|
Training in Naifanchi kata at the Seiyo no Shorin-Ryu Karate Kobudo Kai hombu in Arizona. Members train using kiba dachi, or horse riding stance, which is prevalent in these three forms.
|
Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern karate and a Shorin-Ryu Karate practitioner stated, “Once a kata is learned, it must be practiced repeatedly until it can be applied in an emergency: for just understanding the sequence of moves in kata is useless.” Karate taught in most Shorin-Ryu Karate dojo are designed to build balance, muscle memory, hip rotation, blocking, kicking and punching power. Each and every strike and block in kata is taught to be focused and powerful. But then there is much more to kata.
Kenwa Mabuni, the founder of
Shito-Ryu Karate, is quoted as saying, "
Karate is not fixed or immoveable. Like water, it's ever changing and fits itself to the shape of the vessel containing it. However, kata are not some kind of beautiful competitive dance, but a grand martial art of self-defense which determines life and death". Could it be that these great Okinawan masters of
karate knew something that those who claim there is nothing of value to
kata know. I suspect so.
When a qualified person takes each
kata and dissects it into several
bunkai (
self-defense applications), each individual
bunkai (every move in
kata) can be taught as
self-defense. When this done over and over to educate the muscles,
mushin will take over and the technique, or a variety of the technique, will appear later during
karate training when you least expect it, or during a time when you need to defend yourself - but only if the
bunkai is practical and it becomes part of your daily life.
Every move in
kata should be able to stand alone for
self-defense. Such
self-defense applications are taught to increase punching, blocking and kicking power while at the same time strikes are focused on pressure points. In
Shorin-Ryu schools, we also teach
shitai kori (body hardening) to assist the practitioner in the ability to take strikes to pressure points. Through time,
kata becomes a personal
sensei (teacher), that self-instructs the student in
self-defense and should include punches, blocks and kicks along with hidden techniques such as pressure point strikes, throws, chocks, releases, restraints, ground techniques, and more.
Kata is very important in most
Shorin-Ryu Karate schools. A large variety of
kata are taught at the
Arizona Hombu dojo in Mesa and Gilbert, Arizona, as well as all of our schools around the world. Students of
Shorin-Ryu Karate and
Kobudo train in many of these
forms including the
Naifanchi kata. These three
kata (forms) known
as
Naifanchi are practiced by nearly
all Okinawa
karate and Japanese schools and even some Korean
taekwondo schools. The
kata are known as
Chulgi (Korea),
Dai Pochin
(China),
Tekki (Japanese) and
Naihanchi or Naifanchi (Okinawa), and sometimes referred to as
Naifunchin.
The interpretation of how
they are used in training and combat (
bunkai) varies from style to style and even from school to school. All
three
kata follow the pattern along an imaginary
embusen (line) running right (
migi) to left (
hadari) focusing on
kiba dachi (horse-riding stance).
|
Inside the Arizona Hombu.
|
When in horse-riding stance, the practitioner (
karate ka) may imagine being part of a
cattle drive in
Wyoming. Visualize climbing into a saddle whether on
the back of a horse, or on the sawhorse at the Texas Roadhouse while placing
your boots (in Arizona - your flip flops) in stirrups. Your feet will be parallel while your knees are
bent to straddle the horse. This is what
kiba
dachi should feel like (try this at the Texas Roadhouse and just tell your
waitress you are practicing
karate
should she ask).
As you practice
Naifanchi kata, keep this feeling in
mind. Now imagine riding a short pony named
‘Shorty’.
The only way you can keep your feet from dragging on the ground on Shorty is to
emphasize the bend in your knees (
hiza).
I can’t emphasize how important it is to practice this stance (
dachi)
correctly as beginners tend to relax and avoid deep knee bends while throwing
a partner over their legs during
bunkai
practice. This can lead to hyper-extension of a knee – so keep those knees bent!
Because of the use of
kiba
dachi throughout these
kata, many
have speculated they were designed for
samurai to train in combat
karate (
karate-jutsu) from horseback. But this is not possible. The status
of
samurai was revoked during the
Menji Restoration (beginning in 1868),
and
karate had not been introduced to
the Japanese people until more than 50 years later in the 20
th century. It was still a secret on Okinawa.
Others suggest the kata were designed to teach peasants to fight
on rice paddy dikes. In this scenario
it is suggested the word 'naihan'
in Naihanchi refers to ‘narrow path’ through a rice paddy. And if ‘chi’ were pronounce ‘chin’ (as in Naifunchin) it could imply ‘battle’ as it does for Sanchin (another common shorin-ryu kata). Thus naihanchi it could be interpreted as
‘battle in a rice field’.
|
Kiba dachi on the rocks – practicing kata at 8,500
feet in the Laramie Mountains on 1.4 billion year
old Sherman Granite in 1985.
|
Still others suggest these
kata were designed to teach close
quarters combat for a defender with his back against a wall. With this in mind, most
waza (techniques) in
Naihanchi seemed to be directed against
attackers from the front and sides. But, there is at least one exception - the
first
waza in Naihanchi Nidan that is almost always
interpreted as a defense against a bear hug from behind. But the
more we examine this technique, it is apparent there are many
applications including defense against single and double lapel grabs, and single
and double wrist grabs.
What if the creator of this
kata only had a long, narrow, training
hall or small yard in which to practice? I suggest this only because I know
some martial artists who have private
dojo (gym or martial arts school) in their homes that are tiny such that
Naifanchi kata would fit in their
dojo.
I suspect these
kata were taught
not only for close combat education, but also to build leg strength and
endurance. As a teenager, I spent considerable time training in
kiba dachi due to a lack of space in the small Black Eagle Federation
dojo in
Sugarhouse of Salt Lake City, Utah where I trained in karate.
We practiced nearly
all basics (
kihon) and fighting (
kumite) from
kiba dachi.
Kiba dachi
was also used to build leg strength and power.
|
Front kick (mae geri) at the University of Wyoming about 1993. |
There were many nights we stood in
kiba dachi for muscle strength and
stamina. Our
sensei (teacher) invented
ways to torture that actually benefited us in the long run. In one exercise,
our partner climbed on our thighs from the back while leaning on our shoulders
to add weight as we squatted in
kiba
dachi with our hands on our knees to provide stirrups for our partner. We
did this often. Other times we repeated dozens of squat
kicks from
kiba dachi where we dropped to
a full squat, rose to
kiba dachi and
followed with
mae geri (front kick).
Other times, we squatted in a deep
kiba
dachi while our junior
sensei walked
around punching or kicking each of us in the stomach or ribs as part of body
hardening (
shitai kori). On other
evenings, we would squat in
kiba dachi
while practicing outward blocks while
sensei came around to each
of us, punching with full power so if we missed our block, we would hear about
it after waking up on the floor later that evening. After
sensei
cycled through all of us, we were ordered to squat lower and the exercise would
begin again and again until we stood in a deep squat that any Shaolin monk
would have been proud of. It was a stance we all knew well. This was usually
followed by duck walks.
|
Master Cho of the Shaolin, (c)pencil sketch by Soke Hausel. |
When we practiced
self-defense in the
dojo, nearly all applications were
applied from
kiba dachi perpendicular
to our opponent. So, for my experience, I suspect the author of these
kata enjoyed close-in fighting and felt
the
kata movement gave him or her feeling
of conflict while providing leg strength exercise. I would love to teach
kiba dachi the same way I learned because it would improve everyone’s strength, stances, and provide fond
memories for all of you to tell your students one day. But our
dojo has too many students with knee
and back problems inherited from long ago. Remember, when I trained under these harsh conditions, I was
a teenager with a good back, knees, and few memories of pain.
One of the main characteristics of
Naihanchi lies in training the lower
parts of the body through slow and steady sideward movement. When practicing
these
kata, one needs to maintain the
same shoulder height throughout the
kata
(without bobbing) with weight distribution equally spread to each leg. According to the late Okinawan Grandmaster
Shoshin Nagamine
(1907-1997), the posture for
Naihanchi
is similar to a sitting posture for
Zen,
with strength concentrated in the abdomen.
Soke
Nagamine recalled that
Naihanchi kata
were a favorite of
Choki Motobu.
Motobu was famous for brawling in the red-light district on Okinawa, and credited the
Naifanchi kata as containing all one
needs to become a proficient fighter.
|
Sensei Hausel stands in kiba dachi
with 400 pounds of weight on his back at the
University of Wyoming. |
Most
kata in
karate came from China and were modified
by Okinawan royalty and body guards for pragmatic self-defense.
Kata were designed as living encyclopedia for martial arts
techniques,
bunkai, physical fitness
and building a
karate
mind. One of the oldest references to
Naifanchi is found in a book by
Choki
Motobu (1870-1944). Motobu claimed
Naifanchi was imported from China, but was no longer practiced by
the Chinese.
Motobu was taught these
kata by
Sokon Matsumura
(1809-1901) and
Motobu taught his own
interpretation of
Naifanchi which
included
tode-like
grappling and throwing techniques. Initially there was one
Naifanchi kata that was separated into three
kata by
Anko Itosu (1831-1915). The
original
kata was apparently lengthy.
According to various sources, Itosu learned Naifanchi from Sokon Matsumura who had learned it from a Chinese
man living in Tomari (a neighborhood of
the Okinawan city of Naha). The form was so important to old
style karate practitioners that Kensu Yabu (a student of Itosu) often told his students “Karate begins and ends with Naifanchi”
and urged his students to practice the kata
10,000 times to make it their own. Before Itosu
created the Pinan kata, the
Naihanchi kata was traditionally introduced as the first kata learned in the Tomari-Te
and Shuri-Te schools.
In a 1922 book entitled ‘Tote: Ryūkyū Kenpō’, Gichin Funakoshi attributed Naifanchi kata to the Shōrei-Ryu lineage. This is what I was also
taught as a teenager, that this group of kata
was originally a Shōrei-Ryu kata.
Shōrei-Ryu, also known as Naha-Te,
is often referred to as Goju-Ryu karate,
the style of karate practiced by
some of our students who moved here from Yuma, Arizona.
Today, Naifanchi kata
include three forms referred to as Naifanchi
Shodan, Naifanchi Nidan and Naifanchi Sandan. Naifanchi is from the Ryukyu
(Okinawan) dialect but is also pronounced Naihanchi. In our hombu, either pronunciation will work.
|
Gichin Funakoshi, father of modern Okinawa Karate. (c)pencil sketch by Soke Hausel. |
Sometime after the
kata were introduced on mainland Japan
in the 20
th century,
Gichin
Funakoshi (the father of modern
karate)
changed the name of the
kata to
Tekki (
鉄騎). This change was made by 1956 and was used
almost exclusively by
Shotokan karate
groups. However,
Shorin-Ryu martial
artists
retain the original name.
Funakoshi supposedly renamed the
kata Tekki
(Iron Horse) in reference to his teacher
Itosu.
It has also been suggested that
Funakoshi
renamed the
kata to reference to the
distinctive feature: the
horse-riding (
kiba-dachi)
stance. In fact, the
kanji used
to write
Tekki (
鉄騎) and
kiba
dachi (
騎馬立ち)
both employ the graphic for horse (ideograph with four legs).
|
Hanshi Finley, 7th dan, trains in kiba dachi at the University of Wyoming |
The three
kata can be powerful making use of close-fighting techniques using grappling,
footwork and handwork (
te sabaki). The side to side movement in
a horse-riding stance is designed for balance and strength and for body
shifting. When practicing these
kata,
focus on a deep stance keeping your knees pushed out to your sides to develop
leg muscles. In the early days of
karate,
it was common practice for a student to spend 2 to 3 years doing nothing but
Naihanchi under the strict observation
of their teacher.
At the Arizona
Hombu in Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona, students train in these
kata until they learn all of their
bunkai (self-defense applications) before moving on to another
kata. But during this training, they also learn many other martial arts including
kobudo,
jujutsu, various self-defense applications and
samurai arts to keep the students from getting bored. Not all Arizona martial arts schools teach
naifanchi kata but they are a very important part of the curriculum at Grandmaster Hausel's school in Gilbert, Mesa, Arizona, who taught martial arts for 3 decades at the University of Wyoming prior to moving to
Gilbert, Arizona.
|
Bunkai from Pinan Yodan and from Naihanchi Shodan practiced by Lexi and Janet at the Hombu Dojo |
|
Gavin and John practice bunkai from Naihanchi Sandan kata. |