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How is Your Kata Reading Going?

November 17, 2009 | Author: Matthew | Filed under: Kata, Martial Arts, karate, mindset

Over the weekend I had a chance to study with Bill Hayes Sensei, a senior student of Eizo Shimabukuro. Whenever I get an opportunity to train with Mr. Hayes I am amazed at just how much I have yet to learn. This weekend he shared a little anecdote which I found intriguing.

To properly preface this story, I need to introduce you to the cast of characters. One day Bill Hayes was chatting with Jim Logue, a senior student of Taika Seiyu Oyata. Oyata Sensei is the developer of a style called Ryukyu Kempo, but due to complications, ultimately named his art Ryu Te.

While undoubtedly probing the deepest darkest secrets of karate, Logue and Hayes Senseis eventually turned to the topic of kata. Logue explained that one time while discussing the transmission and application of kata with his instructor, Oyata Sensei posed to him a question: “If I give you a book and you don’t understand it, is it the book’s fault?”

This wasn’t directed at Logue Sensei specifically, but more of an observation about how kata is treated in general.

The Blaming of Books

In regards to traditional training vs modern methods, kata is the oft mentioned reason for traditional stodginess and ineffectiveness. Certainly kata can be the cause of those bad things. But what Oyata Sensei suggested in just a brief thought was that the blame for kata’s problems may not necessarily lie in the kata itself.

A kata is like a book; one that explores the experiences and ideas of warriors from past generations. They encompass not just rote movements, but core principles that made these classical combatants so effective. As Hayes Sensei likes to say, “if you read a book many times over many years, the words never change. But if you are growing, the meaning and understanding of the book will grow with you.”

The understanding of kata is an extraordinarily deep process, made even more complex by generations of word-of-mouth transmissions and personal interpretations. It took many lifetimes to develop them into what they are today, and it would take just as many to unravel all of their possibilities. Making kata effective and valuable is not the kata’s responsibility, it is our own.

The Teacher Rosetta Stone

It would be careless to throw a Bible at someone and simply say ‘good luck’. It would be even more careless if that Bible was written in Latin. Students require guidance, a Rosetta Stone in order to have the best chance possible for extracting true value out of a text.

In martial arts and kata terms, it is the instructor’s responsibility to serve as that guide post. A Rosetta Stone won’t translate a book and spoon feed it to someone, but it will provide those critical junctions to put the student on the best path possible to understanding. As such, the collaborative effort of both teacher and student results in deeper and more meaningful understanding of not just the words but the core meaning as well.

Vigilant effort is required by both students and teachers as they continue to explore the concepts contained within classical training. The books need to be read, studied, memorized, forgotten, and read again.

I wish you continued luck and success in your studies!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 and is filed under Kata, Martial Arts, karate, mindset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

xygoxen
  • Great points and great cast of characters. I like Mr. Oyata. Years ago, I attended a workshop with him (maybe 1991 or '92 in Fargo I think), and he shattered martial-arts preconceptions for me. He made motion look awesome, far beyond my previous experiences with it. His humor and grace was (and probably still is) impeccable.

    I don't want to go on too much... but... I was a younger man then and I overheard a fella ask Mr. Oyata (I paraphrase from a distant memory)...

    Fella: "I heard you quit smoking, cold turkey. How did you do it?"
    Mr. Oyata: (in accented English) "I quit."
    Fella: "Yes Sir, but how did you just quit so suddenly."
    Mr. Oyata: "I quit. When you quit something, quit it. I quit."

    That was my first real, live internal arts lesson. I imagine (to go back to topic) he applies such Real practicality to each of his forms.
  • Very insightful post. I had the opportunity to train with Sensei Logue once at a Kyusho Jitsu workshop. He is a remarkable martial artist.
  • Rodney - I have never had the pleasure of meeting him in person but your sentiments seem to be prevailing amongst those who have!
  • Good point. Although I've learned to see them as poems, where meaning remains hidden until suddenly in a reading it reveals a part of itself. Elusive and concrete at the same time.
  • Yes I can see how that analogy fits as well. Thanks Jorge!
  • Very good post. As a student of taijiquan, I am always amazed at the new insights into the art I discover as I go deeper and deeper into the study of the form.

    The head of the Wu family style of taijiquan said that if you study the standard square form deeply enough as well as practice pushing hands with enough skilled and varied partners, you can learn all hat taijiquan has to teach you.
  • The same is often said in karate of a kata such as naihanchi combined with kumite. It seems that understanding core concepts is more important than amount of forms, etc no matter what style you study.
  • I think most martial artists are guilty of collecting techniques like baseball cards, the skewed thinking being that to be a good martial artist you have to know hundreds of techniques. Very few people training today know what it is to truly master a technique because as soon as they learn one they hastily move on the next one and the next one after that until they have amassed this huge collection that they can do very little with at the end of the day because they don't understand the techniques enough to really use them effectively. I think this a very common problem in the martial arts today. No one is willing to put the time into mastering anything, yet they will go out of there way to hunt down new techniques to add to their basically useless existing repertoire.

    Bruce Lee summed it up when he said that he does not fear the man who knows 10,000 kicks but he does fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times (which as we know, is the amount of reps it takes to come close to mastering a technique). When you really take the time to master one technique you begin to discover things about the technique, about yourself and about the martial arts in general that you wouldn't otherwise discover if you just spent your time brushing over numerous techniques. I am as guilty of this collectors syndrome as anybody. In Jujitsu there are thousands of techniques and it is easy to get "technique fever" and keep adding and adding all the time.

    At the moment I have set myself the goal of mastering one single punch (the right hook) by doing it 10,000 times and it's amazing the confidence you get just from gradually getting better and better at doing it. Eventually I will have a technique that I can rely on 100% and that I know will be devastatingly effective because I have practiced it so many times, i.e. mastered it. It's also amazing the many different nuances of a technique that you pick up on throughout this process of mastery. Just when you think you have it down, you pick up on something else that needs working on.

    We would all be better martial artists if we just spent our lives mastering only a handful of techniques. This would make us genuinely effective in what we do, instead of just mediocre, which compared to a true master, is what most martial artists are when all is said and done.
  • Great input Neal, thanks a lot for taking the time to write this down. I agree with you 100% - if we focus on understanding the core concepts that make a technique work we don't need thousands of external techniques.
  • Name
    Nice post, but some things to think about:

    1. Not all 'books' are worth reading. Or at least, considering how precious one's time is, some kata better studied than others.

    2. Some 'books' written by clueless teachers. In this case, blame the writer.

    Sure, one's education and learning is ultimately one's own responsibility. But it's predicated on a teacher willing to teach the student HOW to read in the first place.
  • Absolutely true - you'll get no argument out of me!
  • Tapetum
    Not to mention:

    3. Not all books, even good books, are appropriate or useful for all readers. A book may be full of deep meaning for one reader, while another will find it trite and useless - not because the second reader lacks understanding, but because their circumstances (life experience, abilities, personality) render the points the book is making moot.

    I'm really liking the book analogy. But then again, I'm a severe bibliophile, with enough books to open a mid-size library. I like book everything!
  • thomasowenm
    Coming from a Kata heavy style, I have learned that you can only "master" a few kata befre becoming overwhelmed, so I have begun looking at them as only note cards instead of books.

    When the traditional kata were being developed the creators did not write down thier methods, probably not because they wouldn't but because their pupils couldn't read. (I know a large leap but it's my view of the subject.) So I take kata simply as note cards where techniques are there to be available as a reminder to those students. Of course the great mysterious and hidden techniques of kata would not have been mysteries to someone who was taught directly by a kata creator. Sadly most students didn't feel secure enough to divulge the "secrets" to their students hence the eternal quest for meaning.

    That is not to say that kata should not be broken down, studied, analyzed, and applied to modern situations. Just a new way to looking at it.
  • I'm a fellow kata-heavy karateka thomas and I know what you mean. There simply isn't enough hours in the day and days in the year to dive deep enough into all of them.
  • Limit67
    Although I train in Shorin-Ryu, I have been to 'camps' with Sensei Hayes and Tashi Logue. I've also read Sensei Hayes book, and is an amazing story with amazing insight in the true roots of karate...

    Great blog!
  • limit - was it the 'little okinawa' get-together? That seems like an awesome event.
  • narda
    'When you quit something, quit it.'

    Very, very familiar. Good post.
  • Fantastic post Matt, great analogy from Oyata-sensei. There's no way I could sum up the principle so neatly - I'd probably write several hundreds trying to get the same thing across... and it's be so convoluted all directness would be lost ;)
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