Heian. The five Heian Kata (or Pinan in Okinawan) were developed by Gichin Funakoshi's teacher, Yasutsune Itosu, to facilitate the teaching of Karate to large groups of students.The word Heian is a combination of the word heiwa, meaning "calm" or "peaceful," and the word antei, which means "easy" or "stable."Therefore, Heian could be translated as "Peace and Stability."Karate was a secret and deadly martial art - not suited for kids in public school. But, they didn't know Itosu had a masterplan. The Heian/Pinan kata system acted as a Trojan horse, allowing Itosu to bring Karate from its secretive darkness into the light of modernization. I think that is a great paragraph that succinctly sums up the key issues relating to kata and modern karate. Many karateka ignore the lessons of kata and therefore inadvertently practise karate as a 'partial' art. Without an understanding of kata, karate is a grossly inadequate and incomplete system. As Geoff says, we need to fully utilise 'the
Karate. A Kata in Karate contains all the basic and fundamental movements within its system. The basic function of kata is and was to teach students these exact techniques. Each technique is done in a specific manner. In Karate, the kata (the Japanese version of forms) holds all of the basic techniques of the system.
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