Otsuka Hironori’s martial arts evolution Part 6.
Starting with further ideas on the paired kata being the “true kata of Wado Ryu”.
I feel a need to remind readers that these articles about master Otsuka’s development as a martial artist, are just my own reflections and suppositions. I am sure that I have got lots of things wrong and that I may have dramatically oversimplified the narrative. We all know that everyone, historical or contemporary, lead lives that are incredibly complicated, and nobody will ever be able to unpack the whole story.
For me, these are meditations in words. I write to basically order my thoughts. Somebody once said, “think with ink”, that is pretty much what I do in these pieces.
The core paired kata.
The above quote, (“true kata of Wado Ryu”) is from a martial arts journalist/historian describing his opinion of what is really going on in Wado. Try as I might, I can’t find the original quote, but this throw-away phrase stuck with me.
Clearly, in his opinion he must have found it easier to grasp the working combat mechanics from Wado paired kata than from the external appearance of Wado’s solo kata.
In this piece I will discuss:
· The Kihon Gumite.
· Otsuka Sensei’s personal ‘tailoring’ of the paired kata.
· Omote kata and Ura waza.
· A word about Ura no Kumite.
· The solo kata of Wado. How did master Otsuka develop them?
· Some final thoughts.
The Kihon Gumite.
The above-mentioned paired kata, the Kihon Gumite, have been around for a very long time, but, like many of Otsuka’s projects they needed maturation to establish themselves as any kind of stable and accepted canon.
In interviewing some the oldest surviving students of master Otsuka, Ben Pollock enquired about the formation of the Kihon Gumite. He was told that they thought master Otsuka originally developed 24 Kihon Gumite, then whittled them down to pretty much the 10 we know today. Then he had a change of heart and brought them down further to 5, and then, yet again changed his mind and reinstated the previous 5, probably because they made a more complete and comprehensive set; which indeed they do.
Otsuka Sensei’s fluid approach to the teaching of the Kihon Gumite was explained to me by another Japanese Sensei, who revealed that the master would teach each according to their strengths.
For the opening move for the first seven of the Kihon Gumite, a very distinctive ‘defensive’ wedge, he told me that Otsuka taught the stance position differently to various students, e.g. If one of the students had a Goju Ryu background Otsuka told the student to perform the move in cat stance (something that is characteristic of that particular Ryu) and there were at least two other variant stances he mentioned. Clearly, this was a bespoke approach, rather than one-size-fits-all.
Omote kata?
The Kihon Gumite as paired kata offer a comprehensive set of clues as to how to deploy Wado strategy. On outward appearance, they are the Omote kata of Wado karate, but there are some problems with accepting them as such.
Just to be clear, and to play devil’s advocate, the difficulty with this set is that they are not ‘fixed’.
My understanding is that the older tradition and spirit of Japanese martial arts Omote kata is that they have to be very very clearly defined; variants are not permitted, nobody can arbitrarily tinker with the outward form of the kata.
If you look at Koryu Budo/Bujutsu this is generally an unbreakable law, although there are exceptions and very rarely kata can be changed, but only after passing the most rigorous examination, or maybe if a Ryuha is in a state of coalescence, or is trying to renovate and reconstruct itself because of an urge to restore older techniques from a closely related line. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
It appears that this is an impossibility within Wado, and I give two reasons for this:
· If you accept that the intention was always that Wado should be an ever-evolving entity, the idea of fixing the kata will never happen.
· The spreading diaspora meant that the genii was out of the bottle, the horse had bolted from the stable, neither of which can be returned to their original state. Put simply; every Japanese Sensei who left Japan (and some who operated on the further fringes of the World of Wado within Japan) were inclined to put their own technical spin on the kata and overlay their personal preferences. I suppose it happened all under the name of ‘creativity’, which you could argue was an earned prerogative.
As a counter and a justification for that, it could be argued that quality control for the ’ever-evolving entity’ is perhaps governed and held in check by the underpinning core Principles of Wado. An example being, the well-known admonitions in Wado circles, the ones supposing coming from master Otsuka himself; the three basic, ‘Thou shalt not’s’ (DON’T use too much power, make unnecessary movement and use unnecessary techniques).
If I take just the first one of those rules; the one about not using too much power/strength; this can be troublesome for even the most senior of practitioners, particularly if they have nobody above them to give an honest critique on their technique. Every one of them will swear that the amount of strength they deploy is appropriate, they will just take it for granted. Thus, it becomes elusive, difficult to pin down and define accurately.
It might also be worth considering Otsuka Sensei’s writing about ‘Kata’ and ‘Igata’. He wouldn’t buy into the cookie-cutter model for kata – but that might be for another discussion.