Did Karate Kata Have Kanji Notation?

Photo by @felipepelaquim on Unsplash

With the exception of a few, the kanji (Chinese characters) notation for karate kata is unknown. Therefore, most of them are written in katakana letters, such as Naihanchi (ナイハンチ), Passai (パッサイ), Chintō (チントー), Jion (ジオン), Rōhai (ローハイ), and Shisōchin (シソーチン). Katakana is mainly used to write foreign words.

Of course, there are some kata whose notation is handed down in kanji. Many of them are numerals, such as Sanchin (三戦, three battles), Seisan (十三歩, thirteen steps), and Gojūshiho (五十四歩, fifty-four steps). Also, some of them are kata of personal names. For example, Kūsankū (公相君). There is a theory that Wanshū is the name of the Chinese envoy Wang Ji (汪楫, ? — 1689), but as far as I know, this is a postwar theory.

Since before World War II, many karate researchers have published various theories about the kanji notation of kata. Their theories are basically based on the following ideas. The kata, or *taolu of Chinese martial arts, which is the origin of the kata, was originally written in kanji. However, the Ryukyuan people who learned from the Chinese did not have sufficient Chinese language skills to understand how the kata names were written even if they heard them phonetically. Or, the kanji notation of the kata was handed down at first, but in the process of handing them down, the kanji *was lost and only the pronunciation was handed down. ……

However, was this really the case? The Ryukyu samurai who went to China on official missions or to study (at government or private expense) were the intellectual elite. They passed the arduous examinations to become officials of the royal government and worked in various positions for many years before being selected to go to China. In the case of studying in China, it is a matter of course to be excellent.

Of course, not all of them were fluent in Chinese. However, they could naturally read and write, and if they were not good at speaking, they could communicate by writing. Sai On (of Kume Village) also communicated with the Chinese by writing when he had difficulty speaking. How is it possible that these people were taught kata (taolu) by Chinese masters and did not ask, “How do you write in kanji?”

Is it possible that the Chinese who taught the kata did not know how to write the kata name in kanji? As I have written before, Chinese martial arts, unlike those of Japan and Okinawa, had developed among the non-ruling classes. Especially after the Qing dynasty, under the slogan of “Fǎn Qīng fù Míng” (反清復明, Anti-Qing and Restoration of the Ming Dynasty), those who were subjected to suppression by the authorities secretly developed Chinese martial arts.

Today, these people would be called insurgents, guerrillas, or terrorists, and they formed secret societies and usually lived as common people, working in various occupations. And since the literacy rate of the common people in China was extremely low until modern times, many of them would not have known kanji. So, even if they could teach a kata (taolu) and say the name of it, they probably couldn’t answer a question from a student, “How do you write that in kanji?” Or, even if the master created the kata and could say the name of it out loud, he may not have known how to write it in kanji.

And the reason why the names of the numeral kata have been handed down is that the pronunciation of the numbers is elementary Chinese, so many Ryukyu samurai who learned the kata may have been able to imagine on their own that “Oh, Seisan means thirteen,” even if their masters did not know the kanji. And the endings of the words “ step,” “hand,” and “ battle” could have been easily imagined in kanji, or they could have been added in Ryukyu.

Of course, the above is hypothetical, but regarding the status of the Chinese who taught Chinese martial arts, many schools today claim that they were people of high status, but that is the wish of later generations, and in reality, most of them would have been of the common class, so it is not surprising that they could not say the kata names in kanji. Also, the people who are said to have been the “military officers” of the envoys who taught martial arts to the Okinawans might have actually been civilian sailors who had learned martial arts. They might have normally been on fishing boats or private carriers, and were only hired temporarily to go to Ryukyu for the enthronement ceremony of the King of Ryukyu, which was held once every few decades.

The other day, I asked a specialist in Chinese history with whom I had attended a symposium in Taiwan about the status of the people who practiced Chinese martial arts. He replied, “They must have been people like coolies.” In other words, they were manual laborers. During the Qing Dynasty, security was unstable in the countryside, so laborers had to form their own secret societies to protect themselves. Such people were the ones who practiced Chinese martial arts.

So, like the samurai of Japan and Ryukyu, the ruling class in China was not the main practitioner of martial arts. When we think about Chinese martial arts and how they were transmitted to Ryukyu, we need to understand the differences in cultural backgrounds.

The original English translation was posted on the Ameba blog on May 7, 2021.

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