"Secret" Kata and The Problem of Preservation

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Every so often, when writing about RyuTe, I feel obligated to point out that I do not speak from a position of authority. I'm just a student. Take my opinions for what they're worth.

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I've been writing a bit lately (here and here) if you're interested, musing on the future of the RyuTe Renmei. I actually got some comments on one of those posts (this is as rare as a meteor striking, given the microscopic readership of this blog), and one of them, from Sensei Strange, got me to thinking. In it, he mentioned that he wasn't into "secret kata" and some kinds of martial-arts politics. And I understand, understand completely, but I couldn't help but think that he might not completely understand the problem.

(Okay, a very small handful of people--probably less than three--are wondering, "What 'secret kata'?" The kata in question is--I see no harm in saying it, you will find out soon enough if you persist in poking around the internet--Shi Ho Happo No Te--and it was, if I understand what I've been told correctly----it was intended for the people in Shin Shu Ho. If you want to know more about Shin Shu Ho, I'd suggest starting with the material here .)

Maybe to really understand the problem--and maybe I don't, maybe I'm getting it all wrong, this is just how it seems to me--a person needs some background information. The first bit of information, and vital information it is, is that the odds are excellent that despite what may be years of experience in and with various karate schools and organizations, you haven't seen "karate" the way it was practiced in the middle of the nineteenth century. I don't mean that the uniforms have changed, or that style names have originated/changed. I mean that through accident and choice, huge amounts of information have been lost to most karate organizations, even down to some basic techniques, and that furthermore, most of the people in those organizations don't even realize it has been lost.

I almost hate telling people this. No one wants to believe it. The Shotokan people have invested a huge amount of effort into convincing themselves that Shotokan is the zenith of martial arts, as have a lot of the Taekwon-do people--so help me, I have actually seen TKD schools promote themselves as teachers of "Super Karate"--half or more of the Goju Ryu people really do seem to think that Yamaguchi Gogen's dedicated practice of Goju Ryu really did give him almost supernatural powers, the Isshin Ryu folks really do seem to think that the reason their system doesn't contain any given technique is that it must have been discarded by Shimabuku as a "fancy" technique, and so on. The grapplers--the judoka, the BJJ folks--often seem like they want to believe that karate is useless at close quarters. The aiki folks and the Chinese internal arts folks seem to have a lot of mental energy invested in convincing themselves that their more sophisticated arts have that simple block-punch-kick stuff beat all hollow.

You tell these people that they they're not really in a position to evaluate karate, either positively or negatively, because they likely haven't even seen the real thing, you are bound to get some interesting reactions, because for more than a few folks, part of their self-image is wrapped up in the their belief that they are practicing a superior martial art.

This is in spite of some very prominent people--or at least one--coming right out and telling us that "karate" as most people know it today and "karate" as it was practiced 160 years ago are two very different things. I recall reading Funakoshi Gichin's autobiography and highlighting a couple of very significant passages. I'd quote them for you verbatim, but I can't seem to locate my copy just this minute. However, if you have a copy, a little searching will verify what I am telling you: Funakoshi said quite clearly that the karate they were practicing "today"--that would have been the 1950s--was a "far cry" from the karate he learned growing up on Okinawa (that would have been the 1870s-1880s). He further said that he had deliberately "simplified" the kata so as to make it easier to teach large numbers of students.

I wonder how many people have asked themselves what it means to "simplify" a kata. If you look around at various versions of Naihanchi Shodan, you can see quite a bit of variation, but just as far as the physical movements are concerned, I don't know if any of them are obviously simpler than the others. Oh, sure, there are details here, and details there, but mostly,
Naihanchi Shodan is recognizably the same kata from system to system. Look, in particular, at the Shotokan version and ask yourself if, going by looks alone, you would consider it "simplified."

So, if by "simplification," Funakoshi wasn't necessarily referring just to the physical movements of the kata, what was he referring to? I suggest to you that he meant he was dropping the instruction of a large body of knowledge associated with given kata, variations on kata movements, the practice of a great many techniques contained or implied in those kata, that he was sticking to simple, surface-level interpretations. I suggest to you that even if he had been inclined to teach the mainland Japanese everything he knew about each kata, he simply didn't have time.

Another couple of books I wish everyone would read are Nagamine Shoshin's The Essence of Karate-Do and Arakaki Kiyoshi's The Secrets of Okinawan Karate, if only to drive home this fact: the two books teach completely different methods of punching. Why is that significant? Because Arakaki learned how to punch from Nagamine. What Nagamine put in his book is exactly what Arakaki says is the wrong way to punch. You can draw whatever conclusions you like. I suspect that Nagamine wasn't entirely comfortable with everyone knowing how to punch like he
taught Arakaki to punch. Whatever the reason, here is what Nagamine writes, emphasis mine:

Seiken is formed by bending the fingers at the second joints, clenching them tightly into the palm, and pressing both the forefinger and the middle finger with the thumb...

Arakaki tells you bluntly that this is wrong, emphasis again mine:

This usage of wrist and fingers has only been passed down by oral tradition. Thus, this core concept has been lost even in Okinawa.

[snip]

...you must not tighten up any part of your body, especially the arm and hand. You never make a tight fist to hit a target.

[snip]

Only a few Okinawan karate practitioners still know about this.

Arakaki then goes on to say:

When those karate practitioners who understood and performed the essence of karate as a martial art began to migrate from Okinawa to Japan and introduce karate, there were not enough of them to teach properly.

[snip]

As a result...the essence of the original was lost.

I do not quote Arakaki because I think everything in his book is gospel; I quote him because he and Nagamine, together, make it glaringly obvious that information critical to even basic techiques has been lost to modern karate.

I could go on, indeed, am tempted to go on, but I think I've made my point clear: there is a very good chance that you haven't seen old-time karate. I don't care if you got your third dan directly under Yamaguchi Gogen, like as not, you haven't seen it. I am not trying to be offensive. I know that there are people who have spent their entire adult lives consumed with the study of Japanese Goju Ryu, with Shotokan, with Shito Ryu, with Taekwon-do, etc., and they are very, very good at what they do, and it is not useless stuff by any means. I would never say such a thing. I am just saying that, formidable as a Shotokan godan might be, he is not practicing old-time karate. By Funakoshi's own admission, he is not practicing old-time karate. Accept Funakoshi's opinion, if you won't accept mine.

But Taika Oyata is practicing old-time karate. His story is told in multiple places around the internet, including on the association website, and you can hunt for it there if you want to read it, but the upshot is that Taika Seiyu Oyata is an enormously important link to the karate of the old days, perhaps, maybe, quite possibly, the most knowledgeable man on the planet as regards the way the Okinawan bushi actually practiced their arts.

And if I understood what he wrote in Ryu-Te no Michi correctly, he thinks of the true, genuine Okinawan karate as a gift of God, given to mankind through the agency of the Okinawan people.

And that presents a problem to someone in Taika's situation: HOW? How do you preserve this precious body of knowledge? How do you successfully pass it on to future generations of mankind? It almost died out once. Who is to say that it won't die out in the future?

Obviously, you must teach. But who? And what? People of Taika's giftedness are few and far between, and even when you find them, you also find that they have careers and families that they must take into account. Can you teach each of them everything? Is there enough time?

I haven't asked Taika or anyone else about this. It is pure speculation on my part. But I would suggest to you that at least in part, the RyuTe Renmei and Oyata Shin Shu Ho are Taika's attempt to solve this problem. I would suggest to you that he is attempting to preserve this body of knowledge in a group of people, some of whom (Shin Shu Ho) he has had an opportunity to examine quite closely and whom he needs to be able to count on to pass on this knowledge correctly, without adding their own biases and prejudices.

The more you think about this, the more a "secret" kata starts to make sense. If that kata was to be the vehicle through which you planned on revealing your most advanced material to your most reliable students, it would be necessary to first make sure that they were all performing the movements correctly. If those people were scattered across a fair amount of geography, this alone might take a few years. Making sure that everyone had a thorough understanding of the principles behind the kata might take a few years more. Helping your students extract techniques from the kata might take a few years more. Helping them to then see how the principles of the "secret" kata could be traced through other kata, perhaps, might take yet a few years more. During all this time, it would be necessary to prohibit them from attempting to teach a kata they did not yet fully understand to others, lest what you were trying to impart be corrupted in the process.

And if, in the middle of this years-long process, some of your trusted students started teaching this kata to others, without your permission, before the group had even thoroughly understood it, let alone mastered it, what would it do to your overall objective of passing on that body of knowledge which you believe to be a gift of God? How would you have to deal with the errant students? In my opinion, your options would be limited--and "politics" would likely be the bogeyman on which any subsequent events might be blamed.

Again, I haven't asked anyone about this. I do not speak for Taika Oyata or the RyuTe Renmei and this is all speculation on my part. But I believe if you examine the problem this way, some of the "politics" start to make a little more sense, as does the idea of a "secret" kata.

Just my opinion, worth about what you paid for it.