Lost Bunkai and the Karate Revolution
From this 1965 8mm film we can conclude that there was a lack of bunkai knowledge being shared in the Matsubayashi community at this time.
I do not know what these people knew or did not know. I can see what they were showing in this exercise. It is not bunkai kata analysis.
These men have skill. They contributed to our lives and karate. They lived under conditions more terrible than most can imagine.
But we cannot presume that they were perfect. We have the responsibility to build on what they taught.
This film shows experienced karate practitioners - the lowest ranking is Takayoshi Nagamine, a Shodan at the time. Shoshin Nagamine participated, as did those who were senior instructors then and soon after - Kushi, Nakamura, Makishi and Omine.
This demo was not improvised. They had been practicing this.
If they or other people in the Okinawan karate community knew the real bunkai to these moves this group, would they have been practicing this or demonstrating it for others?
Did they want to show something modern, easy to learn, and comprehensible to the uninitiated?
We can be certain that the originators of the techniques used in this kata did know the applications. They would not have created these highly specialized, unusual postures, stances, techniques and sequences, for no reason.
It is evident that these movements were not devised to be used as these practitioners are using them.
If an attacker is coming up to your left side, out of range, and punches in the direction of your side, you would not need to do the first move of Pinan Shodan. It would not be a good way to respond.
As shown in this film, the defender knocks the attacker’s punch to the side a little, punches the air, then turns around. Nothing is resolved. And the attack itself makes no sense, not at that distance or to that target.
The three chudan uke stepping forward are doing what?
The double chudan uke are not defending anything that would happen.
The nukite is doing nothing.
The kosa dachi’s have no purpose.
The turns to face a new opponent have no meaning.
Bunkai means divide and analyze. Where is the analysis? What is this kind of “bunkai” teaching?
This was the “bunkai” I learned in the 1980’s. As we can see in this film, it was practiced in the 1960’s. This was the karate that Ansei Ueshiro learned at the Nagamine dojo in Okinawa, and imported to the US. People are still doing this “bunkai” now. It was what they learned from their teachers. They did not question it.
Some of us did.
Here are some of the solutions we have posted so far @mountainkarate:
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan N... - nekko kosa v1
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan ... - nekko kosa v2
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan, ... - nukite
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan -... - chudan arch - two versions
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan -... - three shuto chudan
• Pinan Shodan, two shut... - two shuto chudan
• Bunkai: Pinan Shodan, ... - first direction
• Bunkai: Fukyugata Ichi... - anti-takedown
There are many more out there. See the MBRKataAnalysis site for examples.
Bunkai disputes are not the critical issues of our time. Cultures are collapsing; cities are neglected; millions are afflicted with crime and fear; the prospect of nuclear war is back.
Not to be negative, but here we are.
Deficient bunkai is not the worst thing. But for those of us who are working on this, it matters - for practical self-defense, the vitality of our martial arts, and the ability to honestly transmit skills that will serve our friends and students well.
The techniques in the kata are effective when we practice them with an understanding of their purpose. Anyone who sees them work gets this. Why did Okinawan teachers not pass on the meaning of the techniques of their own art?
It was not the fragmentary transmission of karate to the west by inadequately trained, short-term visitors to Okinawa in the late 20th century that eroded the traditional arts of Okinawa.
It wasn’t just some entrepreneurs taking advantage of gullible foreigners. That happened. But the process started long before, during the modernization of Japanese culture - an irresistible force that transformed Japan in the early part of the century.
What happened on Okinawa follows the pattern of change of traditional arts in other industrializing cultures.
Its effects were faster and more radical in Okinawan karate because martial arts culture requires a personal transmission of knowledge and experience. There was no way to adequately record the content of the training. (There still isn’t.) You could draw pictures. You could write descriptions. There was some of that. But it was not adequate to capture the art or to inspire either the transmitters or recipients to maintain it, under the overwhelming pressures they suddenly faced: industrial modernization, its unlimited demands on time, resources and attention, war at home and abroad, cultural dislocation and spiritual toll.... (more)