Wado Ryu Katas

Kata His­tory

Yasut­sune Itosu (1830–1915) devel­oped the Pinan series of five forms around 1905. His­tory tells us that Itosu cre­ated the Pinans from two other katas known as Kusanku and Chan­nan. The Chan­nan (or Chiang-Nan) kata has been lost, but leg­end has it that Bushi Mat­sumura, Itosu’s teacher, either devised these kata or they were an older set of Chi­nese kata passed on by Mat­sumura. These forms were taught to ele­men­tary school stu­dents in Oki­nawa and when Gichin Funakoshi was hired by Japan to teach karate; he used these as the main por­tion of kata being taught.

The word Pinan (Oki­nawan) or Heian (Japan­ese) means “peace­ful mind”. Pinan NiDan is one of the five Pinan kata taught in the Wado Ryu Karate-Do sys­tem. Gen­er­ally Wado-Ryu & Shito-Ryu favor the Oki­nawan pro­nun­ci­a­tion of ‘Pinan’. Shotokan styl­ists favor the Japan­ese pro­nun­ci­a­tion of ‘Heian’. The rea­son for this is that Funakoshi gave all the katas prac­ticed within Shotokan Japan­ese names. He did this so that the Japan­ese peo­ple would find the names eas­ier to use, to fur­ther dis­tance the art from any of its Chi­nese ori­gins and to acknowl­edge the devel­op­ment of karate by the Oki­nawans and Japan­ese. Funakoshi also swapped the ‘NiDan’ (2nd level) & ‘ShoDan’ (1st level) suf­fixes so that the names reflected the order in which the katas are most com­monly taught. This means that Shotokan’s ‘Heian ShoDan’ is called “Pinan NiDan” in Wado-Ryu and Shito-Ryu. Hironori Otsuka, how­ever, changed the katas back to the orig­i­nal order, hence in Wado-Ryu Pinan NiDan is the first of the Pinans taught.

The five katas fol­low a sequence designed to intro­duce the begin­ner to kata and to pro­gres­sively intro­duce more tech­niques as the stu­dent advances. The series incor­po­rates almost all of the basic stances and many of the basic tech­niques of the var­i­ous Oki­nawan sys­tems of karate, thereby mak­ing the Pinans suit­able for begin­ners and inter­me­di­ates. Mas­ter­ing each form requires years of prac­tice in order to under­stand the finer points of each move­ment. Although the Pinans do not con­tain sym­bolic move­ments often seen in more advanced kata, there are a vari­ety of com­bat inter­pre­ta­tions for sev­eral of the basic tech­niques included in the forms. Under­stand­ing the tech­niques and their usage against the attacker will help the stu­dent to take away a prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion from the Pinans.

Of the four major Japan­ese styles of karate (Shotokan, Wado-Ryu, Goju-Ryu, & Shito-Ryu) prac­ticed through­out the world today only Goju-Ryu does not prac­tice the Pinan / Heian Katas. The rea­son the Pinan katas are com­mon to the three remain­ing styles is that Itosu fea­tures strongly their fam­ily trees. Mas­ter Itosu along with Kan­ryo Higaonna were the main teach­ers of Kenwa Mabuni (founder of Shito-Ryu). The name ‘Shito’ is derived from the two char­ac­ters used in the writ­ing of ‘Itosu’ & ‘Higaonna’. Mabuni was undoubt­edly Itosu’s fore­most dis­ci­ple. Along with Mas­ter Azato & Mas­ter Matu­mura, Itosu was also one of the teach­ers of Gichin Funakoshi. (founder of Shotokan) It is doubt­ful that Funakoshi learned the Pinans directly from Itosu as Funakoshi con­cluded his train­ing with Itosu before the Pinans came into being. Some sources say that Funakoshi learned the Pinan katas from Kenwa Mabuni in 1919, four years after Itosu’s death. Kenwa Mabuni, Gichin Funakoshi & Choki Motobu (who also stud­ied under Itosu) were the main karate teach­ers of Hironori Otsuka. Otsuka also stud­ied Shinto Yoshin Ryu jujitsu under Yukiyoshi Tata­sus­aburo Nakayama. Otsuka received his instruc­tion in the Pinan katas from both Mabuni and Funakoshi.

Kata Data­base

This data­base of the Wado Ryu katas is intended to become a valu­able (hope­fully) resource for dojo stu­dents and Wado Ryu karateka in gen­eral. The cre­ation of each kata dia­gram is very labor inten­sive so progress will be some­what slow, please be patient in that respect.

Remem­ber, the best instruc­tion you can receive in the mar­tial arts is hands-on train­ing by a qual­i­fied instruc­tor. This data­base is not meant to replace instruc­tion by a Black Belt. It is intended to assist stu­dents, train­ing away from the dojo, when they can­not remem­ber the next move in a kata and a Black Belt is not available.

Video of each kata with addi­tional instruc­tion and tips from 7th degree black belt and for­mer World Cham­pion David Deaton can be obtained from his video series “Wado Ryu Karate”. Ask at the front desk of your dojo for the videos. Actu­ally see­ing the katas run can be invalu­able when prac­tic­ing away from the dojo.

Wado Ryu Katas

Gen­eral Kata Rules

1. All katas open with a bow and close with a bow.
2. Except where noted, the open­ing (yoi) is always the left foot set­ting over half a foot length then the right foot set­ting over half a foot length, leav­ing you in hachiji dachi (ready stance). The hands close into fists with no move­ment of the arms.
3. Yame (recov­ery) is always back to your open­ing posi­tion, by pulling the front foot back (or if the feet are side by side, by pulling the right foot in), unless spec­i­fied differently.
4. Except where noted, the clos­ing (naorei) is always the left foot set­ting in half the width of the stance then the right foot clos­ing the dis­tance com­pletely, leav­ing you in masuba dachi (atten­tion stance). The hands open with no move­ment of the arms.
5. Except where noted, once you drop down into a stance, you should remain low as you move through­out the kata.
6. If no change in stance is men­tioned, assume the pre­vi­ous stance is used.
7. When a stance is des­ig­nated left or right, that foot is the front foot.
8. For all moves that involve turn­ing to a new direc­tion, the head moves first (it turns in the same direc­tion as the body will).
9. All turns, unless oth­er­wise noted, are made by mov­ing the foot behind the foot, not across the toes.
10. When not spec­i­fied, the back hand is pulled back in a for­mal hikite position.
11. All jun­zukis, gyakazukis and kicks are to the solar plexus unless oth­er­wise noted.
12. Any­time you do an shoto uke, you are in a mahanmi neko ashi dachi with the back hand across the body and angled up slightly, cross­ing over the solar plexus, with the wrist remain­ing straight and the fin­ger tips extend­ing past the edge of the body (also in a shuto posi­tion), unless spec­i­fied dif­fer­ently. (It is never dif­fer­ent until you are a black belt.)
13. Any­time you are in a tae uke posi­tion (one arm across your lower chest palm down and the other pulled back in hikite (pulling hand posi­tion)) you are stand­ing in heisoku dachi (feet together at the heels and toes).
14. Prior to going into a tae uke posi­tion, both hands are always on one side of the body (as it will be posi­tioned for the tae uke). The hands will stay on that side of the body for tae uke. The one excep­tion to this is Pinan GoDan, the hands cross to the other side of the body.
15. A sweep is always at solar plexus level, arm down about 45 degrees from the shoul­der to the elbow, up about 45 degrees from the elbow to the wrist, and the hand pointed down as far as pos­si­ble with the thumb pointed up as far as pos­si­ble. The palm is fac­ing inward, and the hand trav­els toward the palm to the far edge of your front cen­ter line.
16. Any infor­ma­tion spe­cific to a kata will be noted at the end of each kata page.
17. Please note: The foot posi­tion dia­grams and pho­tos are viewed from the point of view of an instruc­tor watch­ing the kata.

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