Basic - Intermediate - Advanced: The Great Misunderstanding

Basic - Intermediate - Advanced: The Great Misunderstanding

This topic keeps coming up about the changes in the kata and the terminology used at the onset of this CONCEPT.

 

There are no Basic, Intermediate or Advanced kata but continual refinement and placing of Oyata Principles upon the structural construct of Foundational Kata.

 

In the end, Taika tried to clarify things and get people to stop using those three terms for over a decade. He wanted us to use Foundation and Technical Application (Pairing/Kumi a wase). So many refused to accept this vernacular change because they failed to understand the concept approach.

Per Taika, kata should never be called 'Advanced'. The principles may be advanced, but what is actually occurring is taking the original kata and adding moves from other kata (kumi a wase). In one example, what Taika did was say “this original sequence of moves worked for this particular technique from an uke throwing a right punch. If he throws a left, it doesn't work so what motions are required for the left punch?” He then added those moves from another kata. This is just an example or a principle he used. As he thought about different techniques he added and subtracted from various Technical Application versions over the years.

The original term 'Advanced' was given by students that did not understand what was occurring. Yes, the early 1990’s kata videos stated Basic and Advanced but again, Taika said this was a misunderstanding as he had left the majority of the production of said videos to his students because the production was outside his level of understanding.  Basic, Intermediate and Advanced were not terms Taika intended the kata to have attached to them, but Advanced Concept is a better way of thinking about it. As he began showing kumi a wase (pairings) in kata the terms by students became Basic and Advanced because they heard him say this was advanced (thinking or concept) but missed the context. When he added more, the term intermediate was coined, again by students, not Taika because they did not realize this was an evolving process and suddenly, they had 3 versions, or so they thought, of kata. Things really got messy as this process continued for another 25 years of his life and the versions kept piling up. I would constantly hear students in disagreements at Summer Conference, Birthday Conference and other seminars about what was Basic, what was Intermediate and what was Advanced.  Why?  Because it was all a moving target of concepts, and they were missing the understanding that this was a continually moving and evolving string of concepts and principles placed on the foundational lattice.  It is the concept that is advanced, not the kata.

What I honestly believe Taika wanted us to do was perfect the foundational version of each kata, and then start applying his principles to the kata and make our own Technical Application versions for our own study.  A big part of that missed picture can be started with the Oyata Shuffle principle of analyzing each kata motion outside of the kata by drawing 2-3 cards from your own deck (mental or physical) of kata motions from your entire repertoire of kata.  A good musician can improvise, others merely read music or replicate.  Taika did not want us to be Xerox machines as no two encounters would ever be the same.  We need to be able to improvise during an encounter and Kata Independence vs Kata Dependence is the key.

#OyataTe