Friday, April 10, 2009

Kusshin, Kihon & Kumite

I was actually searching for something else when I found this, highlights from the first World Karate Championships and was, well bowled over.

If you can't wait, just "scroll forward" to about 2:00 minutes and take a look at the fights. The stances (although not perfect of course) and the distance (not the distance we in the KWF are supposed to fight) is pure KWF- or what KWF should be. In fact, especially from a couple of the Japanese fighters, their stances and movements were just showing kusshin.

But these days with bouncy bouncy this and chudan-jodan mawashi-geri combo that, this Karate looks even a little bit unusual. But its what KWF Karate is. What a difference from the sports university Karate you see in Shotokan tournaments these days!

Of course, it might be as obvious as night and day to all you experienced Karatekas, but YS says that he is trying to bring KWF Karate in terms of it's technical approach back to its Nakayama Sensei 原点 (genten = origin) and in terms of spirituality and attitude back to its Budo genten / 精神 (seishin = spirit/ attitude/ philosophy).

In a recent interview I translated for Karatenomichi Venezuela YS said that the KWF is actually going in the opposite direction to most Shotokan organizations are doing. Of course for this YS has been castigated by others, especially those who have never even met him face-to-face. Look, I know it's psychologically appealing to some personality types to want to belong to some sort of "true believer" cult minority, but when thrust comes from spin, we are just doing traditional Shotokan Karate. 

Anyway, it just goes to show to an increasing number of people, that we are doing the sort of Karate of a bygone era, and, to tell the truth, I am really PROUD of that! 

Yoroshiku ;-)
Paul.

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