Styles that created there own kata

Here is a Chinese wrestling (Shuai Chiao) form that I created many years ago.

All comments are welcome.

Nice. Most people will watch and see several "back kicks" and not realize they are sweeps done in conjunction with your arms throwing the opponent down. This is also true in a few Okinawan kata but the movements are not as extreme and are somewhat hidden.
 
just wanted opinions / discussion on the phenomenon. Especially since some practitioners are very invested with their kata. Hope I have not crossed a line by doing this...
The Okinawan Historical society used to have lengthy list of all Karate kata. They also broke it down by Tomari, Shuri and Naha lists side by side with name changes.
 
The Okinawan Historical society used to have lengthy list of all Karate kata. They also broke it down by Tomari, Shuri and Naha lists side by side with name changes.
The result will have a good amount of ambiguity. There was much cross-fertilization, blending and sharing of kata information in the early days which can be seen by many styles having kata in common. It should be noted that the description of Tomari, Shuri and Naha karate did not arise until the 1920's. Even then, the intent was not to separate them from each other and put them in neat boxes. Specific styles as we know today were not named till after that. These things were, at least in part, a concession to the Japanese way of organizing things and TMA politics.

While there are regional "flavors" to the way a kata is done, to classify them thusly is a largely artificial nomenclature. It's not so much "what" kata, but "how" it's done. While it's often convenient (and useful) to categorize kata for various reasons (I do myself), too much should not be made of it.
 
Last edited:
The Okinawan Historical society used to have lengthy list of all Karate kata. They also broke it down by Tomari, Shuri and Naha lists side by side with name changes.
I became suspicious of the whole tomrai, shuri and naha thing when I learned they are only a few miles from one another. Surely their styles can't have been all that different, says the sheep shagger who lives in a village with a huge class divide between the nearest two settlements to him
 

Latest Discussions

Back
Top