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Chikara Andrew
Chikara Andrew's picture
Passai/Bassai

Just been reading various articles regarding the history and development of the various strains of Passai/Bassai and I note a numebr of articles make reference to a carbon dated silk drawing of the form, dated to 400 years old. However none of the articles provide a reference for this, can anyone shed any light on it?

I also note that the Kanji making reference to extracting/breaching a stronghold or fortress appear to have been a Funakoshi change. I know that in Karate-do Kyohan he openly states that he has modified and changed the names of kata to reflect his views and modern (1930's) practice, whilst trying to pay homage to their origianl names. Does anyone know if any earlier reference is made to the Kanji?

Kind regards Andrew

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Chikara Andrew wrote:
Just been reading various articles regarding the history and development of the various strains of Passai/Bassai and I note a number of articles make reference to a carbon dated silk drawing of the form, dated to 400 years old. However none of the articles provide a reference for this, can anyone shed any light on it?

Wikipedia doing its thing I fear. The claim is made on the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passai), but there is no citation or links to where it can be viewed. I have a suspicion about where this claim may have first arose and, if I’m right, it’s not a reliable source (numerous claims made of hitherto secret drawings).

Until we see the evidence for it, people should not be spreading it as if it were fact.

On a general note, we need to be careful about making claims based on similarities between kata and ancient images. Using the image below I could falsely claim that Jion is thousands of years old and can be traced back to ancient Egypt! In reality, it’s just a similar posture and we can’t make any claims based on that.

Chikara Andrew wrote:
I also note that the Kanji making reference to extracting/breaching a stronghold or fortress appear to have been a Funakoshi change. I know that in Karate-do Kyohan he openly states that he has modified and changed the names of kata to reflect his views and modern (1930's) practice, whilst trying to pay homage to their origianl names. Does anyone know if any earlier reference is made to the Kanji?

My understanding is that there is no earlier Kanji; just katakana (characters that convey sound an no meaning). Funakoshi is clear that is why he sought to give them new names in ‘Karate-Do: My Way of Life”:

“Another reform to which I give my attention was that of nomenclature. Shortly after I came to Tokyo in 1922, the firm of Bukyosha published a book I had written called Ryükyü Kempo: Karate. At that time, the word was still being written as “Chinese hands,” and almost all the names of the katas that I described in my book were Okinawa origin: Pinan, Naifanchi, Chinto, Bassai, Seishan, Jitte, Jion, Sanchin, and the like. These were, in fact, the names that I had learned long ago from my own teachers.

“No one, by now, had any idea how they had come into being, and people found them difficult to learn. Accordingly, after having transformed “Chinese hands” into “empty hands,” I began to give the kata names that were easier to the Japanese people to use and that have now become familiar all over the world: Ten no Kata, Chi no Kata, Hito no Kata, Empi, Gankaku, Hangetsu, Meikyõ, Hakkõ, kiun, shõtõ, shõin, Hotaku, Shõkyõ and so on. Let me hasten to assure the reader that I labour under no misapprehension that the names I have chosen are changeless and eternal. I have no doubt whatsoever that in the future, as times change, again and then again, the kata will be given new names. And that, indeed, is as it should be.”

What is of key importance here is the statement:

“No one, by now, had any idea how they had come into being, and people found them difficult to learn.”

We have to accept that some information is lost and is likely to remain that way. We should not seek to fill the gaps with questionable information and we need to remain sceptical of claims made without evidence to back them up.

All the best,

Iain

Chikara Andrew
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Thanks for the quick reply Iain

Iain Abernethy wrote:

Wikipedia doing its thing I fear. The claim is made on the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passai), but there is no citation or links to where it can be viewed. I have a suspicion about where this claim may have first arose and, if I’m right, it’s not a reliable source (numerous claims made of hitherto secret drawings).

I saw the wikipedia entry for the reference as well having found it in a number of online articles. I was however skeptical as despite being able to find the repeated claim I could find no link that indicated a source or reference for the claim. Hence why I asked here, collective knowledge is a great resource and if there was some substance behind it I was sure someone here could point me in the right direction, or confirm it's unreliability.

Iain Abernethy wrote:

What is of key importance here is the statement:

“No one, by now, had any idea how they had come into being, and people found them difficult to learn.”

We have to accept that some information is lost and is likely to remain that way. We should not seek to fill the gaps with questionable information and we need to remain sceptical of claims made without evidence to back them up.

Thanks for pasting the reference, I knew the intention but didn't have my copy of Karate-do Kyohan to hand, I must have leant it to someone - must make a mental note to follow that up!

I agree absolutly that we should be careful not to pass on information as if it were fact when it cannot be confirmed either way. Even with known facts these have to be put into context, like with Kushanku we can refer to the Oshima note where a Kushanku is mentioned however there is no factual link between the note and kata.

Thanks again

Chikara Andrew
Chikara Andrew's picture

Iain Abernethy wrote:

On a general note, we need to be careful about making claims based on similarities between kata and ancient images. Using the image below I could falsely claim that Jion is thousands of years old and can be traced back to ancient Egypt! In reality, it’s just a similar posture and we can’t make any claims based on that.

Agreed. Likewise I'm pretty sure that this guy wasn't familiar with your shuto uke drills but he seems to have got the gist of it...

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Chikara Andrew wrote:

Agreed. Likewise I'm pretty sure that this guy wasn't familiar with your shuto uke drills but he seems to have got the gist of it...

That's brilliant! What document is that from?

All the best,

Iain

Chikara Andrew
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Iain Abernethy wrote:

That's brilliant! What document is that from?

It's from a document called the Codex Wallerstein which dated to around the late 15th Century. Along with descriptions and diagrams of armed combat it also includes a number of illustrations of unarmed combat not unlike those seen in the Bubishi. There is a montage video on youtube with all the unarmed combat diagrams in.

Andrew

Cataphract
Cataphract's picture

You can read the book here. The text on that page describes setting your foot and pushing with your elbow so he falls backwards.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Interesting! Thank you both :-)

All the best,

Iain

J Coder
J Coder's picture

Along that same line of thinking I have noticed a similarity of the New Zealand "Haka" dance to the Nihanchi / Tekki kata. The human body is capable of doing a lot of things but it is not infinite. I don't think there is any martial thing that anyone has "invented" in modern history that hasn't been done in ancient history. Someone might think they have invented something simply because they couldn't find the documentation that shows that someone did the same thing several hundred years ago.

Jeff Coder

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Well said Jeff! As Don Draeger wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun … except, maybe, the very old” :-)

All the best,

Iain

Anf
Anf's picture

As an aside, the whole 'storming a fortress' milaki seems a bit iffy to me. I get that most interpretations don't take that literally, but even so. In one of my books, it gives a number of possible meanings dependent on how the current kanji came about. The book gives a theory that many mistranslations are possible simply because similar sounding words might have been misheard and then the meaning changes drastically, but the author admits there's a lack of evidence either way. But even if the meaning is 'storming a fortress', in the sense of breaking through an opponent's defence. Bassai doesn't look like that to me. It looks to me like it's all about breaking out of an opponent's offensive. Bassai looks to like it's saying, if it's really going very badly for you, here's some stuff you can try. Which is very valid of course, but hardly 'storming a fortress'. It's the only form I've learnt so far that contains a retreating move for one thing. And then there's a move that looks very much like it's trying to break an opponents solid grip on you, and a move that looks like a last ditch attempt to break an opponent off who is attempting to grab your legs for a takedown. Rather than 'storming a fortress', it seems to me more like 'trying not to get killed for just long enough for your mates to arrive to help'.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Anf wrote:
As an aside, the whole 'storming a fortress' milaki seems a bit iffy to me. I get that most interpretations don't take that literally, but even so. In one of my books, it gives a number of possible meanings dependent on how the current kanji came about.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, Funakoshi was the person who employed the kanji to the kata. Before that, it was always written with katakana, which gives us sound, but no meaning. Funakoshi applied the kanji because, in his own words, “No one, by now, had any idea how they had come into being, and people found them difficult to learn. Accordingly, after having transformed “Chinese hands” into “empty hands,” I began to give the kata names that were easier to the Japanese people to use and that have now become familiar all over the world”.

Funakoshi is clear this effectively a new name, certainly not the original, and people should appreciate we can’t draw any inferences from it about the origins of the kata.

Languages are in an everchanging state of flux and to take the current sounds of one language and apply them to another language in the past, in other hope of learning something about the nature or origins of the kata, strikes me as fool’s errand. Especially a “forgotten” language. We see it all the time with forceful assertions of what Naihanchi, Passai, etc mean. The truth is we don’t know what they mean, and we never will. Even at Funakoshi’s time, no one had any idea how the names had come into being. So that will forever be lost information.

We do know how the current kanji came about though. Funakoshi is the source … and he never once claimed it was historic; quite the contrary. He is 100% clear he had no idea what the orignal meaning was. We should listen to him.

All the best,

Iain