This Guest Post is by my good friend, Sensei Angel Lemus, of the Zentokukai Okinawa Shorinryu Toude Association. Angel is the creator of One Minute Bunkai. The URL is oneminutebunkai.com. He and I are members of the Hawaii Karate Kenkyukai.
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Karate is Not Jujitsu
When I teach bunkai and see others practicing I have noticed one thing, it
has to do with working bunkai, analyzing it, and the partner work which is a lot
of fun but I think it is too easy for us (everyone in general) to forget one big
really really important point: Karate is not Jujitsu.
Applications involve many things like tearing, breaking, locking,
scissoring, blood/oxygen denial, and all this requires grabbing, holding and
controlling, and all of it looks sort of like Jujitsu, not because Karate is
imitating Jujitsu but because all "real" martial arts, Karate included, contain
the same kinds of principles and applications.
So one can say that Karate is like Jujitsu, but one cannot say that Jujitsu
is like Karate which brings me to my original point -- Karate is a highly evolved
martial art containing grappling and controlling techniques, but what makes it
unique is its Atemi striking aspects which are second to none. Karate masters of
old for whatever reasons decided to focus on the thrusting (punching) and
striking which evolved into many ways of using your fists and hands turning them
into all kinds of destructive strikes. They devised the Okinawan Makiwara and
became incredible hitting machines delivering destructive
punches/strikes.
So when I see people working bunkai that starts off with a strike, and I
see the "uke" (the person receiving the technique) resisting or trying to
counterattack the grapple (later on), I tell myself that person does not "get
it", he would not have the opportunity to be resisting because he should have
been already knocked out unconscious, or his arm would be totally incapacitated,
or his lower abdomen would have imploded causing total shutdown of his body from
a toe kick, or he would have been blinded, or his leg would be torn or broken.
There is no fighting back from this.
We have to remember that by the time a Karateka doing real Karate would be
grabbing and controlling an opponent in order to apply some lock or break, it
should be unnecessary to do so because the attacker should have no more fight
left in him. When I work bunkai I always try to incapacitate the opponent using
Atemi, it is just so much easier. Of course I am a total advocate for studying
bunkai and all the fancy stuff, but when it comes down to it, I will hit first
whenever possible then see where things go from there. This is what I try to do
in every One Minute Bunkai.
We have to remember that Karate has given us massive high caliber
destructive impact weapons, let's always keep those as the primary arsenal before
we move into other aspects like grappling. If you call yourself a Karateka and
you are mostly focusing on the grabby feely stuff then in my book, you are more
of a Jujitsuka than a Karateka. Atemi defines Karate above other arts. My ideal
scenario is to be totally awesome on both aspects of Karate applications, atemi
and grappling (Tode). If you are close to grabbing your opponent's arm then you
should have 3 options, 1) totally incapacitate the arm with atemi, 2) bypass
atemi and go straight into Tode (grappling), 3) my favorite, do both, start with
atemi and then go into it but only if you feel it is necessary. And by this I
mean if you hit your opponent so hard that his arm loses all life in it and has
turns into a wet noodle, his fight is ended.
I can tell you from personal experience from years of my Sensei (Tim
Rodgers) destroying my limbs, where the last thing in my mind was to continue,
because I could not, because I was in so much pain.
Lets learn Bunkai, yes, but lets treat it like dessert, it comes after the
meat and potatoes, and you cannot eat your dessert unless you clean your
plate.
Domo.
