New Kata Mysteries Explained

I mentioned last week that my sensei has started teaching me a new kata from a different style, but that it was very hard for me to find any information about it, due to some linguistic barriers. Fortunately, last night he started teaching me a second kata from the same style, with a much less ambiguously pronounced name, and that has led to some clarification.

First of all, the style these kata come from is Shito-ryu (not Shiteryu, as my ears thought the heard originally.) Wikipedia offers this rundown of the basic history of the style. It is another Okinawan style (as those with more karate knowledge can probably tell from the name) and the founder, Kenwa Mabuni, was a contemporary of Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan. Though most Okinawan styles are closely related, this article lists Shotokan’s close cousin Shorin-ryu as being the more direct ancestor of Shito-ryu. An interesting analysis of the combination of styles behind it:

Shito-ryu is a combination style, which attempts to unite the diverse roots of karate. On one hand, Shito-ryu has the physical strength and long powerful stances of Shuri-te derived styles, such as Shorin Ryu and Shotokan (松涛館), on the other hand Shito-ryu has circular and eight-directional movements, breathing power, hard and soft characteristics of Naha-te and Tomari-te (泊手) styles, such as Goju-ryu (剛柔流).

(Shorin-ryu was the style I practiced briefly while living in Japan. Unfortunately, I never learned any of their kata while I was there, because the sensei was more intent on having me relearn the basics, which, while interesting and understandable, was also quite frustrating, so I don’t have much to compare from personal experience.)

The kata names turn out to be Seiunchin (which sounds like “Sinshin” when run through Arabic-accented Anglicized Japanese, and is surprisingly not as far off as I feared), and Ni Pai Po. It was enlightening to see Goju-ryu listed as a main influence, (one of Mabuni’s first instructors was the founder of Goju-ryu,) because when searching for exemplars of the kata being performed on YouTube, it turned up a lot of Goju-ryu students as well as Shito-ryu.

Another interesting thing about searching for videos of other people performing the kata was how different each performance was. Not one person appeared to be performing the kata in the same way I have been taught, but they are also all performing it equally differently from each other. There is a huge amount of variation. By contrast, when looking at videos of Shotokan kata a few months ago, there appears to be a high level of uniformity. It is not unusual to hear our sensei correct students practicing for a tournament by saying, “No, we have to do it this way now, they’ve changed the standards again.” (I don’t know who “they” are, but they apparently take sadistic pleasure in switching rules back and forth every few months.) I’m not sure if this is because Shotokan has been caught up in the drive for uniformity as a prerequisite for Olympic inclusion, whereas Shito-ryu is not involved with that effort, or if it is because Shito-ryu is less commonly taught, or what.

It also appears, from the sources of the videos, that Shito-ryu may be more popular in South America, particularly Argentina. (Of course, this could also just be because the video posters are more enthusiastic there.) There is a guy who attends our karate school semi-regularly from Argentina, so I’ll have to try to remember to ask him the next time I see him.