Is Karate LETHAL

Описание: Well, is it? A lot of karate styles and dojos teach that karate techniques are designed to kill one's opponents, sometimes because they believe that their techniques are "too dangerous for the ring" or "used to defend peaceful Okinawan peasants from marauding samurai". Obviously, it is not too deadly for the ring, since many MMA fighters use their karate training to defeat their opponents. And long-time viewers, as well as the historically literate karateka, ought to already know that Okinawan peasants never really fought their samurai overlords. But when we interpret kata, we want to find the most effective techniques, the secrets that have been passed down, encoded in our practice, from history, right?


Well, I don't think karate techniques, or the kata that we practice, were ever intended to be lethal. This video is a critique of Giles Hopkins' method of analyzing kata, where he claims that "more deadly" interpretations are "more effective", and therefore more true to the intent of the original kata. I disagree, and I hope my reasoning makes you all think. Mr. Hopkins is a phenomenal karate researcher, and I highly encourage you all to both purchase his books, and to check out his blog and YouTube channel, both of which are linked in the description. I have nothing but respect for his decades of practice and learning in Goju-Ryu, and hope that my feedback can, in some small way, improve the world's understanding of Goju-Ryu and karate at large, and be of benefit to him himself.


Sources and Citations:
https://www.quora.com/How-many-pounds...
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/artic...
https://goju-ryu.blogspot.com/
   • Saifa kata and bunkai  
Hopkins, Giles. Suparinpei
Hopkins, Giles. The Kata and Bunkai of Goju-Ryu Karate: The Essence of the Heishu and Kaishu Kata
Bubishi¸ Patrick McCarthy Translation
Images for Thumbnail taken from Flickr user Better Than Bacon https://www.flickr.com/photos/slurm/ and edited together. Pictures reused under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0


Follow Giles Hopkins at    / kodokan3   and purchase his amazing books at https://www.amazon.com/Giles-Hopkins/... or in bookstores around the US (I know Barnes and Noble carries his latest book).


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