A Quote by Gogen Yamaguchi
It is not the number of Kata you know, but the SUBSTANCE of the Kata you have acquired.
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The meaning of the directions in kata is not well understood, and frequently mistakes are made in the interpretation of kata movements. In extreme cases, it is sometimes heard that "this kata moves in 8 directions so it is designed for fighting 8 opponents" or some such nonsense.
In the past, it was expected that about three years were required to learn a single kata, and usually even an expert of considerable skill would only know three, or at most five, kata.
Once a kata has been learned, it must be practised repeatedly until it can be applied in an emergency, for knowledge of just the sequence of a kata in karate is useless.
A kata is not fixed or immoveable. Like water, it's ever changing and fits itself to the shape of the vessel containing it. However, kata are not some kind of beautiful competitive dance, but a grand martial art of self-defense - which determines life and death.
Even after many years, kata practice is never finished, for there is always something new to be learned about executing a movement.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that just because a kata begins to the left that the opponent is attacking from the left.
There are two kinds of magic. If you think of it like martial arts, there's sparring, where you are doing it with a partner, and the other is kata, where you're doing an exposition for the audience.
To practice kata is not to memorize an order. Find the katas that work for you, understand them, digest them & stick with them for life.
In karate, hitting, thrusting, and kicking are not the only methods, throwing techniques and pressure against joints are included … all these techniques should be studied referring to basic kata
Even in the forty years that I have been practicing Karate, the changes have been many. It would be interesting to be able to go back in time, to the point when the kata were created, and study them.
The techniques should not be practised simply so they can be performed in the kata. Since karate is a fighting art each technique and movement has its own meaning. The karateka must consider their meaning, how and why they are effective, and practise accordingly
There is no place in contemporary Karate-do for different schools. Some instructors, I know, claim to have invented new and unusual kata, and so they arrogate to themselves the right to be called founders of "schools". Indeed, I have heard myself and my colleagues referred to as the Shoto-kan school, but I strongly object to this attempt at classification. My belief is that all these "schools" should be amalgamated into one so that Karate-do may pursue and orderly and useful progress into man's future.
What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata, a physical expression of formae. Or at least have got close enough to explain all those legendary swordsmen and their inexplicable desire to roost on the tops of bamboo trees.
A student well versed in even one technique will naturally see corresponding points in other techniques. A upper level punch, a lower punch, a front punch and a reverse punch are all essentially the same. Looking over thirty-odd kata, he should be able to see that they are essentially variations on just a handful.
Hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The karate that high school students practice today is not the same karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago [this book was written in 1956], and it is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa.
How a man perceives substance dictates the amount of substance in a man. To know the depth of anyone's true substance, simply measure the weight of what consumes and excites their inner drive.
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