Acquiring Martial Knowledge as in learning forms

 

 

There are vast differences between how martial knowledge such as learning kata occurs.

Let me give a few examples from what I have experienced.

 

1, There is continual instruction from one’s instructors (best when it occurs over decades) involving continual adjustments to one’s kata as one’s ability changes. This also occurs with a few years initial instruction the thereafter continually learning in the role of being an instructor.

 

2. When friends share forms, and then make adjustments as well as observing their students progress on those forms over the years.

 

3. When you are able to learn forms very quickly, you really only have your impression what the form really is. That can be useful with work, but it is never really the original either. Your own work on that form over the decades make you find your own worth to the study. But in no case is it the original.

 

4. When you are able to learn forms very quickly, you really only have your impression of what the form really is. But with work that can prove useful as for attacks to work against.

 

This is not a complete survey of what can happen, just useful.

 

For without constant continual instruction you can not say you really got the form.

 

Once upon a time I used to attend a Summer Camp for a variety of martial training for a decade. I learnt many things, and likely did not learn as many too.

 

At that first summer camp, Tristan Sutrisno decided to instruct the black belts there in a form of his Nijushiho. He really did not explain the form so much, just taught it. And me being me, I  remembered what was shown.

 

Then I began to practice the form..Several years later, no longer competing, I thought it would be interesting once again to compete, and to do so with the Nijushiho I had learned.

Never asked Tristan, just did it. That was what it was, Came, Did then Done.

 

Then I moved to Derry and in a while began my youth and adult programs. Tristan used to come up and put on clinics for my students, but mostly for me, because He knew I would retain what was shown. The material was not really used for my student’s studies. Perhaps some of it at a later date.

 

Then around 1989 I decided to include a subsidiary kata for my students, to honor Tristan’s contributions to m art. When he was visiting, to also compete for fun at a local karate tournament, I told him of my idea, thinking the kata would be Bassai Dai.

 

Instead Tristan suggested Nijushiho and then taught it to them at a clinic, including his bunkai for the form. Because I ‘knew’ the form, I spent my time assisting everyone to learn the form. I also did not pay a great deal of attention to what was being taught. I did use the club’s new video camera to record it (later glancing at the tapes once, then setting it aside as I ‘knew’ the form.

 

The next week when the adults practiced, I saw there were mistakes made in their form, and as I ‘knew’ the form I corrected them to what I had been shown.

 

That remained the way the next 20 years we did the form, Over the years Tristan and I went our separate ways, for a variety of reasons, but he had contributed greatly to my knowledge and I always wanted my students to share in that experience a bit.

 

Then about 20 years later I finally watched those tapes, discovering that the version he showed my students, and that which they initially did, was not the version I was originally shown. Close but not the same thing. And because I ’knew’ the form I did not look at what was actually happening that day they were shown the form.

 

I am not an adept in his art, I just know that I was shown, But from that knowledge I can guess what happened.

 

When I was first shown the form, I believe  as he thought no one would remember, he shared  a more advanced variant version of Nijushiho. Call it Nijushiho(2). And what he showed my students was version Nijushiho(1). 

In his system after black belt, when the study of his bunkai begins, when you acquire the bunkai you are also shown a variant version of the kata, A variant to help you remember those bunkai, not bunkai as the term has come to be used.

Rather each movement point  of the form as a unique set of applications to be learned. The variant version of the form to be a mnemonic to remember them

 

Then as dan study increased, at Ni Dan different bunkai were studied for each form, and a new variant version of the form would be learned for the same reason. Thus a Nijushiho(3) etc for all 5 dan levels in his system. Encompassing a very large study of extremely effective technique.

  

At that time I was generally aware of this, but had not pieced this together.

 

When I realized what was reality, I suggested to the other instructors that they might want to return to the version they were originally taught.

 

Perhaps you would say, it really doesn’t matter, as they are just subsidiary studies. And perhaps it does not  As most students never really get that far, and those that do most likely (the adults) go much further into dan studies.

 

But is a caution about what you really know when you do not spend years with an instructor (which becomes something unique in itself).

 

 

 

Now the rest of the story.

 

The two versions shown of Nijushiho in the Sutrisno system would be NIjushiho(1) amd (2).

 

The version Nijushiho(2) is not shown. The differences are slight, more useful as a mnemonic to retain the ‘bunkai’ of that system.

 

Additionally in the Sutrisno family Shotokan, there are 3 Gojushiho kata. Gojushiho,, Gojushiho Dai and Gojushiho Sho. The later 2 versions are what is more commonly associated with Shotokan. He teaches his students all of the versions, each with separate ‘bunkai’.

 

What can be discerned is a bit of what I am talking about. The Sutrisno version is a bit different than my student  Young Lee’s Gojushiho version. Even after decades of work,  work reinforces by many studies of that system, it shows an Isshinryu cast to the performance. Because we were not really his students.

 

The point being when learning a form just from a clinic. You are less likely to get ‘it’ and more likely to make what you have your own version. Not that is bad, just reality.

 

As this was a subsidiary study, knowledge of the ‘bunkai’ we were shown was not a practice we focused on. The application potential and application realization of Isshinry was always our focus.

 

But being a subsidiary form, does not mean we did not put intense practice on it.