I can't believe he said that.

   "So, let's start with an acceptable premise for both of us, since we come from very different

Pointing the way, from Seipai kata.
But the attack is coming from your
left, not the front, and the left hand
is the primary "blocking" hand.

traditions," I suggested.
   "Okay, what would you suggest?" he asked.
   "Well, how about the idea that the techniques we see in bunkai came before the creation of kata--that the ancients, whoever they might have been, found techniques that worked in either combat or self-defense and then only later put them into kata in order to have some way to remember them or some sort of solo practice method."
   "Yes, but the katas have all been changed, or at least we should probably assume that the katas have all changed since that's human nature, and anyway different schools do katas differently, so that alone suggests katas have been changed, and it would be a fruitless endeavor to attempt to discover the original intent of the katas," my friend countered.
   "That may be true," I replied. "But the reason I'm suggesting this is that, if true, it would imply that each technique originally had only one interpretation or suggested application. If there are differences in how katas are performed it suggests two things to me: one, that some people altered kata to conform to their own erroneous ideas about bunkai; or two, some of the changes are actually insignificant and merely show slight variations of how one might apply the same bunkai--that is, as long as they conform to the same martial principles, perhaps both ways of doing the kata are correct. In any event, the way to unlock the keys to the bunkai is to find the principles that they all conform to."
   "That's exactly what I'm saying," my friend immediately countered. "If multiple bunkai could be correct, then a better principle might be to say anything that works is a correct bunkai." Wait, is that what I said?
   "Anything?" I asked, incredulously. He nodded and smiled. "But it has to follow the kata, doesn't it?" I asked.
   "Why?" he replied. "Just because the kata shows a forward step, does that mean you can't step back? I once asked my teacher, the venerable Poobah, the same question. Do you know what he said to me? He said, 'do you have a problem with stepping back?' I said, 'no, Sensei.' "
   "But it's not just that," I said. "Your bunkai for that particular move in kata"...we had been sharing our interpretations of various kata techniques..."well, in kata your right hand is on top, and when you do your bunkai your left hand is on top."
   "So. You should be able to do it either way."
   "That may be, but the way you're showing it isn't the way it's shown in kata, and besides, you're stance is wrong as well."
   "Well, my teacher explained to me that for bunkai the body can be divided into quarters: above the waist, below the waist, the right side, and the left side. You can use the techniques independently or together, and they don't have to necessarily conform to exact kata movement."
   "But bunkai means to analyze kata, so it would seem to me that if you're not sticking to kata movement--and that would include not just the hands and feet but also the stepping that's shown in kata--then you're not really doing bunkai," I said, as gently as I could.
   "Well," my friend suggested. "In all my travels and research, I've come across two schools of thought on that. One is that you stick to kata movement as closely as possible, and the other is that it's okay to deviate from kata because what you're really doing is studying the principles of movement. Two schools, two different opinions."
   "Yes," I said. "But one of them is wrong." I couldn't stop myself. "At least that's what I would say. But I'm not sure I really understand what you mean. Isn't the kata teaching principles of movement? If you deviate from kata movement, then you're not really getting the message, not really learning the principles the kata is trying to teach." At this point I didn't really expect much of an answer.
   To this he responded by demonstrating a technique from kata against one of the other students. It conformed to the way he did kata, but it didn't conform to sound martial principles. "Why didn't he hit you with his other hand when you did that?" I asked. "One of the principles of bunkai that I always look for is whether or not the opponent is in a position to initiate another attack after your initial "uke." In this case, the technique is applied against the opponent's left arm, but the opponent is still in a position to reach you with his right." So I asked, "Why doesn't he hit you with his right?"
   My friend was quick to reply, "Well, hopefully, he doesn't know the bunkai."
   Did he really just say that?

Disclaimer: My apologies to anyone if this sounds familiar. Any similarity to conversations with anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental. In any case, this imagined conversation is only meant to illustrate the difficulties one often encounters in trying to find the original intent behind the kata of Goju-ryu...the bunkai.

Ya can't get they-ahh from hee-yahhh

Goju-ryu posture very similar to the
opening posture in one of the first two
Pinan kata. In the Shotokan Heian
version, the stance is much longer
and much less mobile.

I came across an interesting post the other day on an Internet forum. It was by a guy who was a bit disillusioned but still searching for meaning in his kata--kata that he had been practicing for more than twenty years, I think. He was asking all the right questions, it seems to me: what message was contained in the repetition of techniques in kata? Are there patterns or sequences of techniques, and if so what do they signify? Are there themes that certain kata focus on? The problem was that he practiced Shotokan karate--a style, it seems to me, that is so far removed from its Okinawan origins as to make it nearly impossible to determine the original intent (or original bunkai) of any of the movements that make up the kata.

The stances of Shotokan
are generally wider and longer
than their Shorin antecedents.

After doing a little foraging on the Internet, I found that this searching into the meaning of Shotokan kata is not really new at all. Apparently certain Shotokan practitioners have been bucking the system for years--I'm only hinting at the chilling effects powerful international organizations may have on individual initiative and any questioning of the official line--practitioners like Bryce Fleming, Elmar Schmeisser, Bill Burgar, and John Vengel. Fleming even cites some of my own thoughts on kata analysis in a nicely written article titled "Bunkai: Returning Kata to the core of Karate," though I'm not sure he understood what I was trying to say in every case, which may very well be my own fault, as I'm not sure any of my ideas are applicable to any other art than Goju-ryu. But it is interesting to me that there is an attempt to place kata and the study of kata applications back in the forefront of popular karate study, and Shotokan may very well be the most popular karate style in the world. The problem is, how do you reconstruct the original intent (bunkai) of a kata after the kata has been changed? It's like trying to figure out what Shakespeare was saying in Macbeth after only watching the episode of The Simpsons that referenced it, or as someone once put it, reconstructing the original hits when all you have are the Weird Al Yankovic versions. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but still.

Of course, not all of the movements have been altered, but if one movement in a sequence is altered enough, it will alter how one may interpret the rest of the sequence. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm certainly no authority on Shorin-ryu, but if you change a neko-ashi-dachi (cat stance) to a kokutsu dachi (back stance), as Shotokan does with its Heian versions of the Pinan series, it seems to me that you will be hard pressed to "see" the kick (whether a kick with the knee or the foot) in the sequence. And once you change the cat stance to a back stance, the upper body and arms are also re-oriented in relation to the possible attacker, so they may further alter how one interprets the techniques. One could certainly argue, as many do, that there's no guarantee that even any school of Okinawan karate--Goju, Uechi, or Shorin--has preserved the original way that any particular kata was performed; they've all undergone change (though that's just an assumption in itself and with no more certitude really than to argue that nothing has changed). But that still doesn't mean that all changes are equal--that the bunkai you find in Shotokan is as valid as the bunkai you find in Shorin kata.
All of this, of course, begs the question: Are all versions of kata equally valid? Is the Shotokan version of a kata (and by implication the bunkai) as valid as the Shorin version of the same kata? Is the Isshinryu version of a kata as valid as the Goju version of the same kata? What about more minor differences we find in Meibukan or Shodokan or Jundokan or Shoreikan versions of the same kata? Is it all equally valid because you can, with varying degrees of effort and imaginative interpretation, manage to make a bunkai that fits the kata movements? It won't be the same bunkai necessarily, but so what?! You got a problem with that?

Well, yes. I actually think these are troubling questions, though I know they don't seem to bother the vast majority of karate practitioners out there. Explaining kata movement, or at least the debate over it, is as popular among Shotokan practitioners as it is among the practitioners of the various Okinawan styles apparently, at least after you tire of the tournaments and such. And it would seem that the majority of people who practice karate are pretty satisfied with what they're getting. Otherwise, I can only hope, there would be more people out there pointing fingers and declaring that "the emperor has no clothes," because it's fairly obvious that a lot of the bunkai out there is crap.  The problem is that even though you may have a bunkai to explain a technique that has been altered--as the example of the change in neko-ashi-dachi above--in altering the kata, you have not only altered the bunkai, but you more than likely have altered the themes the kata is exploring and probably the principles of the system as well.

And it can get even more problematic than that. Fleming, citing Harry Cook, writes that "Gusukuma, an original student of Ankoh Itosu," (one of the early Shorin masters) said that "Itosu didn't know all the applications and felt that some of the movements [of kata] were just for show" (Fleming). If Itosu didn't know the applications for all of the moves in the classical kata of Shorin-ryu, how did he go about creating the Pinan series of kata? If you don't know what all of the applications are then how do you know which techniques to use in the Pinan series and which to leave out? Are you taking isolated techniques out, techniques that are actually part of sequences? What themes and principles are you going to use as the basis of these new kata if you're not sure of the applications in the first place? If the embusen (pattern) of the original kata don't carry any message that might demonstrate tai sabaki (off-line movement) because the applications are not fully understood, for instance, what message, if
any, will students be able to extract from the "H" or "I" pattern of the Pinan kata? And when you don't understand something, the very human tendency to change it to something you do understand--or create something you do understand--often steps in and takes over. Not to throw all of Shorin-ryu out with the bath water, but the Pinan series forms a large part of the curriculum in Shorin as well as Shotokan schools, so if you are learning to decipher kata through an analysis of the Pinan kata, you see the problem.

I read stuff over and over again from Shotokan practitioners who say that kata has no purpose other than as a performance art, that it's pointless to even look for meaning in kata. And no wonder, given its history. Certainly it's worth trying to find meaning in kata, but if you're practicing an art that is so far removed from its origins, it's going to be a hard slog at best. If you ask me, which of course you didn't, and me being from New England, I'd have to say, "Ya can't get they-ahh from hee-yahhh."