Think about what Advanced means.

 

I recently shared on an Isshinryu facebook group one of my blog posts, which showed the February 1990 Black Belt magazine article ‘ SUNSU, Isshinryu Karate’s Most Advanced kata”,  I had posted that article to preserve it for my students, http://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-article-on-sunsu-kata.html.

 

It has been a long times since I have re-read it.

 

But on reading that article I began thinking what the word advanced means.

 

To be clear I realize Sunsu (SunNuSu) was the kata Shimabuku Tatsuo created and that it normally is one of the last empty hand kata taught.

 

I love the form for it contains so many lessons and allow us a glimpse into the thoughts of Shimabuku Sensei.

Although the form is learned in a few short weeks and practiced hard for years, it was only about after 20 years of work on the form that I really began to be comfortable with the form. It’s breathing pattern, timing, balance shifts and the like.  I suppose in a way that might be what an advanced form represents.

 

Then when my senior students were a the same 20 year study of SunNuSu I remarked to them about my own experience.  Whereby one of them remarked he was feeling the same idea I expressed. (Though almost identical in their studies with me, they also had their own specialties or focuses, one of them on the kata and one of them on the kobudo.

 

So that is another  definition of advanced.

 

But I have placed my thoughts on another idea, that being are the techniques of SunNuSu (Sunsu) more advanced than the techniques of the other kata, certainly some are different, but are they more advanced?

 

Let me begin with the opening movement of Seisan kata (setting aside the definition of what that movement can represent). With more that a few years of work I identified about 100 different ways they could be inserted into an attack and disrupt that attack,  In fact where I started my shodans studies was just there. The most important thing about that study was to understand how the underlying principles led one to all those application. The working to those applications realizations was something else all together.

 

And if you take those same underlying principles and apply them to the opening movement of the other kata, you will end up with about 100 different way to use those movements, too. So whether Seisan, Seiunchin, Naifanchi, Wansu, Chinto, Kusanku, Sunsu or Sanchin. Each kata presents almost the same potentials for use. Certainly there are some principles which may not apply every time, but that more becomes a moot point.

 

And the same can be said for almost every other movement from each other kata.  Leading one to question are any of the moves really advanced.

 

In summation what you want to see as advanced might be the correct answer for you.

 

 
The following posts from my blog expound on some of the themes expressed above.

At the same time I doubt anyone will work through them, even my students who lived all of this.

 

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2019/10/bushi-no-te-isshinryu-notes-on-kata.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/06/some-of-underlying-principles.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/06/opening-seisan-kata-shodan-study.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2013/07/opening-seisan-kata-sho-dan-study-101.html

Another possible source would be the notes of Don Bohan on the website for him.