Connections

The temperature hit 50 degrees F. (10 degrees C.). Spring seemed just around the corner even though the paths through the woods were still covered with ice. The last snowfall had been packed down along the most travelled paths from countless boots and dog paws, melting in the daytime and then refreezing at night. The snow was gone alongside the trails. Even in under the shade of the evergreens, it looked like fall, with a blanket of dead leaves spread out everywhere. You could hear the squirrels hurrying about, surprised, I suppose, that anyone was out in the woods today--it was really too icy to navigate the trails. It was a day to bushwhack off to the side of the main trails, looking for landmarks, heading up the hill in the general direction of the ridge with its outcropping of rocks.

Off in the woods in the late winter and early spring, the trees stand quietly, no wind rustling through the leaves, as if they are patiently or perhaps stoically waiting for warmer weather, for the longer days that will tell them it's time to wake up, to "shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit," though I don't know why Shakespeare's words should come to mind now. The woods in winter seem far more prosaic, or at least I do, plodding along the trails.

The double-arm kamae shared by
all four kata.

Without the leaves and underbrush, you tend to notice the trees themselves more. Most of the lower branches have dropped, scattered across the forest floor. The ones that have fallen on the trails have been picked up and thrown off into the woods, keeping the trails clear for hikers. The bark is the only thing that tends to distinguish one tree from another in the winter, though there are the odd aspens and small oak saplings that seem to have hung onto a few of their dry, brown leaves. There are oaks here, but they confuse me at this time of year. There are red oaks and pin oaks and eastern white oaks and maybe a chinquapin scrub oak, but I can't tell the difference just from the bark. I'd need to see the leaves, and even then I'd have to bring along Sibley's tree guide. The birches are another story, what with the horizontal striations up and down their trunks, and there are a lot of birches, scattered in their own little groves along the trail. There's the familiar paper birch, though sometimes from a distance the smaller ones look an awful lot like quaking aspens. Then there's the yellow birch and the river birch and the black birch, also known as sweet birch, I believe, because they used the sap for making birch beer.

I used to have two large European white birch trees in back of the house. One had a trunk almost three feet in diameter and must have been over sixty feet tall. But we lost them both to borer beetles and had to cut them down.

Suparinpei.

The birches are all related, of course--you can see the lenticels on the bark quite easily--but I think it's rare that they inter-breed. Yet the fact that there are so many related species here calls to mind that old discussion about Goju kata origins that seemed to rage for years, and still seems to crop up now and again. The argument that many put forward suggested that originally there were only four kata that comprised the classical curriculum of Goju-ryu: Sanchin, Sanseiru, Seisan, and Suparinpei. The other kata, it was argued, were either from different sources or were added later by Miyagi Chojun sensei, but they were not part of the original system taught by Kanryo Higashionna. It's an easy argument to put forward since there seems to be no documentary proof either way and there is an obvious similarity between the techniques of those four kata. In fact, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to suggest that Suparinpei itself is a sort of composite of the three other kata, which for me, as heretical as it may be, always calls to mind the old chicken and egg question: Which came first, Suparinpei or Seisan and Sanseiru?

One of the similarities between
Seiunchin and Suparinpei.

But those three kata--Sanchin, Sanseiru, and Seisan--are so obviously related to Suparinpei, why not Seiunchin? There are similarities there, too. Look at the opening mawashi series in Suparinpei and compare it to the opening series in Seiunchin, the right hand head grab and left hand "nukite" to the chin or neck. It may not be identical--Suparinpei comes off a mawashi-uke technique while Seiunchin comes off an arm-bar technique--but the application is the same. And neither one is an end in itself--that is, the finishing technique in Seiunchin is only shown after the third repetition and the possible finishing techniques in Suparinpei are shown separately, later in the kata.

The angle technique from Suparinpei.

And what about the opening technique in Seiunchin, the left hand grab release that begins the kata? We see this same technique (admittedly with only a single hand) used later in Suparinpei, one of four steps into shiko dachi done along the  northwest-southeast and southwest-northeast angles. In both cases, the key principle is the dropping of the elbow as the left hand is rotated up and the defender drops into shiko dachi. Both look very much like release techniques from an attacker's cross-hand grab. The difference is that Seiunchin kata is a good deal clearer than Suparinpei, but only because the structure of Seiunchin clearly shows a bunkai sequence with a beginning, middle, and end, or an initial receiving technique, a controlling or bridging technique, and a finishing technique. Suparinpei, because of the uniqueness of its somewhat fragmented structure, only shows the initial technique and the bridging technique, moving from a left-foot forward shiko dachi to a step into a right-foot forward shiko dachi. The interesting thing is that the logical finishing technique for this is the step back into a left-foot forward shiko dachi, attacking with a left arm gedan barai or what is often called a down block. We see this in Seiunchin kata as the finishing technique for each of the four angle sequences.

The forearm attack from Seiunchin,
also done on the angles.

So should Seiunchin kata be included in the "original" kata of Goju-ryu, since it too shows distinct similarities to Suparinpei? And if Seiunchin, why not Shisochin and Seipai and Kururunfa? After all, I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the leaf of a black birch and an American beech tree, and birches are related to alders and hazels and hornbeams as well. These origin debates may seem pretty fruitless and academic to most people, but a comparison of seemingly different techniques may, in fact, help explain certain techniques that may at first glance seem utterly baffling.

Does nobody ask why?

It was early Spring and the woods were wet. It had rained pretty steadily for two days. And before that it had been cloudy and drizzling more often than not. The path along the swamp was flooded over and every dip in the trail was damp from slowly drying puddles of standing water. But plants were starting to sprout. In places, ferns and broad-leaf marsh plants hid the rocks and threatened to obscure the trail. Small, delicate looking wild flowers sprang up in places where the sun managed to get through the canopy of new leaves overhead. It reminded me of that part in Robert Fulghum's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, where he says: "Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up, and nobody really knows how or why...."

But then I thought, really? Really nobody knows how or why plants send their roots down into the
soil and the plant slowly pushes up through the forest floor? Really? Maybe Fulghum was not looking for a scientific explanation. Maybe it was a sort of rhetorical question--even though it seemed to be a statement--some sort of ontological inquiry and the little plants were only meant to be stand-ins. Inquiring minds want to know.

The slow "punch" from the beginning
of Sanseiru kata.

I thought of this because I was watching a video the other day on the Goju Ryu kata Sanseiru and its bunkai, or at least what was purported to be bunkai. I always thought that bunkai was "the analysis of kata" and therefore had to follow the movements and techniques of the kata. So you can't change the kata movements, it seems to me, when you're trying to explain how they are used. And yet, here was a well-respected teacher of Okinawa Goju-ryu demonstrating his "bunkai" or explanation of the three slow punches at the beginning of the kata, only in his application the punches were not slow at all but fast chudan punches to the opponent's ribs. And the open hand technique that follows the third punch was used to check the opponent's chambered punch--blocking the opponent's chambered fist with the extended palm before he even thinks of punching! And this was followed by a fast punch (though in kata there is no punch of any kind after this open hand!).

Does no one ever ask why the punches at the beginning of Sanseiru are done slowly and the punches at the beginning of Seisan are fast? If the techniques are done differently in kata--slow in Sanseiru and fast in Seisan--shouldn't the explanation of their application be different as well? Is it possible that the "punches" in Sanseiru are not meant to be punches at all? (And while we're at it, what about the double-arm posture? Is this a hold over from the days of the Marquis de Queensbury or is there a message here?) Sometimes I feel like I'm in Bizarro World waiting for Superman to come straighten everything out.

The first technique in Seiunchin kata.

Years ago now, I came across an explanation (read "bunkai") of the first technique in Seiunchin where the defender was stepping back, using both hands to release the attacker's choke hold. The teacher explained that the kata steps forward on a more-or-less 45-degree angle but in application one is meant to step back. I found this particularly confusing. Does that mean that the kata is showing everything in reverse, opposite to what the defender is supposed to do in application?! Rather than searching for some ridiculous rationalization for an interpretation, shouldn't we be questioning the interpretation? Instead of trying to justify things that don't make a whole lot of sense in the first place, shouldn't we simply follow the kata and, in the case of Seiunchin for example, ask what could be happening if the kata is telling us to step forward along a 45-degree angle? (Obviously not a release from a chokehold!)

There is a lot of mystery in the world. There are also things that we just plain don't know yet. But there's also a lot that we can figure out. A good deal of it is just plain logical. After all, the roots go down and the plant grows up...and the wheels on the bus go round and round. Just follow the kata.