We do have Kobudo to look at as a primarily Okinawan art. Although some of these forms have been made recently, the law of supply and demand. I have a pretty old nunchaku book that states there were no traditional nunchaku kata. Now you can find plenty. Most of Uechi's forms only trace back 50 years.
I think men like Kanbun found themselves in a rapidly modernizing world in Japan and sought to keep the kata as they had learned it; as if holding onto the past.
Tiger, Dragon, Crane, ? !
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- f.Channell
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Could be Fred, but I wonder if moving into Japanese society and it's social structure had something to do with the kata getting formalized. After all how do you determine someone's place in the dojo without a method for judging them? Kata seems to be one of those methods of measurement.
I was dreaming of the past...
- f.Channell
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Hi Mike,
Social structure wise It appears they were at the bottom in Wakayama when Kanbun began teaching. This is not surprising as immigrants of a somewhat recently conquered island. I know in Iaido you line up by rank but also by time in grade, or who began training first. There is nothing I've read that contradicts Kanbun rarely if ever did kata in their entirety. I think we have to assume Kanei began emphasizing the practice of doing full kata. This may correspond to the movement from Karate-Jutsu to Karate-do, and getting it accepted into Japanese society and the Japanese budo world.
I think this is fine in that it has served to preserve many arts that would otherwise have been lost such as Kenjutsu and Jiu-jitsu. Not to mention other Do's such as the non martial-tea ceremony, etc...
F.
Social structure wise It appears they were at the bottom in Wakayama when Kanbun began teaching. This is not surprising as immigrants of a somewhat recently conquered island. I know in Iaido you line up by rank but also by time in grade, or who began training first. There is nothing I've read that contradicts Kanbun rarely if ever did kata in their entirety. I think we have to assume Kanei began emphasizing the practice of doing full kata. This may correspond to the movement from Karate-Jutsu to Karate-do, and getting it accepted into Japanese society and the Japanese budo world.
I think this is fine in that it has served to preserve many arts that would otherwise have been lost such as Kenjutsu and Jiu-jitsu. Not to mention other Do's such as the non martial-tea ceremony, etc...
F.
Sans Peur Ne Obliviscaris
www.hinghamkarate.com
www.hinghamkarate.com