[SKA-Student]

Tsutomu Ohshima über kata:

KKI: You translated - Funakoshi's Karate-do Kyohan and still teach only those kata found in the master text. What are your thoughts on people who make up their own kata? And have you ever made up your own. Ohshima: One guy invents one kata. After five or ten years' practice, his students, ten students, make ten kata. By the next generation, a person wants to study karate, and there are ten thousand kata. Which one is the authentic one? They have trouble. Imagine one teacher in the United States makes up one kata. There are maybe 100,000 karate teachers in America, so maybe 100,000 new kata come out. That's the worst situation I can imagine. Before Master Funakoshi went to Tokyo from Okinawa, he visited experts to learn their kata. He knew that the general public would ask how many kata he had learned. Maybe he learned 60 or 80 kata and maybe he did each kata 100 times or 200 times, but not that much. If he did each kata 100 times that's 6000 times. So with only one or two years' preparation, he couldn't do each kata - 1,000 times. After a certain age, he said it's ridiculous to memorize all these forms. He never told me this, I never asked him, but I know. When I came here in 1955, people would ask me , "How many kata do you know?" I'd say ,"maybe 25". They'd say, "Only 25, I know a man who knows 30 kata". They'd think that the guy who knows 30 kata is more an expert than the one that knows 25. I realized that the general public asks this kind of question - their mentality is variety, different kinds, the actual number. For the martial artist, it has to be completely opposite. We have to simplify, simplify, simplify. If you know 20, you have to make 10 kata better. If you know 10, you've got to cut to five, five kata that are really, really good. Even five kata are too many. Cut it to two. Each one performed 50000 times. Do them 100000 times, you realize that one kata is a little better than the other. Do the one that is better 50000 more times. When you reach 150000 or 200000 times, then I think that kata is yours. Kata is in that direction. It is not to memorize just numbers of kata or to create more kata after only a few years of experience. I'm very creative. I could make up my own kata, but why? So that I could make a demonstration and everyone would be clapping? No. Kata is completely the opposite of that. Kata is for your own spirit, your own maturity. If you digest the kata, then you become one. What does it mean to become one. Your unconscious and your conscious directly connect to your physical movements. If your unconscious and your concentrated mind move with your body, then idealistically this will take a long time. To become one with one complete kata is something you could really pride yourself on. You can say, "This is my karate, this is my kata." You can say, "I felt today that everything was one; now I know that no matter what kind of opponent I face, I can express my best, best energy." Karate is for that direction. Kata is for that. Everybody knows this. At least it used to be. I don't know right now. I invent a new kata to impress a bunch of people is not karate, it's being a Hollywood star.

das ganz interview ist hier: Tsutomu Ohshima Interview