Shotokan Karate KATA 2

Die bildmäßige Darstellung der einzelnen Abläufe der einzelnen Katas ist weit davon entfernt, dass sie hilfreich sein könnte. Es gestaltet sich äußerst schwierig einzelne Bewegungen nachzuvollziehen, falls man mal eine Passage "vergessen" hat bzw. sie nachvollziehen will.

This is a good book to learn the katas with detailed photos and narrative. It also has applications for each kata with the same quality of explanations.

At first glance, this volume of shotokan karate appears to be ideal: high credentials, handy size, numerous pictures. It has a foreword, an introduction and step-by-step instructions to go with the frame-by-frame portrayals of the forms. Everything seems great, until you begin to use the book.It needs to be emphasized that the purpose of a kata manual is to teach the reader to learn, both mentally and physically, a set of katas. (Here there are nine, all advanced, beginning with meikyo and ending with ji'in.) It may be that the reader is in training and only wants a reminder of what has been taught in class. It may also be that the reader wants to prepare a kata in advance, before it is taught in class. Or he or she has moved to another city and wants to train alone; or usually does train alone. For whatever reason the reader wants the book, it should be able to teach a kata well enough so that it will only take a few adjustments by an expert in person to make its performance quite correct.So we start, and notice that the photos are all rather small and indistinct. But that's no big deal, we've seen it before and can pretty much guess what the hidden hand or arm is doing in a given picture. So we start again, and find it unusually difficult to put our body in the same place as in the pictures. What's wrong? We do it again. Again not certain. Is the turn all the way to the left, or just half way? Are we moving straight ahead, or at an angle? We try again. And then we see it: a totally bizarre feature, never encountered before.The author-model in the first picture of each kata (the starting position) is not directly facing us, as in every karate book I've seen, but rather standing 45-degrees to his left, so that all of his subsequent moves are seen at unfamiliar angles. When judging or watching a kata performance, after all, we always sit in front, not at an angle to the side. So now, when learning a new kata, we have to peer at faint pictures and guess the angle, and also guess what the hidden parts are doing. We go to the instructions for specifics and find that the angle of the first turn is always stated, but not always the subsequent ones. And here we encounter another strange feature, never encountered before.In wankan, the model in picture 4 is facing to his right (on an angle), turns to his left in picture 5 (on an angle) and goes into a stance in picture 6 (on an angle). The instructions for number 5 say nothing about a turn, and for number 6 they say: "Go forward to the right placing the foot down into a Zenkutsu-Dachi." To the right? The picture shows to the left. You go over it again, trying to get your bearings from positions 1 to 5. You try it to the right--no, it's weird. It has to be to the left. Could the instructions contain a typo? No, it must be something else. Aha, "to the right" means "to the right foot." So the unmentioned turn is to the left, while the mentioned position is to the right foot. But now the phrases "to the right" and "to the left" have become suspect, and the book has become a pain.It doesn't help that all the stances and techniques are designated by their Japanese titles. Yes, an advanced karateka perhaps should know them, but not every dojo insists on it and it isn't essential for the task of learning the kata. The better way would have been to give the English title with the Japanese in parentheses. The chapters are numbered in an odd formal way, like an Army field manual or a scientific treatise: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc. The thick glossy paper doesn't lie flat very well and has to be held down with a stapler, hammer or rock, whatever is near to hand, when trying to learn the kata.In sum, if you are learning advanced shotokan katas at the dojo and your eyesight is sharp and you're up on your Japanese terminology, then this book could serve as a handy reminder before your test. Otherwise, it is painfully bollixed and obscure, and possibly could produce mistakes with a newcomer. For the reasons cited above, I found it next to worthless.

If you study Shotokan this is great book

Well organized and detailed book