When a tree falls in the forest...and other thoughts on bunkai.

A single leaf at the end of
a new shoot.

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it….does it really matter? It will lead to all sorts of unexpected outcomes. The tree will fall. There will be an opening in the canopy overhead. Sunlight will reach the forest floor where it hadn’t, where it had been shady for years. A small seedling will begin to sprout or an acorn lying dormant under a blanket of leaves will feel the sun. The next thing you know, there will be little twig-sized slips of oak or maple or aspen, two over-sized leaves on a slender stick the size of a toothpick. Of course, the grass takes over first, it seems, followed by the weeds and the ground creepers, but the trees are there--a balsam fir or a white pine or a spruce. They each send up these little, central shoots with a more or less symmetrical arrangement of branches. It begins with a cluster of buds at the tip of the shoot. The central bud becomes the trunk of the new tree and the buds that surround it grow laterally into branches. And each year's growth follows the same pattern, unless the deer come and nibble off the buds or the central bud gets damaged somehow. If it does, the tree is programmed in such a way that one of the lateral buds that had been destined to become a branch takes over the role of the central bud and becomes the trunk. 

First entry or receiving technique
from Kururunfa kata.

I've been reading a lot of Bernd Heinrich lately. He writes about birds and trees and running, among other things. I hope I'm not over-simplifying what he says about trees too much, but it's this changing aspect of the new tree that got me thinking about its relationship to the martial arts as I was out in the woods the other day. We approach the study of kata as if it's something sacrosanct, a ritualized performance piece. And yet we look at bunkai as if the movements are so fluid and dynamic that they supposedly have countless ways of interpreting or applying them. This point of view is, in fact, so widespread that it almost seems as though it has fostered the growth of a whole new industry based on seminars and the discovery of new and ever-more-outlandish applications. 

Initial technique from Seipai kata.

So I would suggest that it may be time to simplify things a bit. We could start with a simple statement about the structure of a kata. Kata are composed of different kinds of techniques--entry or receiving techniques, bridging or controlling techniques, and finishing techniques. Each entry technique is part of a sequence, but because of the exigencies of any given situation—how the attacker responds to the initial block or receiving technique, one's balance, the strength of the opponent—you may need to change things up at some point, sort of like the new shoot when a deer comes along and nibbles off the central bud.

Sliding down the back of the arm
and grabbing the head.

For example, if you respond to an attack with the opening receiving technique from Kururunfa, something unforeseen could happen that causes you to change the sequence and instead continue with the initial technique from Seipai kata. That is, from the forearm attack to the neck in the initial technique of Kururunfa, you might straighten out the right arm, pushing the attacker's head down. Then, you might continue with the first sequence of Seipai by stepping through with the left palm-attack to the chin, going on to twist the head. Or, alternatively, from the initial Kururunfa technique, you might drop the right arm down along the back of the opponent's right arm to move behind him, as we do in Seisan.  Once you’re to the back of the opponent, you could continue with this sequence from Seisan, grabbing the back of the head with the left hand and stepping in to grab the chin with the right hand. Or, you could simply grab the opponent’s trapezius muscles from the back and pull him down onto the front knee, as we do in Saifa kata.

Pulling down by grabbing the
trapezius muscles in Saifa.

Kata itself is a repository of technique, and each technique functions differently. But once we understand this, we can take them apart and put them together in different ways, all depending on what happens in any given situation. In that sense, the system of self defense we know as Goju-Ryu becomes both smaller and larger at the same time. It is smaller because it becomes more manageable--there are, for instance, a finite number of receiving techniques and the same might be said of the bridging and finishing techniques as well. In other words, one doesn't need to become a master of what at one time must have seemed like an encyclopedic number of techniques. But it is also larger because if we truly understand the system and its kata then we can see an almost infinite number of ways that the individual techniques can be taken apart and put back together. That is, the entry technique from one kata might be combined with the bridging technique of another kata and the finishing technique of yet another kata. 

So what if a tree falls in the forest. Stuff happens. Another tree will come along and take its place.

Footfalls in the woods and Suparinpei

I was off in the woods a few weeks ago, swatting at black flies and being careful to avoid the poison ivy and the long blades of grass that reached out over the trail, affording ticks an ideal jumping off place from which to latch onto unwary travelers. It was hot--95 degrees F. (35 degrees C.), but the heat index had it at 103 degrees F. Even the birds seemed to be silenced by the heat. Most of the time, all I could hear was the quiet plodding of my own feet as I walked along a trail covered in the remains of last fall's leaves. This was certainly not the "road less travelled." I was following in the footsteps of countless numbers of other hikers who had passed this way. Sometimes I could see the evidence: an upturned rock or the imprint of a boot heel that had sunk unexpectedly in the mud. The trail was wide enough that I could probably have followed it at night, which made me think of that quote by Miyagi Chojun sensei. Not that Miyagi sensei had said it in any of his own writings, but it appears in Memories of My Sensei, Chojun Miyagi, where Miyagi supposedly tells Nakaima that “Studying karate nowadays is like walking in the dark without a lantern.” Of course, nowadays we have battery-powered headlamps, though I doubt if it makes much difference in our understanding of karate.

And yet the trail is wide enough. We would be hard pressed to lose sight of the path--so many karate-ka have walked this way before. What gives me pause, however, are the contradictions in the metaphor: generations of karate-ka practicing diligently, trudging along this well-worn path in the dark.

I was watching a video the other day. It was originally posted a year ago, but, after taking a seminar, someone had reposted it on Facebook. It had to do with the bunkai to the last technique in Suparinpei, the last kata of Goju-ryu and, at least in some symbolic way, the ultimate technique of the system. And, to many, I suppose, it must seem so esoterically enigmatic. 

This was a short video but it was by a very well-known karate researcher--a teacher who has written many books on the history of Okinawan karate, and so must have carried with it some weight of legitimacy, some knowledge of "Okinawan karate secrets."

The starting position had the teacher with his back to the attacker, who had grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands. From there, he showed the response of the defender, which began with a slight shifting rotation of the body to the right which, the teacher said, would provoke a stiff right arm response from the attacker. At this point, he lunges forward and, looking back at the attacker, does "the distraction," a slapping technique with the back of the left hand aimed at the attacker's groin. At the same time, he head butts the attacker and then slides his head between the attacker's arms--who, in the meantime, has not altered his position or grip on the defender's shoulders--and, with his head now coming up on the outside of the attacker's arms, he brings his left forearm down "hard" on the "brachioradialis" before the opponent even "thinks about a choke." Next he attacks with a right nukite into the opponent's throat. At the same time, he wraps his left arm around the attacker's right arm at the elbow, as his right arm grabs hold of the attacker's lapel. Then, dropping down into horse stance, he tightens the restrictions on the opponent's right arm/shoulder and, with the right wrist, the attacker's neck, until the attacker submits.

Entry technique.

So what's wrong with that? It works in the dojo. And it's wonderfully imaginative. But does it look like kata? I mean, doesn't kata face south and then turn to the north? Does it take too long? It certainly takes too long to describe. Is it realistic? That is, why would you ever think of sliding your head between the attacker's arms? Does this sort of bobbing movement occur in the performance of the kata? Why doesn't the attacker move or alter his position? Does it require the attacker, an unpredictable component of the equation, to conform too readily to the defender's expectations; that is, does the attacker have to behave too predictably? Does it fail to take into account the entry and controlling techniques that precede these movements in kata? Or is this just one possible explanation for these techniques in Suparinpei? And if it's just one of many possible explanations for these techniques, is that simply a confirmation that we are indeed still stumbling along the road "in the dark without a lantern?" 

Controlling technique.

Or is it more likely that this ending sequence to Suparinpei borrows both from Seisan and Sanseiru, and that the explanation of the techniques, the analysis or bunkai, simply shows a variation of how the same techniques are applied in each of those other kata? The entry techniques are shown over and over again in the three complete bunkai sequences of Seisan kata: a sweeping, semi-circular right arm block, while stepping 90 degrees off-line into a left-foot-forward front stance, followed by a left straight-arm palm strike to the side of the face. We see the same entry technique here in Suparinpei. The straight-arm "nukite" in Suparinpei is akin to the straight punch at the end of Seisan kata. Then the turn into what is called here the "dog posture," the last posture of Suparinpei, in horse stance with arms bent and both wrists up and fingers pointing down, shows a variation of the same position at the end of Sanseiru, though the stepping is a little different.

Finishing technique.

In one sense at least, I wonder about the realism of techniques that look as if they would only work in the dojo with a compliant partner, the fanciful creations of individuals whose interpretations don't seem to be grounded in sound martial principles. Such inventions--because we are all supposedly "walking in the dark without a lantern"--confuse legitimacy with creativity; we look at these interpretations with a mixture of confusion and awe, and think, "Gee, I never thought of that." But are all creative interpretations equally valid? Is that the point of kata, to foster creativity? I am certainly not trying to denigrate any of these instructors, nor disparage their interpretations, if that's what kata is. But it seems to me that even if we consider it "art," we don't have license to interpret it any way we want. The idea, it seems to me, is not to impose meaning on what seems to be random and arbitrary, but to discover what the artist--in this case the creator of a kata--is trying to communicate.

Even theory in science, for example, is not simply invention; it's based on an understanding of the underlying principles. Have we forgotten what we learned of the scientific method in middle school? We seem to be living in an age where science has been shouldered aside, where skepticism seems to be leveled at scientific inquiry and tabloid journalism has become the norm. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Who are we following on this proverbial path through the woods? Or is everyone simply striking out on their own? Seems as though there should be some sign posts along the way--the martial principles that all too often seem to be ignored. Is this why we are all still stumbling along without lanterns to light the way?