row—of the kata do not change. By definition, more fundamental changes
(when they are made intentionally and acknowledged as such) connote the
branching off of a new system or art.
But the real function of pattern practice goes far beyond this. The im-
portance of this learning device in traditional East Asian martial—and
other—art training stems from the belief that it is the most efficient vehicle
for passing knowledge from teacher to student, an idea that in turn derives
from broader Chinese educational models.
Learning through pattern practice is a direct outgrowth of Confucian
pedagogy and its infatuation with ritual and ritualized action. This infatu-
ation is predicated on the conviction that man fashions the conceptual
frameworks he uses to order—and thereby comprehend—the chaos of raw
experience through action and practice. One might describe, explain, or
even defend one’s perspectives by means of analysis and rational argument,
but one cannot acquire them in this way. Ritual is stylized action, sequen-
tially structured experience that leads those who follow it to wisdom and
understanding. Therefore, it follows that those who seek knowledge and
truth must be carefully guided through the right kind of experience if they
are to achieve the right kind of understanding. For the early Confucians,
whose principal interest was the proper ordering of the state and society,
this need meant habituating themselves to the codes of what they saw as
the perfect political organization, the early Zhou dynasty. For martial art
students, it means ritualized duplication of the actions of past masters.
Confucian models—particularly Zhu Xi’s concept of investigating the
abstract through the concrete and the general through the particular, but
also Wang Yangming’s emphasis on the necessity of unifying knowledge
and action—dominated most aspects of traditional education in China, Ko-
rea, and Japan, not just martial art training. In Japan, belief in the efficacy
of this approach to learning was further reinforced by the Zen Buddhist
tradition of ishin-denshin(mind-to-mind transmission), which stresses the
importance of a student’s own immediate experience over explicit verbal or
written explanation, engaging the deeper layers of a student’s mind and by-
passing the intellect.
Thus, attaining mastery of the martial or other traditional arts came
to be seen as an osmosis-like, suprarational process, in which the most im-
portant lessons cannot be conveyed by overt explanation. The underlying
principles of the art, it was believed, can never be wholly extrapolated; they
must be experienced directly—intuited from examples in which they are
put into practice.
The role of the teacher in this educational model is to serve as exem-
plar and guide, not as lecturer or conveyor of information. Traditional
martial art teachers lead students along the path to mastery of their arts,
Form/Xing/Kata/Pattern Practice 137