Kanku dai

Biiiiig karate self-training session this morning. I videoed a bunch of it: set the camera going and just trained. I haven’t reviewed the video yet; that might be interesting... possibly horrifying? Probably not though.

Anyway, I grabbed a screenshot from close to the beginning of the kata Kanku Dai. It’s the longest kata we practise, and very representative of the style. It (or perhaps its older form) was the favourite of Master Funakoshi sensei, the founder of Shotokan karate.

One of the “origin stories” for this kata is that it’s original name, Kusanku, was the name of a Chinese envoy to Okinawa, whose fighting style/techniques are represented in the kata.