Kata Is A Grammar, Not A Script

"Kata teaches you the what.  Drills teach you the when." ~ Iain Abernethy

Over the last few decades, there has been a split in the martial arts community centered around kata.  In one camp, there are some who study "reality-based" systems, such as Krav Maga, and also some who study Brazilian Jujitsu, MMA, etc., who claim that kata is useless for one reason or another.  In the other camp, are those that have begun to study the kata from a more practical self-defense oriented mindset, who claim that kata are like a template that recorded the techniques of an art in an age when most people could not read or write. I am decidedly in the second camp, for reasons I will outline below.

The most common critique of kata that I have personally heard centers around the misconception that kata is a script.  This misconception claims that no one ever responds to attacks and defenses the way that the "script" of a kata runs, so the movements chained together in the sequence in which they are in the various kata are highly unlikely to play out that way. Some of this misconception comes, firstly, from a misunderstanding of what exactly are the techniques in a kata. This misunderstanding has been caused in most part by a particular era of karate practitioners themselves, either because they did not pass on the true interpretations of a technique or because they themselves did not know the true interpretation to even be able to pass it on.

Some of this misunderstanding comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of karate and of the kata of karate.  The techniques recorded in traditional karate kata are not primarily meant to be used in "unarmed duels" or in "kendo matches with bare hands".  They are meant to be used by civilians, in a civilian context, against an unlawful, sudden, and violent attack or imminent attack.

HAPV-Theory:

Patrick McCarthy, founder of Koryu Uchinadi, created the above list after analyzing crime statistics.  These are the 36 most common physical attacks experienced in a violent encounter.  When looking at the kata of traditional styles of karate, kata researchers have discovered over the years that the techniques recorded in the kata are effective methods for dealing with these attacks, and effectively countering them.  It would seem, then, that human nature has not changed much over the centuries, nor have the typical ways in which violence tends to play out between human beings.  The most common differences seem to be specialized techniques in the kata (which are few) that take advantage of some peculiarity of grooming or clothing from by gone eras, such as topknots.  With a little tweaking, even those techniques can be made effective and practical today.

There is no hard and fast rule about how any technique must be interpreted.  Nor is there any rule about how many times a technique must be performed in a Real Fight®.  It only matters if you can pull off the technique against active resistance and most especially in a violent altercation. Just because the kata records the technique being done once, does not mean you can't use it against the attacker more than once.  Just because the kata records the technique being done on the right side doesn't mean you can't perform it on the left, etc., though it might mean that the creators of the kata might have thought that such a technique would probably be most useful to a right handed person against a right handed person (the most common scenario even today) when performed the way it is in the kata.  Sometimes, the techniques are not meant to be done one after another, but are instead alternatives, i.e. do the first technique and then you can choose to do either the second technique *or* the third, etc.

Kata are dictionaries, templates.  They record the techniques and essence of a style, but it is bunkai (analysis) that unlock those techniques, becoming the oyo (applications) that will save your life and that of your loved ones.