There is a common understanding that the kata that make up modern Okinawan karate have been passed down for a long period of time essentially unchanged. There is also a common precept that “the kata must be preserved unchanged”, that they must be kept that way. The idea, of course, is that they contain knowledge that has been passed down intact and that if they are changed this knowledge will be lost.
Ok, that makes sense. The forms contain information for and about the systems they are a part of. Wouldn’t dream of arguing with that. The “unchanged” part, that might be a little more problematic. It is a nice idea. I’d like to think that we have little nuggets of ancient wisdom to draw on in our practice. In some systems that can be somewhat verified. Taking something like Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu, there is a very well documented 600 yearish line of continuous succession and written documentation to back up the physical practice (this includes records of changes made, but that’s a different conversation). The two person paradigm that the kata embodies is somewhat change-resistant, as is the highly conservative environment of the practice. However, to be honest, we have no video reference before the 20th century, so we really have no idea what it used to look like. But the Okinawan arts have a very different cultural background, and solo kata a very different practice paradigm.
Focusing on the cultural background, I’d like to look a little more closely at what unchanged might mean. To do so, I’d like to look at one or two kata from the early 20th century. We don’t have video reference from this period, so let’s really simplify and just look at kata names and who taught them. Let’s start with Seisan. We know that Aragaki Seisho demonstrated a version in 1867, so it has a long history in Okinawa. About 60-70 years later, around 1930, there were at least 7 versions extant. They included:
Higaonna Kanryo’s, which became the Goju Ryu version
Higaonna Kanyu’s, which became the To’on Ryu version
Uechi Kanbun’s, which became the Uechi Ryu version
Nakaima Kenri’s, which became Ryuei Ryu’s version
Matayoshi Shinko’s, which became Kingai Ryu’s version
Kuniyoshi Shinkichi’s (probably from Sakiyama), which became Okinawa Kempo’s version
Kyan Chotoku’s, which became Shorinji Ryu’s, Seibukan’s, and Kobayashi Ryu’s versions
There is evidence of other versions. Itoman (The Study of Karate Techniques, 1934) lists an Iha Seisan and Mike and Takada (Kenpo Gaisetsu 1930) an Oshiro Seisan, which Kinjo Hiroshi has said is actually a Tomari Seisan passed from Mastumora to Iha to Oshiro. (He also says there was no Shuri Seisan.) Others, including researchers like Patrick McCarthy, have said Matsumura passed down the Shuri Seisan. I haven’t spent much time looking at the Shuri/Tomari lineages and can’t speak to some of this, so I’m sticking with the ones above as they will make my point well enough. The possible existence of others, or more complicated lines of transmission, only reinforce it.
So around 1930 there were at least 6 and possibly as many as 10 or more (I wish I could document 13!) versions of a single kata on Okinawa, a kata that had already been around for at least 70 years. Probably more, but we can clearly document to 1867. And these 6-10+ versions were each passed on by a single teacher to only one or two people we know of; for example Kanyu Seisan went only to Kyoda Juhatsu. That says two things. One, that the only versions we know now were those passed to people that continued to teach and helped create the styles we know today. (As a corollary, with small groups and not every teacher having students that taught, there were likely versions that simply didn’t get passed on.) And two, that none of these versions were widespread, they were particular to a single teacher and a small group of students.
To put it a different way, every teacher that passed down Seisan passed down a different one, and passed it down to a few direct students only. They passed down their own version. Indeed, while they all bear close resemblance to each other no two teachers from the pre-war era passed down an identical Seisan. What does that say about a “root” kata, one unchanged? By whom? As of when?
I’ll bring another kata in to look at this a slightly different way, Passai. At the same time, the 30s ish, there are a number of different versions of Passai extant, at least according to the somewhat scant written record. At this point they have taken on the names of the folks who taught them. A list could include:
Matsumura no passai
Oyadamori no passai, also known as Tomari no passai
Tawada no passai
Itotsu no passai
Matsumora no passai
Ishimine no passai
Gusukuma no passai
These are people’s names, plus a place name. Even with a fairly comfortable understanding of Japanese I often find a list of names like this somewhat inaccessible. So let’s rephrase it. If it were in English, the list would feel more like:
Bob’s passai
Steve’s passai, also known as Chelmsford passai
Tim’s passai
Mike’s passai
Tony’s passai
Ludwig’s passai
Jim’s passai
This isn’t a list of style specific kata or kata named for some long lost ancestor. It’s a list of kata, named for people in the current or recent generations. A list of individual variations of a common piece of material. If you are familiar with folk music think about the different versions of The Ballad of John Henry recorded in the 20th century. Each artist considered it ok, in fact if you know musicians you’d realize they would consider it essential, to take the root material and “make it their own”. The same thing is happening with karate kata here.
There were no styles at the time. Each teacher had, essentially, his own style, made up of what he had learned from their various teachers and completed with his own personal research and development. None of these teachers had many students. They did however, have a community around them.
These guys all knew each other. They shared stuff- the kenkyukai is a perfect example. A bunch of folks from what would eventually become different systems got together and shared. They were interested in how their peers were training. It wasn’t radical, though like most groups made up of a bunch of leaders it didn’t last long.
Community is important. Looking at these kata variations it seems clear to me that each teacher took the themes that were current in the community, things like Seisan or Passai, and worked with them as they saw fit. This wasn’t considered transgressive. To wit, in Miyagi Hisateru’s piece “Memories of a Karate Man” he writes that “Yabu (Kentsu) performed Kusanku, which combined Sho and Dai. In Yabu sensei’s version all the shuto-uke were replaced by tsuki-uke. I think this was Yabu sensei’s way of improving the kata and that it was a good idea. Researching and combining kata has its place. Using the fist is better as the usual shuto-uke runs the risk of having fingers broken, which is quite frightening.”
It seemed normal to Miyagi that Yabu sensei would combine and make changes to classical kata based on his own ideas. The variations of Seisan and Passai, and their names, indicate to me that this was a typical way of working with kata. If not, there wouldn’t be so many unique variations of Seisan, or Passai with different teachers’ names attached.
So I might suggest that we should look at any search for an “original” version of a kata in a different light. We can’t know what the kata actually looked like before video. We do know that teachers felt comfortable making changes to kata at least up until the war and the development of today’s karate styles. We also know that even after the formal styles were created and the idea of kata as unchangeable came into more prominence changes still happen. If they don’t why are there so many minor variations of Goju’s Seisan now? They all come from Miyagi. Maybe he taught it differently to each person that learned it, or taught with variations, in which case he started out precluding the idea of a “true” kata. Maybe each teacher made some minor tweaks that he thought were ok. Either way, in 2 generations, with video and a clear pressure to keep things the same, there are differences, albeit minor. What does that imply for kata in an environment with no video record and a common acceptance of teachers making changes as they see fit?
Perhaps we could find an “original” version of a kata for whatever system we are researching as far back as say 1930. Maybe as early as the start of the 20th century, if we have any way to prove the current version is unchanged since then. But before that? I dunno. Taking Seisan, they are all clearly variations on the same form, but which version is closest to the original? How would you know? There is no documentation about its creation. There doesn’t appear to be one that was more popular, at least in the early 20th century. You might be able to tease out one that was from an older lineage, but how do you know where the other lineages got theirs, and how do you know what changes were made the generation before it was passed on as it is now? How do you know that other versions from the same period didn’t keep key elements that the teacher that passed down the “older” version didn’t like? And does it matter?
Kata are an essential part of Okinawan karate. They hold important elements of the systems they embody. But equally clearly, at least to me, their secrets are in their practice, the way they are done and how they were shaped to work within their systems, within current (at the time of the system’s founding) training methods and concepts, as much as in the sequences. Their embodiment of these particular concepts is what makes them valuable tools. Certainly they have been passed down to us and we should treat them with the respect they are due. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves that we have some unchanged piece of the ancient past to work with. Our karate ancestors were inspired men, not the kind of folks to blindly pass on something, but the kind of men who would make sure whatever they valued they worked with and shaped to be an active and creative part of the art they loved. Respect that, follow the goal, not the finger pointing at it, and don’t create a mystical artifact that, most likely, is just illusion.
Oh, and don’t change the kata.