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Chris R
Chris R's picture
Lack of variety in shotokan kata

Hi,

My style of karate has always been shotokan, therefore most of my kata and bunkai training is based on the shotokan kata. One key thing I have noticed about shotokan kata is that there is little variety in the number of different techniques included within them, relative to many other styles. This is especially true looking at older variations of the kata, which appear to contain wider range of different techniques. Basically, the shotokan kata appear to be quite simplified.

To give one example, the same shuto uke sequence is present in both heian shodan and heian nidan in shotokan. On the other hand, in shito ryu these kata have different shuto sequences; in pinan nidan they are done low, and in pinan shodan they are done at the middle level. In this case, the shito ryu practitioner has more variety in his/her kata, and can therefore have more potential variety in their bunkai. Meanwhile, the shotokan practitioner just repeats the same sequence. The shotokan practitioner will even continue to repeat this same sequence in more advanced kata, like sochin and kanku-dai. There is clearly less variety to work with.

I was wondering how people on the forum tend to view this; is it good, bad, or neither? I personally view it as a limitation, and I sometimes end up looking at the kata of other styles to gain a better perspective and add variety to my bunkai. Appreciate anyone's thoughts on this

Thanks,

Chris

Tau
Tau's picture

Look less at the technique and look instead at how they're linked. There you'll find the variety and the keys to bunkai

Jeb Chiles
Jeb Chiles's picture

Shito Ryu is one of the few that would come to mind having as much variety as Shotokan as far as kata and just sheer number of different techniques goes. The Okinawan styles I do have well less than twenty Kata but the footwork, bodyshifting, stances, are cetainly much more intricate. If you take all of the 26 or 28 Shotokan kata ( we practice a Shotokan version of Tensho and Hyakuhatchi Ho) there are a lot of techniques if one was counting variety that way, but I would totally agree theyve all been simplified. Funakoshi says as much in Karate do my way of life. 

All the best, 

Jeb

Leigh Simms
Leigh Simms's picture

I would say that the Shotokan Kata are more standardised than simplified. 

That being said, I don't think you can really study any kata in detail unless you are looking at the other versions of the kata which appear in other styles/systems. 

Also, I am not sure if I am understanding Tau's point, but if he means to look at the "sequence" rather than the individual techniques, then I would concur as well. The individual techniques are quite standardised but the sequences are where the variety occurs.

Chris R
Chris R's picture

Thanks for the responses. Some good points to think about here

deltabluesman
deltabluesman's picture

My karate background is in Shotokan but I did not learn all 26 kata, so I don't know the full system.  (Although I do seem to remember some very sophisticated motions & bunkai for Chinte, Kanku Sho, and Bassai Sho.)  

Of the kata that I am familiar with (Heian 1-5, Bassai Dai, Tekki 1 and 2 / Jitte / Ji'in / Jion / Kanku Dai), I do see a tremendous amount of cross-over.  A lot of the exact same themes and principles are expressed in those kata, just in different ways and in different levels of complexity.  So in this sense, I think there is a lack of variety, and that's actually a good  thing, because it keeps us focused on the fundamentals and core themes of the system. 

In prior decades, I could see the lack of variety creating problems.  Maybe some really effective tools were passed down in other styles but were left out of Shotokan's version of a particular kata.  If you didn't have access to that knowledge, your martial arts practice might be hindered.  But in today's world, there's a sea of information available to us, and we could spend lifetimes studying effective techniques.  So nowadays, I don't think it's an issue at all.  Instead, the lack of variety is an invitation to import the most effective methods of other systems (whether it be MMA, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, boxing, other styles of karate, kickboxing, Muay Thai, whatever).  I don't think you have to do that, of course, but you can if you want to. 

Just my two cents.   

Neil Babbage
Neil Babbage's picture

If you subscribe to the view that a "school" of karate is encapsulated in a single kata, then it isn't surprising that there is lots of crossover because there are only a limited number of effective ways to reliably incapacitate someone. 

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Neil Babbage wrote:
If you subscribe to the view that a "school" of karate is encapsulated in a single kata …

I do: https://iainabernethy.co.uk/content/how-kata-records-style

Neil Babbage wrote:
… then it isn't surprising that there is lots of crossover because there are only a limited number of effective ways to reliably incapacitate someone.

Absolutely. Each kata stands alone and does not need the others to “complete” it. I think the problem in thinking comes from the modern propensity to allot ownership of a kata to a style. We talk of “Shotokan Kata” as opposed to “The kata as practised in Shotokan”.

The kata were all in existence long before any of the modern styles we have were codified. Because we put the cart before the horse, we assume that the kata combine to make the style … and from that point repetition between the kata seems unnecessary.

While the historical evidence on this is lacking, I have a suspicion that the “sho” versions of Kushanku / Kanku and Passai / Bassai were created by Itosu to avoid repetition now that the Pinan / Heian kata were established. Common motions are a requirement when the kata are standalone (as they originally were), but it becomes repetition when they are grouped together.  

Leigh Simms wrote:
I would say that the Shotokan Kata are more standardised than simplified.

I’d agree. Once you group kata together in a style, you start to standardise things. You make movements that are similar, common. For example, all the “shuto-like” motions in the kata collected together – which serve a common purpose; but will be done a little differently because the kata were created by different people in different points in history – are standardised and made common. You can see this has happened in all styles.

All the best,

Iain

Marc
Marc's picture

This quote by Gichin Funakoshi seems to be relevant:

"But once you have completely mastered one technique, you will realize its close relation to other techniques. You will, in other words, come to understand that all of the more than twenty kata may be distilled into only a few basic ones. If therefore you become a master of one kata, you will soon gain an understanding of all others merely by watching them being performed or by being taught them in an instruction period."

There will be similar principles encoded differently or similarly into the various katas. As Neil said above:

Neil Babbage wrote:

If you subscribe to the view that a "school" of karate is encapsulated in a single kata, then it isn't surprising that there is lots of crossover because there are only a limited number of effective ways to reliably incapacitate someone.

Being a Shotokan practitioner myself, I never felt that I was missing out on variety of techniques in my katas. I am fully aware that other styles do slightly different techniques at some points in the katas. And when researching applications I certainly make use of that. Looking at variations of a kata as practiced in the different styles helps with recognising the quintessential theme of a technique. But I haven't yet felt the need to switch to the Shito-Ryu version of a kata or even change my Shotokan version only to include a greater variety of techniques.

Chris R wrote:

To give one example, the same shuto uke sequence is present in both heian shodan and heian nidan in shotokan. On the other hand, in shito ryu these kata have different shuto sequences; in pinan nidan they are done low, and in pinan shodan they are done at the middle level. In this case, the shito ryu practitioner has more variety in his/her kata, and can therefore have more potential variety in their bunkai. Meanwhile, the shotokan practitioner just repeats the same sequence.

It may be true that having the Gedan-Shuto in Heian-Shodan/Pinan-Nidan can give you an additional clue as to how to interprete this sequence, and that its application is supposedly different than the respective Chudan-Shuto in Heian-Nidan/Pinan-Shodan.

Let's look at another example: At the end of Heian/Pinan-Godan the shito ryu practitioner does two consecutive Manji-Uke whereas the shotokan practitioner gets to do a very accentuated additional Nagashi-Uke + Gyaku-Gedan-Nukite before each Manji-Uke. I believe that the additional positions are merely exaggerations of the first half of the Manji-Uke motion, but they are practiced and counted as discrete techniques. So the shotokan practitioner "can therefore have more potential variety in their bunkai".

Chris R wrote:

The shotokan practitioner will even continue to repeat this same sequence in more advanced kata, like sochin and kanku-dai. There is clearly less variety to work with.

Since the Heians/Pinans are essentially a "best of collection" of all the "smash hits" (quite happy with this pun) from the older katas like Kanku-Dai, Bassai-Dai or Jion we should expect to find some identical techniques and sequences.

On a side note: I refrain from calling some katas "more advanced" than others. All katas are fighting systems in their own right. The fact that in most syllabi the Heians/Pinans come first and Sochin or Chinte come later does not make them more advanced. It is just a convention to teach them in a certain order. Of course katas like Unsu or Gankaku/Chinto are athletically more demanding than most others. But I can't see why Heian/Pinan-Godan should be labelled less advanced than for example Wankan which is often required for higher dan grades. I would rather say that the katas that are taught first are supposedly more relevant within a style than the katas that are only taught after years of practice. It is the practitioner that is more advanced after years of training and is therefore ready to include more katas in his/her repertoire even if they are less relevant.

All the best,

Marc