the moves in the gichos, pyung ahns, bassais, and naihanchis didn't make any sense. When the old masters attempted to string them together in patterns that would seem to work or flow, they couldn't come up with anything. So they came up with alternatives that use some of the "movements" in the forms and seemed to fit. This is where the bulk of TSD has stayed pretty much...although some people, like myself, are beginning to change.

TKD, on the other hand, innovated, IMHO. Instead of living with this disconnect, they decided to invent new forms. This was partly done in order to Koreanize the system and it was also partly done to solve some problems with the curriculum. Particularly, the one that is discussed above. The new TKD forms tied together the basics that were being practiced and the forms and their application in Ill Soo Shik. Sure, there would still be a disconnect between the basics/forms and sparring, but at least part of the curriculum made more sense.

Were tuite, nage, kyusho and other elements being practiced in the early days when people were doing these forms? No. These were added later because the old masters saw a hole in the curriculum. These elements appeared in TKD and TSD, around the same time, in the form of Ho Sin Shul. Ho sin shul, or "self defenses", were originally slightly changed forms of judo or jujutsu two person kata lists. In some TSD organizations, the Yawara list, as practiced in Judo and Danzan Ryu Jujutu was almost completely ripped off. Over time, the ho sin shuls changed, not to fit the forms, but to fit the various masters vision of what they should be. What we have today are still recognizable as judo or jujutsu, however, the connections are much more loose.

What all of this tells me is that the old masters had no clue what the original bunkai were for the forms. If they would have known that stuff they could have made created lists of basics that fit the forms, they could have created Ill Soo Shik that fit the forms, they would not have needed Ho Sin Shul because that stuff was in the forms already. Now, armed with this knowledge, you can see why the TKD forms did not originally contain any of this information. People who are interpreting these forms and "finding" tuite, nage, kyusho, etc are not uncovering anything. They are reverse engineering the moves to fit what they want it to fit.

How will interpreting the forms in the old Okinawan fashion change TKD? There is no easy way to put this, but the entire curriculum would have to be reworked. The lists of basics that you practice would all have to change in order to show what is actually in the forms. This list would include effective hand strikes, effective blocks, kicks, joint locks and throws. The practice of ho sin shul would disappear or be reinvented as something else. Entirely new Ill Soo Shik would have to be invented so that they showed the things in the form. The rules for sparring would change. Randori would have to be added. Grappling would have to be added. The bottom line is that there wouldn't be time to practice 720 jump spin hook kicks with fakes because students would be struggling to learn how to do proper seionages against resisting opponents. In the end, almost everything about TKD would have to change and it would become almost unrecognizable as the TKD now practiced.

This, IMHO, doesn't sound like such a bad thing. In fact, I think that changes like this would make TKD a better art in the end. The only real point I am trying to make is about intellectual honesty. All of these changes were not originally part of TKD. Claiming that they are is wrong. These changes would be something new (and something old). They would be something that is not TKD unless you are willing to totally change the definition of what TKD is.

 

[exile]

You are asking alot of good questions about this stuff and I think the answer lies in taking a look at the TKD curriculum. You can see what the founders and other various higher ups are thinking based off of the selection of materials and their arrangement in the syllabus.

UNKy---thanks very much for your detailed response---I want to read it carefully and think abt it but alas have to help Clean Up The House, our weekly experiment in trying vainly to undo the effects of a nine-year old boy working in concert with the built-in disorder of nature. I'll be back on line later this evening and try to absorb and think through what you've written here.

 

[exile]

OK, so here's what I think---I still early in the learning stages of TKD, don't have anything like your experience in terms of contact with the sources of the art. If your impression is that the senior students of the Kwan masters didn't really have a clear sense of any effective bunkai for the forms, I'm quite willing to accept your conclusions. I've certainly read enough complaints by karateka about how they haven't been given effective applications of katas, and the proliferation of all these `what's the point of all this kata stuff' threads in the karate fora of various MA discussion boards would seem to bear that out.

Look at the Ill Soo Shik, this is where one is supposed to be using the basics in the context that they were meant. In TSD and early TKD these patterns were/are completely disconnected from the forms. This was because the moves in the gichos, pyung ahns, bassais, and naihanchis didn't make any sense. When the old masters attempted to string them together in patterns that would seem to work or flow, they couldn't come up with anything.

Because, if I'm interpreting you correctly, the themselves didn't know what the original intentions of the form patterns were. OK, I'm with you so far...

So they came up with alternatives that use some of the "movements" in the forms and seemed to fit. This is where the bulk of TSD has stayed pretty much...although some people, like myself, are beginning to change.

When you say `beginning to change'---in what direction, do you mean?

TKD, on the other hand, innovated, IMHO. Instead of living with this disconnect, they decided to invent new forms. This was partly done in order to Koreanize the system and it was also partly done to solve some problems with the curriculum. Particularly, the one that is discussed above. The new TKD forms tied together the basics that were being practiced and the forms and their application in Ill Soo Shik. Sure, there would still be a disconnect between the basics/forms and sparring, but at least part of the curriculum made more sense.

Let me see if I understand you here. Having lost the knowledge of the underlying combat applications for the classic Okinawan kata such as Naihanchi and Chinto and so on, the Korean masters who went with TKD after the split reworked the isolated movements, which they were interpreting as blocks, kicks and punches, in a very literal way---the stuff you were referring to being practiced up and down the dojang floor en mass---into new forms which flowed together but had no connection with the fighting methodology locked up inside the Okinawan ancestral kata forms. Having lost that meaning, they took the simplified interpretations that Itosu had intended only for the `children's' forms and used them, in that simplistic interpretation, to chain together strings of movement into new hyungs, reflecting the extreme dilution of that original Okinawan knowledge. Does this roughly correspond to your take on the TKD innovations?

Were tuite, nage, kyusho and other elements being practiced in the early days when people were doing these forms? No. These were added later because the old masters saw a hole in the curriculum. These elements appeared in TKD and TSD, around the same time, in the form of Ho Sin Shul. Ho sin shul, or "self defenses", were originally slightly changed forms of judo or jujutsu two person kata lists. In some TSD organizations, the Yawara list, as practiced in Judo and Danzan Ryu Jujutu was almost completely ripped off. Over time, the ho sin shuls changed, not to fit the forms, but to fit the various masters vision of what they should be. What we have today are still recognizable as judo or jujutsu, however, the connections are much more loose.

The point being, in effect, that having lost the grappling elements---grips, locks, sweeps, controlling moves, takedown applications and so on---because they didn't know what the meaning of the original kata moves were, and working with novel forms built up in part on the ignorance of that meaning, they naturally turned to other developed arts to bring into the system needed elements that their own curricula no longer supported. This is evidence of the ignorance of the original purposes of the kata moves that you're talking about.

What all of this tells me is that the old masters had no clue what the original bunkai were for the forms. If they would have known that stuff they could have made created lists of basics that fit the forms, they could have created Ill Soo Shik that fit the forms, they would not have needed Ho Sin Shul because that stuff was in the forms already.

Yes, exactly---in the Okinawan sources, but not in the revised form of those sources that emerged in successive generations of purpose-built hyungs (where one of the main purposes was the purging of Japanese associations, hence the Okinawan elements).

Now, armed with this knowledge, you can see why the TKD forms did not originally contain any of this information. People who are interpreting these forms and "finding" tuite, nage, kyusho, etc are not uncovering anything. They are reverse engineering the moves to fit what they want it to fit.

OK, but isn't there another interpetation possible? In many cases, the novel forms (the Taegeuks are a good example) still contain bits and pieces---some of those `minimal combat units'---that were present in things like the Pinans and maybe a few other of the still older forms. Couldn't one also see the recovery of tuite and nage applications from these cases as people retrieving inherent combat techniques that are present just by virtue of the fact that the sequences in question are kind of fossil relics of the older Okinawan forms, sort of preserved in amber like an ancient insect? In that case, what people would be doing might not have anything to do with the ideas of the creators of `modern' TKD, but what they would be seeing, through a glass darkly admittedly, would be the vestiges of the old ancestral kata forms, no?

How will interpreting the forms in the old Okinawan fashion change TKD? There is no easy way to put this, but the entire curriculum would have to be reworked. The lists of basics that you practice would all have to change in order to show what is actually in the forms.

I think that would be good!

This list would include effective hand strikes, effective blocks, kicks, joint locks and throws.

Again---that would I think be very good for the art, if it's going to have a chance to avoid combat irrelevance.

The practice of ho sin shul would disappear or be reinvented as something else. Entirely new Ill Soo Shik would have to be invented so that they showed the things in the form. The rules for sparring would change. Randori would have to be added. Grappling would have to be added.

I love it---something like this has been a kind of private vision of mine about how I would learn and teach TKD if I ever got the chance. To me this is a description of the revival of the art after decades of increasingly narrow specialization as an Olympic sport...

The bottom line is that there wouldn't be time to practice 720 jump spin hook kicks with fakes because students would be struggling to learn how to do proper seionages against resisting opponents.

Best of all, IMHO.

In the end, almost everything about TKD would have to change and it would become almost unrecognizable as the TKD now practiced.

This, IMHO, doesn't sound like such a bad thing. In fact, I think that changes like this would make TKD a better art in the end.

Clearly I have nothing but agreement to offer with what you've said here.

The only real point I am trying to make is about intellectual honesty. All of these changes were not originally part of TKD. Claiming that they are is wrong. These changes would be something new (and something old). They would be something that is not TKD unless you are willing to totally change the definition of what TKD is.

But see my suggestion earlier about how one might see this in other terms. In a sense, people like Simon O'Neil might be using frozen elements of the modern hyungs as a kind of time machine, or at least a periscope back in time, to see things that were originally there in the Okinawan ancestors and were recycled relatively intact as TKD replaced its Okinawan ancestral forms with the purpose-built ones you were alluding to earlier.

This is very illuminating, UNKy---thanks much for bringing all this knowledge of the background to bear...

 

[Brad Dunne]

This will most likely get some TKD folks knickers in a twist, but the reality of the Taeguek forms, the first 5 at least, are nothing more than basic footwork and balance drills for beginners. This discussion as been labored before on other sites and folks that do the forms came to understand this point of view. For those that don't know the forms, it is easy to speculate about the bunkai attributes within them. Now just about any form can be augmented to include what someone wishes to see. Now I base a forms application strictly on what the given movement is, not what it could be. If I change anything within the given movement to facilitate and end result, then I have infact changed the form and thus it is no longer the same form.

On a side note, which is also connected to this subject, there are flaws in the Taegueks, if one wishes to lend them to a self defense aspect. I will furnish an example. In Sa Jon/4th form, in the next to last section, the movement calls for a 180 turn to the right and then into an inside middle block. The rational which makes this movement flawed is that with your back turned to the imaginary attacker, you turn the stated 180 degrees, which now has you facing the attacker and then you reset your defense to inturn due the middle inside block. To my way of thinking, if there is someone behind me and I have to turn to face the oncoming threat and protect myself in the process, I would either due one of two things differently within the context of this form. 1) I would rather turn in the other direction (left) and do a left handed outside middle block or 2) if turning the original direction (right), I would prefer to do an outside right hand middle block. Either way, I am offering a stronger more plausable defensive posture than that of the original positioning. (Note; for clarification, for there are those folks that have a different understanding on what is In and Out on the blocking aspects) Inside blocks are from the outside of my/attackers body coming into the centerline of the body and the outside block is just the opposite, from the centerline to the outside of the body). There are other examples and if you do the forms and look at them from a realistic self defense point of view, I'm sure you can find your own movement(s), which you would prefer to change. This only adds to enforce the positioning that the forms are nothing more than building blocks for footwork, balance and blocking drills.

Are or is there self defense applications to the original intent of the form(s), aside from just being the stated drills? Yes there are, but the are very simplistic and fundamental........ie; a simple block and punch/kick combination.