Suparenpei

[T. Kimura]

Does anyone here include suparenpei (or any other naha te kata other than selshan for that matter) in their syllabus? In other words does anyone tech it as a part of their program?

Thanks, TK

[Tim49]

Does anyone here include suparenpei (or any other naha te kata other than selshan for that matter) in their syllabus? In other words does anyone tech it as a part of their program?

Thanks, TK

No, certainly not me, Can't think of a reason to do so (beyond curiosity) I just don't see the point.

Tim

[dkc]

I remember asking about this kata a long while ago..........Never dared mention it since LOL
Its NOT in our humble syllabus.

[T. Kimura]

The reason, I suppose, to include it, is that there is no true Naha te kata in the syllabus. Seishan is Hangetsu which is far removed from naha te Seisan. I have never seen a coherent Wado version. The Shito ryu kata is nice but I do not know it. Strangely it was listed in the original syllabus but never practiced?

[oneya]

The reason, I suppose, to include it, is that there is no true Naha te kata in the syllabus

There is no 'true' shuri te kata in the syllabus either.

Wado ryu kata is a completely different animal altogether from its Okinawan or generic counterparts and excising superfluous kata that mostly replicated others in a series (naihanchi/ tekki and kushanku/kanku for instance) was applied across the Okinawa te spectrum early in the piece so perhaps Wado ryu used this process of paring down or winnowing out to bring an understanding of muda na more to the fore in its more Japanese raison d'être.

I am like Tim in this respect

Can't think of a reason to do so (beyond curiosity) I just don't see the point.

Perhaps "To see the point of practicing suparinpei" is to miss the point of wado ryu..??

oneya

[T. Kimura]

Mr. Otsuka was the one who initially put it in the syllabus, and he did teach it, even if he dropped it later. Also I think it is possible to over-state wadoryu's uniqueness in terms of kata. The kata do have some very attractive features but remain in the general range of shurie te karate.

[oneya]

Hi TK

Wado lore, myth or legend is that Ohtsuka meijin was teaching suparinpei at one time when he forgot the sequence - 108 waza so I am not surprised in the early days - and didn't teach is beyond that time..

Don't you think that if he (Ohtsuka meijin )had meant to include Suparinpei within the core kata it would be all over wado ryu like the bread and butter staple of Pinan and the four other 'official kata' and this thread would never have been written..???

Also I would have to disagree with you about 'not overstating' the uniqueness of wado kata. While it is true we can still find familiar waza and embusen the emphasis on posture and dynamic demonstrates very different reasons for inclusion within the wado kata syllabus. Wado core principles and analytic aspects of kaisetsu, bunkai are well served and tested by wado kihon kumite, sanbon kumite, ohyo kumite, kumite gata, tanto dori and Idori so much of the Okinawan 'flavour' is superfluous due to wado ryu's very different dynamic.

It is true there are some however who will still try to practice wado ryu with a more Okinawan flavour but this I think is due to a confused understanding of its proportional wado heritage and its lineage and timeline making it very much more a Japanese martial art as Ohtsuka meijin described it and bearing only an indistinct memory of its Okinawan antecedents.

In my opinion, stressing this Okinawan historical aspect beyond its true weight in physical terms only serves to dilute its essence in the long term.


oneya.

[blackcat]

Lots of stuff on the AK forum and previous on the Yahoo wado forum if you want to delve into the background TK.

Otsuka's connection with suparinpei is all the more interesting because of the question of who he learn it from.

The story about him forgetting the kata came from an interview with Tatsuo Suzuki. Arakawa sensei had a slightly different recollection and Ishizuka sensei has a different slant to both of them. Hakoishi sensei had a suparinpei kata in his book; his version was based on the Shitoryu kata. He was asked to teach it once in England on a seminar in 2004 and now some people include it in competition events under the name "Hakoishi suparinpei". Make of that what you will.

Otsuka learned about 30 kata originally, but the 9 kata are the ones he put the emphasis on as far back as 1950.

Some of the university karate clubs have additional kata which the old boys clubs roll out from time to time. They are proud of their connections with the founder and if he occasionally taught something different in those clubs, well they like to maintain the practise a little, I guess it differentiates them slightly.

Its the same with idori, tantodori, tachidori and kumite kata..some people trained those a little with Otsuka or acted as his partner occasionally, so they like to keep practising them. Its their connection with their teacher.

Ben

[Gary]

I've been fortunate enough to have trained with Hakoishi sensei - and during a session where he was asked to teach Suparinpei...!! Let's just leave it at that... which is pretty much what he said at the time.

Gary

[T. Kimura]

These are all pretty enriching resonses. There is a lot of collective understanding and experience here. I actually neither know nor practice Suparenpei. It does, however, feel "right" to me to have at least one somewhat authentic naha te kata in a syllabus. The nine core kata constitute most of my own practice. I teach and practice only 15 kata. As far as the "Okinawan-ness" of Wado, I think there are some semantic issues, rather than technical, involved. Wado can not be so distant from its sources that it is no longer karate. I think it is important to see Wado very much as a school of karate Do and not as a school of jujitsu. If I am not mistaken Suparenpei was included, in writing, to Dai Nippon Butokukai in the original Shenshu Wadoryu Karate jutsu syllabus, and was practiced in the Shinkokai/Shinbukai before the war. I was wondering if anyone did it just to see if any kind of otsuka version was still practiced or remembered. I obviously agree that Wado is the most Japanese (meaning grounded in Japanese kobudo) of all karate do. Perhaps Wado's ultimate evolution would have been into a formation of sogobudo rather than a school of karate.