The Way of Least Resistance

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 of this article. Shisochin begins with 3 opening sanchin stances making it superficially similar to cluster H. However it departs from cluster H in almost every other sense: the kata is “symmetrical” and has a high proportion of “soft” techniques. Moreover the opening thrusts are performed as nukite — knife hand thrusts. While it is said that cluster H were originally practiced open hand, it is more likely that, like the uechi-ryu kata, the nukite where executed palm down to a point just below the attacker’s nipple, not with a vertical hand to the solar plexus as per shisochin. All of this points to shisochin being from a very different source than the cluster H kata (and of the same family/source as saifa, seiyunchin, seipai and kururunfa). But what was that source? As I stated in Part 2 of this article, shisochin might have existed in Okinawa before Kanryo Higaonna even left for China: there is written record of Seisho Aragaki performing a kata n...