Original
Shorin Ryu Chinte Version
There seems to be many different points of
view on the purpose of the 3 hop backs at the end of Chinte kata. For me the
hops are simply to get you back to the starting position. Others see possible
self defense applications to the hop backs.
I was taught the form from the Shotokan of Tristan Sutrisno. His father trained
in the Naval War College in the 1930s before the war, Funakoshi was the one in
charge, but others did most of the instruction. His version did not use the
hops, just ended without them. His father kept to the way he was shown.
Their
version was their family version of Shotokan back in Indonesia. His father was
a doctor drafted into the Japanese Navy at the time Japan owned Indonesia. As
he was a doctor, hence the naval war college as he was to be an Officer in the
Navy and a doctor. Just before the war Japan freed Indonesia to show they were
not warlike, and his father was released. Then he served in the Indonesian
Underground working against the Japanese.
The hops were introduced by
Yoshitaka Funakoshi after he lowered and stretched the postures of the original
kata and nobody could return to the starting point anymore. After only one
generation of students everybody forgot this point and someone introduced the
legend of an “ancient unfinished kata” with a certain halo of mistery and
sacred, and then other people started to imagine absurd and ridiculous bunkais
for the three hops introduced by Yoshitaka.
The historical truth is under your
eyes: the original kata, Chinti or Chintei, is still transmitted in its
pristine form and it ends perfectly on the starting point without any hop.
You
can still see the original form in the Shorin Ryu Kyudokan and even in the
Shito Ryu school (even if a little bit “japonized”).
It’s time to recognize and
to distinguish the original Okinawan forms from their modern distortions
introduced by the Shotokan school. And above all it’s time to wipe out all the
bullshit created by disinformation in karate.
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