Much of the past is simply not available to prove, and that includes even the recent past. What an instructor actually taught 100 years ago is not documented. Too often the modern ‘revelations’ are, IMO, being cast backward to explain what happened from a modern point of view.
My review of Itosu Anko’s students writing shows an interesting possibility of what earlier karate training may represent, and I believe as a group their writings in the 1920’s and 1930’s suggest common origins through Itosu’s teachings. Itosu explained that the use of karate was passed orally from the instructor to the student.
Itosu Anko defines Toudi as “entering, deflecting, releasing and seizing”, and that they were passed down by oral tradition. It is only through repeated practice the context of their use can be properly developed. He also wrote, “In Toudi, YOU must determine whether a technique is for cultivating the body or has martial applications.”
The picture of karate usage as I see it then was foremost practice of kata, some explanation of kata technique used to enter and conclude an attack, and a wide variety of other practices to be added to the kata technique practice to become a force multiplier and likely make any technique an ending.
From what I’ve read there are many different answers whether Okinawan instructors used something like ‘bunkai’ to express their art. There are systems which never broke the techniques down. Some never taught formal applications but had the students work on their own answers of what they felt the ‘bunkai’ could be. Hiagonna Morio in his first Panther tape on Suparimpe explained one set of kata application answers but then explained it was up to the student to go further. Those early books show a range of answers, but I can see a more common theme, that there was more taught outside of the kata to make every answer work.
Mabuni Kenwa shows one example in his Seienchin kata applications, the addition of a kick not in the kata, to conclude the attacker. Shiroma Shimpan shows a wide range of answers how to use kata techniques, incorporating other material to make them work. Mabuni describes a wide range of making blocks work, Chibana used Osae to have the block conclude the attack (a different example than Shiroma Shimpan used, and Funakoshi shows one example of that in his original karate applications demonstration.
A clearer example was demonstrated in the early 70’s by Fumio Demura when he explained ‘Kakushite’ using an example from the Jion kata being demonstrated in the article. .
Demura Sensei is a Shito-ryu stylist in the Mabuni lineage.
An interesting correlation actually came from Oyata Seiyu wrote in one of the magazines about 15 years ago that ‘bunkai’ was not the highest level of karate study, instead that taking a piece of one kata and adding a piece of another kata to conclude the attack was the highest study. I’ve read one of his students, Barry Wood on line in ‘Bunkai and Kata’ make the same point that ‘kakushide’ (hidden techniques within a movement or concept) was the highest level of the art. Different tradition from Okinawa paralleling Shiroma Shimpan’s kata technique answers.
It may even be a reason Mutsu’s ‘Karate Kempo’ has ½ of the book on karate applications against a wide range of attacks, but not pegged to specific kata ‘bunkai’
I believe the original training kept the private, working explanations for only the most senior and trusted students. All techniques work if you have enough skill to use them appropriately, the extra answers may well not have been available of all. Just because you wan them may not have been sufficient reason for an instructor to train each student the same way. In fact then there were no systems of study, just instructors and many of them had reputations of changing their teachings as they desired.
Funny thing when I started thinking of this I remembered an old article by Oyata Seryu stating that ‘bunkai’ wasn’t the highest answer, but that taking one section of a kata and adding a section of a different kata to conclude an attack, was the highest use of karate (alas just from my memory), and trying to do some internet research discovered one of Oyata’s students describing that using ‘kakushide’ as the highest answer….hmmm. Okinawa being a small place may well win out again.
That may be the reason ‘bunkai’ didn’t develop with Shotokan, that the Mabuni style bunkai demonstrated was just a tool to prepare advanced students for the ‘real’ answers, and a program geared for University students who kept moving on may well have decided they wouldn’t develop the appropriate skills in the time available, so different answers were sought.
Just of one possible karate kata usage paradigm.
Contemporary Analysis studies
Personally I have worked a long time to understand a very wide range of kata technique usage without the addition of other techniques, one kata then yielding dozens and dozens of answers that can work. I am not alone in such an approach and know others even more intensive in this approach of study.
Logically ½ of those applications probably would never be chosen because other answers avail themselves, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have training value, even if only for the subsidiary skill they develop. The other ½ also make great sense, but to insist that is the only way to make karate effective is hubris.
Having a much smaller set of ‘bunkai’ for a kata, and then many effective additional add-on’s – force multipliers so each of them work, still leaves you an effective system of study.
Even with the information that is available we only have a very small subset of past studies, but the underlying principals lead us that we can do the same ourselves, if we choose.
Lessons learned
We cannot recreate the past, we can however use the documented examples they left us and experience ourselves what they described. Their original audience in Japan did not have the years of training we ourselves possess.
In fact the entire body of available material makes for an interesting study in its own right. As we pursue our own contemporary studies we might well consider additional technique usage for a more complete understanding of our art.
Perhaps the technique add-on’s worked for increased effectiveness of a much smaller set of responses than the full kata suggests, enough more study was not proscribed, just suggested for the students own understanding.
Note:
My analysis is not to discredit modern analysis and usage. If you can do something a drop your attacker I don’t care whether it was created last week or was passed unchanged for hundreds of years. Nor do I care what terminology you use to describe your art, that choice is your business.
It’s just to my way of thinking, the developments that may have come about as karate became a Japanese version of the arts, likely have little to do with the arts origins and I prefer not to include Japanese terminology in my analysis, or even in my usage because I practice a contemporary variation of an art that originated on Okinawa.
My instructors studies on Okinawa, for good of for bad, were mostly without extensive technical vocabulary, and in that it seems related to older Karate practices, where there was not even a specific term for punch or block in Okinawan usage.
I think if you formalize what ‘bunkai’ is you limit potential, potential I’d prefer to remain infinite.
