Russ,
I would argue that in fact, if the whole point of koryu kata is to prepare an individual for combat in which there is a high probability of losing one's life, any attempt to reconstruct an old kata that does not have some understanding of this experience would be lacking something "vital."
As we all know, the reason koryu kata are supposedly effective vehicles for teaching combative arts is because they are the results of continuous feedback from actual combat. Now I just don't understand how anybody who has never seen any form of combat could conceivably RECREATE/and or reconstruct lost kata? Grappling forms might be slightly easier because you can actually test these, maintain feedback, etc. But a sword kata? Has anyone here ever been in a real sword fight? So how are you possibly going to re-create an old form that was originally designed, presumably, by someone who engaged in not just one, but many sword fights? I suppose you could try simply based on the principles of the previous forms. But that would still lack, I presume, the true vitality of the original form.
This is where some form, ANY form, of real combative experience would at least provide guidance to someone trying to recreate lost kata, since they would at least have an understanding of the neuro-psychological stress reactions, the stress on motor activity, and some understanding of combative bio-mechanics. This would be valuable even if they only understood this on some intuitive level, e.g., this posture doesn't feel right, etc.
That being said, the entire translation from combat experience, to kata, and back to combat experience is so intuitively remarkable that I constantly find myself amazed by the warriors who created this stuff.
Best regards,
Arman Partamian