History of Karate Kata

You walk into a karate school for the first time in your life. You’ve called the instructor ahead of time and asked if visitors are welcome. His response is visitors are encouraged and that they're having an advanced class that night and you are welcome to come in and set on the side and observe. What luck! Not only are you going to see some action but delivered by advanced students so the techniques should be varied and plentiful. The class bows in and the instructor pulls a chair to the side of the ring and calls out a name the first student a brown belt with two stripes on his belt walks into the center of the ring and assumes a stance. The instructor says simply Hein Five. With that the student bows, gives his name, and states that the name of his Kata is Hein Five. Then much to your surprise and disappointment begins to dance by him self across the floor only to end up at the exact same place from which he started.

The instructor offers the student critique as you wonder to yourself “What the heck was that all about. I’m not paying forty-five dollars a month to dance with myself I do that for free now. I want to kick, and punch, and in general learn to kick butt.” You consider leaving, but shucks, you're already there so you decide to stick around and watch. One student after another is called up and assigned a dance of one name or another. You think it’s pretty, but pointless. Some of the movements look interesting though, so once a break is called you go up and ask the instructor what in the heck is going on.

The origins of martial arts are lost in the antiquities of time but it’s generally agreed that primitive man out of a sense of self-preservation originated martial arts. What art came from where has been a subject of much discussion by many learned scholars?

Where the original martial art originated from may remain a mystery forever but what is recorded is the fact that about fourteen hundred years ago the founder of Zen Buddhism left India and traveled alone to China to present lectures on Buddhism. A trip of several thousand miles in times where bandits where plentiful, forest were wild, the terrain was rough, and the people needed protection from the wild life instead of the other way around.

Daruma (Bodhidharma) eventually ended up at a Shao-lin Temple in Hunan Province lecturing on Buddhism. It’s said that “a great multitude of followers fell from exhaustion from the harshness of his training.” Daruma set forth a method by which the priests were able to develop their strength both physical and spiritual so that they could finish their training. This method came to be called Shorin-Ji Kempo. This system eventually found it’s way to the Ryukya Islands 300 miles south of China, 300 nautical miles North of Taiwan, and 400 nautical miles east of China, and developed into Okinawa-te and this developed into Karate.

About five hundred years ago a national policy came about under which possession of any and all weapons by the people of Okinawa were forbidden. Then about two hundred years later weapons on the Ryukyu Islands had been confiscated by the government when the islands came under the scrutiny of the Satsuma Clan of Japan. Since the people weren’t allowed traditional weapons with which to defend themselves they had to use improvised weapons made from common farm implements, refine the art of unarmed combat, and train in secret.

In those bygone days when bandits roamed the countryside armed with sword and staff, and the nobility had the right to maim and kill at their slightest whim Karate was not a sport were the loser went home. It was life or death with no time or room for hesitation or doubt. The movements had to be automatic, precise, and lethal.

Kata is one of the training tools that the Karataka used to condition there sub concise for instant response to attacks. Kata contains in them stances, blocks, strikes and combinations of techniques that must be used with out the slightest hesitation in order to insure your survival. Mind and body must be one when you have a sword that can shatter wooden armor sweeping toward your neck, welded by a man trained from childhood in the arts of war.

In that day and age the peasant worked from can see to can’t see with little rest, and small profit due to the fact that their masters demanded their pound of flesh. This didn’t promote the ideal musculature required for fast responses and attacks need by the karate practitioner of that time. Loose muscles respond faster than due tight muscles so in order to stretch their body out kata was an ideal aerobic workout allowing them to move faster and respond more readily and to improve their balance.

When one trains in secret one does not always have a training partner. You can’t just get four or five friends together for a few hours of round robin sparing on any given evening so to keep their reflexes sharp they use kata to maintain their combat skills, and to make their fighting smoother, and more fluid.

In today’s time kata serves all of these purpose and more. Kata helps us to maintain a sense of origins of our art. Kata helps us to focus our minds, and relieve stress. Kata strengthens our bodies and minds into a single unit able to accomplish more together than apart. This synergy is the secret that most non-karate practitioners can never hope to understand or defeat.

Karate is more than a fighting style, more than an art, it’s a way of life and kata allows us a chance to understand what the original masters of our art meant and were trying to convey to us their descedants.