Skip to main content

Deciphering Bunkai Across Styles

 I’ve spent a lot of time training kata and studying bunkai. It is really at the center of my training, at least mentally or intellectually. When I think about karate, I’m usually thinking about bunkai.

The dojo I came up in had many many kata, something like 30 kata all told. As I discussed in my post of the Flexible Bunkai Model, I think there were several reasons for this and I’ve continued to train a number of those kata beyond the 8 classical Goju-ryu forms.

However, what I’ve stopped trying to do is decipher bunkai for those kenkyu or research kata. I’m sure I could slap together something obvious (and have had to do that before for testing), but I don’t believe it would be close to the Core Bunkai I would want, the ones the kata was built around.

For Goju-ryu, I think I have enough of a map to find those Core Bunkai. For example, Goju-ryu bunkai will usually have you move off the line of attack, get in close to control the attacker, and finish with a strike to or twisting of the head and neck. This is the Goju-ryu strategy – Counter, Close, Control.

I don’t know if Shorin-ryu or the other Okinawan styles follow this strategy, so while I may be able to apply it for a few moves, I’m not sure if it gets me closer to the essence of those kata.

One thing you see with Goju-ryu is that the kata movements are quite similar across kata. Goju kata have a lot of opening and closing hands (grabbing techniques), striking with the forearm, and very few kicks, mostly kansetsu-geri to the knee. This doesn’t seem to be what is happening in Sochin or Anaku. Those Shorin forms are much… lighter? With a springiness and snap and lots of body movement… it’s clearly a different style.

Which brings me to another problem with deciphering non-Goju-ryu bunkai: Even if I could determine a strategy governing some of these kata, would be it be same strategy for every Shorin kata? I can see some similarities between Sochin and Anaku… but is it the same for Naihanchi? Jion?

I do not know enough about the history of these kata to parse it out, but here is a major advantage for Goju-ryu: the classical kata were grouped together by one person, the founder, Chojun Miyagi. The individual kata are certainly older than the style, and of all different ages, but Miyagi and his Sensei, Kanryo Higashionna, grouped them together and passed them along as a single style.

To me, this is evidence that there should be some similarity between the bunkai across different Goju-ryu kata – and there is! I can’t say if the kata of other Okinawan styles will have similar connections between them. I also need to do more work tracing back where the kata I learned come from, I’ve been using “Shorin forms” as a catchall term, but that’s a broad brush.

I am fortunate that Goju-ryu has this depth to it. Clearly there is a lifetime of study here for me. And so while I enjoy and still train the non-Goju kata, I am wary of bunkai experts who freely analyze across styles. It may provide a good starting point for analysis, but there is no substitute for long term study of a specific style.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Karate Lessons - Strategic Thinking, Calculated Risks

One of the more startling things I took away from my second-to-last conversation with my old Sensei – one of the things that made it the second-to-last conversation (see The Schism ) – was when she asked me how I was incorporating karate into my life outside the dojo. It is a good question, but what startled me was that my sensei even had to ask it. It showed how far apart we had become in our practice and how little involvement they had in my day-to-day. Let me start with inside the dojo – we were a few years into COVID at the time of this conversation so my training was entirely in my home dojo, a space that she had seen pictures of and could see it was quite spacious. I was reviewing kata and bunkai every night after my kids went to bed in preparation for my sandan exam so karate was pretty front-and-center in my life at that time.  However, karate was still a major part of my life in the years before COVID. I had joined a local Goju-ryu dojo that trained once a week for a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Knowledge as a Tool of Control

I think there is a valid argument in holding back knowledge from a student, especially in the context of the martial arts. There are advanced techniques – some of which may hurt the student (looking at you nunchaku ) and some of which the student could use to seriously hurt others – that require a certain maturity in the student. I’ve written before about the short and brutal Core Bunkai , most of which end with twisting the neck to wrenching the head. Those techniques are serious and I would reserve them for a serious student that has the right mentality about them. I’ll also point out that many Okinawan styles rely on closing and grabbing, something which requires a high level of skill in and of itself regardless of any follow-on techniques. There’s a good chance a novice wouldn’t even be able to apply certain advanced techniques successfully even if they did “learn” them. So controlling some knowledge is part of being a Sensei, as is determining when a student is ready for more. T...
Post a Comment
Read more

Just a nobody...

Hello hello. Seems fitting to start with an entry about myself and what this blog is for. I’ve been training in the martial arts (specifically one art) for 30 years starting from the time I was a very young child. It’s been a constant in my life and remains one of my passions. But within the karate world I’m not really anyone special. I’m not part of an organization. I’m not a champion competitor. I don’t own a dojo and I’m not in demand on the seminar circuit. I’ve never written a book or made a DVD of my fighting methods. I don’t have my own line of karate gi. No ancient scrolls either. A trip to Okinawa is still just a line on my bucket list. I’ve risen to the rank of Sandan, 3 rd degree black belt, which is… if not a low rank, not a particularly high one. I’ve had some great experiences dabbling in other martial arts, and intend to keep doing so, but my through-line has been Okinawan Goju-ryu Karate-Do. It is the art that made me, the one that fits me best, and where I move ...
Post a Comment
Read more