Kata Specifications in Karate II
by Kenji Tokitsu Sensei
We began by raising questions about the future of contemporary Karate, examining the potential of the kata and its situation at present. If this article proves difficult to follow, it would be a good idea to (re)read the previous ones first.
Under the ancestral system, karate practice was practically the same thing as kata training. By practicing the kata, practitioners increased their strength. The role of the kata was more important than it is today, because learning came through the complex technical ramifications of each of the techniques being taught.
Let us go back to the first question we posed: spectacular technique vs. barely visible technique. To address this question, let me first ask the following one: how and under what conditions can a combat technique be effective?
Perhaps you'll say through strength, speed, timing,...
But then you would be forgetting something crucial: combat technique is effective when it can't be seen.
The effectiveness of any technique is raised to the maximum if it is employed in such a way that the adversary can't see it. One of the roles of speed is to decrease the visibility of a blow. Otherwise, if the adversary manages to see it coming, its effectiveness will be diminished.
Obviously, therefore, when we think about a single technique, we overlook the need to understand the phenomena of combat and transmission.
In the times when martial arts were effective enough to play an important social role, skilled fighters honed their technique in this way. That is, they worked to make their techniques as little apparent as possible, to make them truly invisible. The main concern in training was to find a way to make this or that technical move without allowing the adversary to see it.
The techniques developed with this idea in mind were handed down secretly, because it was necessary to keep them hidden from possible adversaries. It was necessary to avoid making known the specificity of one's school. Allowing others to watch training was out of the question.
Let us stress again that insofar as technical quality and the system of transmission were concerned, classical Karate was based on a hidden, esoteric system, whereas today it is based on the opposite system, a system of performance and exhibition.
In classical Karate, demonstration in public did not make sense. If occasionally a festival or exceptional event was held, what was shown were “the flowers” of Karate techniques, but “the fruit” was kept hidden.
The noble karatekas of the Shuri castle valued the sober, efficient techniques that called for a minimum of gesture, and disdained “spectacular” movements. These they called “peasant techniques”. Their eyes sought to find, during the execution of a kata, the instants when techniques were truly “cutting” and the skill with which they were disguised by apparently ineffective movements. Skilled fighters cared only about the opinion of their peers. Aware that some might be in an audience, a karateka would never put on a demonstration to please the crowd.
The disappearance of this mindset spelled the beginning of change for Karate in Okinawa. I have heard a Karate master from Okinawa say: "In the karate dojos located near tourist areas, techniques changed frequently. The demonstrations held grew increasingly spectacular, with the result that teaching was transformed."
Bruce Lee contributed to the development of Chinese martial arts and popularised Karate. His talent as an acrobatic actor is undeniable. What he shows in his films are “the flowers” we were talking about. “The fruit” is generally impossible to convey in a film.
Regrettably, many would-be specialists in martial arts do not know how to make this primary distinction.
The same is true of the late Toshiro Mifune, who died at the end of 1997 and played so well his roles as a master sword fighter. He was not skilled in sword combat, but was an excellent actor in sword scenes - an important difference. In Japan, when combat scenes are filmed, they are directed by action specialists. Such scenes are called “tateshi”. The specialists are masters of combat performances. They have more or less experience in martial arts, but they cannot be confused with masters of the art of combat.
What is invisible is not conveyable by a visual system. The transmission of ancient Karate consisted of directly communicating to one's pupil, through practice, the technical subtleties that are invisible to the ordinary eye. To become a skilled fighter meant learning how to see to the bottom of things. When what is essential lies hidden under a layer on which a show has been painted, the skilled karateka is one whose eye is capable of penetrating that layer. Isn't that the specific quality of an expert? In an art worthy of the name, it takes the skilled eye of an expert to appreciate quality. The same thing applies to karate. However, most of today's Karate has become a show that does not require a skilled eye to be appreciated.
Martial arts shows are made for audiences who are generally not practitioners, and even the details of the movements can be seen. Here, techniques should be visible, highly and totally visible in fact, in order to be appreciated.
As we have seen, the most efficient technique is the one the adversary is incapable of seeing. How could a technique that is invisible even to the eye of a trained adversary be visible for inexpert spectators?
Isn't it time to acknowledge and publicise the fundamental difference between the spectacle of the martial arts and true martial arts?
One of the problems of modern-day martial arts consists of the confusion between these two entirely different phenomena - i.e., martial arts and martial shows. The latter are a sort of parasite of the former. To be credible, they feed off the martial arts and then relegate them to the realm of myths.
To keep from denaturalising the martial arts, it is necessary to distinguish between true martial art and martial shows, and to attribute to each its relative value. It's not a question of rejecting the existence of martial shows, but of practitioners' freeing themselves of the suffocating idea of performing, convincing themselves instead that they can build mastery and a way of practice open to the view of true experts.
As for the show facet, there is no ambiguity in circus art, which goes to the limits of the visible. There, non-specialist spectators see a degree of daring and applaud accordingly. Circus specialists could stage a much better martial arts show than any karateka could.
It is sufficient to distinguish performance mastery from bodily discipline. The one tends toward the visible, and the other toward the invisible.
How did this distinction come about?
Karate reform in the early 20th century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Karate began to emerge from the classical period. Karatekas sought to affirm themselves in modern Japanese society, on which the island of Okinawa depended.
In 1905 Karate was adopted as a new physical education discipline for school children in Okinawa. This marked the beginning of the expansion of Karate into the public domain.
If esoteric martial art suddenly became popularised, it is not because the doors were simply opened. There was also a reform of Karate. This should be understood today. But what kind of a reform was it?
Here I will mention briefly only the two most important reforms that took place:
1. The teaching and training model
2. Combat technique
The reform of the teaching and training model
First, in order for Karate to be accepted as a school discipline, it was necessary to convince national education experts of its educational value. Also, parents of the children had to approve it. Consequently a reform of classical Karate was necessary to make its values comprehensible to the eyes of non-practitioners. The inspectors had to be convinced that Karate was as effective a discipline as the physical education reference models of the period, namely, the Western model of military training.
It was for these social reasons that Karate was transformed into a disciplined means of training groups of people. Before, karate instruction took place individually or at most in groups of two or three students. Consequently, there was no ritual of discipline: line-up, formal bow, calling off “one”, “two”, “three”, â?¦, turn, back, stop. Thus the collective salute to the master under the orders of the highest ranking student parallels the military salute under the flag.
Let me stress that all these features which are considered to be a Japanese tradition are in fact a replica of Western discipline. In Japan in the times of the Samurai and on Okinawa during the classical Karate period, discipline was very different from that of contemporary Japanese martial arts. I will explore this point further in other articles.
Reform of combat technique
The way that the teaching of Karate was organised influenced its content. A large number of technical reforms were made in the years between 1905-1915. We will discuss this in a forthcoming article.
Kenji Tokitsu
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