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Jujutsu Kata
By Rory A. Miller

"Kata is to be done in an air of distrust." -Shuzuk Shitama, 16th dai-shihan of Sosuishitsu-ryu.



From the moment of bowing in for kata, you and your partner are professional warriors whose only goal is to kill one another. You must have that mindset to properly execute or understand the kata. In some instances, uke will approach as a friend to get close enough for an assassination; in others tori will kill uke with no warning. In either case, the underlying attitude is that of a professional.



When you begin the kata, learn the moves. As uke, you must learn the attacks properly. They must be executed so well that if tori fails to respond he will be severely injured. This is the only way for tori to develop the proper timing, distance and mindset for a real encounter. Also as uke, you must carefully learn the ukemi for the specific kata. Several of the falls are counter-intuitive in that someone who is trained to fall will attempt to slap out with the controlled arm or dislocate an extra joint in rolling.



After getting a basic understanding of the moves and developing skill, you will progress fastest with a partner who you trust. You must trust him to kill you. Literally. In order to develop the timing and mindset, you have to be absolutely sure that your uke will not attempt to pull the blow or in anyway change his attack to prevent harm to you. Once you are absolutely sure that he will drive the boken (or shinto, later) through your skull, you begin truly learning.



Timing is critical. Not the sequence or rhythm of the moves, especially, but the waiting. Tori must wait until uke is fully committed to the attack. Tori must wait in absolute stillness until it is nearly too late and then move explosively and decisively. In this way, tori learns how much time there is in a heartbeat, and something of how to control his own perception of time.



Uke dedicates himself to the pre-arranged attack of kata, but if he detects the slightest mis-timing in tori, uke immediately alters the attack to take advantage of the opening created.



Zanshen must be maintained. Throughout the kata and afterwards, both tori and uke maintain the expanded awareness and the definitive presence of a veteran warrior facing combat. When the kata is completed and uke is neutralized, tori retains the relaxed awareness. It is a constant reminder that one seemingly defeated opponent is not the battle, that things may not be over when the seem to be.

This is general advice about how we do our kata.

Rory A. Miller is a Corrections Officer who resides in Portland, Oregon. He is a training officer with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and is ranked in Sosuishitsu-ryu Jujutsu and Ju

KATA EVERYWHERE
Amazing, isn´t it?

We learn Kata at school…with the writting exercises, with the caligraphy routines, with mathematics repeating again and again the same operations to interiorize the mecanisms and, after years and years, use them in real life without even noticing how we use them. Those automatic responses are the result of years of scholarship routines, but we don´t call them Kata. And we don´t use Shu Ha Ri to call the path we follow to become “automatic” with our responses.

People look at the Kata from the Okinawan perspective, and I´m using a general interpretation for those who are not involved in Martial Arts training of Traditional Japanese or Asian Fighting disciplines, maybe because the word Kata was used in a louder voice and due to the raising popularity of Karate when arrived to the “western part” of the world. Still today people look at the kata as “fighting with the wind,” but the truth is that MMA fighters, Brazilian Ju Jutsu practitioners and even those who claim that their arts got “no kata” to study with are wrong. They use Kata but they call it “training routines”.

Look to the boxers; a good friend of mine trained in Boxing for 6 years, we met a couple of times, drank a few beers and started a little debate about how training were in our Arts. He claimed that Kara are too rigid and unrealistic in the Art I was studying, that there wasn´t Kata in Boxing so everything was more flexible and “real”. So a question popped in our debate: “What do you call all those routines you´ve got with your trainer about: one, two, jab, uppercut, dodge…and so on?” I asked. He went silent for a moment. His silence was the best reply to my question. He just realized that those pre-arranged sets of exercises were, in fact, a Kata. Both goals are the same, interiorize principles, then adapt those principles and “routines” to your body, mind and capabilities to, after dedicating a period of time to the discipline you are studying/practising/training, be able to “express” yourself spontaneously with the execution.

But the same debate is still going on in our time; people are still looking to the Kata with a “single minded perspective”, specially some people who claims that they are no “form” or Kata in their combat disciplines or modern form of Budo. Kata is everywhere, is a fact…Chefs got “kata” for teaching recipes to their assistants at the restaurant´s kitchens, soldiers at their different aspects of their training, teachers and students at school, lawyers when preparing a trial, but we don´t call them Kata, we use other words.

Don´t get me wrong please, I´m just trying to illustrate a reality for those who argue about the Kata, or pre-arranged form, for being useless, being rigid and without any kind of flexibility or a little spot to express creativity…again, look at our writting. We learned first a mechanic way to develop confidence and a good control of the muscles in our hand and wrist, making improvements slowly to achieve a level of proficiency (and when we reach it) we are not grabbing the pencil/pen as if we were holding a stone, then when we are at, for example 6th grade, our writting skills are much better so the teacher pays attention to other aspects of the “writting expression” as grammar, punctuation and proper use of the words. This is how Kata work in our training in Martial Arts and for all kind of activities; it doesn´t matter if they are in the “Martial/sport” world or outside those boundaries. Some people dismiss kata because they said that is too confining or old fashioned, or because their concept or interpretation of what Kata means is “too rigid and confining”.

Maybe, maybe not…but Kata is here, there and everywhere. You can run but not escape, sooner or later you´ll be using a “pre-arranged form” for something and, then, you´ll be using Kata.

Sincerely,

Oscar Recio