Concerning the Chinese origins of the Okinawn arts

5-10-2001



Evening All (at least the night is falling on a perfect May evening in New Hampshire, far from the heavy snowfalls of March),

Mario,



Thank you on your confirmation of Sifu  Jamal Al Bakkar.  I am not familiar with him, but I am well awre of the Hung Gar system. I’ve long had Bucksam Kong’s book on the Tiger/Crane Form, one of their major sets.  Unfortunately the book itself cannot convey the essence of Hung Gar.



It seems to me that the book he’s written of most interest, on Iron Thread and Sanchin is not available to the public.  That of course makes it impossible to determine whether his analysis is correct or not, either.  It also seems to me to be the only text he’s offering which addresses this issue.   It may well be there are parallel interests in these arts.  If so we then have to surmise if they originated from a common source.



As for the rest, it would appear we either wade through the books (or the charts) and determine if there are enough parallels to Okinawan arts for a direct correspondence to Hung Gar.  



From my own vantage point, as clear as Bucksam Kong’s text is, I do not see a direct correspondence to Okinawa.  Perhaps this means we really need to obtain some video record.

 

My friend Ernie Rothrock’s contention is that the Chinese Art of Hsing Yi is the closest overall Chinese Art he’s seen that compares to Okinawan Karate.   He’s referring to the means of generating and issuing energy, not parallels in form technique.



Does anybody have any reasonable suggestion how to obtain video tape of Hung Gar Form Iron Wire (Tiet Sin Kuen)?  I believe I would pursue that before buying charts, or books aboug Hung Gar. (note: this was written before You Tube was common.)



To Change the topic now, most of this afternoon I’ve been thinking about Fernando’s post to Travis about Matayoshi and Kingai-ryu.



I concur with Fernando regarding Matayoshi’s Seisan and parallels to Ueichi Seisan.  Now I don’t know a great deal about Matayoshi Sensei.  I know he was primarily a weapons instructor, with a bent to Chinese influenced weapons alongside the Okinawan arts. I have his first Tsunami tape and vividly recall his Eku form on the beach, how he was using Nihanchi style stepping to flip sand into the eyes of an attacker, and saw definite Bunkai of same to Nihanchi stepping, too.

As many have commented on Matayoshi changing his kata for public demonstration, I wonder if his long years of training had created a Personal Art, as opposed to a system.



One of my original instructors always maintained the first 20 years you were the product of your instructor. After 20 years your art became yours.


 

In the older tradition of personal instruction, with nothing documenting their practices, except the template of the kata, with one-to-one situations, it would be easy to change things for different students. This could be the result of 1) meeting the individual student’s needs 2) changing as the instructors viewpoint changed 3) originally being taught multiple versions of the forms, among still other reasons, too.



Does this mean that Matayoshi was really showing his personal art?  It may be the case if as Fernando maintains.



This might also explain why a Kyan Sensei or a Tatsuo Shimabuku Sensei taught their kata differently to different students.  The template of the kata in their minds, may well have been influenced by their personal art.

 

Well I don’t want to descend into the babble complex at this time, so I’m drawing this to a close.



Victor