One of the trademarks of martial arts has become the kata, or form. This history, though general, covers the main influences.
Primitive Kata
From the depths of history comes the oppression of the Chinese and Japanese. In China, raiders came from the north to plunder outlying villages that the central government was either unable or unwilling to protect. In Japan, outlying islands like Okinawa and the Ryukya had weapons outlawed. In both cases the peoples had to defend themselves, but had nothing to do it with.
As primitive martial arts began to develop in these regions, it was found that the easiest way to pass along the techniques were through a series of movements where everything was compiled into sets that the students could learn. Open hand movements and other styles using farm tools cropped up, with instructors using forms to pass information along.
Uses Of Kata
Within time, other groups of people began to find kata useful. Disciples of the temples throughout Asia would find themselves sitting in uncomfortable positions for hours at a time, with their legs and backs becoming stiff. Movements that developed into forms were compiled to give the holy men a form of exercise. Many of these monks would travel, and would sometimes pick up a form of martial arts to defend themselves. Throughout history their temple forms became integrated into some martial arts.
Royalty often practiced martial arts as well. Royalty in many countries, including Korea and China, would often want certain elements to stand apart from the commonly practiced art that soldiers and martial arts masters would use. In order to create the noble rift, special sets of techniques and movements would be developed. Forms were created for the nobles to help express their connection to divinity. While good schools would often stamp out the addition of unnecessary, new techniques, many of the forms preserved themselves within schools.
It is suspected that other Chinese styles used developed forms to mimic their environment around them, including animals and certain elements of nature. It is a theory that by understanding imitations of nature, martial arts could become more natural and more pure.
Modern Forms
The “walking kata”, or modernized version of many of these movements, has been credited to a martial arts practitioner named Kenji Tomiki. He developed them in the early to mid 20th century for his Aikido classes. Working on them during World War II, he had his new ideas for the walking kata published in 1956.
Following his work, a man named Miyake Sensei took Tomiki’s work and refined it, using kata in schools all across Japan to help teach technique. This was just in time, because martial arts were seeing their integration into the United States culture, with ambassadors from all different schools coming to profit off of the populace.
 |
