Reflections on What is the Past?

This study is a result of a long chain of events, a look at some of Okinawa’s special karate traditions and a whole lot of speculation that what we know may not really be what we know.

After all we’ve all heard Shimabuku Sensei was tired and/or ill when he landed in Seattle, and this caused the “MISTAKES” in those 1966 movies on his kata. Many have detailed that history and those mistakes in far greater detail than I would attempt, and the video record does exist. So, we know the story of Isshinryu’s founder at that time, don’t we?

I would politely suggest, perhaps not.

This chain of events started earlier this year when I scanned a number of my old karate magazines forms from back in the early 70’s when the magazines were documenting some of the arts in detail no longer seen. 

Here on Pleasant Isshinryu I placed the weapons kata in the files section, thinking this group might find them interesting. The kata ones (non-Isshinryu kata) I scanned and placed in the files section of the Bunkai Unlimited group I also host.

Among them were two Shito-ryu kata, Jiin by Demura and Rohai by Kotaka.  Nice renditions, both showing the technique skill of the performer. The Rohai looked different from what I would consider the normal Shorin standard versions (as in Matsubayshi Ryu), but there was no Shito-ryu documentation to compare it to.

One of the BU members, knowing and liking both performers, detailed how Deumra consciously changed one of the sections in Jiin, and how Kotaka had bragged at the time that he had changed the kata.  They weren’t being evil, there were living up to one of the older Okinawan standards.

Back in 1978 Estrada interviewed Soken Hohen of Matsumura Seito and in the interview, he stated:

Interviewer: Was Taira a friend or student? He is very famous for his weaponry in Japan.

Sensei: Yes, Taira... he knew a lot of kata,... Yes, he is dead, you know that. He would watch my kata all the time and try to learn my tsuken style stick. But I would trick him and change the kata, wah!! ... just like that. He would still come back and look some more in the hopes of being able to take it back. When we both were young -- our karate was very good. When we both got old, our weaponry was good.

The full interview is at this link. It is interesting to read.

http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=7fdb969202e8a68cd104e33a8d843b57   No Longer Found

There is plenty of evidence that public performance of the Okinawan arts often required the instructors to consciously change their kata, both for public approval, and to retain the ‘right’ way to do them for the inner circle. 

This was not a unique experience.

Funakoshi sent his son to study other kata on Okinawa and one elderly instructor who showed Funakoshi’s son a kata (reportedly Gojushiho) cautioned the son that one of that instructors' students, who really wanted that form, was shown the form wrong, and the version he just showed Funakoshi’s son, was the true version.

Kashiba (later founder of Kashiba Juku a subgroup within the Matsubayshi Ryu) studied with Soken at his instructor’s (Nagamines’s) blessings. His brother was the head of the Yamanni Ryu bo tradition. They reportedly never demonstrated their kata in public the ‘right’ way.  In fact, the popular Oshiro Yammani Ryu video are not the real Yammani system, but a group of forms he created using some of the Yammani formula solutions to bo.

Another of the Okinawan Instructors who teach Crane, also was well known for creating audience versions of the kata.

In a different tradition the Sutrisno family tradition I studied, have multiple bunkai versions of their forms, never demonstrated to the outside public, their core Shotokan and basic kobudo traditions, the only ones shown.

Training was for the close group, not for public consumption.  I’m sure this goes back to the oldest traditions. Karate was a secret, and you had the responsibility to keep it so.  It wasn’t written down and had to be passed from hand to hand as a life experience. Documentating any of it in any detail, came about in Japan, to impress the Japanese MA establishment, giving the Okinawan arts authority.

So, we have an older tradition.  Public demonstration of karate has been around for a long time, but that demonstration did not make one drop keeping the true art secret.  Why I know not, just that it was a tradition with legs.

When Shimabuku landed and was later filmed, he didn’t do his kata one time. There were multiple versions of each. There exist an outtake record of kata not chosen for the public movies, and I see those ‘outakes’ as better versions (again being held close to the chest).  So perhaps his performance and ‘mistakes’ were the result of jet lag, and other infirmity for an older person traveling ½ the way around the world.

But perhaps, yes perhaps, they were conscious changes, only leaving the shell or a part of the shell of the art.

Perhaps Shimabuku Sensei was concerned with demonstrating his art, and made changes that would not affect his ability to leave a shell of the forms, appropriate for his students abilities in those days?

Sure, this is speculation, but what if it was not?

Go back to those magazine kata. If they were wrong 35 years ago, they’re still wrong. But if somebody worked hard and practiced and the taught those versions for life, with skill they become real. Whether 100% correct or not, those techniques are as effective as any techniques are. Sure, the subject doing the kata (and/or their initiated students) can laugh at those who are copycats. 

But if that person, self-taught, actually does the kata with power and flow, and can apply every addition and change, most correctly,

It is a kata, as good as the ‘pure’ original version, which was not transmitted.

These questions are large, and their likely is no proof what to believe.

Just an art passed from person to person, and if your instructor says it’s true, you have no choice but to believe them.

So, think on this.

Victor

Appendix – 

Post on Bunkai Unlimited 

Date:  Mon May 24, 2004  11:37 am   

Subject:  Re: Demura and Kotaka

1. Both of them are showing their respective kata incorrectly.  I know and love Jiin and Demura starts with the double block reversed the way it is done in Jion. Plus, he leaves out the double blocks that finish the kakewake/kick/double punch/double block sequence.

 

Kotaka bragged at the time that he wasn't showing the kata correctly so that nobody could copy his kata.  This seems to be a common practice.

 

Of course, most people have difficulty learning kata from video let alone pictures. The thing is, leaving out the double block I mentioned means that the application possibilities are much different.

 

More interesting than the kata are the practitioners.  Here are the 1961 and 1962 all Japan champions in their hey day.  Look at the stances, the clarity of the moves.  Even though Demura was Itosu-kai and Kotaka was Seishin-kai (Motobu-ha) at the time, there is a strong similarity in their basics.

 

At the time the Rohai article was done, David Krieger had recently beaten Joe Lewis, Chuck Norris and Ron Marchini all on the same day.  Yet, David could barely defend himself against Kotaka while sparring.

Jiin Kata – Demura Shito Ryu 

Rohai –  Chuzo Kotaka – Shito ryu (KI 08/70)

Jion – Yamashita –