Ladies Kata (encore)

Since I have been asked by a few folks to elaborate on my last post, i hope this is what you all were looking for.

Grand Master Kenwa Mabuni, the founder of Shito-ryu karate was your typical legendary karate person.  He was small, I think they said 4' 11"....and as many Okinawans were in those days, he was frail. He bagn training when he was around 13. 

In his teaching of martial arts, he was consumed with making the arts available to everyone.  He and Yasuhiro Konishi (another karate master) decided to collaborate on kata for the ladies, trying to ensure that the arts fit the students, (one of my favorite concepts) instead of the other way around.  So, he and Konishi went to O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, the Grand Master of Aikido for additional advice and teaching concepts. So you can imagine the discussions those three giants of the martial arts had.

The katas reflect the intense work and the great knowledge that went into them.  You'll notice they are relatively short, taking about 45 seconds to perform, both for Aoyagi (also spelled Aoyanagi, and also called Seiryu) and Myojo. The shorter the kata, the easier to remember. Even the names reflect their content: Aoyagi/Seiryu means "Green Willow" and Myojo, means "Bright Star." (The difference between Aoyagi and Seiryu names has to do with whether the speaker is using On-Yomi (Chinese Reading) or Kun-Yomi (Japanese reading) which are the two ways to read any Japanese Kanji (character). Don't sweat that part of things, its stuff that is only of interest to language teachers and nerds like me.

The techniques are meant to NOT rely on too much physical strength.  Not that ladies cannot be strong, we know they are, but that pitting strength against strength is not wise, nor does it conform to the 5 elements theory, or to Yin/Yang or to other Oriental philosophies. "When the wind blows, the oak tree stands strong and is blown down.  The bamboo sways and stays upright."

The opening movements, with the hands crossed high on the body and then moving down to the lower body, are protective moves (as you might have figured out already. ) They are also about modesty and decorum. And they allow you to take a deep breath before you move further into the action of the kata.

Most of the blocks are parries or cams, sort of like in Escrima.  You aren't trying to stop an attack or break a limb as with most hard blocks, but rather trying to deflect and keep the attacker's momentum going. Then you can direct an elbow or single knuckle into a soft spot or a pressure point. So most of the strikes are done with the elbows and with single knuckle punches, which don't need hard conditioning to be effective.  Remember, we hit strong things, like the skull, with soft things, like a palm slap.  We hit soft things, like pressure points with hard things, like elbows, single-knuckles, and our heels.

Even the "high block", or the empi age uke, isn't a block; it’s a forearm strike to the throat.  And if you do it from the side, you have a good chance of hitting pressure points like stomach 9, for a knockout.