Chapter 6. Karate, an alternative story.
The free Substack posts will continue every Tuesday but for this longer post in its entirety, sign up for the premium (paid) section.
In this chapter:
The second part of a personalised technical view of the early days of ‘Project Wado’ in the UK.
Otsuka’s teaching method.
Kata ‘changes’.
My Shodan grading.
Technical observations.
Obviously, by this time my personal technical development was not just happening within the Mansfield Dojo, the Dojo time I was using to brush up on stuff I was learning on the big courses with the Japanese Sensei.
‘Extra’ kata.
At about this time Suzuki Sensei was introducing extra kata into the senior curriculum; ones we’d never seen before or even heard of. Dojo seniors came back from a course I’d missed out on, all excited, with tales of these ‘new’ kata and were keen to show us. Thus, we stumbled our way through kata like Jion and Jitte, until Suzuki Sensei clarified the finer points with us and explained his way of doing things.
His variety of Jion was distinct to him. The early Suzuki version had chunks missing; it was only later when we found out why, that subsequently those sections were reintroduced.
Without being told, we assumed these additional kata were pegged as reserved, exclusive and advanced, certainly, in the 70’s and 80’s no Japanese Sensei was contradicting this view. I am sure that in part we had come to that conclusion ourself, as only the Dan grades were ‘allowed’ to practice them AND they appeared on the Dan syllabus that means they must be super-advanced, surely?
The reality came much later on when we realised what a ‘moveable feast’ they were. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it is fairly clear in my mind that the core Wado kata are the first nine (five Pinans, Kushanku, Naihanchi, Seishan and Chinto as the apex kata), those others are not advanced in the normal understanding of the word, they are just extra.
Here’s where the anecdotal ‘evidence’ comes in.
I have heard from more than one source that Otsuka Sensei as the founder of Wado Ryu karate placed the real emphasis on the ‘core’ nine kata, with a suggestion that everything comes together neatly with Chinto, while reserving the ‘lifetime’s study’ needed to get to the bottom of Naihanchi and Seishan, as if you haven’t got enough on your plate.
Wado Ryu’s second grandmaster also voiced the opinion about the ‘extra’ kata. He said that technically they just contained other versions of things you’d done before.
The ‘moveable feast’ I mentioned above, describes why and how there were so many odd variations found between the Wado ‘inheritors’ for the extra kata, the ones additional to the core nine.