HIS Karate-Do

Some thoughts about kata. The first time I ever saw a group of people performing kata, it was at the old Pearl City dojo (used to be located on 3rd St). I can vividly remember that there were about 8-10 green belts performing Heians Sandan and Yondan. I was amazed at their precision… not to mention their memory, being able to do these exotic, powerful looking moves in unison. I remember thinking that I’d like to be able to perform these kata too, and how little these looked like what my mom had pointed out to me when I was a little child. My mom, being proud of her Okinawan heritage, used to tell me that the Uchinanchu had developed a martial art of their own, just like judo and aikido had been created by the Naichi or Japanese. One night, we were at a party where some of the old Okinawan men had drunk a lot of beer/sake and had begun doing some “dancing” with their open hands twisting and turning in the air in time with the music. Looked kind of silly to me, but my mom insisted that they were doing martial arts movements. Some fifty years [...]

When I was a kid, I remember reading about the wonders of leverage. One of the things that stuck in my head was a drawing of a man using a long pole, placed under a large boulder, and a log under the pole acting as a fulcrum. And by using leverage, the man could lift/move the boulder as if he were several times stronger. I think it was Archimedes who said, “Give me a long enough pole, and I could move the Earth.” …or something to that effect. When I was in Aikido, they often cited the concept of proper alignment with the Earth during execution of a technique, giving one immense power. We all know that it’s easier to carry a heavy box closer to one’s body, rather than holding it with one’s arms extended outward. In earlier notes, I mentioned my feelings about proper shifting of your center-of-gravity to lend more power into your punches and kicks. All of these methods are about properly aligning oneself to maximize help from the huge advantage that gravity can give you. But the advantages of proper alignment exist everywhere and in everything. If you’re surfing the big (or small waves), it [...]

Back in Okinawa, the root systems of what would become modern karate-do were variously called; te, ti, tuite, toude, etc. Shotokan founder, Funakoshi Gichin, designed and implemented a pervasive alteration of the ancient art to transform it into a budo that would be accepted in Japan. This is very evident, even to those of you who have only experienced our ministry, when we see students who have previously trained in some of the modern Okinawan systems, notably, Shorin-Ryu. The differences, both major and minor, are visible in almost every move and posture. In addition to these physical changes, there were changes to the names of many of the katas. A very major change was renaming Te to Karate. We know that Te means “hand”, but the change to Karate has been translated most often as either “Empty Hand or Open Hand”, with the former probably being the most common. Personally, I don’t care for defining our art as the art of the Empty Hand. I guess another meaning would be the Weaponless Art (the development of Shotokan involved removing weaponry such as the nunchaku, tonfa, sai, bo, jo, and ekku from our hands). I don’t like Empty (I’ve also seen [...]