Why did Itosu make five new kata?

Anko Itosu was 48 when the kingdom ended in 1879, and he had spent his life in the art of Shuri. ¹ He had learned it from Sokon Matsumura, and he had kept it the way te had always been kept: a teacher, a few students, each teacher with his own method. ¹ Now the warrior families who had carried it were losing their place, and the art was at risk of going with them. ^1,11

Into the schools

What saved it was a change of room. Karate recovered once it was taught in Okinawan schools, and Itosu is credited with helping to bring that about. ¹

That changed the art itself. Something passed from one man to a handful of chosen students was now taught to rows of pupils, in order, in a group. ¹ A school needs a syllabus, something that can be learned step by step by everyone in the room, and te had never had one. ^1,30

Accounts differ on the year: one says karate entered Okinawan schools in 1905, another that the Pinan kata entered the school system in 1895. ^1,30

Five kata for beginners

A class cannot learn the way a chosen student learns. So Itosu made five new kata, simpler forms for beginners and for children, and called them pinan, "peaceful and safe". ^1,30 They are numbered Shodan to Godan, first to fifth, and learned in order. ³⁰ That is still how kata are taught: in stages, with students repeating the earlier ones at a higher standard as they progress. ¹³

The Pinan are a syllabus in miniature. In Shotokan, Heian Shodan is where a student first meets back stance, kokutsu-dachi, with most of the weight on the bent rear leg, and Heian Sandan uses the crescent kick, mikazuki-geri, as a kicking block. ^33,46 The forms are built on the stances and blocks of the basic lines, so a kata grading tests the same things a basics grading does, joined up and turned in four directions. ^1,4

The idea outlived him. In Tokyo, Gichin Funakoshi's son Yoshitaka, also called Gigo, made the Taikyoku kata, simpler still, on the floor pattern of the first Heian. ^4,43 In Naha, around 1940, Chojun Miyagi created the Gekisai kata to teach basics to Okinawan schoolchildren, and the Fukyugata "promotional" kata were made in Okinawa the same year for the same purpose. ^6,11 Every one of them is a teacher asking Itosu's question again: what is the simplest form that still teaches the real thing?

The students

Itosu taught many of the men who later founded their own styles. ¹ Two matter most to this story. Gichin Funakoshi, born in Shuri in 1868, learned from Anko Asato and from Itosu. ³ Asato was the teacher who held that te had grown out of an old Okinawan dance, and who linked tode to Sakugawa; Funakoshi took the dance theory from him. ¹

Kenwa Mabuni, born in Shuri in 1889, began Shuri-te under Itosu at 13, and would later teach as a police officer and in schools himself. ⁷ On Okinawa, the Shuri line carried on as Shorin-ryu, the name Choshin Chibana, a top student of Itosu, gave his style in 1933. ¹¹

Mabuni had a friend from Naha, Chojun Miyagi, a year older than him, who was training under Higaonna. ^7,26,27 Miyagi introduced his friend to his teacher, and so Mabuni learned Naha-te as well as Shuri-te. ⁷ He went on to study with a Chinese White Crane teacher too, Wu Xiangui, known in Japan as Go Kenki, and by the 1920s he was seen as the leading authority on Okinawan kata. ⁷ That double inheritance from Itosu and Higaonna is the whole idea of Shito-ryu, the style he founded, and its name joins the first characters of his two teachers' names. ^7,27

Two names, several orders

When Funakoshi took karate to Tokyo he renamed many Okinawan kata to make them easier to say and more acceptable in Japan at the time. ^5,13,43 Pinan became heian, which means the same thing. ^13,30 So a Shotokan student does Heian and most other styles do Pinan, and they are Itosu's five kata either way, allowing for each style's own version. ^13,30

Even the order differs. Shotokan's Heian Shodan is what Shito-ryu calls Pinan Nidan, and vice versa; Wado-ryu and Shukokai teach Pinan Nidan first because it is the easier form; some Shito-ryu dojos teach Pinan Shodan last. ³⁰ Kyokushin numbers them Pinan Sono Ichi to Sono Go, and Sankukai has its own version called Heiwa. ^75,84 In the Karate Union of Great Britain's Shotokan syllabus a student learns one Heian per grade from 8th Kyu to 4th Kyu; in the Shukokai Karate Federation the five carry a student from yellow belt to purple. ^61,80

Itosu died in 1915. ¹ Beyond his dates, his teacher and his students, the record of his life is almost silent. The five kata are his record, and anyone who has learned a Pinan or a Heian has read it.

The student who sailed

In 1922 Gichin Funakoshi, one of those students, left Okinawa for Tokyo to show karate to Japan. ^1,3 He was in his fifties, and that same year he would publish the first book ever written on the art. ^1,3 The word ryu, school or style, would soon attach itself to karate for the first time. Funakoshi never used it for his own: he just called it karate. ^1,4