Alphabet Soup for the Ryukyu Soul

Why are there so many versions of Taika’s kata? 

As this question has come up a lot recently with students, peers, and even complete strangers, I thought I’d spend a little time tackling some of the things I learned from Taika about this.  Taika treated kata as a way for him to become fluid, precise, efficient as well as to teach concepts and ideas to his students.  It was much more as well.  It was a research tool.  We, his regular weekly guinea pigs, were a way he could make a modification and see what path it led him to.  He could see in us a true three dimensional representation of what he only saw of himself in the mirror.  Taika would change things multiple times in a class or from class to class in the same day.  You would sometimes hear him say, “I think maybe this way, try.”  Sometimes that meant to us that he wanted us to think about it, but often he was just thinking about it.  He was looking at how we moved with each experiment.  The flow of it all.

Taika talked about kata being alphabet.

- You learn to spell – Foundation

- You learn words - Foundation Tier 2

- You learn incomplete sentences - Foundation Tier 3

- You learn complete sentences - Foundation Tier 4

- You learn Paragraphs - Foundation Tier 5

- You learn to read a book and make a book report - Foundation Tier 6

As you now can spell, you can also read. You go away to school and teachers ask you to research.  They give you a topic such as WWII boats. In the old days you would spend the day at the library reading, copying different books, magazines, newspapers, et cetera. Nowadays the cheaters don't even have to leave whatever room they are in they can just browse the internet. :)

- You learn to research multiple sources and piece them together - Technical Application

- You take that T.A. version and make it Force Efficient - Tier 1

- You take that T.A. version and make it fluid – Tier 2

- You take that T.A. version and make it apply to a different theoretical target – Tier 3

- You take that T.A. version and vary the timing for different order of attacks – Tier 4

Note: The above tiers are examples and not limited to just the above examples. 

We have different versions and different timings of those versions for several reasons then.  He was growing as he taught, and refining.  He wanted us to grow with him.  People who did not train every week with him, would get a version maybe once a year and think that was the version they were supposed to be doing but it was only a snapshot in time.  People made the mistake of believing that, ‘Oh, this is the new Naihanchi Shodan’ and usually missed the entire point of the version.  What everyone needed to ask was, ‘What is he trying to get us to understand with this tool.’

Naihanchi Crane

As an example, I will tell the tale of the genesis and birth of Naihanchi Crane.

Taika had been experimenting as always on us faithful guinea pigs and went off to a weekend seminar at one of the affiliated schools.  His intent was to teach what we had been working on, something using the tool of Naihanchi but not related exactly to what came forth that weekend.  He adapted to a problem he saw.  He taught a Friday evening and all day Saturday seminar then returned home.  We met up on Tuesday for regular training and he told the whole class how frustrated he was that the students there had no balance.  This had angered him that people that should be farther along in their practice and training could not even balance when they crossed over in Naihanchi.  He ended up teaching them what we later called the Naihanchi Crane and working to perfect their balance.  He then had us work on it for a short while.  (This drill would actually spawn some other crane/balance drills at another couple of weekend seminars where he tried several different ways to get people to practice enough to attain balance.)

The kata version was quite simple conceptually.  People had no balance, so they needed to practice balance.  Taika took a tool, Naihanchi, which required balance on the cross overs.  He then added an exercise to that tool.  Every time you crossed over, the back leg would pull up into a reverse crane.  For those that need further explanation of a reverse crane….the back leg pulls up until the instep of the foot rest in the back of the knee.  Taika would then make you count to 5 out loud, slowly, then drop the leg and continue the kata.  We had to keep our knees bent, and head from bobbing.  He would explain that if the knee pointed one direction there was no balance, but if you pulled it another you were balanced.  This was a familiar tool (Naihanchi) with an added drill (crane). 

We worked on it a short while until most people’s balance improved.  That was it.  The drill was never visited again by us beyond that day at his dojo.  That drill is a tool I use for unbalanced students.  The problem is, most students at that particular weekend seminar never asked Taika or understood that this was a drill.  For months, they spread the rumor that this was the new version and they were bequeathed it.  At the next Summer Conference a bunch of people were practicing it and of course Taika had moved on with other drills. 

Kata was a tool for Taika and the one tool that every single student in his association should know is Naihanchi Shodan.  That is why we have so many versions of this kata, more than any other kata in the system.

In truth, he would refine his Foundational and Technical Application versions over the years but all the other ‘Tiers in Between’ were using the kata as a tool to make the student better. 

Tier: a layer; level; stratum:

If you remove the initial Foundation kata and only practice the other variations, your entire structure will crumble.  Foundation is 1,2,3 for memorization but has to be there, has to be precise.  If you cannot have your feet properly aligned, thereby aligning your chest, your aim will always be off in any tier above the Foundation.  The Biathlon is an Olympic sport where there is cross country high cardio combined with shooting.  The marksman learns a stance in their early foundation training.  They don’t forget that stance when it comes time to shoot during their Olympic games.  They don’t wear roller skates or spiked heels during the game.  They know the stance required and have trained on it for years to allow the rest of their platform to do what it needs to do.

Taika’s actual versions of kata were gradually refined over years of training.  There is a misconception that there are a bazillion versions out there.  In reality, from numerous conversations over the final years of his life, there are only two full versions he believed and accepted.  His Final Foundation and Taika’s Final Technical Application.  Everything in between were tools for various reasons and personal refinements.  ‘Timing’ experiments were another common tool.  Putting Foundation motions together or changing up the timing was common.  These were greater concepts Taika was trying to push down our throats during his final years.  I will address more of this in a later blog on pairings but Taika’s goal was to move us past spoon feeding to the point we start making our own drills, our own timings, and our own pairings. 

Cautionary Tale of Kata Reversion and False Claims

For those that knew and trained with Taika Seiyu Oyata, you know that his art progressed gradually over the years.  He didn’t stay stagnant in the art.  There are many forms of Karate, Kung Fu, and other arts out there that strive to remain exactly today as they were decades or centuries ago.  This was not Taika’s path.  He would endeavor from the end of WWII when he began his training until his death in 2012 to make his art more refined, streamlining body mechanics and the like.

 

Taika’s first recorded images of techniques were from the 1950’s and his first video was recorded in 1968 in the United States.  The next video was around 1978 and then he continually, every few years, released videos of exercises and kata.  Each version was slightly more refined.  This lasted until June of 1991 when the Classic Okinawan Arts video series was finalized.  There were actually 15 VHS tapes produced, and as always, by the time they were finalized he was already striving to refine things even more.

Of special note, it is specifically stated within this 1991 tape series that objects in the video were exaggerated in some places, some stances were shorted due to the size of film location they rented on 23^rd Street and the lens they had on the camera they purchased.  So even this 1991 version was not, for that snapshot in time, 100% correct in Taika’s eyes.  Also take into account that Taika was somewhat camera shy.  By this time he well knew, as he had been filmed for 23 years, that videos could be slowed down.  The bunkai in the videos were not the crème of the crop, and there were specific endeavors to distract the viewer like throwing a hand up in the air and shaking it.  I’m not saying the techniques were not any good, quite the opposite.  Taika just felt that if he put his best stuff in a video, as history had previously shown, people would steal his product and he would be out of business.

On to some key changes since the 1991 video series and why it makes it pretty easy to see when people are professing that they trained with Taika and they actually did not, or at least not in the last decade of his life.  There were a rather large percentage of people that either were removed from the organization by Taika from 1991 to 2012 or left on their own.  The largest exodus occurred between 1992 and 2001 when Taika began to, ‘Clean House’.

Basic – Intermediate – Advanced

In the 1991 videos, the terms Basic and Advanced were used to differentiate between the two kata versions and for quite a while those terms were used and Intermediate was thrown in there as well.  There were even some using Basic 1, Basic 2, et cetera.  Taika would refine something and people would make a new kata category instead of putting that piece in the version he requested.  Sometime after 2003 Taika announced that he didn’t like those words and they were poor translations of what he had really meant.  The words he later chose to differentiate versions of the kata were Foundation and Technical Application.  The word Basic just gave the impression of being not important once you progressed, but he was adamant that the Foundation kata must be retained, though tweaked and refined.  He would gradually over the 21 years between the release of the 1991 videos to his death refine the Foundation and tell us in class and at seminars what was the ‘now’ Foundation.  When he showed us anything related to the kata, we would clarify which version it was for.  These changes were predominately body refinements to motion.  These are things that made your attacks work better.  Angles, speed, et cetera were bettered.

Technical Application was not an advanced version he said, but additions to the kata to make certain techniques flow better.  As an example he would add a Pinan motion to Naihanchi Shodan to make the transition to an arm bar cleaner.  These refinements were not advanced, just refined additions.  Depending on how you count a kata, particularly with varied timing, it may have a different number of moves.  To a brand new kyu student learning Naihanchi Shodan, you might teach the foundational kata with 30 motions.  This is just an example, I am not specifying how anyone should teach and count motions.  If you did an experiment, sequestered two new students and taught one 30 motions, and the other student 48 motions, teaching them the Technical Application version, neither would know the difference unless they were told.  Thus, in Taika’s perspective Technical Application wasn’t advanced, just more.

A Few Refinements

A few examples will follow but just one very important way you can tell if someone trained with Taika in his final decade would be the stances in their kata.  Horse stance was narrowed, not as deep.  In the early days, we all trained where our stance was very wide and deep.  Height disparity would dictate exactly how much farther in, but the stances became more mobile and for me, horse stance was probably a good six-eight inches narrower.  There was also a key change to the balance of all stances.  “Heels out!”  That was a shout anyone who actually trained at Headquarters heard a billion times and at many seminars as well.  That applied to horse stance as well as Seisan stance.  When I see things like several recent videos released by people claiming to have trained at Headquarters, particularly in recent years, and I look at the stances, I can easily tell they are fabricating their history….well, and I was there.  Anyone else who trained there can as well and I frequently get emails of people complaining about these claims.  It is what it is, the deceitful will always be deceitful it seems.  These stance refinements were for balance, power and quite simply for practice aiming.

The BOX – Stances and Twisting

Taika talked about a box representing the torso, or a rectangle.  You learned to be proficient at aiming by using the Han Shin principles (see other blog by me or Tony) and for the most part you remained in your box with your arms or fairly close to the box.  A right punch would end with your index knuckle in your imaginary opponent’s brachial plexus…..that soft spot where your arm and pecs meets.  The dot in the diagram would be where that knuckle would land, relaxed fist at a 45 degree angle.  It was much like target shooting with a gun, throwing knife, dart, arrow, et cetera.  You learned to always put that knuckle there for basic target practice and used bottom body, side body, back body, or other means to aim than twisting your body halves more or less than 90 degrees past your torso.

What many would call a down block (we refer to the as down forearm strikes) would put your knuckle at the bottom dot, again a right angle from your chest or torso.  It would go right where your opponent’s soft spot connecting the leg to the torso.  You aimed with other parts of your body.  Certainly there are parts of the kata where your hands go briefly outside this box or the box is somewhat expanded for the head.  The above diagram is just one tiny part of the things we were working on with him, and the ‘target boxes’ he gave us.  There was absolutely no exaggerated gross motion outside this box and at no point did you twist your upper body opposed to your lower body to strike out at areas far outside that box.  Passai is an excellent example of this as Taika showed how you could punch left and right of center by moving from one Twisted Horse stance to another.  Your upper body never left the box and your chest stayed almost perfectly still during that portion of Passai.  I won’t go into much more detail but this is the section near the beginning when you first face back to the front, just after the kidney strike.

Hidden Strikes

The hidden strikes that so many people attribute to ‘Advanced Motion’ were everywhere in what Taika called foundation.  If you don’t believe me, please go back to youtube and check out the 1968 video of Taika doing the foundational 12.  When he punched, he also covered.  Back to my original analogy of two students doing the same kata but one does 30 moves and the other 48, the same thing applies.  If you think about Tomari Seisan and the moment you turn left at a 90 degree angle midway through the kata, you can perhaps follow along.  If you teach to turn left with a single followed by three punches (and a shuffle in there) that is four counts.  We teach what Taika told us to do…….eight counts as his foundation version of Seisan.  Cover-Single, Cover-Punch, Cover-Punch, and Cover-Punch.  Our yellow belts that learn this have absolutely no idea that others didn’t listen to Taika or were not around to hear it, and only do 4 moves.  These moves are in Taika’s foundation, per his request.

Angles

In the Technical Application refinements, there are numerous angle changes that are completely missing from the 1991 ‘advanced’ video series.  Pinan Shodan for example does not start at a 90 degree angle.  Tomari Seisan’s left 90 and subsequent right 180 are completely different angles. 

These are but a scratch on the surface of the refinements that Taika made during the course of those 23 years.  Massive improvements were made to our balance, ability to strike efficiently with more force and speed, among other things.  These were all made by Taika Seiyu Oyata, and we went to great lengths in his classes at headquarters to ensure these amendments were clarified and documented.

Conclusion

Taika did not stand still.  He constantly refined his skills and endeavored to ensure his refinements would carry on past his death.  The number of people who were with him till the end are few compared to the number of people now selling their wares.  When Taika had his cancer scare in 2000 and the subsequent numbers were thinned, he began having a roll book taken.  Three different people took those records over the years and there were also records taken of who paid their headquarters dues and who attended seminars.  Participation at said seminars, well that was another story.  There were always the few that would show up every 5-6 years, or less, and want to acquire something. 

The art progressed 23 years past the production of the June 1991 release of the final tape series, and anyone that uses them as their gold standard needs to rethink Taika’s philosophies.  I will only show the technique portions to my students as I don’t want my students reverting back 23 years.  I digitized those 1991 videos for Taika in 1999 and Tasshi Jim Logue tried to get Taika to authorize the sale of them in DVD version at that time.  It was only eight years past their original production at the time and Taika told Jim ‘No!’  Taika told us that those versions were not where he was now and not what he was teaching.  That was no longer his art.

Don’t throw away the 27 years of progress.