Why have kata changed?

This is a follow-up to my earlier post: What was the original kata?

We know that kata have changed - even a cursory glance at youtube will show you the huge variety of ways that any given kata can be performed.  This appears to not be just a modern development, as even by looking at books from the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s etc... we can see that there have been changes to kata since then, and even at the time (compare, for instance, the earlier publications of Funkoshi such as Tote-Jitsu (1922) with his later publication, the Karate-do Kyohan (1931) and then with its re-working in the 1950s; or compare the two earlier works and their rendition of naihanchi kata with Motobu's Karate - My Art (1932)).  Even within the students of the same teacher, we can see variance that cannot all have been contained within what was originally taught (see the different schools of the students of Choshin Chibana, for instance - the differences in kata between Kyudokan and Matsubayashi-ryu are a good example).  This begs the question, why have kata changed?

I think (with varying amounts of evidence) that there are a few reasons.  But before I get into those, I think it is worth examining what has changed, as that will inform how I examine the whys.

The major types of changes we see in kata are:

1. Number of techniques/steps.  A technique or number of repetitions of a technique can change.  For instance, I have learned seisan with a palmheel up/out sequence with the right hand, followed by the same with the left, then into the tetsui and renzoku-zuki to the right side.  Most other schools have left side, right side, left side then right again before the tetsui.  Different schools have the same techniques in the same sequence, but the number of times each is done is variable
2. Loss of/additional techniques/technique sequences.  Without having an original to compare to, these are the same point.  One school's kata will have some additional techniques/sequences, or will omit them relative to another school.
3. Modified techniques/sequences.  This is not the same as 2. The overall technique - or frame of the technique - is there, but it is not the same.  For instance in Jion, shotokan and shito-ryu have a sequence of 3 teisho going south along the line of embusen; in kyudokan and some of the other Chibana-derived schools, this is 3 enpi uchi/ukes, followed by a wrapping around hand that in its finished position looks much like a teisho.
4. Timing.  Different bits are done at different speeds or with different emphasis.
5. Direction.  Same techniques/sequences, but done on a different line of the embusen.
6. Power generation.  Different power generation principles are applied in the performance of the kata.  The kyudokan/shinjinbukan utilisation of hip rotation in their kata compared to other shorin schools is an excellent example of this.

So, why these changes?

The first, and most obvious reason I can think of is that kata get changed via the standardisation of something that was originally naturally variable.  I subscribe to the point of view (via Patrick McCarthy) that kata originated as the culmination and solo-rendition of two-person techniques.  Given this, it is likely that kata in their original form had variation in how they were structured, as the same technique done against differently sized or positioned individuals would itself have varied to some degree.  If the teaching of karate was to small groups or individuals where the two-person applications were the primary lesson, and the kata were an adjunct to that, then as students left and practised on their own, they would likely perform parts of the kata slightly differently, depending on how they experienced performing the applications.  If they then went on to teach it to others, particularly to larger groups, then it is likely that a single way of performing the kata will have eventuated for each student of the creator of the kata (which is a whole lot of caveats in a row, right there). So, in one generation of transmission of the kata, there lies the possibility of multiple variations arising.

Additionally, the person being taught the kata may have been taught with a particular emphasis to best fit their own body shape (something that has been remarked on in early writings on pre-war karate), but may not have been made aware of the other ways of doing the kata.  This leads into the second (and to my mind the main) reason why kata have changed, which is:

In the teaching of karate, the two-person application became divorced from kata.  Kata became taught first and without the guiding boundaries of application, the reasons for doing each part of it a certain way became lost.  When this happened is unclear and may have varied from style to style, but it has unquestionably happened for the vast majority of kata.  Points where this may have occurred are the formalisation of karate into the high school curriculum by Itosu; the rushed transmission/training of Higashionna and Miyagi in China; the massive-scale death, destruction and disruption to training caused by WWII.  Any of these could have caused a loss of the inter-relationship between originating application and kata it inspired.  With the loss of application as a reference-point, kata have undergone the cultural equivalent of genetic drift - no selection pressure means that new variations arise and remain in the population, giving rise to more variations that are even further from the original.  

This is more general to all of karate, not just the kata component.  I first became exposed to Silat in 2010, and have attended a number of seminars over the years run by the outstanding Maul Mornie.  One thing I remarked on then, and continue to observe is that while there are many conceptual and structural similarities with goju ryu in what he does, everything appears more direct and more contextualised by its efficacy in overcoming the opponent, than anything karate has. Given that it has only been one generation (two at the most) since the silat will have had a functional use (during World War II and the Malayan Emergency), everything has a concrete (not hypothesised) pragmatic context - whether that be the holding of people on the ground face-down so they drown in puddles, the way that machetes are swung so they can be used in formation fighting, the footwork necessary for fighting on raised bridges versus on open ground - something which all karate, with its nebulous origins and absence of known original context, lacks.  This leads to the third reason why kata can change:

In the absence of original context or applications, teachers can fill the void with their own.  These then feed back into how the kata is taught and performed.  I personally know (or know of) at least five teachers of karate, all of different styles, who have done exactly that, and suspect that pretty much every half-decent teacher of karate has done the same thing at one point of another.  This is not change for change's sake, it is change that provides the kata with a meaning and purpose within the overall framework of their expression of karate and is an anchor point for it in the world of the practical.  Having said that, one teacher's context may be another's heresy.  We can see a related factor at play in the shift of one particular branch of shorin karate into shotokan.  There is a fair likelihood (particularly from looking at his earlier published works), that Funakoshi knew a practical application-based context to the kata he taught, but it is equally apparent that he chose not to pass this aspect on.  He chose a new context for what he saw karate to be and how it should be taught and practiced.  In doing this, he (and his son, and Nakayama and the other seniors after them) deliberately changed not only the reason for kata, but all of the above-mentioned aspects of the kata as well (to some not inconsiderable success, I might add - if success can be measured by number of practitioners, recognition and number of countries where Shotokan is trained).

So, changing the kata can be a deliberate act, but there are also other factors that can cause change to occur, by disrupting the transmission, retention of, or practise of kata.  World War II is an example of one of those.  Not only did the war years disrupt and disperse the people training in karate, many of them dying during the war; but the Battle for Okinawa killed many, many civilians, destroyed most of the written records and historical documents pertaining to karate and made the luxury (for luxury it is to be doing something for desire, not necessity) of expending time and energy on something not immediately useful to daily existence, beyond the reach of most.  We know, from the testimony of some of the karateka who survived the war years, that they did not train for a number of years during and after the war.  Some knowledge - the way of doing things, the meaning for doing things a certain way, the sequence of some techniques -was lost or at the very least degraded.  And we don't know what it is that we did lose.  When the karateka started training again after going through the war years, they not only needed to recall partially forgotten and neglected kata, but their outlook on the purpose and function of their training may well have been altered.  We have evidence that Miyagi, for example, altered his outlook on what karate was for; we know (from testimony from his students and comparisons between pre-war and post-war students) that he changed what he taught and how he taught, including the kata.  We know that other karateka started teaching karate in order to earn enough money to survive; they opened up training to people they would not otherwise have trained, including American servicemen, which may have caused deliberate and unintentional changes to the kata.  We have oral testimony from the time that changes were needed to be made to kata to suit the larger sizes of the US soldiers, and that due to reasons (to do with time, language barriers or possibly an unwillingness to teach the 'real' stuff to the conquerers), they were only taught an outwards form of the kata, without the meanings of the movements or the underlying principles being passed on.  The survivors of war years also may have been interrupted in their stage of training and, having lost their teacher/s, would have needed to make sense of their kata without further guidance.  Which leads to another factor that causes change in kata:

Intermittent instruction is another causative agent of changes in karate.  These days, students of a local karate instructor may have several decades of direct, regular contact with their teacher.  This, however, is a more recent thing - in the pre-war years, this was not always the case (for instance, Higaonna trained about 3 years with Arakaki, and then about 10 years in China; Miyagi trained with him about 13-15 years, then a year or so in China; Yamaguchi had limited and sporadic training with Miyagi; and so on...). Additionally, a number of the early founders of the main styles that continue through today learned under multiple teachers, or picked up different kata in isolation, separate to their regular training.  Post-war, foreigners (whether US soldiers in Okinawa, or tourists/practitioners from overseas) who received training in Japan or Okinawa for a short period of time, might have years between visits and would only receive sporadic feedback/tuition on their kata.  This lack of consistent and regular feedback is a breeding-ground for change.

Intermittent instruction is a magnifying factor for change, particularly if the ability to communicate is limited due to language differences.  Teachers make mistakes, or do things a particular way to emphasise a momentary point they want to make.  But if that is the student's only exposure to the kata, then that is the way they will continue to perform it.  There are apocryphal stories of Japanese instructors visiting their overseas dojo and performing a kata a certain way because of an leg injury; that way of doing the kata then became the standard way of performing it in those visited dojos.

The next reason I want to touch on is one that I feel most people discount, because of how it comments on what they see as their motivations and relationship with karate.  That is, laziness.  By this, I don't mean that someone is lazy, or that they don't have a committed approach to their training.  Rather, I am talking about the tendency for movements to become short-cut or abbreviated over time as the body takes a path of least resistance, something that can be almost entirely subconscious.  But, if it occurs while teaching, then the full movement the student sees is in fact an abbreviation of the original. It doesn't take too many generations of significant transmission to see whole-scale change occurring.  My personal feeling on this is that it is more common than people are willing to admit, and I think it has played a large part in the amount of difference we see in the kata of the different goju schools (but without any actual evidence for this, it remains a feeling).

The last reason why I think kata could change is related to the formation of karate into 'styles'.  Most modern styles/schools of karate are an amalgamation of kata from different sources, but it is uncanny how similar the execution of all the kata are within that style.  They originally came from different sources and will have had differences in stance, limb formations and in power generation, but over time they have become homogenised to the main way of performing these that the style follows.  Standardisation is a major driver of change, both at this macro-level, and at the level of individual techniques.  Done solo (absent the person you are doing it to), something that is used to strike can look a lot like something that is used to block, and look a lot like something that is used to entangle - similar, but different in both intention and in the subtleties of execution.  However, without the extra-kata knowledge of the exact purpose of the technique (which people mostly don't/didn't have), standardisation to an individual's natural/trained/preferred way of doing things will cause these technques in the kata to merge and become the same, especially if emphasis is put on the finishing position. (an emphasis that I believe has and has had a negative influence of karate - but that's the topic for another post).

Part 3 can be found here.