Looking for in depth information on Naihanji Hyungs

[Jep]

I'm about to start writing up a paper on the history, meaning and characteristics of the Naihanji Hyungs, but have been unable to find much, if any, decent information on them. I asked my instructor where to look, and she suggested I hit up some forums for help, so here I am.

I have a general idea about what the hyung is about, but I'm looking for something more concrete to base my paper around.

If you could provide some information, or some suggestions of where to find the information, I would be very grateful.

Thank you.

- Jep

 

[exile]

I'm about to start writing up a paper on the history, meaning and characteristics of the Naihanji Hyungs, but have been unable to find much, if any, decent information on them. I asked my instructor where to look, and she suggested I hit up some forums for help, so here I am.

I have a general idea about what the hyung is about, but I'm looking for something more concrete to base my paper around.

If you could provide some information, or some suggestions of where to find the information, I would be very grateful.

Thank you.

- Jep

Hi Jep—first of all, is the Naihanji hyung you mention a TSD `cognate' form of the Naihanchi kata widely practiced in several Okinawan/Japanese karate styles, the one Gichin Funakoshi spent nine years practicing, studying and working out the bunkai for as his primary training? Because if it is, I think I can help you out quite a bit... but first let me know. It definitely looks like `more than coincidence', but one never knows...

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

The naihanji, or keema, hyung, from what I know, are all based on the horse - obviously.

The only other thing I know is that they provide a good means of self defense when your back is close to a wall, since you move in a straight line horizontally, without need of stepping backward or forward. They require a -lot- of hip rotation to get any power as well. I know keema hyung cho dan through sam dan, so if you have any questions on the moves, I might be able to provide some help there. I have a video of myself performing keema hyung ee dan (no sound) that also might be good reference, I guess, but if I take your meaning correctly you know the forms already and just need information about their history. There...dunno. C.S. Kim has a book (which I need to buy one of these days) on traditional TSD, and from what I hear it's excellent. Might be worth a look.

 

[Master Jay S. Penfil]

JT,
These hyung are some of the best defensive tactics hyung in our system. If you look back to the Okinawan instructors of the past, the one who was known for being the toughest in the street, and made Bunkai the center of his training, Choki Motobu, called Naifhanchi Cho Dan; The only kata that you really need to know. He felt so strongly about this kata that he stated; if you can only choose one kata to learn and spend the rest of your life training with, it should be this kata.

The techniques in this hyung are such that if performed correctly, with the correct mind set, every technique is a finishing technique (fatal blow), with the exception of the disengagements at the end of each line.

I have spent many years working on these hyung with Okinawan and Japanese instructors to learn the Bunkai. Each of them have brought the principles and concepts of their respective Soke’s to the training.

Contact me directly and I will forward you specific info and video that you will find beneficial.

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

What, no Korean instructors were good enough? If it's a TSD form, you'd think that's where you'd want to go.

 

[exile]

What, no Korean instructors were good enough? If it's a TSD form, you'd think that's where you'd want to go.

JT, Naihanchi was an Okinawan form that was one of the main courses of instruction for the Okinawan masters who became the teachers of the Japanese karateka, and, later on, of the original Kwan founders. It got into KMA because those Korean masters trained it under people like Funakoshi and Kanken. But there is excellent reason to believe that, historically, the Korean masters were not taught the fullest and deepest bunkai for these forms—that the bunkai underlying Matusumura's and Itosu's practice, for example, were probably a lot different and more combat-specific than what Funakoshi himself learned in the next generation, and it is widely conceded that the next generation after Funakoshi got a lot less of the directly `martial' apps. So yes, it makes perfect sense to go to the source, particularly the Okinawan karateka who still probably maintain the closest version of the fighting systems that kata like Naihanchi encode.

What I was going to suggest to Jep, in fact, was that he take a look at the `Bunkai-Jutsu' series video on Naihanchi (Passai is also on there) by Iain Abernethy, maybe the foremost pioneer of `bunkai recovery' in the progress kata-interpretation movement centered in the UK, with people like Stuart Anslow and Simon O'Neil leading the charge in hyung interpretation based on Abernethy's methodology. The Naihanchi video that IA has on the bunkai and oyo for the Naihanchi is beautifully produced and shows the wealth of severely effective techniques concealed within that kata. As Master Penfil correctly states, this was regarded by the older generation of Okinawan masters as one of the jewels in the crown of martial arts training, actually a whole martial arts system on its own. If I were doing research on any given kata, I'd definitely move heaven and earth to find out how IA's analysis of it ran, and it this case you have the tremendous advantage of actually being able to see what he's talking about.

 

[Makalakumu]

Jep - first of all, welcome to MT. Second of all, here are some threads that might be of some interest...

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21508&highlight=Naihanchi

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34853&highlight=Naihanchi

 

[Ian wallace]

my history on hyungs is very poor but i was once told that the the naihanji hyung's where once one long hyung but was later split into three forms due to how long it was, i know that it translats to "the iron horse", its a form that teaches you how to defend and attack while your back is against a wall, i also once heard that it was taught to people who had to fight on a horse. but as you know there is alot of storys in T.S.D that people get wrong due to poor interpretations or the famous "chinese whisper" but i hope the little info helped!!!
Good luck with your Essay!!

Ian Wallace

Tang Soo !!!!

 

[Master Jay S. Penfil]

Ian,
I know that many think that this hyung series was once one long hyung and the split into 3, but that is totally incorrect.

In the beginning there was only Cho-Dan. Itosu later developed/created Ee-dan and Som-Dan...

 

[Master Jay S. Penfil]

JT,
You don't need to be so defensive of the Korean masters/grandmasters. If you read KJN Hwang Kee's final book, he discusses the Okinawan connection and relationship to our hyung.

Open your eyes and your mind to the early past. That is where all of the answers are...

 

[Master Jay S. Penfil]

Exile,
Thank you for that excellent post.

I must elaborate on the level of Bunkai that Funakoshi was able to pass on to his student that would eventually be passed down to those like Hwang Kee.

In Shigeru Egami’s Book: Karate-do, Beyond Technique, Egami wrote;

The master (referring to Funakoshi) did not teach us the Bunkai for the kata, as he had not himself, learned it from Itosu prior to moving to Japan.
(Shigeru Egami was Funakoshi's senior-most student)

If Funakoshi had not learned the Bunkai prior to leaving Okinawa, and had only learned the kata itself, then there is absolutely NO WAY that the Korean Kwan heads that trained in this lineage could have brought the Bunkai to their respective students.

Hwang Kee, and the others were left with an empty shell of a system to teach and the responsibility of developing their own ideas for what the techniques could have been intended to be. I don’t fault Hwang Kee or any of the others. They all did the best that they could with what they had to work with at the time, and from them, we all became the Tang Soo Do practitioners that we are today.

Here is the important piece of the puzzle for those of you who choose to get hung up on having to keep everything in Korean context; Hwang Kee never intended for us to live in a box/dead art. By tracing back the roots of the system and the hyung/kata that we train with, we are breathing new air into our art and expanding on that which has been given to us. Just like a parent hopes that his/her child will surpass all that they themselves could be, Hwang Kee want us to take Tang Soo Do to new highs and establish an environment of constant UPGRADE with all that we do.

By training with the older systems and bringing back to life that which has been lost by so many, we are fulfilling Hwang’s dream…

 

[Ian wallace]

I always thought it was one hyung, i guess the more you search the more you find! thanx for that master penfil! do you know any more info on this hyung but more directed to its techinical intentions (in the moves)? i do know most but some could be a strike when others could be a block, this info could help also for the essay our friend is writeing!!

 

[exile]

JT,
You don't need to be so defensive of the Korean masters/grandmasters. If you read KJN Hwang Kee's final book, he discusses the Okinawan connection and relationship to our hyung.

Open your eyes and your mind to the early past. That is where all of the answers are...

This is profoundly true of the KMAs. My impression is that for a long time Hwang Kee (in his disputes with Gen. Choi over the future course of the Korean striking arts at that time) emphasized the connection to earlier Chinese arts, but that later on in his life he was explicit about TSD's debt to the Okinawan tuite masters of the previous century.

Understanding the deep debt of the TSD forms to their Okinawan/Japanese sources in no way diminishes the pivotal role of the kwan founders in the development of the Korean offshoots of those earlier forms of the art. But as Master Penfil emphasizes, the key to many of the technical elements are to be sought and, ultimately found, in the ideas and discoveries of the Okinawan masters.

I only wish that Taekwondo had preserved as much of its links to its Okinawan sources that TSD did. Some of you TSDers out there may not realize how lucky you are to have forms like the Pyung-Ahns (from Itosu's Pinan/Heian katas), Naihanchi, Bassai and some of the other original `total system' hyungs, taken over literally from the O/J sources which the kwan founders were taught, as part of your curricula. I'm very fortunate: my sabumnim is deeply familiar with the Pyung-Ahn hyungs. But the WTF's efforts to snuff out the technical linkages between TKD and its Okinawan roots have been successful enough that there are probably fewer than one in fifty TKD dojangs which employ instructors who know the Pyung-Ahns, let alone the other Okinawan-source forms you folks learn as a matter of normal curriculum. Even the Palgwes were eliminated from the KKW curriculum because they are so evidently recombinations of Okinawan/Japanese kata sequences (in my subversive dojang, we learn the Palgwes instead of the Taegeuks). Count your blessings!

 

[crushing]

I very much appreciate the information that has been exchanged in this thread. I've been curious about the Naihanchi forms and their application.

Given our curriculum, I must also belong to a subversive TKD organization. After the Ki-chos we started in on the Pyung-Ahns with Nohai, Naihanchi, and Shipsoo to round it off to eight hyungs along with the Palgwes. I think the Taegeuks and the Bassai and Koryo forms are down the road yet for me.

I've also really appreciated the videos of forms posted by upnorthkyosa. It's interesting to see the difference in how some of the techniques in the forms are done differently from my organization.

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

JT,
You don't need to be so defensive of the Korean masters/grandmasters. If you read KJN Hwang Kee's final book, he discusses the Okinawan connection and relationship to our hyung.

Open your eyes and your mind to the early past. That is where all of the answers are...

I was only expressing my belief that studying an art doesn't require studying another art, except for comparison out of interest. Researching a past iteration only shows a historical footnote; you can learn how best to get power out of a form best by doing it.

In regards to Ian's question, most quality books detail the moves for each hyung, but if you want info on a specific part of cho dan, ee dan, or sam dan, I can help you there (more with cho dan and ee dan, since I only learned sam dan a month or two ago). The main thing is to use your hips for power; crossing for blocks and pulling back the retracting hand fast and hard help, but in this form especially waist power is crucial.

In regards to exile's comment about the pyung ahn forms, I agree. I hear they were originally one long form, broken up to make it easier to learn, though I've no details on exactly how that worked. What I do know, though, is that the 5 pyung ahn forms are core to TSD simply because of their effectiveness and variety of moves. At the C.S. Kim schools, black belts now have "required" pyung ahn forms for tests (though we have to know all of them, if we're asked to perform them) just because of how well they teach moves and combinations with stance shifts and all the other little technical things necessary to make the whole form work. Part of the cho dan test, in fact, is performing gi cho hyung sam bu, then all the pyung ahn forms, in sequence, with no choon bee in between forms. Good for in neh, too, I guess.

If they're from Okinawan styles, cool. I'll still practice them Tang Soo Do-style, though.

 

[exile]

Given our curriculum, I must also belong to a subversive TKD organization. After the Ki-chos we started in on the Pyung-Ahns with Nohai, Naihanchi, and Shipsoo to round it off to eight hyungs along with the Palgwes. I think the Taegeuks and the Bassai and Koryo forms are down the road yet for me.

Boy, CR'g, you sure do belong to a subversive dojang if you folks do those forms. That's a rarity among rarities in the TKD world, I'd say! Taegeuk and Koryo, that's pretty much the norm, but Naihanchi and Bassai in your outfit? Your chief instructor sounds like someone with a background in TSD, if not karate!

I was only expressing my belief that studying an art doesn't require studying another art, except for comparison out of interest. Researching a past iteration only shows a historical footnote; you can learn how best to get power out of a form best by doing it.

I don't think it's so much a question of studying one art by studying another art, in this case. To my mind, it's more like something along the following lines: you run across a proverb or saying in one language that doesn't necessarily make much sense. So you might assume it's just a bit of random nonsense. But you subsequently discover that the proverb was actually borrowed into that language, in translation, from a different language, and in that second language, one of the crucial words in the saying has a double meaning, so that the saying is a pun expressing some sharp bit of verbal humor. It's not a perfect analogy, but the idea is, the explanation of why that particular sequence of moves is in the form may be more accessible if you look at the art which was the source of the form, and whose practitioners still have a memory of what the specific apps were that the form movement were encoding. It saves you a lot of trouble in terms of extracting the combat meaning of the form yourself, where there are so many possibilities to consider and so many misleading paths that you'd prefer to avoid. Since these patterns originated in Okinawa and the memory of their original combat scenarios is yet green there, so to speak, it makes sense to consult with the Okinawan masters who are most likely to understand the logic of application of the movement recorded in the forms in question. It's not so much a matter of generating power as of understanding, for example, that that apparent `uppercut' movement wasn't intended as an uppercut, but part of a trapping move locking up the assailant's forearm, which leads to an immediate take down with a low sidekick as a finishing strike—that kind of thing.

Correct performance of the hyungs is very important, for sure—but not so much for its own sake as much as being a necessarily preliminary to figuring out just what the counterattack tactics encoded in the forms really are. You won't get the combat technique `blueprint' from the forms if you don't practice them correctly. But a good performance is only a preliminary to hard-headed bunkai analysis and `field testing' of the oyo with a (very) noncompliant training partner. A lot of stuff that looks good on paper in advance turns out to be a little too hard to pull off under those conditions to be really reliable in close-quarters applications on mean streets...

 

[crushing]

Boy, CR'g, you sure do belong to a subversive dojang if you folks do those forms. That's a rarity among rarities in the TKD world, I'd say! Taegeuk and Koryo, that's pretty much the norm, but Naihanchi and Bassai in your outfit? Your chief instructor sounds like someone with a background in TSD, if not karate!

Rather than me plagiarize and/or paraphrase, I'll just point you to a link with more information about my organization, if you are interested: http://wmtkd.freehosting.net/

 

[Makalakumu]

I was only expressing my belief that studying an art doesn't require studying another art, except for comparison out of interest. Researching a past iteration only shows a historical footnote; you can learn how best to get power out of a form best by doing it.

When it comes to TSD, studying the arts that formed the root of our hyung, CAN and DOES help you do the form better with more power. Once you understand what you are actually doing with the moves, sometimes the entire character of the move changes. The entire emphasis suddenly shifts to something else.

Your comments on the "use of hip" are telling because it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes "using the hip" the way TSD is showing it doesn't work with the application that one is working on and sometimes, the use of hip is completely "backward" from the way that we do it.

The bottom line is that TSD does not have all of the information when it comes to its hyung. It's like what Master Penfil said, the old Masters did the best they could with what they had and now it is up to us to give TSD an upgrade.

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

When it comes to TSD, studying the arts that formed the root of our hyung, CAN and DOES help you do the form better with more power. Once you understand what you are actually doing with the moves, sometimes the entire character of the move changes. The entire emphasis suddenly shifts to something else.

Your comments on the "use of hip" are telling because it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes "using the hip" the way TSD is showing it doesn't work with the application that one is working on and sometimes, the use of hip is completely "backward" from the way that we do it.

The bottom line is that TSD does not have all of the information when it comes to its hyung. It's like what Master Penfil said, the old Masters did the best they could with what they had and now it is up to us to give TSD an upgrade.

I have to disagree here. I don't learn hyung as a series of motions but as a series of techniques. Each technique has a specific purpose, and my instructor takes special care to inform us what each move does in the form. From the beginning, we learn to think of hyung as fight sequences and to picture our opponents so that we know where to block/attack. It's not like hyung are just out there, patterns of motion.

If you know the technique and what it does, you know what you're doing in the form. It's that simple. I can't think of a single instance in a form where I wouldn't know what I was doing or where my opponent was while doing the technique. Just going through the motions is a practice very much discouraged, at my school anyway.

And if you think that about using the hip for power, you don't understand me. Perhaps I should use "waist" instead. You get power from your center, not just your limbs. A fan doesn't blow much if its motor isn't using enough power, and the motor is at the center. Show me one instance of it being counter-productive, and I'll show you a technique misunderstood.

 

[exile]

Rather than me plagiarize and/or paraphrase, I'll just point you to a link with more information about my organization, if you are interested: http://wmtkd.freehosting.net/

Hey CR, many thanks for that pointer!