“Every single institution dedicated to public truth-seeking is under simultaneous attack. They are all in a state of collapse. Every body of experts fails utterly. Individual experts who resist or worse in an attempt to return their institutions to sanity, they find themselves coerced into submission. If they won’t buckle, they are marginalized or forced out. Those outside of the institutions who either seek truth alone or who build new institutions with a truth-seeking mission face merciless attacks on both their integrity and expertise, often by the very institutions whose mission they refuse to abandon.
There is a saying in military circles, once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
– Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist
I began investigating the meaning of the movements in our kata long ago. It was not welcomed by some style leaders.
I intended to invigorate our style. To show how the techniques work. To restore practical combative skill training to kata training. If you know what you are doing when you move in solo forms practice, you get great practical results. If you just repeat the movement without understanding what you are trying to achieve, you get very little.
Knowledge of the kata applications was known and taught long at one time. That knowledge leached away, set aside during the period of modernization of warfare in east Asia a century ago. It went unused, and in a few generations, it was largely forgotten. That was followed by ignorance, vehemently defended as “tradition.”
The insights into kata which we rediscovered are outlined in my article Lost Bunkai and the Karate Revolution, in its embedded videos, in the approach to bunkai analysis and the examples described in my book True Karate Dō, and in the bunkai application videos at @mountainkarate on YouTube. There is much more work to be done.
…decadence is a time when “the forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result…”
–Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence
To some style leaders my insights were unwelcome. The new knowledge was a challenge to their authority, to their claim that their knowledge of the style was complete, and to their claim, and the belief of their credulous students, that they were the only authentic and permissible source of information.
Maybe they were focused on preserving their status or market share. Maybe they were sincere in their belief. Either way, their claims were not supported by analysis, evidence or pressure testing. So, I investigated further. I went deeper into the use of kata, into interpretations and advanced body mechanics that would work in combatives.
I thought: if we are supposed to use kata to train in self-defense, why was there no relationship between the way we move in kata, in kumite and in yakusoku? Why do even the kihon, as taught, not work in practical application?
Why was it that what I saw in some east Asian martial arts, in professional military and law enforcement combative training, in hundreds or thousands of violent incidents – resembeled the kata movement but differed so completely from the interpretation the styles were showing and practicing in the dojo?
I wanted to teach our techniques and methods that our members could rely on. Instead of deflecting sincere questions or making things up, I searched for answers. Sometimes I found them.
I traveled, studied, and trained. Over the last 30 years my investigations proved fruitful.
As important as dojo practice was to the process, outside sources were indispensable. In addition to law enforcement experience, and law enforcement instructor training, I drew on Chinese medicine theory, the Chinese sources of our techniques, and I looked at their interpretations, practice methods, training objectives, and cultural context.
I worked with professionals in multiple styles and cultures, in professional and dojo settings. When I encountered an insight, or a fresh approach to skill development or an application which illuminated a move from our kata, I shared them with the members of our schools.
Through all that exploration of the meaning of the moves, I did not change the embusen of the kata at all. I made sense of what was there.
These insights and discoveries, little by little, brought our kata to life. They reinvigorate body mechanics, combative principles, kata applications and other dimensions of traditional kata that are amazing and useful but not well known. To discover them I had to go beyond the limited, style-centric approval systems, beyond the shrinking knowledge-base which results from these artificially imposed restrictions on learning.
I began to share this information, in print and in video. The response was great. Some people, having seen the videos, articles and books, said that our work cleared up issues that had bothered them, sometimes for decades, and opened up new vistas of practice. Some made use of the information in their dojos, and shared it with their online viewers.
As positive as that was, the established styles were shocked and outraged. I was showing familiar moves in a different, more practical light. They found this intolerable. Their responses did not question the validity of the material. They didn’t even address that. They just expressed rage and resentment.
Author Jacques “Barzun says the term “decadent” may properly be used of any social situation that is blocked, where people entertain goals for which they will not tolerate the means. …”
– John J. Riley, First Things
The karate world has moved on since the 1980’s. Looking back, imagining they were standing atop an eternal and unmoving hierarchy of authority and experience, they could overlook or dismiss advances in the martial arts. But when the news of genuine discoveries in their own style started coming out for everyone to see, they felt what seemed like panic. Clinging to an imaginary golden age, maybe they feared they would be left behind by a new generation of practitioners. In reality, all they had to do was continue to learn. Every professional does it. Every builder, electrician, doctor or lawyer takes continuing education classes. Scholars and engineers, technicians and practitioners in every field keep up with the literature. Why wouldn’t martial artists do that too?
Instead of considering the new info, examining it, judging it, using what was worthwhile and discarding what wasn’t, some style leaders did all they could to prevent this information from getting to their students.
They tried to frame the issue as “loyalty” to them and the founders, without considering their own duty, loyalty to their own members’ quest for reliable self-defense knowledge and skill.
Resistance to fresh perspectives is not unique to martial arts. This orthodox response – hidebound, rigid and defensive – pervades all decadent institutions. This is corrupt. It is damaging to health, decency, strength and freedom.
Shallow martial arts do not top the list of bad stuff afflicting modern civilization. But martial arts is the arena in which I have worked, and in which my contribution – and those of many other sincere practitioners – have been sometimes embraced but too often shut down.
Despite that, we are training in this material. We share it with anyone who wants it. We are proud to contribute in a small way to the training of people who sense there is much more to their karate than they ever knew.
It is our job to understand the art we have, and its potential in physical training, combatives, mind training, and in all the dimensions of our lives which our karate training touches.
I was on the Twitter blacklist. It was all true information that was just found inconvenient. …That’s what I was sharing.
–Dr. Jay Battacharya, Director of the National Institute of Health
Our bunkai are the result of years of investigation and experiment, by many people worldwide. They give access to techniques that everyone in the Shorin Ryu world can use, in kata and in self-defense.
These insights are outlined in my article Lost Bunkai and the Karate Revolution, in its embedded videos, in the approach to bunkai analysis and the examples of it described in my book True Karate Dō, and in the bunkai application videos at @mountainkarate on YouTube.
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in the mountains of western NC.
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read True Karate Dō by Jeffrey Brooks
“One of the best books I’ve read in years, inviting and compelling. Jeff Brooks moves effortlessly from martial arts to Buddhism to consciousness studies, self-transformation, and related fields in this wide-ranging and Illuminating study that has much to offer both novice explorers and veteran practitioners. A splendid achievement.”
— Philip Zaleski, Editor, The Best Spiritual Writing series