Chinte Kata

What is Kata?

In Karate, kata is a sequence of moves organized into a pre-arranged fight against imaginary opponents. The kata consists of kicks, punches, sweeps, strikes, blocks, and throws. Body movement in various kata includes stepping, twisting, turning, dropping to the ground, and jumping. Kata is not a performance or a demonstration, but is for individual karateka to practice full techniques– with every technique potentially a killing blow (ikken hisatsu), while paying particular attention to form and timing (rhythm).

The standard kata in (Shotokan) Karate are:

Chinte Kata

The title of this kata 'Chinte' is taken from the Chinese characters which mean 'Strange hands',despite an unsuccessful attempt to rename it 'Shoin' by Master Funakoshi in his attempt to make the art more accessible to the Japanese public. The kata managed to keep its original name.

It is only natural that a kata with the title 'Strange hands' should pay high attention to the hand techniques of karate. So much so that there is only one kick in the entire kata, but with unusual (or strange if you care to make the connection) te-waza such as tate-zuki, naka-daka-ken, age-empi-uchi, teisho and nihon-nukite used throughout. Techniques such as naka-daka-ken are only used in this kata, so deveopement and understanding of these techniques will take place in this kata.

Also important to consider in this kata is the fact that it teaches you a great deal about striking to vulnerable points of the body, and once you absorb the knowledge from this kata, you will be able to apply this to the rest of your karate, and actually improve the effectiveness of your karate. From this point of view, Chinte is critical kata in the syllabus, although it is commonly disliked by many students, and like Hangetsu, many of the more advanced karateka gain an appreciation for the kata over time. In many respects, this kata is quite similar to Sochin, particularly in the sense of how rooted the karateka becomes whilst performing the kata, with transitions from fudo-dachi into zenkutsu-dachi on the tate-shuto, tate-zuki sequence generating impressive levels of power.