Should we differentiate one form of karate and its bunkai from another, rename it perhaps? As an example: Sport Karate (Bunkai), Children’s Karate (Bunkai), Practical Karate (Bunkai)? (And probably more)….. Which box would your karate fit into?
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Personally, I really don’t like the modern sport karate bunkai, the type shown recently at the Olympics, very athletic, unrealistic, and unfortunately the most popular. For me, as martial artists, we should be students of reality.
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So why is unrealistic bunkai being taught in the first place?
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The answer is simple: Because the vast majority of karate is taught by instructors who don’t know what realistic bunkai is. And that’s because their instructors were never taught it….. and their instructors’ instructors were never taught it.
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, you have to contextualize your training. Practitioners and followers of the martial arts really need to know the difference between sport, karate for children, dojo sparring/fighting (with all its iterations) and pragmatic karate. Unfortunately there are literally thousands that just don’t understand the differences. Some don’t want to understand, they are fine with what they know.
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The original creators of each kata had their own applications. However, the transmission of that was incomplete and eventually faded away in pretty much all lineages of karate. No karate instructor today can definitively say what each technique in their kata was originally designed to do. However, we can hypothesize, reverse engineer, work it out for ourselves, if you really understand the principles being conveyed.
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So if we can work it out for ourselves why then is the majority of bunkai unrealistic?
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The bunkai that anyone comes up with on his/her own is just a reflection of their own knowledge. If all they have is an understanding of punching, kicking, and blocking, then that’s what they’re going to see in the movements of the kata. It’s that simple.
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And in my opinion, one of the biggest problems is practitioners seeing “uke” as a block. It is NOT. Take away the distance, move in to grappling range, don’t have a “dead hand” (utilize both hands, a guard has a dead hand), then have a look at what is presented to you.
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How many times do I still have to watch someone “block” a front kick with a “gedan barai”, being attacked in turn from different directions by two or more opponents? ….. What is wrong with you people? And you continue to defend it and show it as real?…… Come on please!
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This will continue until the student questions what he is being taught. This will happen as soon as he realizes “something isn’t right”. But in many dojo, it is taboo to question the instructor, and so, that student doesn’t always get that chance to question what he is taught. So he quits the dojo and now “sounds off” that karate is ineffective and doesn’t work.
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But as martial artists, and in my opinion, we should be students of reality, not fantasy.
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So tell us, which “box” are you in?