Kata: Nipaipo (karate), Er Shi Ba (White Crane Kung Fu)

Nipaipo (Nepai) meaning 28 ‘beats’ or steps, is a shito-ryu kata developed by Kenwa Mabuni. It descends through the Naha-te lineage of shito-ryu. Mabuni’s influence for this kata came from Gokenki, a Chinese tea merchant who moved to Okinawa in 1912. An expert in the Southern Chinese style of Whooping Crane Kung Fu (Baihequan) he set up home in Kume village just a short distance away from Matsuyama Park and close to the Ryukyu Tode-jutsu Kenkyukai (a hidden and secret underground Karate research society).  

He started teaching his brand of white crane kung fu to karate masters at the Ryukyu Tode-jutsu Kenkyukai, including Kenwa Mabuni, Chojun Miyagi, Juhatsu Kyoda and Shinpo Matayoshi. He taught several white crane forms including Nipaipo. However this version of the kata is not the same as the karate version developed by Mabuni, though it did influence it; the original Chinese white crane version, called Er shi Ba (28 constellations), is longer and performed using the softer, more flowing moves of kung-fu.

Here’s the karate version of the kata: 

Here's the original White Crane version:

The World Karate Federation has adopted Nipaipo as a mandatory kata to be performed in the early stages of WKF kata competitions. 

Nipaipo is a 2nd dan kata on our syllabus and thus one of my current kata.

22nd June update: 

Since writing this post I have had some e-mail correspondence with Joe Harte, a Taiji instructor of over 20 years experience. He said:

“Traditionally in the white crane world the form was called ershiba lohan, meaning “28buddhas" or "28sages" but sometimes shortened to just  ershiba.

In the Taiji syllabus we refer to it as Quickfist as it’s the only fast form we use in master Huangs system of taiji.  More formally it’s called SanFeng Quickfist in reference to the legendary founder of Taiji, Chang San Feng, and also in recognition that master Huang changed the emphasis of this form over his lifetime so now it is externally the same as the white crane version but internally has a different flavour – towards the pure taiji principles.”

Thanks Joe, look forward to meeting you at Marfest!

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Interview with Master Ken at Martial News

Martial News (an online martial arts newspaper) has just published a unique and exclusive interview with the great Master Ken, the founder of Ameri-Do-Te! If you're not familiar with Master Ken and his show 'Enter the Dojo' then view this video clip before clicking through to the interview on Martial News:




You'll find the interview HERE. Enjoy!

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Is the Queen a secret budo practitioner?

Photo By DAVID MOIR/REUTERS

Even if you’re not British you probably can’t have helped noticing that it is the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations at the moment – I’m sure highlights of the various events have been screened around the world…

Sixty years on the throne! – She’s only the second Monarch in British history to have achieved such a long reign (Queen Victoria being the other one at 63 years).  As you can imagine Britain is feeling pretty patriotic at the moment – lots of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ being sung and the Union Flag being flown and waved around on every street. There have been thousands of street parties and over 4000 beacons lit and that’s just in the UK. Celebrations have gone on around the Commonwealth too – she is their Queen too, after all.

The Queen is a very special person. Even if you are not a monarchist you have to accept that as a woman the Queen is an exceptional person.  She has devoted herself tirelessly to serve the people of the UK and Commonwealth.  The Queen is now 86 and yet she still carries out around 430 engagements a year. She has an amazing work ethic don’t you think? For most of these she is accompanied by her husband the Duke of Edinburgh who is nearly 91!

She is a constant presence in an ever changing world – an anchor, a link to our past. She has witnessed many Heads of State from other countries come and go with repeated regularity. She has given wise counsel to many a British Prime Minister. She reminds us what it means to be British.

I also think she could teach us a thing or two about budo!

Let’s take this weekend’s celebrations as an example….. On Saturday we had the Pageant on the Thames. A flotilla of a thousand boats sailed down the Thames which took about 4 hours. The Queen and her family witnessed the event from the Royal Barge. They stood for the entire time to watch the event, with only a flimsy roof to shield them from the elements. They must have been freezing yet they didn’t flinch from their duty to watch every single boat go past. People had sailed from all over the world to be part of the pageant and they didn’t want to let her down and the Queen certainly wasn’t going to let them down by not watching just because it was cold, windy and raining! They couldn’t even take a loo break which isn’t easy for a couple aged 86 and 91! (Unfortunately that is probably the reason that the Duke was hospitalised with a bladder infection the next day). The Queen remained upright, stoical and interested throughout the whole pageant.

If that wasn’t a display of shugyo I don’t know what is!

The Queen displays many of the characteristics you would expect to see in someone who has practiced budo all their lives – she is physically strong for her age, she is focussed on her work, devoted to her family, she shows humility and compassion, she is knowledgeable and wise, calm and stoical, trustworthy and respectful of others….the list goes on. Her life has been one of perseverance and selfless endeavour.  She even stayed calm and de-escalated the situation when an intruder broke into her bedroom at Buckingham Palace in 1982! 

I think the Queen is a woman to be admired and the British Monarchy an institution to be envied. Nowhere else has what we have here in Britain, we would be mad to get rid of it. I have no truck with the tiny republican movement we have in this country. There have been a couple of small republican protests during this weekend of celebrations (after all it is a free country). Guess where they held their protest – outside Traitors gate!

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Marfest 2012 is coming....

It's that time of year again! Martial Arts Festival time...

The 12th Great Northern International Festival of Martial Arts (affectionately know as Marfest) is due to be staged on Sunday 24th June 2012 at the University of Sunderland, 'City Space' site from 10.00am - 4pm.

This is a great day out for martial artists and non-martial artists alike. The festival takes the form of demonstrations to a seated audience on the main mat with a rotating programme of 'taster sessions' for the public to try on four smaller matted areas. This format proved very popular last year with dozens of people trying out various martial arts for the first time with instruction from some of the regions top instructors.

The festival always kicks off with a spectacular lion dance parade




This year's demonstrations include:

Kung Fu - Paul Tennet

Jujitsu - Chris Poole

Karate - John Bruce, Holly stirling

Directional Fighting Method - Phil Doherty

Judo - John Pickering

Tae Kwon Do - Mike Campos

Aiki Arts - Geoff Aisbitt

Ninjutsu - Bill Patterson

Kempo Jitsu - Paul Thompson

Cane Do - Mick Farrow

Tai Chi - Joe Harte

Here's a medley of last years festival:




The aim of Marfest is to raise money for cancer research. All proceeds from the day will go to the North Eastern branch of Cancer Research UK. Newcastle University is a world leader in cancer research with projects in both adult and childhood cancers. In addition, marfest has set up a fundraising page on the Cancer Research UK website where people can donate directly to the 'sarcoma project' that is currently being funded by the charity at Newcastle University.

This will be my 4th year of attending the festival. I'm not good enough to do a demonstration for them, though I enjoyed participating in the taster sessions (I did some judo, aikido and DFM last year), so I have offered to help the organiser, Peter Seth, by helping to promoting the festival. To that aim I have set up a blog dedicated to Marfest as well as the fundraising page. Please go and visit the blog where you will find out more about the festival and its participants (more content will be added on the run up to the festival) and if you want, go visit the fundraising page too, after all cancer touches on all our lives in one way or another and the work done at Newcastle University will benefit cancer sufferers the world over....

Thanks for listening...

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Where does YOUR karate come from?

Don’t worry this isn’t going to be yet another treatise on the history of karate – we all know karate comes from Okinawa…

What I mean is where does YOUR karate come from in YOU?

You may be aware of the phrase Shin Gi Tai. This goes a long way to explaining where your karate comes from but in my opinion it misses one important ingredient. Before I reveal what that is lets explain what these terms mean:

Tai: This means the body (e.g. tai sabaki – body movement). It refers to the fact that to do karate well you must have a fit, healthy body that is flexible, coordinated and strong. Our body must be able to endure physical contact with another and react quickly to changing situations. We achieve this kind of body through hard repetitive training of the basics of our art as well as our own supplementary training.

Shin: This means the mind (e.g mushin – no mind; shoshin – beginner’s mind, seishin – positive mind, zanshin – an aware mind). It refers to the need to cultivate the correct mental skills to be a good karateka such as developing a clear and uncluttered mind that is fully focused on the task in hand whilst still maintaining a peripheral awareness of what is happening around. It also refers to developing a positive, confident spirit, one that will persevere with determination to achieve one’s goals.

Gi: This refers to technique. It’s no good cultivating the perfect body and mind if you don’t know how to do any karate! Obviously you need to learn and practice a range of karate techniques too.

We generally develop shin gi tai in parallel, improving in each one as we progress through training, so you might consider that your karate comes from your body, mind and good technique all combining together in a coordinated fashion . It’s a very holistic approach – the end result being greater than the sum of the parts; but for me there is an ingredient missing here…

I would argue that karate really comes from the heart. The Japanese word for this is kokora. The heart is the seat of passion, compassion, conviction not to mention courage. We feel all these things in our hearts and it is these things that drive us to be good karateka. We feel our karate in our hearts; it virtually bursts out of us if we are doing it well.

If you look around the students in your dojo you can see who has the heart for it and who doesn’t. Some will be sweating with the effort, appear to be concentrating, even have reasonable technique but their face tells you they have no heart for it, it looks expressionless and bored. Others may still be out of shape, getting a little confused with the technique but the look of joy and animation on their faces as they persist in trying to improve tell you they have heart.

Having the heart for karate may save you one day – if you lose heart you will lose the fight.

So where does YOUR karate come from – is it the heart?

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