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Before the modern way of teaching martial arts in classes with coloured belts, people would have just trained with whoever they could and learn whatever they could - naming the art was not important and it would probably have been named after the person who did it! After training for a while training became personal and the art was adapted to suit the practitioner. No grades were given and blackbelts did not exist! Martial arts have fractionated into seperate training methods each with a different name (karate, ju, aiki, nin and kobu to name the most commonly known ones).
With the arts each taking a different path and ideology to training and then each style within each art doing the same - many of the links between arts are difficult to see unless you start to dig deeper. It is not a surprise that people from other arts can see moves in Shotokan katas that are valid moves within their own arts but as Shotokan practitions do not know of them often miss the alternative uses for kata moves.
SKG were lucky enough to have an 8th Dan Aikido instructor run a course especially for them in 2004 - where ikkyo, nikyo, sankyo and other aikido techniques were introduced and practised. The ikkyo technique, if thought is given, is similar to the first move of Bassai Dai, the first kiai in Bassai Dai and the third move of Heian Shodan etc.
Each of the above Japanese martial arts originated as a "fighting style" (jitsu or jutsu) and has progressed over the years to become a "way" (do). This progression enabled easier teaching with safer techniques being able to be taught to more students and also younger students. The bolded entry is the most commonly practised today - some still have the jitsu art being more widely practised than the more modern 'safer' do art.
| Meaning | Way | Fighting style |
| Empty hand | Karatedo | karatejitsu |
| Gentle way | judo | jujitsu |
| Harmony | aikido | aikijitsu |
| Ninja | nindo | ninjitsu |
| Weapons | kobudo | kobujitsu |
| Drawing a sword | Iaido | Iaijitsu |
| Nunchaku | nunchakudo | nunchakujitsu |
| Jo staff | jodo | jojitsu |
| Tonfa | tonfado | tonfajitsu |
| Bo staff | bodo | bojitsu |
| Sword | kendo | kenjitsu |
| Please note that the last 5 arts in the list are also components of the kobu art | ||
As mentioned above, there are many styles of Japanese karate around today which are classed as "traditional", these mainly stem from common roots and similarities can be seen between techniques and katas (see the image below). The lines between the names are influence lines meaning that the person below either trained with the person above or classes them as their teacher. As you can see many karateka trained with several instructors, took what they wanted and combined it together to make their own style. A brief description of each style mentioned (red text) will follow using information from the web soon. There are more styles around than are listed here in this quick run-through and variations of each style exist depending on who taught that style. Some karateka have no style under their name, this is because they leave no style behind and trained in whatever they could for their own usage and passed this information down to their own students.
Training in martial arts will see students start at one end of the spectrum and move to the other end over time. There are both hard and soft aspects to Shotokan Karatedo and the progression is usally from soft to hard back to soft again. Looking through the Shotokan katas and picking the two opposite ends of the scale: Gankaku (Shorin - lighter, faster and flowing) and Hangetsu (Shorei - harder, slower and staccato) there is a wide range for students to pick from (More information on kata types is in the kata section). More experienced students can also perform middle-of-the-road kata in different ways - depending on what they want to practise.
As discussed in the tae sabaki (body evasion) section, it is more advantageous to 'avoid being hit' (soft) than 'take a hit to give a hit' (hard). Soft blocking is called keise blocking and uses tae sabaki to get out of the way and the soft block to keep the attacking limb in range (where a hard block would usually whack the limb out of distance) so that it can then be used for trapping / strangulation (of the limb) / locking / breaking / throwing etc.
The most common soft block is used in the jodan oi tsuki (stepping punch to the face) attack in kihon ippon kumite Advanced set (basic one step pairwork) where the defender side steps out of line and the 'blocking' arm is directed towards the punch, touches the arm en-route and then redirects the punch before it completes. Compare this to a common hard block where the 'blocking' arm is used to smash into the arm at almost completion - if done sufficiently hard enough the attacking limb will be diverted and the attacker spun. Both of these have different purposes and merits; the hard technique is useful for competitions and dojo training; to soft technique is more useful for self defense to subdue rather than injure your attacker - inflicting injury is likely to see you in court not them! There are exceptions to this and situation dictates what is used and when and with how much force - that is something that cannot be taught as black and white.
Founded in the 1920s by Gichin Funakoshi, Shotokan is the oldest of the traditional styles of karatedo widely practised today. Funakoshi was known under the alias of 'Shoto' when writing and when a training hall was built in his honour it was called the Shotokan (Shoto's Hall). Funakoshi took Okinawan karate from Yasutsune Azato and Yasutsune Itosu and converted it into a style for teaching in Japan, during this process he changed the meaning of the word karate from chinese-hand to empty-hand (this is not a noticable change when viewed in English version of the kanji lettering called Romanji, but the first of the two charactors was changed when viewed in the Japanese kanji writing) and several kata names were changed (Pinnan to Heian, Passai to Bassai etc). High kicking was added to Shotokan by Funakoshi's son (Gigo) as most kicking before that was done to the legs and not above the waist. The 5 Heian kata were created for teaching high school children by Itosu, allegedy, from the Channan kata (see book: Channan, the heart of the Heians by Elmar T Schmeisser for these kata) but with the dangerous moves removed and similar moves from Kanku Dai added in to make them safer for widespread teaching. Using the basic set of kata with modified names and adding new ones, several developed by Itosu (Tekki Nidan and Sandan for example), modern Shotokan has more kata than most other Japanese styles.
Founded in the 1938 by Hironori Ohtsuka, a student of Master Gichin Funakoshi (above), Wado Ryu is a mixture of old Shotokan and Ju Jitsu, using the original version of the Shotokan katas, complete with original names, with emphasis on close quarter techniques and tae sabaki (body evasion, explained more here).