Change:
Spencer Sensei
12/2/2016
About a decade ago a prominent and well-respected instructor told me about an incident at a karate tournament. He said that a student from his style performed a kata well known to the karateka. The student however embellished parts of the form to make it more visually appealing. When it can time to score the competitor, the instructor scored him a zero. After the competition, the student asked why the low score? The instructor asked, “What gives you the right to change a kata that was created over a hundred years ago?” The student had no answer and simply walked away dejected. At the time I believed the instructor was correct in his disdain, but I’ve had ten years to ponder that question. This paper is on my response.
In my karate lineage change is what kept it relevant. It all started with Tode Sakugawa also known as the father of karate. When he was young, his father was robbed and murdered, so when he became a young man, he went in search of those that could teach him how to best defend himself against attackers. Ti (tea) was the indigenous martial art of Okinawa at the time, so Sakugawa trained in Ti. Ti in the Okinawan dialect meant hand, or what may better be described as hand-to-hand, but this did not satisfy Sakugawa sensei’s desire to fully protect him and his family. Sakugawa went to China to learn Kung-fu. Upon his return he began to integrate both TI and Kung-Fu into what is now know as karate or Todi (Toe-day). Sakugawa sensei truncated many of the sweeping arm movements of kung-fu into more compact circular motions that are found in karate today, doing so made karate more efficient. This divergence from traditional kung-fu was revolutionary. I am certain at the time that Tode Sakugawa had his own set of kung-fu traditionalist shaking their heads in disapproval, but without his willingness to change hundreds of years of tradition to make a more practical fighting system we would not have karate today, nor would there be over four hundred dojos on the island of Okinawa.
Sakugawa sensei trained Bushi Matsumura sensei. Bushi Matsumura was a palace guard. His duty was to protect heads of state. He needed the best system available to perform this service. Matsumura sensei developed kata or forms to help train his men. Kata enabled them to pull memorized techniques from the reservoir of situational self-defense practiced in the forms. Kata is a living unwritten textbook. Using this tool, a situational self-defense could be practiced singularly or with a partner. Forms practiced hundreds of times, with an understanding or bunkai, will imprint the response to an attack making the counterattack flow without thought. As Matsumura sensei learned new viable techniques, he added them to kata. Chinto kata was created by Matsumura after trying to arrest a Chinese sailor marooned on Okinawa. The sailor was stealing food from the villages, so Matsumura was dispatched to find and arrest him. As the story goes the Chinese sailor was skilled in jumping kicking techniques, and proved next to impossible to capture, so Matsumura proposed an exchange of food and lodging for training in the sailor’s esoteric form of kung-fu. The results were concatenated into Chinto kata. Chinto may be the one form that is not greatly changed from system to system. If Matsumura had not added Chinto to Sakugawa’s karate, the jumping double front kick could have been lost. Matsumura changed Sakugawa’s karate.
Chotoku Kyan was trained by Bushi Matsumura. Kyan sensei was a sickly child whose father was a court diplomat. This gave Kyan access to the palace guards and karate. Kyan was small even by Okinawan standards. Karate training did improve Kyan’s health. There were no styles of karate at the time of Kyan’s training, but he would become the father of many of the diversified modern Shorin-ryu systems found on Okinawa today. Kyan’s small stature made linear or straight on attacks ineffectual, so he developed angular attacks. He also improved the way we maximize power within a punch. He emphasized shoulder and hip rotation with simultaneous weight transfer from the back leg to the front leg. Because he was small in stature, he had to maximize his ability to match his adversary’s power. Kyan’s katas were preserved by the Seibukan and Zenryo Shimabukuro. Zenryo sensei kept the forms exactly the way Kyan sensei taught them. Assuming that Kyan’s kata were unchanged from the way Matsumura taught them we can use this as a measuring stick to see how much the forms have changed system to system. Kyan modified Matsumura’s karate to suit his body style.
Yasutsune Itosu created the Pinon katas in 1917 to enable school children to more easily learn karate when it was introduced into the public school system. He took older kata and broke them into more palatable pieces. He also modified the traditional way of teaching basics. School children were taught to walk in straight lines practicing only one block or punch in concert with their stepping. The old way was to teach blocking and striking at the same time or as an integrated process. Teaching blocking and striking together develops the body-mind connection. Shimabuku sensei did not teach children and chose not to deviate from the old ways when teaching basic karate technique. Funakoshi sensei didn’t totally abandon the old tradition totally. He placed the fundamentals into a form named Ten-No-Kata. This form is not a major part of the Shotokan training. Even Itosu changed kata to meet a need, and because of this change karate has flourished.
After Kyan’s death in 1945, karate began to become more ritualized than practical. This may stem from a desire to honor the sensei that went before, but it’s kind of like driving a 1945 Ford and never improving the model. These rituals are tightly held by modern karate masters, but there is an inconsistency in their message. If no one changed anything, why do our forms vary so much style to style? Every system claims to hold the correct kata. Teaching students the best way to defend themselves, after 1945, became secondary to maintaining tradition. Changes to the set ways was met with hostility within the Okinawan and Japanese martial arts community. However, Korean karate born out of Japanese karate and conflict emphasized kicking techniques and continues to evolve towards being an Olympic sport. Some choose to change while others do not.
Tatsuo Shimabuku was a master of Goju-ryu and Shorin-ryu. He was trained by Miyagi sensei, Motobu sensei, and Kyan sensei. He changed many of the fundamentals taught by traditional schools today. He was ostracized for his daring to modify the traditional ways. Ironically it was his depth of understanding and their ignorance of the technique that caused their indignation. Here is a one of these examples. Tatsuo changed the middle forearm bock from the side of the forearm to the top of the forearm. Impact from the blow would be spread across the ulnar and radius bones while the musculature of the forearm acted like padding. Traditionalists block with either the ulnar or radius bones singularly. What they do not know is the middle block was always performed the way Shimabuku taught, except after the impact of adversary’s blow was redirected, the karateka’s forearm was rotated to cut pressure points in the opponent’s attacking limb. This nuance was lost in the day of teacher do and student imitate. All the students saw was the sensei striking with the side of the arm. Their ignorance became dogma. Some schools went on to create arm pounding drills to harden these bones to make the blocks more effective. The one bone verse two bone block was one of many changes made by Shimabuku sensei.
Change is inevitable. Nothing can survive if it is stagnant and unchanging. This is my answer to the question, “What gives you the right to change a kata that was created over a hundred years ago?” I changed the form to win should have been the student’s response. I changed it to make the kata relevant. I changed it because change is inevitable. If I win the change was good. If I lose, I must reexamine, abandon, or continue to adapt to win. Karate is and always will be changing and improving or it will become irrelevant and die. When karate becomes ritualized it is like a history book gathering dust sitting on a shelf. When karate came to American it changed. When karate it came to Japan it changed. Karate must adapt and grow to remain more than simple ritual. Karate must be allowed to be like water and adapt. If it is fettered it will die.