Sometime within the last week or so, as I scrolled through my favorite reddit pages, I stumbled upon a comment complaining that kata in judo are just to make judo more like karate, and they’re dumb.
I would link this comment for you to look at yourself, but if you know reddit, you know the struggle of finding a discussion thread, let alone an individual comment within the thread. So, while I can’t prove the existence of this, rest assured that many who may not say it, think it.
If you’re not of a Martial Arts style that includes kata, they are forms of movements within a Martial Art. Patterns of techniques that are typically intended to teach the techniques, as well as overarching principals within a Martial Art.
In judo, the history of kata is nuanced and, at times, quite sexist.
Historically, judo is, more than its own art, a conglomerate of the arts of the era, which eventually turned into its own creation. Kano-sensei, a skilled Martial Artist and brilliant educator, decided there was a better and a safer way to teach Martial Arts to people. He used his background to put together judo. If you look up judo on Wikipedia, it’s defined as “a physical, mental, and moral pedagogy in Japan.” It’s a system of learning, more than a group of techniques. Over time, it turned into the art, sport and, for some, way of life we know it as today.
How does kata fit in with this?
Kata are a systematic way of learning new information, something educator Kano-sensei thought was important. As judo is a conglomerate of historic arts, the use of kata was likely just a given to be included. They weren’t something added without purpose, they had an important role to play in the education of students as Martial Artists. They teach not only the principles of judo, but also give opportunities to practice techniques not allowed in randori (looking at you, IJF-leg-grab-ban), and opportunities to really refine technique, among other things.
In today’s judo, the most common kata is Randori no Kata, which is compromised of the more-well-known throwing kata, Nage no Kata, and the ground work kata, Katame no Kata. While there’s a long list of other kata, the only other one I’ll give a shout out to here is my favorite, Ju no Kata.
For women in judo, Ju no Kata is of particular interest. In the early days of the Kodokan, judo’s original dojo founded by Kano-sensei, Ju no Kata was taught to male students when they reached their black belt. But for women, they began learning Ju no Kata earlier than that, closer to what we now consider brown belt level. (As an important aside, in Japan, black belt was and still is considered a student level, up until about 4th degree black belt. This is in contrast to America, where back belt is considered “master” by most people. For context, in modern judo, America’s black belts are more akin to Japan’s 2nd/3rd degree black belts, because 1st degree black belts don’t hold the same esteem in Japan. Women were being taught Ju no Kata before even their 1st degree black belt.) Kata were held in higher respect then, and it was expected that all students would learn the kata, and learn them well.
But Kano-sensei’s highest level women students revered Ju no Kata, and were held in high regard for their skill. Keiko Fukuda, one of Kano-sensei’s most famous and accomplished women students, once said that watching two skilled women do Ju no Kata was quite special, especially compared to watching men do it.
Unfortunately, while the sense that women should do kata remained over time, the reverence for kata did not. By the time Rusty Kanokogi was pretending to be a man to compete in judo competitions, kata were disregarded in judo as “the thing women do,” and used as a way to dismiss women from competing.
In 1964, Fukuda-sensei demonstrated Ju no Kata at the Olympics, the first Olympics male judoka could compete. It wasn’t until 1992 that women were allowed to compete in Olympic judo.
Nowadays, women’s judo is much closer to being equal in competition opportunities to men than it was 30 years ago, and women’s competition judo is the primary focus of many female judoka. While this may not be BECAUSE of women’s judo complicated history with kata, both the hyper focus on competition in general, and women’s complicated history have impacted the decline of interest in kata over the years.
Kata’ descent in importance may be for any number of reasons, including the ones mentioned above. It could be that kata are boring compared to randori. It could be that learning good technique is difficult, far more difficult than being strong and dragging someone to the ground. It could be that learning how to drag people to the ground wins competitions a lot sooner in a judo career than learning the deeper essence of the techniques.
It could be that kata have changed. They were supposed to be a time capsule of technique, a way of maintaining the integrity of Kano-sensei’s judo. But, from personal experience of studying Fukuda-sensei’s book on Ju no Kata compared to the modern Ju no Kata, I can assure you kata have not been maintained. And thus, the systematic method of learning the principles of judo have become a set of steps designed to… well, I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do now.
It could be a little of all of these, and more. The reality is, kata are dismissed as unimportant for those that are focused on competing, and judo is often dismissed as just a sport. How can it be useful for self-defense when you need a gi? Is it really that much different from wrestling? And attempts to explain judo’s non-sport merits are, at times, dismissed as “the cult of judo.”
So many criticisms of judo I have seen are answered in the kata.
“How do you do no-gi judo?” Nage no Kata and Ju no Kata uses gi-less grips for many of their throws.
“How good is judo for self-defense?” Ju no Kata was taught as a self-defense kata to women. Many of the kata involve throws, joint locks, strikes, etc. being used as counters to strikes and weapon attacks. Kime no Kata was developed for teaching combat defenses.
“Judo isn’t a complete workout on its own, you have to supplement judo with weight training and cardio!” Go no Kata, I have been told, is quite the callisthenic workout. Seiryoku Zenko Kokumin Taiiku was created to develop a good physique, and could be done without a partner. All of the kata involve some amount of strengthening, flexibility, and targeting of muscles not commonly used in randori, while also refining techniques and teaching core principals.
Judo appears to have been designed to be a complete physical system, where supplemental exercises should not have been necessary to the practitioner. By disregarding the parts of judo that aren’t immediately impactful to winning competitions, we lose out on what was supposed to differentiate judo from other Martial Arts systems.
And these things are just the beginning of what kata do for a student of judo.
Judo was created to be more than just a system of fighting, more than just the sport we assume it to be now. Kata were an important part of that.
For women, kata were, frankly, used to limit our participation in judo. But that doesn’t mean women should balk at the idea of learning kata, nor does it mean that kata should be disregarded by the broader judo community as unnecessary. Their movements, meanings, and lessons are deeper than they appear, and spending the time to really learn what the kata have to teach can improve your judo drastically.
Yes, even your competition.