Wednesday, June 25, 2008

New gonokata video

This is interesting. The Go no kata (forms of strength) is one of the "lost" kata of judo. Gonokata was aparently practiced in the pre-war Kodokan school, but was not taught post-war and died out along iwth the pre-war students and instructors. There has been no small amount of talk in the last few years about reviving this kata, either by finding a surviving person who learned it before WWII or by reconstructing it from written accounts. I don't know which of these this demonstration represents, but on first viewing it appears to be a pretty good one for two reasons:

  • It fits with the available written descriptive material I've seen on the old kata, like this and this.
  • It has a similar spirit to junokata, for which it was supposed to be a complementary partner-kata.



1 comment:

  1. I'm endlessly fascinated by these judo katas. I love how they address the basic structures and still seem so pertinent to regular use.

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