Practicing the kata Niseishi, under the instruction of Soke Sakagami
On December 16th, 2018, the Soke Seminar was held in the headquarters of Itosu-ryu Karatedo International Federation (IKIF). It is organized by Kato district Association of Itosu-kai Japan, and it is an annual event which is held in the end of year.
This is basically a seminar for every branch dojo’s instructors, and about 25 instructors gathered and practiced together this time.
After the basic training, we reviewed JKF Shitei Kata: “Heian” series. The lesson was organized by Shihan Hino (8th dan). Japan Karatedo Federation (JKF) created new mandatory katas for a junior tournament. They are five “Heian” Katas from Shito-ryu group, five “Heian” Katas from Shoto-kan group, five “Pinan” Kata from Wado-ryu group, and two “Gekisai” katas from Goju-ryu group. Those katas will be officially conducted from 2019 in all of junior championships hosted or collaborated by JKF. So, instructors need to know them. Shito-ryu group’s “Heian” katas are created based on “Shito-kai” organization’s katas, and they are completely different from our Itosu-kai’s basics in regards to the details and the pattern. Some people say it is another burden to learn other style’s karate, but many people think knowing others is finally knowing ourselves, and there are a lot of benefit as well.
After that, Soke Sakagami conducted the class, and he taught Bassai Sho at first. We usually practice Bassai-dai a lot but we have relatively less opportunity to practice Bassai-Sho. So, we spent a lot of time to study the details of this kata. Especially, Bassai-Sho is a very unique kata whose application is against Bo staff. Soke Sakagami is actually Jodo (a short stick) and Kobudo master and he is very good at using Bo staff. His explanation was very clear and detailed.
Then, from a request of one of the instructors, we practiced “Niiseishi”. He explained this kata was one of the three “Aragaki-ha Kenpo Katas”. He especially focused on teaching the scooping techniques in the application.
Three and half hours had quickly passed, and the last Soke seminar in 2018 was over. All of instructors moved to a local Chinese restaurant and they had Japanese traditional “Bonen-kai” party (A party for the end of the year). Our new years training will start from annual Winter Beach Training in Enoshima, Japan on January 6th, 2019.
