Bunkai, Kyusho, and the Death Touch – Part III

Before moving on with my discussion of other aspects of bunkai, let me share some of my thoughts on the subject of who the bunkai were developed to combat Some hold that the bunkai (and kata) were developed for use against anyone you might meet on the street. Others hold that they were only developed for use against untrained or unskilled fighters.

I don’t know the answer and doubt anyone does for sure. All that exists, to my knowledge, are a bunch of theories and beliefs. For a more accurate history of our arts and the lineage of our kata from a scholarly standpoint (meaning the result of very rigorous investigations, rather than merely the repetition of rumors and hearsay passed down from generation to generation, sometimes as PR for a style or organization), I’d recommend everyone read Hanshi Patrick McCarthy’s Bubishi, Sensei Harry Cook’s Shotokan Karate: A Precise History, and Sensei John Sells’ Unante. These were the last three I read. But there are surely others out there, written by other martial arts scholars. Please feel free to recommend others in the comments section below.

In philosophy, they make a very clear distinction between the use of the word “know” and the use of the word “believe”. People often get these confused. They say they know something, when in fact they merely believe it. To know something means you are certain it is true and have concrete evidence to support that position. To believe something has a much lower level of proof. In the case of the origins of our older kata and their bunkai, probably no one knows the truth even though some may believe they do.

The question about kata being developed for use against trained or untrained opponents is a new one. Throughout my over 55 years in the martial arts I never knew anyone who questioned this until recently. We always assumed kata were for honing skills for use against pretty much every possible unarmed opponent. This is why they were referred to as an encyclopedia of a system.

For as long as I can remember, primary warrior arts always included weapons. Empty handed arts like early jujitsu and sumo (both of which included striking and kicking), and later karate, were considered secondary arts. They were for use when a warrior lost his weapon, it broke, or he was attacked at a time when he didn’t have a weapon with him or within reach. So would this be any different in Okinawa? These were brilliant men, charged with the protection of the royal family in some cases. I find it hard to believe that they would miss this point. In a bloody battle on a muddy field, weapons did slip out of hands. And warriors were surely attacked by surprise by other warriors when otherwise engaged and didn’t have their weapons at the ready. I certainly don’t know the answer to any degree of surety but do have a lot of questions and see many possible (even probable) inconsistencies here.

But if some want to restrict their usefulness, that’s certainly their right. I choose not to. In fact, I’m always searching for sources of useful information from both inside and outside the martial arts – from martial arts and styles different than my own and from physics, psychology, mathematics, sociology, physiology, anatomy, etc. I previously mentioned Hanshi Anderson finding his concept of increasing and decreasing Rates of Closure from helicopter pilot training.

I find a great deal of useful material within our kata. They are endless sources of information on techniques, tactics, and strategies, including for fighting both trained and untrained fighters. I practice both the Okinawan and Japanese versions of many. The latter include longer fighting distances and are perhaps more clearly geared towards honing techniques for use against another trained man. (Also, what some tend to forget is that, when the Okinawans were introducing karate to the Japanese, they weren’t teaching it to the Swiss. They were teaching it to a people with a tremendous warrior tradition. Most who trained in the early days were very proficient in other martial arts with very long histories.)

But even if evidence was uncovered to prove our kata were created for use against untrained fighters, does that mean we have to – or should - interpret bunkai in this way? Not as far as I’m concerned. Times change. How many people outside your school do you know who have had some training in the martial arts? I know a lot. When I began karate in the 50s, only a handful of people in the entire country had trained in the martial arts. But we didn’t restrict our training to techniques for use against the untrained. There were people out there who had trained in boxing and wrestling and some very great, very experienced street fighters so we trained to defend ourselves against other trained men. The kata were viewed the same. And with the popularity of the martial arts, matters are far worse today.

Those who have created many things in life often aren’t always the best judges of the full usefulness and value of their inventions. I doubt the inventors of the telephone, computer, or internet had any idea as to the full potential of their creations. How could they? Do you think those who invented the internet had any idea it would someday bring down countries, as has happened recently?

This is all just my opinion on the matter. I have no issue with anyone choosing to think otherwise. In fact, as we will each possibly pay the ultimate price for our choices in the martial arts, it’s critical we each make the best choices as possible for ourselves. Again, thanks for bearing with an old man’s ramblings. I greatly appreciate your readership and support.

Tradition - with thanks to T.S. Elliott

… if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, ‘tradition’ should positively be discouraged. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable… and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to train not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the history of the martial arts has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a martial artist traditional. And it is at the same time what makes him most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

The above is my modification of an article written by one of our greatest poets, T.S. Elliott on tradition in writing, not the martial arts. But tradition in one art is much the same as that in another IMHO.

Thoughts on today’s events in Libya

As I watch news footage on the events occurring today in Libya, my thoughts are on a very kind, gentle man and the father of two young karateka I met in 1987. That was the year I traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for my first USAKF National Karate Championships. The USAKF was then the designated National Governing Body (NGB) for karate in the United States under the U.S. Olympic Committee. I was stranded at the tournament site when a wonderful man, Elia Stratis, offered me a ride. I rode back to the tournament hotel with him and his family and couldn’t have been treated more kindly by the four of them. Neither he nor his wife were involved in karate. But his two children were serious and accomplished competitors. He was so dedicated to his family that had driven out from New Jersey for the championships. I saw him and his family at several more events over the coming year and we always spoke.

On December 21, 1988, Elia Stratis was on his way home from a business trip. He had a long layover in London. While there, he met another businessman. They spoke and the man offered to switch flights with Elia. The man was single and wanted Elia to get home earlier to his family for Christmas. Elia gladly took him up on the offer and was on Pan Am Flight 103, which Kaddafi’s people bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland. A man who his own staff is now describing as a war criminal took from the world and his family a truly wonderful man. I think you can guess my wishes for Colonel Kaddafi.

Bunkai, Kyusho, and the Death Touch – Part II

An old friend once defined ki as “mass times acceleration,” which is, of course, the equation used in physics to determine the amount of force applied to an object. (Force = mass x acceleration.) Mass is the weight of an object. Acceleration is its speed at the time of impact.

A bullet has very little weight on the mass side of the equation but tremendous speed on the acceleration side. So it develops deadly force. A steam roller has huge weight on the mass side but low speed on the acceleration side. But because of its huge mass, it develops huge amounts of force and is capable of doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Our goal in a serious, life-threatening encounter is to apply as much force as possible to one of a number of vulnerable body targets in hopes of causing our opponents to either change their minds and want to quit or damage them so badly they can’t continue fighting, regardless of what they would like to do. We do this by applying the equation of force to our actions – accelerating our techniques as quickly as possible, then locking them briefly and allowing the momentum of our entire body mass to be brought to bear on our targets.

Whenever I throw a technique, I do so knowing full well my opponent will try to block it. So I always throw pretty much everything with all the force I can muster and direct each along a path that will best enable it to break through whatever my opponent puts between me and my target (breaking his arm or whatever if necessary) and still possess sufficient force to not only continue on but penetrate deep enough into their bodies to do internal damage. To achieve this, I call into play all the forces at my disposal – mental, physical, and spiritual. For me, one part of the surface or omote bunkai of our kata is discovering these forces and bettering my ability to harness and apply them at the point of contact.

Next time, I’ll discuss more of my thoughts on this, pressure points, and what I think about the theory that our traditional kata were never created to be used against another trained man. Thanks for your continued support. I appreciate it.

Bunkai, Kyusho, and the Death Touch - Part I

Many years ago, while a graduate student at Stanford in Education, I also worked on a concurrent M.A. degree in Physiology Psychology. One of the requirements was a class in what was called The Psychology of Institutions, which looked at the military, prisons, industry, churches, and so on and the psychological effect they have on both society and those within those institutions.

When the instructor moved onto the subject of prisons and their effect on both prisoners and guards, I mentioned that I knew someone, a former black belt student, who was a corrections officer at Soledad Prison, where some of California’s worst criminals were housed. The instructor asked me to visit the prison and report what I saw, which my former student was soon able to arrange. (I had needed to move quickly as my former student intended to leave the job within a few months, and did.)

Soledad Prison was actually composed of three separate prisons. Central Prison housed serious criminals, mostly murderers from what my former student told me. South Prison was more like a jail farm, where low risk prisoners were housed. And North Prison was where they kept most of the worst prisoners. It was actually divided into two separate prisons. One housed mostly people who had intentionally killed someone (meaning premeditated murderers), who killed several people, or who murdered for hire. But, these were people who could generally get along with other prisoners. The other half of North Prison housed gang members, who had to be kept separate from each other. Two or three people were killed there the day before I took my tour, even with extremely tight security measures in place. There was also another maximum prison within a maximum prison, a section of Central Prison where the absolute worst criminals were housed. This was called O Wing. Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Bobby Kennedy, were among those housed there.

While touring the non-gang side of North Prison, my former student introduced me to a guy who had been heavyweight boxing champion at San Quentin Prison, before being transferred to Soledad. He had been on death row at one point at San Quentin and had somehow managed to have his execution commuted. In fact, he was soon to be paroled. He wanted to learn full-contact fighting when he got out in hopes of fighting professionally. My former student suggested he train with me so he arranged for us to meet and talk.

The man was surprisingly clean cut and very well spoken. On the outside, I would have never guessed he had ever been imprisoned, let alone on death row at one point. He was a very powerful man. He could reportedly bench press 450 lbs. My former student left us alone to talk, not wanting to inhibit our conversation. To make small talk, I asked him about weightlifting. He told me about his training routine then asked if I did any lifting. I told him I did. He asked me about my routine. I told him it included bench pressing as there had been two recent fatalities nationally in the martial arts at the time in which people had been kicked in the chest and stopped their hearts. So I always included bench pressing in my students’ and my own routines in order to increase strength in extensor muscles (used in punching and blocking) but also to strengthen intercostals, the muscles between our ribs to make our rib cages stronger, and to increase the protective padding over our chests by increasing the size of our pecs. He didn’t say much. At the end, we shook hands and he said he would come see me when he got out. (I never saw him again.)

As my former student escorted me back to the exit, I asked him what the guy had been imprisoned for. I had no idea and my student didn’t know what we had discussed. He told me the guy had hit a man in a bar fight so hard in the chest he had stopped the guy’s heart and killed him. If I remember right, he had killed two people in street fights.

I felt like a fool. The poor guy probably thought I was mocking him – which would have been dumb for several reasons.

There are, I think, several rules of budo. One of them surely is “If you’re dead, it doesn’t matter how you died, you’re just as dead.” A touch or a hard, bone crushing smack are all weapons in the arsenal of a good martial artist. And, as such, I believe they are all there in the bunkai.

I’ll stop here for now. Thanks again for reading and for your continued support.

What do you think of this?

I’ve gotten behind in my writing of my blog. So while I work on my first in the bunkai section, consider the following, which was posed to me by a very high ranking karateka:

“When called, the true warrior kills his family, burns down his house, salts his fields, kills his stock, and goes to war.”

Those who can, spar. Those who can’t, do kata – Part XI

Many years ago, the legendary Sensei Oshima demonstrated several years running at the IKA tournaments, hosted by my primary instructor, Soke Takayuki Kubota. Each time, he would perform Heian Yondan kata. One year, he took the microphone and said, “I know what you are thinking, ‘On no, Mr. Oshima is going to do Heian Yondan again.’ But I am will continue working on it until I can get it right.” He had been a direct student of Sensei Funakoshi and surely been working on this kata for 40 or more years at the time.

There’s an old saying “Practice makes perfect”. When it comes to kata, however, I tell my students “Practice makes better” as I think it’s impossible to perform a perfect kata. I certainly can’t, even after 55 years. When a student tells me he “knows” a certain kata, I ask him to ask me how many I know. When he does, I tell him “None. I’m working on a bunch of them but don’t know any of them yet.” To me, “Know” infers having perfect knowledge of something. And I am far from that point on any of them.

There are 21 moves in Heian Shodan kata. Each of these moves can easily have one hundred possible errors – improper foot placement (feet not flat on the floor or correctly angled vertically; improper horizontal foot angles; improper width of stance; depth of stance, toes not in proper position, etc.); improper knee position (legs bent too much or little; front knee not pressed vertical, etc.); incorrect back angle; improper position of hips, neck, head, shoulders, arms, hands, etc. In addition, there are mental qualities involved in each move. Mistakes can include improper concentration, eye direction, breath control, etc. And lastly there should be spiritual control (not spiritual in the religious sense but in the sense of a person’s strength of drive and determination – as in “He rode a very spirited horse”) evidenced by means of the intensity of each move, their total focus, the fire in their eyes, etc. I think it’s likely impossible to perfectly execute all of these within a single kata performance.

A downside to all this and my years of training, coaching, and judging competitive quality kata is I’m no longer able to really enjoy a kata performance as I had before. Ignorance is bliss, they say. Every performance I now watch contains a slew of “errors”. Someone recently posted a clip on Facebook of what they described as a perfect performance by a former world champion. I spotted three or four major errors, including a bad slip. (Bad, of course, is relative to the venue. For a world champion, such a slippage would surely cost him the championship.)

I expect to begin my discussion of what I’ve learned about bunkai and kyusho next time. I have to thank you all for bearing with me though this discourse, which went on far longer than I anticipated when I set out to write it. I had expected to complete it in one or two posts but this is my tenth. Sorry about that. I think I might have lost people along the way. Thank you all for your continued support.

Those who can, spar. Those who can’t, do kata – Part X

Many years ago, I was in New York to teach a seminar. A friend, Sensei Grant Campbell, was competing in a tournament the next day in the Bronx and asked if I’d like to go with him. I had only heard negative things about the Bronx, all via the media, so I wanted to see it for myself.

The people at the tournament couldn’t have been nicer or more hospitable. There was also some great karateka, including some fantastic fighters, people I had never heard of. As one of the national coaches at the time, I would have loved to have some of them on the national team and tried to recruit a couple of them. One of these competed in a white track suit. Sensei Campbell asked if I knew why he didn’t wear a gi. I just thought it was a personal choice. He told me the guy couldn’t as he had been shot so many times on the street that the canvas in a gi irritated the bullet holes. That was a new one for me. He was blindingly fast and skilled in that way that only reality in your training can give you.

While at the tournament, I was asked to sit on the panel that was to judge black belt kata. They seated us in a straight line, rather than in the ring corners as is sometimes done. One of the competitors came forward and bowed. He was only around 6 to 8 feet in front of the judges. When he called out his kata, “Gojushiho Sho,” I thought he would surly take a few steps back before beginning because Gojushiho Sho could not be done correctly within the space he had given himself. And running into, or coming too close to, the judges would normally earn him a score of zero, as it indicated he didn’t know his kata well enough to know where to start it. Well, he started it where he stood. And he soon headed right for the chief referee, who sat in the middle of the row. Then, I saw something I had never seen before or since. The judges all stood up as if it happened all the time, moved their chairs out of the way, and allowed the competitor to continue through them, waiting while he headed back the other way and ended where he started. It was a great performance – except for making the judges move.

I was surprised when the chief referee called for scores. Under the WUKO system, he would normally have called a meeting and instructed the judges to award the performance a score of zero or at least some major point deduction. Well, on his whistle, I held up a low score. But everyone else gave him such high scores, he won the division. Whereas this would generally been considered a major miscalculation on the competitor’s part, it was sort of refreshing - although I would not recommend any kata competitor to ever do as he did. They only judged his performance and didn’t let anything else affect their judgment, ignoring what many officials would have considered disrespectful.

It’s generally critical a competitor knows his kata well enough to know where to begin without running into the officials, other competitors, or a wall or other obstruction. Any of these will almost always be considered a major flaw and result in a low score. Also, some competitors seem to believe they will impress the judges if they deliver their techniques as close to the judges’ faces as they can, as if it demonstrates control. It will most certainly not impress an experienced judge. In fact, it will do just the opposite. And this is especially true for kobudo (weapons kata). I judged a weapons kata once, where the competitor performed a kama (sickle) kata, with the kama on long cords. He was very skillful but on a several occasions, his sickles intentionally came very close to the judges’ faces. Everyone gave him a very low score. No one appreciated him putting their health at risk. If he had slipped even slightly, a cord had snapped, or he wasn’t as good as he thought he was, one of us would have been seriously injured. Not only did he receive very low scores but he was told that if he ever did it again, he would be banned from competition.

Thanks again for your continued support and for reading my humble ramblings.