Crossing that Bridge when you come to it

 ….. a remembered post from 2005

 

 

So much of our vision of karate’s origins is filtered through today’s experiences and knowledge. A current discussion on the understanding of Kusanku as a night fighting kata on ITOL perhaps make me realize why some have difficulty thinking there is even a remote possibility such is the case.

 

Just go back 100 years in Okinawan history.   Individuals who taught did so privately,  most likely they were studying karate because it was to be needed in their clan’s role in society also likely outside to boot. 

 

And lighting would have been at relative premium, I doubt electric lights were available across the Island. And even traveling to and from your instructor’s house you may well have been walking through the dark. So the intent of low level application wasn’t a theoretical possibility.

 

Was the origin of  the way to fight in the dark?  Perhaps, or perhaps the story was a way to heighten awareness and suggest some principles.  Some of the discussed applications seem quaint or impossible, but then if you haven’t been outside in rain and fog where you can’t see your hands, or in varying nighttime conditions, what is or isn’t reasonable is just opinion, not experience.  Believe it or not.

 

Couple that with nothing but physical and oral transmission of the art, and tying a story to a kata doesn’t really seem that unreasonable. That and the fact we have almost no idea as to what they actually trained in those days, just today’s reflections through time.  So the story may be true, it may just be an instructive pointer, or it may be deception. In fact the best deception may be its so true the non-trained won’t believe it….. Now that would be a true work of art wouldn’t it.

 

But this isn’t about Night fighting but a different journey across a bridge, one I’ve never left behind.

 

I’d like to take you back in time when I was a beginner, only 30 years ago. There were no applications to kata technique in my instructors training, and the stories, well perhaps they came from the Sensei, or perhaps the occasional magazine or book. I can’t say but they did enter the picture of my training.

 

I vividly recall when I was a new student the instructors were working with a brown belt in the dojo alcove by placing two bo’s on the floor on an angle, and that student was doing a kata between them.  I didn’t know what he was doing, always had enough of my own training to work on not to know what the seniors were doing. Several years later Murray Sensei took two bo and placed them on the floor of his church basement and I discovered what they were for, running Chinto between them.

 

I think Murray Sensei mentioned to me in his Church basement that Chinto Kata represented a fight on a bridge, with attackers coming from two sides. But as we didn’t do kata applications it didn’t register as much.  BTW, the kata was being done between the bo’s to test that you were staying between the sides of the bridge. 

 

Very private aside, Charles did offer one Chinto application, where when a Ninja was diving at your out of a tree you would reach up and drill them into the ground.  Interesting concept but in 30 years I’ve not had a ninja attack me that way so it may just remain such, and I realize I don’t think I’ve mentioned it to my students either. O’ well perhaps they’ll try jumping me from a tree and learn that lesson the right way.

 

But time passes quickly.  In the early years I had begun my program at the Scranton Boys Club and in the summers we held class at McDade Park which had a small bridge over a culvert.  So for those students doing Chinto, the story became a reality, doing the kata on a bridge.

 

Now in Okinawa te there are roughly three Chinto directions, with the almost same structural techniques. The Itosu Chinto’s go straight forward and back (12 to 6 o’clock) for the most part. The Tomari Chinto goes from side to side (3 to 9 o’clock). The Kyan Chinto goes from 10:30 to 4:30. Dan Smith of the Seibukan relates Kyan chose the 45 degree angle from his police work, finding that the best angle of entry to apprehend a suspect.

 

It is the Kyan no Chinto pattern which most closely represents Isshinryu’s own.

 

Running the kata on the bridge made me realize that they you work to stay in the center. There is a tactical reason for this, the stronger you’re on the center the easier to force your opponent off the bridge. Conversely the less you’re on the center, the easier for your opponent to force you off the bridge.

 

So Chinto on a bridge was teaching me a lesson of tactics. But if you do Chinto and even if you turn exactly correct you quickly discover you can’t stay over the centerline, the shape the kata is such that at times your line parallels the centerline

 

This became an advanced practice for my dan students on occasion.  Moving from Scranton in my yard I have a narrow path between a series of bushes (as well as rows between my field of blueberry bushes, and I exchanged the bridge with the narrow path but kept the same mission.  Working Chinto to stay on the centerline.

 

What I discovered is you have to make subtle stance adjustments to do so. This was not alien to what my instructors taught us.  The manner in which several kata were taught required tuning up the stance as your body awareness grew.

 

Now you may be seeing this as a quaint practice, trying to make sense of a  story, but there was a more tactical answer. At the same time my studies into technique application advanced. I grew more and more fascinated at the power in turning, and Chinto exploration became one of my tools with its continual turning techniques.  When working the applications how you have to sometimes shift a technique came into play, working with what you are presented. It seemed pure kata wasn’t necessarily the answer. But couple that with my Chinto movement studies and I began to realize how the same subtle shifts coupled with the kata movement application potential allowed you to keep the centerline of the attack you were working against, without shifting away to ‘sell’ the technique.

 

So the center line of the  bridge becomes the centerline of the attack or of the opponents body, the line to work, to  stay on the center to dominate and control.

 

A method of kata practice mirroring the reality of application.

 

Or just a small story of one strange practice of somebody who listens to old tales too hard.

 

For the record, the new Chinto student does not enter into this practice. Only after about 3 or so years into Chinto do they begin to study this concept, and that’s just an opening movement in a larger, lifetime study, IMVHO.

 

So Chinto being a fight on a bridge…. A fight to control the centerline…. A method of training to supplement reality of application…. Take your pick.