Kata and Gokui

In a recent posting on FaceBook Advincula Sensei provides some data he got from Shinsho (Tatsuo-san’s second son), i.e. “What is the most important thing to teach karate students?”

His answer was that karate had two parts. First part is show karate, i.e. he and his father understood that to draw in students you needed to put on a demo, i.e. where Tatsuo-san would drive a 16 penny nail through a plank and others would demo tameshiwari, etc. Second part was “kata and gokui, i.e. these two were to most important parts of karate training and practice. 

Show karate, said Shinsho, includes sport karat and tameshiwari. 

Where I question things is, “When you make a statement like ‘kata and gokui are the most important aspect of karate,’ you have to consider what they mean by making that statement.” How kata has gokui and what that gokui is may be the most important aspect of karate training and practice. Just accepting the statement without finding the essence and meaning of how these two come together into one wholehearted practice is important. In my view, how can you understand what you are doing without this knowledge.  

I have studied, my perspective, the gokui for years now. I took it beyond the obvious and made connections that would support such a statement. I actually believe that the gokui is the most important aspect of karate and kata is born of that aspect. When you think of the fundamental principles of martial systems, i.e., “theory principle and philosophy principle,” you get a sense of how the terse karate koan of the gokui can lead to support the practice, training and application of karate in life. Even the other two major principles of physiokinetics and technique come from theory and philosophy which are all reflected in the gokui as presented by Tatsuo-san (note: there are more than one interpretation of gokui in karate circles and this is just the one Isshinryu studies). 

I feel strongly, my feelings and sense of things, that the gokui is a key to lead us toward the fundamental principles of martial systems that also are about life, morality, humility, decency and many other traits that make for a whole holistic person. I feel this is important since that drives how you apply your training and practice in the real world. 

The gokui is also a koan that helps practitioners to reach a level of focus and awareness that allows us to separate the wheat from the chaff, i.e. where a practitioner could detect the rhetoric that drives commercialized martial arts to see the value of classical or traditional martial arts. 

The gokui is that key that leads us to the underlying connections and interconnections that unite the seemingly separate and different approaches to the martial arts. It is this teaching of the underlying factors that make all martial arts function and provides them the value I believe we all search out in our study of this physical and spiritual discipline. 

As I allude to in this post there are connections and interconnections that make the study of martial arts valuable and holistic. It is this teaching that leads us past the mere basics and provides guidance toward mastery, true master of martial arts. This is how gokui and kata lead toward a complete and wholehearted study of Isshinryu, Karate and all Martial Arts.