Karate Kata's Rosetta Stone

I'm a karate guy. For years I've been obsessed with kata, the dance like moves performed solo. I believe these "dances" are a teaching syllabus of striking, wrestling and joint locking technique and not an imaginary stand-up fight against four or more opponents, or something only to be performed for the sake of choreographed movement. I was convinced there was something beneath the surface, something hiding in plain sight.

Our understanding of kata today is similar to what the last guy understands of a message in the game of telephone. As each person receives the message it mutates, gets edited or embellished and is then passed on. After many repetitions, the message contains some bits of the original but also nonsense. This situation is fine if kata were only a performance dance, but no so good for teaching practical fighting applications or simply for historical accuracy.

If the phone message were in a foreign language, accurate message taking and transferring becomes nearly impossible. At best we can relay the shapes and sounds, but lose the meaning. Knowledge of foreign languages, or other martial arts, can help in the interpretation of the fragments that are knowable. In the past I've used my limited experience in Judo and joint locking to understand bits of kata. There is so much more to learn.

The learning of it won't come from frequent repetition. No, I needed something to break the code; something to unlock the frequent patterns of seemingly arbitrary movement found in many martial arts. I needed a Rosetta Stone of kata, a key to unlock its mysteries.

If there were such a key, the likeliest place to find it would be where the message originated: for arguments sake, China. In other words, by understanding White Crane Kung Fu and Taijiquan, for example, our understanding of kata is greatly improved. In the telephone game, this is like skipping all the middlemen and receiving the message directly from the source.

Click the title of this post for a link to what I believe to be a key to understanding kata. On my first viewing, it made sense of karate technique such as manji uke, morote uke, mawashi uke and mawashi uchi, zenkutsu dachi, nekko and kokotsu dachi and more. For your reading pleasure, I recommend Analysis of Shaolin Chin Na by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming.