A personal view on the development of the Wado curriculum in the West – Part 3.

A focus on kata.

In this instalment:

·       The canonical Wado kata.

·       Kata as ‘form’.

·       Western projections on to kata.

·       Taking the kata literally.

·       Chasing rabbits. What we grasp with one hand, we lose with the other.

·       When body mechanics started to become important.

·       Those ‘extra/advanced’ kata.

·       Otsuka Sensei reveals some of the meaning behind moves in the ‘extra’ kata.

·       The concept of the ‘all-rounder’ as an ideal rather than a reality.

·       The controversy over the Okinawan origins as they relate to Wado.

A focus specifically on solo kata.

The kata of Wado karate and the teaching intentions.

Starting from the most basic of basics; the solo kata of Wado are intended as a set of teaching steps, incrementally adding challenges as we move up the grade ladder.

Initially, in the UK and Europe the core kata were set with the five ‘Pinan’ kata, plus Kushanku, Naihanchi, Seishan and Chinto. An acknowledged canonical nine solo kata.

To many western Wado students the rationale behind the core solo kata seems to be the most difficult to justify – but not so with the Japanese Sensei. For the Japanese there are no questions to ask, it just is what it is.

This is wrapped up in Japanese culture and is actually quite alien to western thinking. If you want to get a handle on how ‘kata’ (in its broadest term) exists in Japanese culture I would recommend the book by Boye Lafayette De Mente, ‘Kata – The key to understanding and dealing with the Japanese’.

Kata as ‘Form’.

You have to have a good understanding of written Japanese to pick apart the Kanji used for ‘kata’ and, take it from me, Otsuka Sensei had a very nuanced interpretation of how the character should be manifested in physical form. See the generally available – though ‘limited edition’, Otsuka kata book, and the chapter/section on ‘kata’ and ‘Igata’, the latter is a simple template, with no meaning beyond being a mould to make other identical artefacts. Its purpose is limited to that end (question; do we do kata with the sole objective of getting good at kata?)

Where the waters got muddy.

This intention is obvious to the Japanese Wado Sensei, but not to us westerners. We have a tendency to project other ideas on to the kata, ones that are more in-line with western linear thinking. This doesn’t square with the Japanese outlook though. Westerners, when struggling to find meaning will invent a meaning of their own. This is why there is a compulsion to shamelessly indulge in reverse engineering.

The Japanese were not immune to also creating simplistic applications for kata moves; but in lots of ways these were just adjuncts to the functional lower-level paired kata.

It’s easy to criticise these as just being ‘karate formal techniques used against other karate formal techniques’, but they are not meant to be judged as self-defence techniques, they are just another formalised set running a similar agenda to the kyu grade paired kata, (either Sanbon or Ippon Gumite).

The critics would ask; how do you square these as being Self-Defence? The frustrating and annoying answers are, ‘they are, yet they aren’t’ and ‘it depends how you define it’. Or an answer that would really annoy them, ‘they are, but you have to go the long way round to get there’. That last one is a more honest answer. It just means that you look at the whole discipline of kata training as involving a long list of agenda items and somewhere way down comes the idea that the fuller list of accumulated abilities has a good chance of being useful to you in a fight. Another handy question is; if you have enough years’ experience behind you, do you find yourself using strategies learned in kata in your free fighting? If you don’t, then there’s definitely something missing in your training.

Misunderstandings through taking things very very literally.

To some degree the early pioneer Japanese Sensei in Wado karate unintentionally added fuel to the fire of the naysayers and the critics.

I would refer you to the crowd-pleasing demonstrations that Suzuki Sensei performed showing ‘applications’ of Pinan kata, which the uneducated audience took very literally (the truth was that back in the 70’s and 80’s we were all ‘uneducated’).

Example; in the demos we unquestioningly accepted that the upper and lower ‘X’ blocks were showing two hands dealing with one attack, whereas in Wado this strategy is considered an anathema. (There are examples where two hands are deployed into the same zone, but each doing a slightly different job, but not a literal Juji-Uke). This was just another unacknowledged different level of formalisation.

The teaching and learning priorities.

In those early days we were engaging with the challenge of the kata in terms of two key imperatives; we wanted to do the kata correctly (as related to form) and we wanted to deliver it in a style that appeared energised and dynamic, to give it the verve that we thought we were observing with the Japanese Sensei.

In hindsight we were chasing two rabbits while letting the others get away. It is only with the advantage of years of training in and observing kata do we now see our folly. If you want to see what particular rabbits we were chasing, they are pretty obvious in the movie of Suzuki Sensei and the other more junior Japanese Sensei performing kata in Battersea Park, a film produced by Sakura Trading Company in the 1970’s.

Images from the Sakura Trading Company movie. Sakagami Sensei (then 5th Dan) performing Kushanku and Suzuki Sensei showing an interpretation in the kata Pinan Sandan.

The ones that got away.

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