Kusanku - the Night Fighting Kata

At some level the idea of Kusanku being a night fighting kata often drives others to excesses about the value of these stories. Why would anyone design a kata to fight at night? The techniques of Kusanku can obviously be used at any time. And of course the Ninja variations of the story get even more ridiculous.

 

Actually the story explained how to use Kusanku technique to feel your way through the dark and if touching an opponent how the following technique would be used to respond to that touch. Of how to make sounds in the total dark to cause an attacker to move to that sound and in turn use that as an opening to dispatch the attacker. It told of a partly cloudy night, at times obscuring the moonlight so you could move more freely and at times moonlight shining would cause you to drop to the ground to try and obscure your silhouette from being seen. Of all the stories this suggested the largest application potential.

 

You have to step back a bit and think about Okinawa in the past, in the origins of Karate development.

In the past karate was frequently taught in private at night. In those days there were not electric lamps to light a path or road. Moving through the dark to your training location was a reality and moving in the dark (with ever changing conditions, footing, weather, etc.) was not the same as taking a stroll in the daylight.

 

At night youth messing around might be in the prowl. Animals, bad weather conditions, and other miscreants might be around. I remember reading instructions from one senior instructor if a group of people were moving towards you in the night, you should hide and let them pass, then quietly follow them to see if they were going to harm someone else, where you should then attack them from behind to end their violence.

 

Actually that story ties well to part of the Kusanku tale.

 

If we truly think about Karate’s past, fighting in a low level light environment was a specific set of training to experience.

 

Yambaru forest at night

For most of us today’s training is devoid of experience in a low level light environment, where the eye’s visual purple must extend sight potential and your other senses come into play. Hence in Isshinryu’s Code of Karate (from the Bubishi) the eye must see all sides and the ear must listen in all directions.

 

The eye seeing all sides not just referencing peripheral vision but using it to register movement detection. Likewise the ear must listen in all directions referencing awareness of sound from an approaching attacker is important to not be attacked without warning. The night by shutting down much of our normal sight allows these other uses of our senses to flourish.

 

In Isshinryu as our story has it one night our founder, Shimabuku Tatsuo, woke up hearing something in his house. He didn’t find anything amiss but realized that some of Kusanku’s technique could be applied to the dark environment. He is not alone in this thought, the Kashiba Juku group uses all of the kata in their system to explore their night fighting potential. Likewise a Shorin stylist on the West Coast in the 70’s, Steve Fisher, used to have two different versions of Kusanku a day version and a night version. I never saw him and they may have just been the Kusanku Dan and Kusanku Sho kata with different naming, but the concept of Kusanku used for night fighting remains.

 

Coming from the era with no studies in kata applications, when I began my own application studies I choose to explore how Kusanku could work in the low light environment. Years later attending a Bushi No Te summer camp in the Poconos with my 18 month old son, I ran the clinic at midnight teaching Kusanku from my night fighting applications. It was raining on and off, my son was asleep in his stroller sheltered from the rain, and between rain, fog and mud, I gave what I consider one of the unique Kusanku presentations I’ve ever done.

 

More than just exploring how Kusanku might be used, the story actually shapes how we execute the kata in our practice. Most specifically the section where we move forward with stepping knife hand strikes we use them as ‘feeling in the dark motions’ trying to feel an opponent in total dark. When the hand touches an arm, it rolls over with ossae (pressing power) and the following movement is the attack to conclude them.

 

As I came up in the era kata application study was not the paradigm how Isshinryu was taught, I always remembered the small tales about kata I heard. Then decades later when I began my own kata application studies, I used them for inspiration.

 

I had no reason  to believe technique for Kusanku kata was restricted to that of night use, but that is where I began my studies.

 

Several years later in 1990, at a mixed group Summer Camp, I was asked to host the midnight Friday night training session. I had taken my son Victor-Michael with me, he was then 18 months old and I had a blast, That evening, were I was the instructor with the less time in my art, and the rain was lightly falling, I gave my clinic. My son was sleeping in has baby carriage beside me. I announced I was going to begin showing them Isshinryu Kusanku kata, and some of its applications.

 

I believe the other instructors thought I was joking, but teach it I did, I remember having those attendees throwing a crescent kick and then dropping to the ground, and their faces were placed in the puddles on the field there. Then they learned to jump up and change direction again placing their faces into the ground in other mud puddles.

 

The applications I showed them were consistent with my theme of uses for Kusanku at night.

 

I doubt any of them will ever forget that night.

 

We did not cover the entire kata that night, later  the next day I completed showing them the form.

 

So I began teaching part of the form, then I began showing the applications I was working on at that time.

 

Over time I found many Kusanku kata uses for many different situations, but the Night Fighting version remains in my thoughts.

 

A clearer example of what I showed can be found here.

 https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2017/08/kusanku-kata-and-night-fighting.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2011/04/embrace-night-night-fighting-kata.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/08/steve-fisher-and-moon-kata.html