Kata and the Ship of Theseus

If you’ve been around karate very long, you’ve probably heard things like this:

“We teach authentic, traditional karate, exactly as Master so-and-so taught it!”

Sigh, … no. No, you don’t.

Everything changes, even if we try not to let it change. Change is inevitable, but how much change does there have to be before a thing becomes “different enough” to be considered a different thing altogether?

In philosophy, there’s a thought experiment known as the “Ship of Theseus” that deals with the identity of a thing across incremental changes. It goes like this: If you continue to replace the pieces of Theseus’ ship as they wear out, eventually there will come a time when none of the original pieces remains. When that happens, is it still the same ship? If not, at what point did it become something different?

Instead, you may have heard of the woodsman who bragged about his 20-year-old axe. It was still going strong, despite replacing the blade twice and the handle four times. Surely it would outlast any cheap axe they sell these days. But is that really the same axe?

A more modern example might be a sports team like the Los Angeles Dodgers. None of the players from the Dodgers of twenty years ago continue to play for the Dodgers today, but few would argue that today’s team isn’t still the Dodgers. On the other hand, you could probably find a few old baseball fans from Brooklyn who insist that today’s Dodgers are not their Dodgers. Where is the line drawn, and who gets to decide?

The place this tends to pop up most often in karate is with regard to the kata. If you change the kata, is it still the same kata? Gasp! What?!? Change the kata?!? Who would do such a thing?

Everyone did, and still does. How do we know? From a combination of observation and the words of the masters, themselves. Many people have read Gichin Funakoshi’s autobiography where he wrote, “Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too”, but that is just one line in a larger section that makes Funakoshi’s view on change clear.

“Hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The karate that high school students practice today is not the same karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago, and it is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa.

Inasmuch as there are not now, and never have been, any hard and fast rules regarding the various kata, it is hardly surprising to find that they change not only with the times but also from instructor to instructor”.

When Funakoshi changed the kata he was taught, did they become different kata? Was Funakoshi’s Kanku Dai a different kata from the Kusanku he learned from Itosu? What about its “cousins”, Kosokun and Chatanyara Kushanku, from Shito-ryu or its “nephew”, Kushanku, from Wado-ryu?

Let’s have a look at a few kata, from a few different styles, and relate them to our hypothetical ship of Theseus.

Swapping out a few boards

One of these is performed at competition speed and the other was filmed as a tutorial, but they’re clearly the same kata … even though they’re not the same. Can you spot the differences? There are at least two, but they’re tough to spot unless you look closely.

1. The “SKIF style” has the feet move back through each of the first four moves, while the “JKA style” keeps them on the same horizontal line.
2. After the first, second, and fourth age zuki, the “JKA style” has the hand open flat, while the “SKIF style” adds a twist at the wrist while the hand opens.

My impression has been that, with minuscule differences like this, no one denies they’re the same kata … they just argue which is the “right” way to perform it.

Refinishing the quarterdeck

I’m not picking on the JKA and the SKIF here, they just have plenty of good videos available to use as examples.

Most of the Shotokan world performs Meikyo with kakiwake uke before the first gedan barai. Then, the following two similar sequences begin with gedan barai (a second time) and uchi uke, respectively. The SKIF, however, inverts the kakiwake uke into what they call “joshin gamae”, and the following two sequences begin with uchi uke and age uke, respectively. This isn’t just different footwork and a different wrist motion - these are different techniques with different names.

Are these the same kata? As before, I think most people would say these are the same kata, performed differently, and simply argue about the “right” way to perform it for a given school or organization. Parts of the ship have been replaced, but not “enough” parts for it to be considered a different ship.

New sails and rigging

This article over at Ikigai Way and this video by Jesse Enkamp do a good job of describing the antiquity and ubiquity of Seisan throughout karate styles, but let’s focus our attention on the versions practiced by Shotokan and Wado-ryu. They’re from different styles, and have different names, but are still very, very similar. Given that Wado-ryu’s founder was a direct student of Shotokan’s founder, that’s no surprise.

But are they still the same kata or are they “different enough” to be recognized as distinct from each other. If you showed up to a Shotokan tournament, yelled out “Hangetsu!” and then performed Wado-ryu’s Seishan, it would be noticed and penalized. So, is competitive acceptance the yardstick we should use to determine when we have a different kata? (Probably not - we all know how fickle judges can be.)

Replacing the entire hull

Kanku Dai and Chatanyara Kushanku are very different kata, but if you look closely, you’ll see many similarities. That’s because they’re part of the “Kusanku family” of kata. They have a common ancestor, but it has been lost to a combination of time and incremental change.

Here we’ve almost certainly crossed the “different enough” threshold. They’re no longer the same kata performed differently. Instead, they’re different katas containing similarities. They use different techniques to express common themes.

Why this matters …

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment. It doesn’t really matter, except to the extent that you might be tested on it for a class. It’s an exercise designed to hone your thinking and rhetorical skills. But, likewise, kata is kind of a thought experiment, isn’t it? The particulars don’t really matter except to the extent that you might be tested, either in your karate class, or “on the street.” Kata is an exercise designed to hone your self-protection and physical skills.

In both cases, the important questions are: What are you trying to learn from the exercise and why? Trying to learn the self-protective principles of a kata in order to keep yourself and your loved ones safe is different from trying to learn the particular performance requirements of an organization’s grading rubric, or group of tournament judges. Neither motivation is better or worse than the other … they’re just different.

In my personal practice, it’s more about the themes I mentioned above. I train to learn the principles that the kata have to teach me. It’s not always a question of “the book says” or “sensei so-and-so says”, both of which are arguments from authority. It’s a question of what makes sense. Thus, I tend to blend a bit. To take the example of Empi above, I tend to use “JKA style” opening footwork with the “SKIF style” wrist turn, because both make sense given my understanding of my distance from the attacker and what I’m trying to accomplish.

Does this mix constitute a “new” kata? I think not, as no one would look at my Empi and mistake it for anything else. To return to the nautical analogy, I’ve altered the rigging a bit to take advantage of the wind that’s blowing at the moment. Just as the winds change, so must time, the world, and karate.