The Thematic Bunkai Model

 Now that I’ve described the two competing bunkai paradigms that I’ve worked within – the Core Bunkai Model that I ascribe to and the Flexible Bunkai Model which I grew up ‘learning’ – I thought I would take some time to describe a third model that is common and, I think, also useful.

While I was struggling to understand the Flexible Bunkai Model,  I stumbled upon a critical book called Four Shades of Black by Gavin Mulholland. This book is a must-have for any Goju-ryu practitioner. Mulholland has a clear point to make and he drives it home in a beautiful and illustrative book. I can’t recommend it enough.

The basic idea is that the Goju-ryu kata form a progressive curriculum so that the student develops more advanced karate skills as they move through the kata. The book uses the first four Goju kata to illustrate the point (Gekisai Dai Ichi, Gekisai Dai Ni, Saifa, Seienchin). Each kata gives the student a new area of study and a new set of skills to develop. You move from the more basic smashing attacks of Gekisai to the more advanced grabbing and pulling of Seienchin.

I loved this idea. It is simple yet deep. Most importantly, it provided a structure for my own bunkai study right when I was searching for one. I’ve come to call this approach the Thematic Bunkai Model. Each kata has a ‘theme’ it is trying to teach the student and adding all the kata together creates a well-rounded martial artist.

I spent years toying with the kata to try and discover an underlying theme that I could build my bunkai around. At that time, and still now, anything that even remotely resembled the kata movements was called bunkai so you have a proliferation of bunkai for any given kata. I was trying to use the theme to whittle away all these extra interpretations and end up with a solid set of bunkai.

Now for some kata it was fairly straightforward – Saifa, for example, is filled with techniques to escape grabs. Therefore the theme is breaking free and striking back with a strong counterattack. It’s pretty easy to group all the bunkai around this theme. But for other kata, like Seipai, it was much harder to determine a theme between all the movements. It was this difficulty that led me to abandon the Thematic Bunkai as a concept. I simply couldn’t find clear themes for the more advanced kata.

This makes sense to me now because I don’t think the kata have themes. Unless that theme is countering, closing, and controlling (killing?) the attacker. Moving off the line? Attacking the head and neck? These themes were clear across all the kata…. probably because they are the basic tactics of the Goju-ryu style so of course they are in every kata.

Anyway, I’m writing this post because even though I think something is missing from the Thematic Bunkai approach, I still use it. I still plan to teach it to my students. I see a lot of value in the Thematic Bunkai as an instructive tool.

One of the things that struck me most about my first time running a dojo was the major change that happens around 5^th kyu. Green belt, halfway to black, and the student is introduced to that first classical kata, Saifa. It is very different from anything that came before it and I remember my students struggling with that, talking about that, and (I hope) being intrigued by it.

At this point I think it is really helpful to have such a clear message about the kata. Hey, Saifa is really different, but it’s trying to teach you to escape grabbing techniques. That is something solid they can lean on.

Additionally, I think it would be difficult at that rank/experience level to understand and apply the Core Bunkai, even for Saifa. Controlling the distance and the attacker, the use of body weight and your own coordination… it can be tough.

And… to  be honest… I think the Core Bunkai is dangerous. Lethality was one of the things that convinced me the Core Bunkai approach was the right track. So those aren’t techniques I would teach lightly to someone with a few years of experience – it just seems like Black Belt stuff to me.

With all this in mind, I put together Thematic bunkai for the four Goju-ryu kata we practice before black belt. The themes I’ve worked around are –

• ·          Saifa – escaping from grabbing or grappling techniques
• ·         Seieinchin – using grabbing and grappling techniques against an attacker
• ·         Sanseiru – using full-body movements to generate power
• ·         Shisochin – focusing on moving from the hips to generate power

I think that is a pretty well-rounded martial arts education. You play with distances, you play with power generation. If a student leaves after earning their black belt, I’d be content knowing that they developed decent fighting skills.

After black belt I switch to the Core Bunkai. In addition to learning more advanced kata, I would also have the students go back and learn the Core Bunkai for those prior 4 kata. To me, this has at least two advantages –

1. The student already knows those kata well so they can focus on the idea behind the Core Bunkai and hopefully learn it better. The philosophy and the actual techniques.
2. Black belt is often said to be just the beginning. Well, this would literally be a new beginning. A re-examining of what you thought you knew under a different lens. This would be both humbling and (hopefully) inspiring to the student.

For #2, that strongly reflects my experience in graduate school. I remember graduating with my bachelor’s degree and thinking I was hot shit. Even now, that point in time is a high-water mark for the sheer knowledge and confidence in that knowledge that I possess. (Ah to be 22 again….)

Graduate school, at least in the physical sciences, is a systematic dismantling of everything you learned as an undergraduate. All the simplifications and omissions ARE the focus of graduate work. You have to see the complexity and swim in the uncertainty. It isn’t pleasant to have the ground move beneath your feet, but it builds determination. And a certain clear-sightedness.

That is the same experience I want to give to my students, especially advanced students. Even aside from the techniques themselves, the experience of restarting, rebuilding, resetting and having to endure all over again is crucial. Those are the life skills of karate.

So yes, the Thematic Bunkai are incomplete. But they are a useful bridge and teaching tool that I hope keeps the students engaged for long enough to become an heir to this tradition. And a little focus on the pedagogy, the method of teaching, I think goes a long way in keeping our tradition alive.