The Kata Issues

12-12-2001



Is change inevitable?  Sure, but the operating issue is what is change.



To one person changing one block in a form in an unacceptable level of change. To the next person keeping 90% of the kata the same means there is no difference between the arts.  There are systems which try and keep the kata unchanging, and there are those which are totally undocumented and you can’t prove if they did or didn’t.



I can view 4 different schools spinning off of Kyan Chotoku and see entirely different things in their kata.  Keeping in the Kyan lineage, another could compare books showing Nagamine  “Chinto Kata” and Isshinryu’s Chinto Kata and declare they are essentially the same form.  But training with advanced individuals in the Matsubayshi Ryu lineage doing Chinto alongside Isshinryu’s Chinto, while they have a surface similarty they are intensely different beasts.



[Aside, at no time am I implying any of the versions I’m discussion superior over another version. In my experience it totally depends on the skill and knowledge of the practitioner to sell their ‘system’ which is the driving force. Not the system.]

 

Or I can maintain there is absolutely no difference between Isshinryu’s Seiunchin Kata and Goju Ryu’s Seiunchin Kata (using the 85% rule) where the Goju stylist (an abstract person not present on this forum of course) would have an absolute fit with such a claim.



Isshinryu’s many flavors can all train together, ignoring the oft times slight differences, yet that doesn’t mean they are doing the same thing.



Gary described his training in Japan and finds the 90% rule of simultaneity binding, another can watch a festival from Okinawa and seeing Goju practitioner after Goju practitioner doing their kata differently.



In my studies on the nature of Seisan-ness, a search for the underlying binding behind Seisan Kata, I’ve explored Shorin, Isshin, Ueichi, Goju Seisan, as well as Shotokan Hangetsu. They are all different from each other, but there is a definite underlying structure that permeates Seisan too, one that sets aside style differences.  Not that you can ascertain the original ‘Seisan’, but still you reach a conclusion that an original Seisan may have been a real possibility.



Some arts have dealt with change in the modern era more openly. Funakoshi obviously re-crafted his instruction in Japan.  Isshinryu’s founder likewise clearly changed his instructors training, but a close study of those underlying traditions, also shows he likely did so within those instructors trainings, too.

 

I think function is the more important issue.  Where older documentation is available, it gives glimpses into what may have been before, but as that is not clearly the case in most instances I don’t think it is reason to drag you down, either.



One of the marvelous issues which arise from our studies, is with skill, almost anything can work. So if the blocks go higher, or are replaced with another technique, so be it. You can still find way to make them function. Should you never change a move there are still uncountable uses for the ‘frozen’ techniques, enough to never run dry with study.



It’s what you do with yours which is the most important issue, now and in the future.