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Bunkai - Defined

2025-05-10

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I am going to talk about Bunkai and what the true and correct meaning is, as per Taika Seiyu Oyata. I get this kanji breakdown and the meaning from Oyata. He grew up with Uchināguchi, Hachijō, and Japanese Pre-WWII as well as English. I believe his pre-war, multilingual native speaker's knowledge of the meaning of bunkai over that of a current generation, Japanese as a second language speaker. (more)

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To Taika, Bunkai was a KEYSTONE element of karate. Without understanding of the Bunkai Process, your entire art from a self-defense or life-protection stand point, falls apart.

Bunkai 分解 (verb) - In the martial world, it is the process of analyzing kata and extracting fighting techniques from the movements. In other regards, it is used in other ways in Japanese such as dismantling a clock (時計を分解する) or in science to resolve H2O into water and hydrogen (水を酸素と水素に分解する). It is very much not just a martial expression. If, in Japanese, you apply bunkai to science as above, you do not produce bunkai (verb), you produce Oxygen and Hydrogen (two nouns). If you use a process of disassembly (v) on a clock you produce clock parts (n).

Taika Seiyu Oyata
1930-2012

​私は少年時代、時計を分解するのが好きだった。

I used to love taking apart clocks.

Watashi wa shōnen jidai, tokei o bunkai suru no ga suki datta.

In Japanese language, historically, the term arose from the need to systematize complex techniques or concepts into understandable parts. In science, bunkai is often used to describe chemical decomposition, where complex substances are divided into simpler parts. In the cultural context, bunkai may reference detailed analysis of concepts, helping to clarify ideas or revealing the underlying structure of celebrations and practices. It is referenced in Japanese dictionaries this way that are over 100 years old.

Bunkai 分解 (verb)

分

bun

  • part, portion, share

  • one's means, one's place, one's lot, one's social position

  • one's duty, one's part

  • in proportion to, just as much as, to the same degree

解
kai

  • solution (of an equation, inequality, etc.), root (e.g. of a polynomial)

  • solution (to a given problem), answer

  • explanation, interpretation

Oyo 応用 (noun)

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In the martial context of bunkai, Oyo is the finished package, the output. This is what you tie your little ribbon around and present as your final product. This is the answer to the question.

Oyo 応用 (noun)

応

o

  • apply, answer, yes, OK, reply, accept

用
yo

  • utilize, business, service, use, employ

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Henka (変化) (noun) – I’m not going to chase this rabbit too far but henka are essentially just variations of Oyo. If bunkai led to oyo, after you and your partner play with that Oyo a little while you may find slight changes to the finished technique that are just mild alterations.

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 change; variation; alteration; mutation; transition; transformation; transfiguration; metamorphosis; variety; diversity; inflection; declination; conjugation

Henka (変化) (noun)

変

hen

化
ka

  • adjectival noun or quasi-adjective

  • strange, odd, peculiar, weird, curious, eccentric, funny, suspicious, fishy.

  • unexpected.

  • noun

  • change.

  • incident, disturbance, disaster, accident, emergency.

  • After a noun.

  • change to ..., becoming ..., making into ..., -ization,

  •        -ification.

Bunkai Sequence

Bunkai is a process which does not require an exact, sequential representation of kata events. A common and incorrect assumption is that the process requires sequential motion analysis.  Taika believed the kata is the alphabet and though, occasionally displaying words in alphabetical order (a), (I) produces a word, rearrangement produces many, many more. You must rearrange these ingredients to make more than a handful of techniques. Much like boxcars on a train, the sequence during analysis does not have to be ordered. In fact, Taika believed that limiting yourself to the exact order that you learned the kata in only serves to limit your understanding of what is within. It stifles your training and understanding. All box cars arrive at the destination regardless of their sequence.

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Bunkai is not a specific technique. It is the process of analyzing kata (plural).

 

Linguistic Note: 1 kata and 12 kata.... there is no ‘S’ at the end. You only pluralize Japanese words with context. Bunkai is an action/verb. You do not know 12 katas, you know 12 kata. If you are holding one short stick it is Tanbo. If you are holding two short sticks it is still Tanbo. If you want students to go and grab TWO short sticks, it is NiTanbo because they lack the context of having two sticks in their hands.

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If Oyata produced a Bunkai video with 12 techniques in it, it produced 1 analysis method (bunkai) which in turn produced 12 Oyo (techniques). Every instructor’s bunkai is at least slightly different because they produce bunkai based on set criteria, principles, etc. IF Oyata made a bunkai rule set while analyzing Tomari Seisan of (rear attacks only) and produced 12 Oyo, and then reanalyzed the same kata years later with a new rule set (front Attacks only) producing 12 oyo, it would still be the Oyata Bunkai Process.​​

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If three people used their own principles and beliefs to analyze Tomari Seisan to retrieve 12 Oyo each, those three methods would be different and highly likely to result in 36 Oyo. Even similar oyo would have slight variances. Here is where we could do a deep dive into henka but I’ll defer that to a later date.

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  • Oyata Bunkai of Tomari Seisan (Oyata Oyo Seisan 1-12)

  • Odo Bunkai of Tomari Seisan (Odo Oyo Seisan 1-12)

  • Nakamura Bunkai of Tomari Seisan (Namamura Oyo 1-12)

Occam's Kata

The simplest explanation to why there are so many different versions of individual kata by the same name is that, through bunkai, an individual instructor’s understanding and interpretation of the kata drifts over time.

If you were trying to list out every single technique from your lineage that was produced by your instructor’s bunkai process, there would be thousands, and you would most likely abbreviate those names. A logical abbreviation would be ‘Seisan 01’ instead of Oyata Bunkai of Tomari Seisan, Oyata Oyo Seisan 01. That’s a mouthful.

Imitation is the Worst Form of Flattery

Early in Karate adoption, some native English speakers misunderstood what bunkai was and just started saying, "Let's work on bunkai." What they meant was, let's work on the product of Oyata's bunkai, or whoever their root lineage instructor was. Taika called this Xerox Training. When you solely work on HIS solutions, HIS Oyo from HIS process, you are being lazy. You need to learn the process, not the solution. If you simply look at the back of the math book for the solution, you are not learning anything. (For the young readers, many math books used to have the solutions in the back of the book for pre-quizzes.) A Jazz musician is not considered a quality musician simply by replicating a former musician’s work. A musician isn’t considered a composer by simply copying Mozart’s last concerto from one piece of paper to another. A painter isn’t considered an accomplished artist by making exact copies of a Rembrandt.

 

Early in your martial career, you need to learn fundamentals on hand positions, leg positions and Oyo is a good starting point. It is like a painter learning brush strokes, or a musician learning chords and scales. You must, however, begin to think for yourself. You must learn principles and begin to apply them.

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Kata Training without Bunkai is Counter-Productive

Oyata's Bunkai Process is a methodology of applying principles to analyze kata (plural). We use a deck of kata stills. Still snapshots of each kata move, including the ‘in betweens’, are placed in a card deck. We shuffle the deck, draw 2 or 3 cards and try to produce Oyo using those moves. There are many ways to play this game, varying the emphasis and rule sets as you go. This analysis process is what helps speed up your reaction time during an encounter when you see something new, a new situation you are not polished on. Bunkai training  prevents your brain from lingering in Analysis Mode during the fight. Bunkai training is the key to speed. Analysis Mode during an encounter will get you hurt or killed.

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Even using Oyata's method of bunkai, if I do this and have a net result of 12 Oyo, they would be labeled as;

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  • Richards Bunkai of Tomari Seisan (Richards Oyo 1-12)

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NOT Richards Bunkai 1-12.

 

A verb can produce a noun. An action produces an object.

Bunkai Produces Oyo

People keep incorrectly using the term bunkai as a noun. It is not a technique; it is a process.

Break the Cycle

Please help break the cycle. Somewhere back in many karateka lineages, there was a person who misunderstood what bunkai was. It could have been their misunderstanding of language, or the original instructor was just not clear. Please break that cycle. It doesn’t mean your English-speaking martial ancestor was a moron. It just means there was a mistake made during translation. There are many examples of this such as calling 裸絞め Hadaka Shimeru a Rear Naked Choke, when that is absolutely not the translation, and the kanji was never to be translated as choke. All humans make mistakes. Knowing your mistake and passing it on because of ‘tradition’ is detrimental to the art as a whole.

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A Mixed Bag of Kata

The kata bag can and should be mixed. Taika said that the kata specific sequences are there to get you fluid in the motions. The very first time you learn any kata, the odds are that the majority of motions are foreign to your body. The motions are awkward. The kata is there to make these things fluid. In this regard, each kata is like a specific Encyclopedia volume.

 

An Encyclopedia may be difficult for the current generations to understand, growing up in an era where you just google everything. This is essentially where Wikipedia gets its name. Before googling, if you were working on a school project and had to produce a paper, you would turn to various encyclopedia. A bookshelf would have something like the Encyclopedia Brittanica. There might be 30 books. If you needed to do a book report on Aardvarks in New Zealand you would first go to the book with Aardvarks in it, probably a book labeled A-C. You would copy all the information including references. You would then go to book N-M and look up relevant information on New Zealand and copy that information. You would collect all this information into a report of your re-wording and summarization, possibly even accessing other volumes as you learned more. Perhaps you read during your research that Doctor Pendergast did some research on the Aardvark. You might open book O-P to find out more regarding him. All of this was research that produced your report for your 6th grade teacher. Your actions (v) produced a report (n). That is how bunkai works with multiple kata.

 

You could also look at it like having some of the data in the cloud, some on your laptop’s hard drive, some on a thumb drive. You have multiple sources of data and must compile a summary of them after first sorting them all.

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Kata is your Enclopedia Brittancia of Martial Movement

Original Meanings

Per Taika, the original meanings of original, historical kata are lost. He grew up much closer to the root of knowledge, in the 1930’s, and this was his belief then. The original meaning and purposes of kata may very well have been specific techniques from long lost instructors. He would say that nobody knows, as that knowledge was either lost or distorted via word of mouth over time. If there were written records, he believed they were destroyed in the war. Nobody knows who invented the wheel or what the original motivation was for doing so. Everybody uses the wheel many thousands of years later.

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In the End

Sometimes people think I am a little too anal when it comes to these things. I will admit that if you change the terms to Apples and Oranges, a person can still learn and in that grand scheme, I suppose it does not matter. But if our goal is not just to learn, but to preserve the cultural aspects of the art and the deeper meanings of the original Japonic languages at the root of the art, we need to use the correct terms and educate ourselves on the correct use of the words. Using the wrong term only confuses things when others use the correct term. We need to honor the legacy of Oyata and others that came before who knew the correct meanings.

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I cannot stress enough that if people are not working on Bunkai (v) and are only working on Oyo (n), your training will be lacking in fundamental things that increase your speed and reactions during an encounter. Do not just be a xerox machine and only work on Oyo. Do not fool yourselves or future generations into thinking you are working on the keystone skill of Bunkai just because you are using the word to describe Oyo.

Bunkai is the Process

Oyo is the Product

Henka is the Variant

I highly recommend you seek your lineages bunkai process. If it has been lost, then start with Oyata's Bunkai Process and branch out into other ideas on your own or with the help of other.

- Lee Richards

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