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View Full Version : KATA: Wankan (aka Okan)



Doug Daulton
31st December 2000, 17:56
This thread is dedicated to the research and study of the theoretical and practical applications of the kata Wankan (aka Okan) in its various derivations throughout the Okinawan karate ryuha.

Discussion of Japanese and Western interpretations of this kata are welcome as are discussions of the influence of Chinese martial arts on the origin/development of this kata. Practitioners of all levels and backgrounds are welcome to post. Though the free sharing of ideas, perhaps we can all learn a bit more about the kata.

Please avoid statements like "My teacher, XYZ Sensei, knew the one, true Kata X ... all else is bunk." or the Saturday cinema classic "My kungfu is better than yours". Even if you are right .. it is rude and most likely something your teacher would rather you did not say anyway. All E-budo rules apply.

Enjoy! :D

kusanku
31st December 2000, 23:21
Formerly and maybe yet , my favorite kata.

Without going into long detil on this one, an entire sytem of fighting can be derived from this kata, and make no mistake this is a fighting kata.

Not a training form, not a self defense form, this one is , like some others, for when the rubber meets the road.

All the rally essentil waza of shorin ryu are honed in this kata and utilized as in real combat.


Called King's Crown, after some moves near the beginning of the kata, the form may descend from a Chinese chin na and point strike form called 'Eighteen Hands to catch the King."

Kusanku
Kusanku

Tobey
30th January 2001, 22:26
Greetings,

I am new here to e-budo but this thread caught my eye. It looks like it is dead but I was wondering if anyone has any historical connection between the kata Wankan as done in Shotokan and the kata Wankan as done in say Matsubayashi-ryu (known as Matsukazi by the Shito-ryu schools).

Thanks,

Tobey C. Reed
Yudansha, Karatedo
Massachusetts, USA

kusanku
31st January 2001, 00:33
Shito Matsukaze is related to Wankan Matsubayashi, but the Shoto Wankan is very different indeed.

There is a Chinese form called eighteen hands to catch the king, a chin na laden form, similar to wankan, may be the ancestor of all wankan forms, though it is considerably different.May not be, too.

That's all I got on this one.
Kusanku

Tobey
31st January 2001, 02:58
Mr. Vengel,

Thank you for your prompt reply. When you mention this Chinese form and say it is similar to Wankan do you mean Shotokan Wankan or Matsubayashi Shorinryu Wankan? I know it is confusing.

Also what is your reference for this Chinese form? What system practices it etc.

Thank you for your time.

yours,

Tobey C. Reed
Yudansha, Karatedo
Massachusetts, USA

kusanku
1st February 2001, 11:01
I mean it is different from both of them, but maybe closer to matsubayashi.

Reference is from a Chinese book on forms, as printed on what is now the Cyber-Kwoon.

Its an authentic Shaolin form, northern I believe, luohan Ch'uan possibly.

Like I said that's all I got.

I think the Shotokan form is messed up some, but I don't know the original it came from.

Many of the later added forms in Shotokan are screwed up, including wankan, chinte, unsu,and sochin, the people who added them were college performers after WW11, as far as we know.

The Shotokan people will themselves tell you this, I am one of those who has been helping them research combat apps for the katas, and the history of some of those katas is a source of amusement within the Shoto Community..

For instance the sho and dai in Shotokan katas is reversed from the Okinawan ones.Some of how this happened is really funny.

Japanese nationals being telecast on TV in the Fifties, mind you, and oe of the big guns finishes Gojushiho Dai and hollers 'Sho!' From that point on, the kata names were reversed to save face.True story, either that way or vice versa.

Lot of that type thing happened. Some of the Shoto guys went to learn some Shito kata, drank some sake, and did them a few times, later forgot exactly how they went and reconstructed them so completely that there is only about one move the same in Shotokan Unsu with Shito ryu Unshu.Sochin is totally different, Chintei is almost the same as Chinte, but one of the Shoto guys wound up too far forward and did three backward hops to return to centerof embusen, now those hops are in the Shoto version but good. In Shito, you step back into neko ashi dachi and return to center.I think two steps.

And there are at least three shotokan versions of jiin.

This information was given me, not secretly but on public forums, by high ranking mostly American Shotokaners who studied in Japan.

Wankan? Who knows? They have the signature move same but little else.My bet? Messed up.

Okinawan versions are all very close, even the shito ryu Matsukaze is close.

Does it come from China, maybe that form I found? No one knows. You'll hear that a lot if people are honest. No one knows.

Nagmine called wankan a dateless kata from Tomari Vilage.Who taught it first? No one knows.

Sorry I can't give you better answers. No one else can either.

Kusanku

Ken Allgeier
8th February 2001, 04:49
To Quote ---

" think the Shotokan form is messed up some, but I don't know the original it came from.

Many of the later added forms in Shotokan are screwed up, including wankan, chinte, unsu,and sochin, the people who added them were college performers after WW11, as far as we know. "


John, If you read Randall Hassell book " Conversation with the Master" i.e Masatoshi Nakayama.The late Nakayama Sensei,states that he and Gigo Funakoshi went to Kenwa Mabuni ( Shito Ryu) before WW2, to learn the follwing kata,

Bassai/Passai & Kanku/Kusanku Sho
Sochin
Unsu
Nijushiho
Chinte
Wankan
Gojushiho Dai & Sho

If you watch the video of the films taken from the 1930's of Gichin Funakoshi's students/Shotokan, you can see such kata's as Nijushiho,Bassai Sho,Kanku Sho being preformed.

It was Hirokazu Kanazawa, of the S.K.I that reversed the order of Gojushiho Dai & Sho as it was set in the J.K.A. I have a copy of the Book " Karate-do Taikan" published in 1938 ( mine is a reprint of the original) by Genwa Nakasone,inwhich , Kenwa Mabuni demonstrats the Argaki Sochin kata ,which is radicaly different from the Sochin that was created by Gigo Funakoshi.Why I do not know,I believe that Gigo Funakoshi may have learned the orignal kata from Mubani Sensei , then added his own ideas to create his own kata?To say that a group of Shotokan students learned some kata, and then got drunk and forgot how the kata's went,is a bit of hyperbole.





ken



P.S or is their a photo of Gigo Funakoshi & Masatoshi Nakayama getting drunk on sake !

[Edited by Ken Allgeier on 02-08-2001 at 04:32 PM]

kusanku
13th February 2001, 03:16
Actully Ken, the story I heard went that way. Whatever happened, the sochi and Unsu got really messed up, as for the Chinte hops, the don't exist in Chintei, the Shito Version, and so on. I suspect that however long the training on those kata was, it wasn't long enough.

The Wankan is nothig like the Okinawan versions, and while the Gojushiho and Nijushiho is pretty good indicating a longer training time, the Bassai Sho is a kind og=f messed up leaning over version f the Okiawna Bassai Dai, including the so called stick block which in Okinawan versions, is hands upraight and slanted in in a pyramid or like that.

A Shito Ryu Fifth Dan told me about the sake session.

As for the sho and dai reversal in Gojushiho, I had some information as to that, it may have been incorrect, I will however check on that.

Point is somehow some katas and some kata maneuvers got messed up.
Regards.

In like manner, there is not a single version of Jiin in JKAShotokan, there are about three.All regarded as correct.

John

Ken Allgeier
18th February 2001, 04:21
John,


In both Keinosuke Enoeda and Hirokazu Kanazawa books the kata Jiin are preformed the same.I agree that the 3 hops a the end of Chinte , do not make any sense and were never in the Shito Ryu version ( which i have on tape).I have read the Harry Cook interview and agree with his assessments of the end of Chinto.But I do not fully understand by what you mean by " messed up,,,, kata" can you please articulate that phrase.




ken allgeier

kusanku
20th February 2001, 23:06
Ken-

You want me to elaborate on the term 'messed up kata' as regards some, not all, Shotokan forms.

What I am actually referring to is where the form of the technique, or the order, or the sequence, , has been changed in some significant way without regard to combat applications.

This often occurred post-Funakoshi and post war,and was either a result of gradual change caused by doing kata for referees in tournaments( movements made bigger, tilted so they could be seen, and so on),and by making some of the movements athletic unnecessarily.

Eaxamples- the side kicks in Nijushiho are originally( I mean originally in Shotokan) knee lifts, as shown by fifties kata film.

Supposedly Yahara put the jump in Unsu, originally that wasn't there.

Stances got deeper than Funakoshi ever did them, and wider, in the late fifties.

More changes occurred in the Seventies, by the time of Best Karate.

The problem was, most if not all the peole doing the changes have admitted they did not know what the moves they were changing, in the kata, were for.

Therefore the changes were aesthetic or athletic but not functional.

As one who practiced Shotokan kata since 73 and Okinawan kata since 72, I can speak on the differences between Okinawan forms and Shotokan pretty well.While Okinawan kat also have jumps, spins and training techniques( high front kicks done where low ones would be used), these functions are known.

When a variant kata is done, the application of it is taken into account.

It is generally understood by those investigating this area, that Funakoshi and his prewar students particularly pre 1935 ones, did know the applications of the kata.They however, were not the ones who made the biggest changes, those were done afterwards.

What then I refer to as messed up kata are those kata of Shotokan, which have had the combat apps sometimes taken out and possibly unknowingly, or either which have been lessemened in their effectiveness by being altered past the oint of maximum efficiency, for the sake of aesthetics, athletic difficulty( increasing) or power enhancement.

Now, Shotokan has an extremely simple and effective system of power delivery, and the basics, and the kunite, have been refined to an degree unsurpassed by anyone and matched by few indeed.

But the fact is, the kata have managed to be totally marginalized except as tournament play,to the extent that they could be left out of the instruction and a person could still be a world class tournament player.Except in kata of course.:-)

In the okinawan systems, the kata are at the center of training.Used to be in Shotokan as well.

Now this isn't to say that there are not bunkai taught in Shotokan, of course there are. But some of the ones taught for the more advanced forms, which have in some cases been messed with, are of course, not too realistic.

For instance, the sankaku tobi maikyo jump.Oh, come on, what the heck is that?

The original move is a triangular step that becomes a triangular jumpp to avoid mutiple opponent's attacks and wind up behind them, but the meikyo version has been changed totally from the original rohai kata.

Unsu has been changed from the original unshu , where that jump is in Shotokan, used to be a step through iron broom footsweep takedown.The one is a hip breaking hop, with no combat application, the other is a sweeping takedown that almost cannot be stopped after lock on.

The hangetsu dachi has been changed from an outer tension wide sanchin stance,to an inner tension knee stresser.

The sanchin stance has been similarly treated.

The original teiji and renoji dachi and cat stace, has been made into a kokutsu dachi, style wide, almost, which limits mobility and changes applications everywhere.

The zenkutsuhas been widened, and t and the kiba dachi, have straightened the front feet, taking away groin and knee protection.

The lengthening and widening of stances copared to the Okinawan originals has vitiated much of the Okinawa Ti footwork, both tai and ashi sabaki,and left ony a little suri ashi and a lot of move in and smash stuff, in other words, tournament style Shotokan , Freight Train Ryu.Mostly straight down the pipe and proud of it.:D

This is great if you are stronger, faster and weigh more than your opponent, are five times better than him/her , or dont mind taking pain to give some back.

But it leaves kata sitting on the sidelines with its unexplained angles of attck/defense and weird hand and body and leg maneuvers.

And it leaves the old style of karate technique which depended on technique, timing,and application, virtually unexplored until relatively recently.

I'm not saying one has to turn Shotokan back into Shorin ryu, but it wouldn't hurt to learn or relearn some of the principles of the older stuff, and some of those kata do need worked on to make them effective once more.

Some think Funakoshi deliberately taught certain techniques so an Okinawan karateman could always take out a Japanese stylist.

Kokutsu dachi is a case in point. Though no Shoto-ka use it in sparring anymore,( why not, do you suppose?),they used to,and many Taekwodoists and others do.All you have to do is cross step in and kick that back leg straight back, and Phump! Down they go.

Not so with a cat stance, they can move away when you try it.

Wide front stance opens the groin right up.Front facing fudo also does.

Too low a stance limits mobility.Increases power in technique, though.

Too much reliance on hip rotation makes for power allright, but makes the arc of a techniques larger and thus slower.

lOWERED HIP LEVEL HIKITE IS GREAT FOR POWER IN CHUDAN OIZUKI AND GYAKUTSUKI, NOT SO GOOD AGAINST A LEFT OR RIGHT HOOK.
(Big hole, so capitals for emphasis.)

Shotokan vs. Boxing, hands only, what happens?

Shorin ryu , for instance , is faster than boxing.Done by the same person I mean, skilled in both. Shotokan slower than boxing and shorin ryu.

That doesn't mean a shorin ryu fighter can always take a pro boxer or a Shotokan player, but it does mean they will move faster doing it that they will doing the other two.

In self defense, speed is life.

Shotokan taught as PE and sports, in Japan, allowed these changes to happen, earlier in Okinawa, school system under Itosu began these changes.

So, when I say messed up or messed with kata, this is what I mean, purely from the applications standpoint.

Regards,Kusanku