what was the original kata?
How can we know that the kata we are learning is the original form?
One of the things that we are told - often unsolicited - is that we should do kata exactly as we have been taught, because 'the old masters knew what they were doing' or 'we will lose the meaning of the kata if we do'. Leaving those two very leading assumptions aside (for now), implied in that is that the kata have been unchanged as they have been taught and handed down from generation to generation.
But is that actually true? There is no denying that each kata had, at some stage, a starting point where someone (or someones) created it. At that point in time, there was indeed, only one version of the kata and it was undoubtedly the correct one. But who created it, when and for what purpose, is often difficult to determine. For some kata such as tensho, the gekisai and pinan kata, we do know who created them, when and have at least some recorded information about their intended purpose. So surely, they would have been passed down essentially in the same form from then to now? For others, such as naihanchi, seisan and the like, there is no record, no known creator and no information as to how they performed the kata, nor their intentions regarding it. In essence, we have to rely on a faithful transmission to provide surety as to the kata's meaning.
Except can we? Even for kata such as the pinan (heian) kata, created in the early part of the 20th Century by Itosu Anko, there are many, many variants - sometimes even between students of the same teacher, and with starkly contrasting differences between organisations. For older kata, the differences can be even more stark - seisan and naihanchi have huge differences in the way they are performed and the manner in which they generate power from group to group - to the extent that in some cases only the name and only the most cursory skeleton of surface postures remain to unite them. So, which of these many different forms of the same kata is original? Which is the one that was correctly transmitted, alone amongst all the incorrectly learnt versions? Does the original kata even exist anymore?
On one level, the answer is a flat, definitive no. Once the creator of the kata died, his (and they were pretty much men - as far as we know) understanding, context and manner of performing the kata died with him. Even if he taught his students, they would not have the same understanding of the meaning of the kata, and unless they were his identical twin, nor would they have the same body proportions to perform the kata in exactly the same way.But that way of looking at kata may be too restrictive - whether the original kata exist anymore may depend on what the purpose of the kata was. If it was to pass on certain techniques, or to act as mnemonics for those techniques, then it is possible for the kata to be transmitted from generation to generation with two provisos:
1/ the techniques were explicitly taught along with the kata - so that the meaning of the movements was also transmitted; and
2/ the outward shape of the kata would alter for each student so that they were practising effective movements for them. In this way, even an externally changed kata in fulfilling the intended purpose of its creator, is still the original. Likewise, a kata created to practise a method of power generation, for instance, would still be original if it continued to provide effective transmission of that mode of power generation.
Even assuming this, though, it is highly unlikely that most variations of a kata are true to the original, either in spirit or in adherence to the particulars of the outward form. There is a very high chance that the kata I practise are not the original - about the same chance that the katas you practise are not either. The sheer volume of difference between different schools for any given kata - even for the newer ones - is so vast that there is an overwhelmingly high likelihood that the original no longer completely exists.
I was intending this to be a fairly short entry, but in writing it I keep coming up with new questions and avenues to explore, each of which really needs a post in itself:
Why have kata changed?
Is there any way to tell how close to the original, or to the intent of the original your version might be?
Does it actually matter if the kata have changed?
If we don't have the original, is there a point to learning and performing a kata?
Each of which will be a future blog post. As I create them I will add the link to each into this post.
One of the things that we are told - often unsolicited - is that we should do kata exactly as we have been taught, because 'the old masters knew what they were doing' or 'we will lose the meaning of the kata if we do'. Leaving those two very leading assumptions aside (for now), implied in that is that the kata have been unchanged as they have been taught and handed down from generation to generation.
But is that actually true? There is no denying that each kata had, at some stage, a starting point where someone (or someones) created it. At that point in time, there was indeed, only one version of the kata and it was undoubtedly the correct one. But who created it, when and for what purpose, is often difficult to determine. For some kata such as tensho, the gekisai and pinan kata, we do know who created them, when and have at least some recorded information about their intended purpose. So surely, they would have been passed down essentially in the same form from then to now? For others, such as naihanchi, seisan and the like, there is no record, no known creator and no information as to how they performed the kata, nor their intentions regarding it. In essence, we have to rely on a faithful transmission to provide surety as to the kata's meaning.
Except can we? Even for kata such as the pinan (heian) kata, created in the early part of the 20th Century by Itosu Anko, there are many, many variants - sometimes even between students of the same teacher, and with starkly contrasting differences between organisations. For older kata, the differences can be even more stark - seisan and naihanchi have huge differences in the way they are performed and the manner in which they generate power from group to group - to the extent that in some cases only the name and only the most cursory skeleton of surface postures remain to unite them. So, which of these many different forms of the same kata is original? Which is the one that was correctly transmitted, alone amongst all the incorrectly learnt versions? Does the original kata even exist anymore?
On one level, the answer is a flat, definitive no. Once the creator of the kata died, his (and they were pretty much men - as far as we know) understanding, context and manner of performing the kata died with him. Even if he taught his students, they would not have the same understanding of the meaning of the kata, and unless they were his identical twin, nor would they have the same body proportions to perform the kata in exactly the same way.But that way of looking at kata may be too restrictive - whether the original kata exist anymore may depend on what the purpose of the kata was. If it was to pass on certain techniques, or to act as mnemonics for those techniques, then it is possible for the kata to be transmitted from generation to generation with two provisos:
1/ the techniques were explicitly taught along with the kata - so that the meaning of the movements was also transmitted; and
2/ the outward shape of the kata would alter for each student so that they were practising effective movements for them. In this way, even an externally changed kata in fulfilling the intended purpose of its creator, is still the original. Likewise, a kata created to practise a method of power generation, for instance, would still be original if it continued to provide effective transmission of that mode of power generation.
Even assuming this, though, it is highly unlikely that most variations of a kata are true to the original, either in spirit or in adherence to the particulars of the outward form. There is a very high chance that the kata I practise are not the original - about the same chance that the katas you practise are not either. The sheer volume of difference between different schools for any given kata - even for the newer ones - is so vast that there is an overwhelmingly high likelihood that the original no longer completely exists.
I was intending this to be a fairly short entry, but in writing it I keep coming up with new questions and avenues to explore, each of which really needs a post in itself:
Why have kata changed?
Is there any way to tell how close to the original, or to the intent of the original your version might be?
Does it actually matter if the kata have changed?
If we don't have the original, is there a point to learning and performing a kata?
Each of which will be a future blog post. As I create them I will add the link to each into this post.
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