It is all about the past

[terryl965]

How many times do you find yourself looking back to the past for answer of today? I know when I'm really working a tech. from long ago I dream about how it was used before guns and so forth. I also wonder how it can be modify to fit into days world.

Do you feel that for the most part that older ancient techs. can be used in a modern world for SD? If not what do you believe to be lacking in these ancient techs.?

 

[newGuy12]

Good thread, Terry!

I say that close quarters is close quarters. Knives have been around for a long time. As for a gun, from what I have seen on this board, on MT, I, for one, would rather be accosted with a pistol at close range than with a knife!

From the threads that are posted here, it seems like a gunshot can be less lethal than a knife wound. If that is the case, then there should be no difference in techniques for today, right?

 

[Xue Sheng]

Of course the can be modified to fit today’s world see Sanda, Kava Maga, JKD and Systema.

But there are many cases in today’s world that there is no need to modify them at all. An attack with a foot, fist or a knife is still an attack with a foot, fist or knife just the same now as it was when they developed whatever MA being trained today.

 

[JBrainard]

How many times do you find yourself looking back to the past for answer of today? I know when I'm really working a tech. from long ago I dream about how it was used before guns and so forth. I also wonder how it can be modify to fit into days world.

I do that as well. Some techs I am taught were originally applied with a barong, not a stick. I think about how to translate this tech into something more usable in the real world, like using the tech with a knife.

Do you feel that for the most part that older ancient techs. can be used in a modern world for SD? If not what do you believe to be lacking in these ancient techs.?

I would say that yes, for the most part "ancient" techs can still be used in today's world. After all, the human body hasn't changed, so the ability to break it hasn't either. And the advent of guns hasn't really changed the effectiveness of the techs, simply the the way in which the tech must be applied. The only thing that really needs to be modified for use in todays world is the use of ancient weapons, unless you carry swords and other exotic weapons around town with you

 

[exile]

I always try to get information on the history of technique or a movement component. My feeling is, in a classic one-on-one assault/defense situation, there are only so many ways for the attacker to proceed, and the enormous depth of kata techniques offers multiple solution for just about any of those ways; there's nothing new under that particular sun, I'm pretty sure. Modern conditions may have changed somewhat, particularly insofar as handguns are concerned; but mostly what works now was what worked before on the mean streets of Naha, Tokyo, Seoul and other places where the TMAs came into existence to protect people from personal violence in civilian contexts. The problem is that modern conditions make us much less dependent on our own individual self-protection capabilities and more dependent on agencies of civil authority: police, courts, security systems... which means that our MAs are much less likely to be battle-tested on regular bases, and as a result, a steady loss of first-hand knowledge, how this or that technique works in practice, is bound to occur. Part of keeping our training efficient and comprehensive is trying to get as much information from past MA usage as possible, to remind us why this knife-hand strike follow that 45º pivot... what the actual moves were in the context of specific defensive strategies.

The people who put these arts together lived a long, long time ago. I believe that they knew exactly what they were doing. It follows that I have to pay attention, to the degree I can, to what intentions and perspectives on fighting methods were in as much of the past as I can find out about...

 

[Steel Tiger]

There is not a lot that is younger than 150 years old in my art so I am constantly reminded of it's ancient nature. I wonder about things like how the clothing of the originator affected the technique, especially footwear, or did they practice on nice smooth floors. I have an excellent hill just near my home so I can go and test uneven ground theories.

Like Exile, I'm pretty confident that the guys who developed the techniques knew what they were doing. I have found that their purpose was not to enhance their spiritual beings but to overcome professional rivals. Thus the techniques are for fighting. Always were, always will be. The modern world can throw up some strange things, like studded clothing or people, but the techniques of my art are adaptive and versatile and I have confidence in them.

 

[TheOriginalName]

Just a quick thought.....should we not always be looking at how any tech can be adapted to new situations?

Dojo training is usually routined - we know what to do and we generally react in the same way each time.
Real life is fluid, non-predictable - we should always be ready to adapt one tech to suit the flow of "battle".

Anyway - just a thought.....

Oh and the reason we know why the "old" tech work.....the people who originally concieved them survived battle to teach them.

 

[Xue Sheng]

There is not a lot that is younger than 150 years old in my art

150... HA newbie.....Taiji origin (Chen) about 300 Xingyiquan origin between 200 and 700 years Yang style...um...well....aaaaaa.... ok 130 years....and aaa well...ummmm sanda :uhohh:.....never mind...150 is pretty old.... :uhyeah:

 

[exile]

OK, so ThON's post offers some nice places to make the discussion here very specific. Here's what I mean:

Just a quick thought.....should we not always be looking at how any tech can be adapted to new situations?

It's hard to argue with this suggestion at a general level, but there's a knotty factual issue just below the surface of the question, namely, are there any genuinely new self-defense situations? My earlier post, and Steel_Tiger's, both asserted fairly explicitly our joint belief that the combat methods of the past are supremely applicable to the scenarios that arise in street violence in the present; that belief entails that nothing is that different in the details of the violence offered by 21st century assailants, as vs. 18th and 19th c. assailants. I think both of us were talking about 1-on-1, weapon-free attacks—obviously, as soon as you bring in weapons, you're changing the name and nature of the game. So keeping those assumptions, is there any reason to believe that the nature of the violence we're likely to be confronted with is any different from what people in 18th c. China or Okinawa were likely to have to face? For the record, my guess is no, but clearly that's something we can and maybe should be talking about, to do justice to the OP's query...

Dojo training is usually routined - we know what to do and we generally react in the same way each time.
Real life is fluid, non-predictable - we should always be ready to adapt one tech to suit the flow of "battle".

OK, no argument here, but that's a different question, in a sense. It's useful to distinguish what we're training from how we're training. Victor Smith, one of our particularly knowledgeable members, makes the interesting claim here that

Pre 1900 there was almost no karate, just a small group of private practitioners. There was no sport version of sparring. There was almost no violence on Okinawa that required karate-ka to defend their families. They were part of the Japanese empire, and karate developed by members of the elite classes for their own reasons. Almost the only thing we can say for sure is that the primary training tool was kata, and what practices were wrapped around kata study remain speculation.​

If he's right— and I'm certainly in no position to dispute his comment!—we don't really know just how kata combat applications, what Iain Abernethy has dubbed `bunkai-jutsu', were trained. In this sense, while we may look to the past for the combat content of our training, we have to go by our modern understanding of how learning, particularly learning of physical skills takes place; how the adrenaline rush response works and how to control and channel it rather than being incapacitated by it, and so on—in other words, apply contemporary knowledge of the psychophysiology of combat situations, since (again on the assumption that VS is correct) we know little or nothing of how the bunkai of traditional kata were trained for effective use.

But with all that said, I think it's important to note that this is in effect a different kind of question from the question of what we should be training. The discoveries of the past masters about the what are contained in the kata; if we think about these carefully and insightfully, as puzzles to be solved, then we're likely to wind up with effective fighting techs. But it's probably also the case that if we knew the how that they practiced, we'd also be in good shape; the problem is, we don't exactly know just what it was they were doing in their 1-on-1 combat training. So it's not so much a matter of replacing the training methodology of the past with the superior methodology of the present as it is a question of reinventing an effective training methodology for effective bunkai application, because we just do not know what training practices made the old master karatekas so formidable. I myself suspect that if we had a time machine and could go back and observe people like Matsumura, Azato, Itosu and Motobu, we'd find their training regimes as effective as you could ask for.

JAnyway - just a thought.....

Oh and the reason we know why the "old" tech work.....the people who originally concieved them survived battle to teach them.

Agreed, these guys fought a lot and seem to have almost never been beaten, so you'd figure that they knew. But notice now: you're saying that the `old' techs work (in the present, going by the verb form!) because the old karate, gung fu and other MA masters `survived' combat—in the past. This kind of argument, which I wholeheartedly accept, is therefore based on the assumption that what worked in the past will work in the present, and this idea in turn rests on the idea that civilian combat in the past cannot have been that different from what we have noe. I think that Terrry' OP really turns completely on this question: are our attackers and assailants now doing basically different things from what the thugs, bullies and sociopaths of two centuries ago were doing?

My answer is, `probably not', so to me, the past has very different benefits to confer than it would in the view of someone who believes that people these days initiate physical violence differently than they used to...

 

[Kacey]

How many times do you find yourself looking back to the past for answer of today? I know when I'm really working a tech. from long ago I dream about how it was used before guns and so forth. I also wonder how it can be modify to fit into days world.

Do you feel that for the most part that older ancient techs. can be used in a modern world for SD? If not what do you believe to be lacking in these ancient techs.?

"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" Santayana

For contrast: "But it is also tradition that times *must* and always do change, my friend." Prince Akeem, Coming to America

My point, I guess, is that the past is a valuable resource, and much can - and should - be learned from it, but at the same time, one must allow for, and adapt to, change.

There is much that can be learned from TMAs - after all, I have been studying a particular TMA for 20+ years, and still feel like I have only scratched the surface - but at the same time, MA practitioners of all types have are facing things that their particular MA was not designed to respond to - including other MAs. Therefore, using the TMA as a base, and experience in the current conditions as a modifier is, I think, the only rational way to move forward.

Evolution is necessary - in the variety of situations that can be responded to, in improvement in technique, etc - for an art to remain vital and relevant, but at the same time, the lessons of the past must be remembered, and more importantly, passed on, so that future students can expand their knowledge without making quite as many mistakes as the generation before them did.

IMHO, the key is to evolve without losing sight of either the past or the future; if you lose sight of the past, you lose many, if not all, of those valuable lessons, but if you lose sight of the future, you lose the flexibility necessary to adapt to change.

 

[tellner]

How many times do you find yourself looking back to the past for answer of today? I know when I'm really working a tech. from long ago I dream about how it was used before guns and so forth. I also wonder how it can be modify to fit into days world.

Do you feel that for the most part that older ancient techs. can be used in a modern world for SD? If not what do you believe to be lacking in these ancient techs.?

With respect, you're not going to like my answer very much. But it's an honest one, so there you are.

If your profile is correct you aren't doing ancient technique. TKD is a very recent adaptation of Shotokan. The differences are even more recent changes designed to make it more Korean. Shotokan itself is a pretty new martial art derived largely from Okinawan adaptations of Chinese boxing. Hapkido mostly comes from Aikido which is an unabashedly new martial art.

That isn't to denigrate what you do. Far from it. But with these questions you need to realize that the answer doesn't mean much in the context in which you asked it.

There's no sense reinventing the wheel, which is why one bothers to learn from others at all. But we no longer live in a world of oxcarts. Different conditions demand different solutions. Some will be exactly the same. We're still bipeds with opposable thumbs. Many will be radically different.

I've recently taken up a Japanese martial art with a well-documented history in excess of 400 years. There's a lot of very good stuff there. But a lot of it is purely useless for modern self defense. Unless I move to Maasai country I'm not going to encounter spears or swords very much. And the naginata? Not even, let alone Japanese armor. Principles? Body mechanics? Sensitivity? Footwork? Attitude? Hell yes. Technique? Not very much. There's better knife work out there. The grappling is good and still useful.

Take away the guns and a lot of the "so forth" is the same.

Are old techniques useful? It depends. Who are you fighting? How do they fight? How much does that overlap with the situations and conditions your stuff was designed to address? The really old stuff is usually along the lines of "If you don't have a weapon, hit him. Seize him. Throw him to the ground. Hit him again. If he has a weapon neutralize that before you get too far into the hitting part. If you do have a weapon hit him with that." Of course that still works. You just have to keep your goal in mind. If it's the preservation of antiquities exactly the way they were your effectiveness will suffer. If it's good self defense you'll need to adapt what you do to current reality.

 

[exile]

If your profile is correct you aren't doing ancient technique. TKD is a very recent adaptation of Shotokan. The differences are even more recent changes designed to make it more Korean. Shotokan itself is a pretty new martial art derived largely from Okinawan adaptations of Chinese boxing. Hapkido mostly comes from Aikido which is an unabashedly new martial art.

That isn't to denigrate what you do. Far from it. But with these questions you need to realize that the answer doesn't mean much in the context in which you asked it.

One of the cool things about a thread like this is that you get to interpret the OP query according to your own ideas of what's important. My take on Terry's question is that he's not asking about ancient history per se. We all (well, almost all :lol recognize that the well-documented history of TKD makes it a very recent Korean offshoot of the very recent Japanese offshoot of a pretty recent Okinawan offshoot/synthesis of fairly old Chinese and Japanese budo combat systems with some not-totally-well-documented indigenous Okinawan stuff mixed in. When Terry talks about the past, I don't think he's getting at lineages going back to the Stone Age; it's more a case of late agrarian preindustrial vs. Western postindustrial that he's talking about. And the crucial pivot of the question is (the way I'm viewing it, anyway): are there things about the MA you practice that you need to do some historical detective work to unravel?

A simple case in point is something like the double block—simultaneous outward-middle and high—that begins the kata Pinan Shodan. Very odd-looking move, interpreted as a block: who the hell is going to be coming at you with a high downward strike and a mid-section strike simultaneously? But if, as Iain Abernethy has argued, this is a pin instead—and he makes a damned good case!—then the mystery is cleared up. Only, current karate/TKD teaching teaches almost nothing but strikes and blocks. If you go back to the origns of linear karate, however, and read what Itosu, Motobu and other pioneers had to say, and what their students said, you realize that pins were once upon a time a big part of `linear' karate. There's no contradiction. Motobu's scathing comments about Funakoshi suppressing the grappling/controlling part of karate in favor of the `elegant' but technically depleted striking component make perfect sense, when you try to come up with practical interpretaton of traditional karate technique. From that point of view, understanding the vertical grappling component of karate's past lives can reinvigorate current practice. And that's the sort of thing I think Terry was asking about.

The problem is that a great deal of technical knowledge wound up disappearing very quickly in the karate-based arts, and maybe other TMAs as well, due to the radical changes in the social context of the mid-to-late 19th c. on the one hand and the very early 21st c. on the other. So recovery of that past can be a major source of technical understanding. That's just my own take on the OP question, of course, but there's currently a good deal of work being done in the history of `greater karate' (including TKD) which does seem to illuminate a lot of the curriculum in those arts...

 

[terryl965]

With respect, you're not going to like my answer very much. But it's an honest one, so there you are.

Well here is the first delima I respect everyone views about the Art, so I do have an open mind.

If your profile is correct you aren't doing ancient technique. TKD is a very recent adaptation of Shotokan. The differences are even more recent changes designed to make it more Korean.

Well here is another mis-conception folks have my Bio reads as the following train in Okinawa Kararte under the guideness of my father Master Drill instructor in Okinawa, Japan and Korea to name a few. I only swirched over to TKD in the mid 80's when I moved to California, he was the only knockdown hard core gym in the area so I joined Korean Karate which I soon learned to be TKD.

That isn't to denigrate what you do. Far from it. But with these questions you need to realize that the answer doesn't mean much in the context in which you asked it.

Well in my opinion they do, There is more to me than meet the eye's ask the folks here on MT that know me and the way I train my people. As my GM say it is TKD today because I teach TKD, I choosen the path but still have my roots in Okinawa Karate and when you look at my student wide stances you can see it as well.

Tellner I respect all of what you say and I know you respect alot of what I say and think. I believe so many school owners frget that some of these modern techniques have been around for a long time with just a slight variation to them, the core remains in tact but most folks never relize this when they train.

Looking forward to some more great converstations.

 

[Steel Tiger]

150... HA newbie.....Taiji origin (Chen) about 300 Xingyiquan origin between 200 and 700 years Yang style...um...well....aaaaaa.... ok 130 years....and aaa well...ummmm sanda :uhohh:.....never mind...150 is pretty old.... :uhyeah:

Well, we could play that game if you like. Bagua concept developed by Fuxi circa 2800BC, developed by King Wen (1099 - 1050 BC) of Zhou dynasty. How's that? :wink1::lol:

A simple case in point is something like the double block—simultaneous outward-middle and high—that begins the kata Pinan Shodan. Very odd-looking move, interpreted as a block: who the hell is going to be coming at you with a high downward strike and a mid-section strike simultaneously? But if, as Iain Abernethy has argued, this is a pin instead—and he makes a damned good case!—then the mystery is cleared up. Only, current karate/TKD teaching teaches almost nothing but strikes and blocks. If you go back to the origns of linear karate, however, and read what Itosu, Motobu and other pioneers had to say, and what their students said, you realize that pins were once upon a time a big part of `linear' karate. There's no contradiction. Motobu's scathing comments about Funakoshi suppressing the grappling/controlling part of karate in favor of the `elegant' but technically depleted striking component make perfect sense, when you try to come up with practical interpretaton of traditional karate technique. From that point of view, understanding the vertical grappling component of karate's past lives can reinvigorate current practice. And that's the sort of thing I think Terry was asking about.

The problem is that a great deal of technical knowledge wound up disappearing very quickly in the karate-based arts, and maybe other TMAs as well, due to the radical changes in the social context of the mid-to-late 19th c. on the one hand and the very early 21st c. on the other. So recovery of that past can be a major source of technical understanding. That's just my own take on the OP question, of course, but there's currently a good deal of work being done in the history of `greater karate' (including TKD) which does seem to illuminate a lot of the curriculum in those arts...

This is an important point to make. We often talk about evolution of the arts, in fact Kasey mentioned it as being important. It is important. It allows us to view and examine things in different perspectives. But it must also be remembered that martial arts are not governed by biological evolution but by social evolution, And social evolution can throw up bad things that will endure. Social evolution can be governed by what is in vogue. Take platform shoes for an example. Developed originally in the seventeenth century as an overshoe to keep women's shoes out of the mud. They reached insane proportions, up to 75cm high, but are more reasonable now. They are dangerous to the wearer (a Japanese woman tripped and died while wearing a pair, and all those damaged ankles) but they persist.

As Exile pointed out with Motobu"s attack on Funakoshi the martial arts are not immune to this pursuit of the popular. Just because something is a later development does not mean it is better. We need both the old ways, developed, by people who made a living from conflict, and the modern approach to what we do, but we also have to pay attention to what we are looking at.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Well, we could play that game if you like. Bagua concept developed by Fuxi circa 2800BC, developed by King Wen (1099 - 1050 BC) of Zhou dynasty. How's that? :wink1::lol:

DAMN... Yeah... well...aaaa... Sanda has Shuaijiao in it and that’s the oldest...... ok it was a lame attempt at trying to regain my honor...ok you got me...(Hangs head in shame) Steel Tiger > :whip: < Xue Sheng :uhyeah:



I was fairly certain Bagua concepts, particularly circle walking was quite old, but I was not and am not sure how old.

 

[exile]

Just because something is a later development does not mean it is better. We need both the old ways, developed, by people who made a living from conflict, and the modern approach to what we do, but we also have to pay attention to what we are looking at.

Good points all round, S_T.

It's hard to obtain much useful information about the historical figures whose joint efforts led to the combat systems we study. But from what I've read of their lives, they appear to have been, in the end, very down-to-earth pragmatists, guided by necessity and the possibilities and limits of the human body's ability to move. If that picture is correct in its essentials, then it suggests that we really do need to get a handle on what these chaps had in mind in elaborating the technical resources that each of the TMAs comprises. We might want to go further—and if we do, we should be very clear on exactly why we do—but we first must get some idea of what our predecessors discovered, to avoid the danger of not only reinventing the wheel, but having it come out square.

I've always been a big fan of making discussions as concrete as possible; you seem to get a lot more in the way of informative input when you do that. So here's an idea: if people think that there are specific self-defense situations, scenarios and the like that were neglected, or addressed inadequately, in the work of earlier generations of MAists, why not simply identify these explicitly as `new business' items for the serious MA community to address? But the problems have to be identified specifically. And it could well turn out that someone will object that no, that problem is eactly what the combat moves hinted at in the latter part of Pinan Sandan are all about. But that's the only way we will get some very clearly defined idea of just what—if anything—is missing from the MA formulations of the past, eh?

 

[Steel Tiger]

Good points all round, S_T.

It's hard to obtain much useful information about the historical figures whose joint efforts led to the combat systems we study. But from what I've read of their lives, they appear to have been, in the end, very down-to-earth pragmatists, guided by necessity and the possibilities and limits of the human body's ability to move. If that picture is correct in its essentials, then it suggests that we really do need to get a handle on what these chaps had in mind in elaborating the technical resources that each of the TMAs comprises. We might want to go further—and if we do, we should be very clear on exactly why we do—but we first must get some idea of what our predecessors discovered, to avoid the danger of not only reinventing the wheel, but having it come out square.

This is the tough bit isn't it? Even in those cases where we have writings and sayings from the old masters and style originators, it is often very difficult to comprehend what they are driving at. I have found that they often make allusion to cultural features that escaped the notice of history, or were very topical for the time. These things were not written for us, students 100 or 200 years in the future, but for their immediate students who understood the references. The best we can manage is to interpret the writings with reference to what cultural features survived or have been unearthed.

I've always been a big fan of making discussions as concrete as possible; you seem to get a lot more in the way of informative input when you do that. So here's an idea: if people think that there are specific self-defense situations, scenarios and the like that were neglected, or addressed inadequately, in the work of earlier generations of MAists, why not simply identify these explicitly as `new business' items for the serious MA community to address? But the problems have to be identified specifically. And it could well turn out that someone will object that no, that problem is eactly what the combat moves hinted at in the latter part of Pinan Sandan are all about. But that's the only way we will get some very clearly defined idea of just what—if anything—is missing from the MA formulations of the past, eh?

One problem I can see with this approach is that you would, in theory, have to examine every MA in the world so as to understand what needs to be addressed as 'new business'. Of course you can always shrink your perspective to say just the CMA, but that's still hundreds of different styles. There is a vast amount of overlap, but soughting through it to find the 'missing bits' could be monumental.

Then there is the problem of interpretation, as you say. Just because I consider part of the Tiger form to be a hip throw doesn't mean that another person will (unless I'm the one who taught them). Interpretation is the Pandora's Box of the martial arts. It is both very rewarding and extremely frustrating. We would have very few conversations here at MartialTalk if not for the variety of interpretation.

 

[Steel Tiger]

I was fairly certain Bagua concepts, particularly circle walking was quite old, but I was not and am not sure how old.

Neither am I to tell the truth.

Dong haichuan appeared in Beijing around 1860, and bagua gained its vogue then.

 

[Xue Sheng]

This is the tough bit isn't it? Even in those cases where we have writings and sayings from the old masters and style originators, it is often very difficult to comprehend what they are driving at. I have found that they often make allusion to cultural features that escaped the notice of history, or were very topical for the time. These things were not written for us, students 100 or 200 years in the future, but for their immediate students who understood the references. The best we can manage is to interpret the writings with reference to what cultural features survived or have been unearthed.

This is true and in the case of CMA add in Dynastic change that on occasion out of fear and/or desire to stay on top they would suppress and at times outright destroy anything that was written from the previous dynasty that had anything to do with fighting, combat or the production of weapons. Also part of the reason that some of the Senior CMA guys of the past wrote little or not at all was pure self preservation. Not that someone would learn from a book and beat them up but that someone would get a hold of what they wrote, learn form it and latter try and over throw the government or use what they learned to do something that would catch the eye of the government and if said government found this Sifu's book or recognized anything that the perpetrator did as coming from that Sifu they might just go kill him and his family.

One problem I can see with this approach is that you would, in theory, have to examine every MA in the world so as to understand what needs to be addressed as 'new business'. Of course you can always shrink your perspective to say just the CMA, but that's still hundreds of different styles. There is a vast amount of overlap, but soughting through it to find the 'missing bits' could be monumental.

You took the words right out of my mouth. And you also have (in CMA) Dialectic differences to confuse things and of course the ever present metaphor.

Then there is the problem of interpretation, as you say. Just because I consider part of the Tiger form to be a hip throw doesn't mean that another person will (unless I'm the one who taught them). Interpretation is the Pandora's Box of the martial arts. It is both very rewarding and extremely frustrating. We would have very few conversations here at MartialTalk if not for the variety of interpretation.

Also very true, What I call it is likely not the same as it would be called in say a Korean or Japanese style and then you also run into translation issues.


It might be help to analyze the older traditional styles (which would be a monumental undertaking) and compare it to the newer styles that were designed for similar purpose. Such as (Yes I am going for styles I know) compare Sanda to Xingyiquan, both are/were used by the military for battle. Or compare various older Muay Thai styles to the newer or Kav Maga to any style of your choice kind of thing. But again this will take a lot of people training a lot of styles that are willing to logically discuss their styles in order to get a grip on what may have been added or removed for functionality.

Example not a whole lot of use these days for learning how to fight a guy on a horse so that would likely have been removed or not a whole lot of use for learning how to defend against a gun if a gun did not exist at the time so things may have been added.

 

[Mark Lynn]

A simple case in point is something like the double block—simultaneous outward-middle and high—that begins the kata Pinan Shodan. Very odd-looking move, interpreted as a block: who the hell is going to be coming at you with a high downward strike and a mid-section strike simultaneously? But if, as Iain Abernethy has argued, this is a pin instead—and he makes a damned good case!—then the mystery is cleared up. Only, current karate/TKD teaching teaches almost nothing but strikes and blocks. /quote]

Actually are we sure this was the move as it was done originally or was the execution of it modified later on? Thereby changing the application of the technique. Shosin Nagamine in his book on Okinawan Karate shows this move to be a high block and a upper cut punch. As if the person punches from the front and you shift your wieght onto your back foot and block upwards at the same time as upper cutting the person to the body or chin. Now granted the rear hand is not turned running horizontally towards the rear as we practice it in TKD or Shotokan, rather it protects the head as any upward block on the rear foot would.

Also in the Gen Choi's ITF manual it shows this to be a defense against two people not a single person with two attacks.

In fact when I learned the Pinan Katas while studying Wado, I was told these two postures weren't blocking techniques but rather a ready position (I think it was mind like the moon, and the open hand position in a later form was mind like water?). Regardless my point to this is that over time these moves change physically as well which would change the application of the move. How I did it in Wado it couldn't work as a block, or a pin for that matter, it could only work as a posture a ready position. In TKD the way I was taught it could work as a block and that is how it is taught. What I saw in Shosin Nagamine's book made the most sense though. Although here after Christmas I'm going to get a couople of Ian Abernathy's DVDs.

Mark