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Kusanku and Kanku

Page history last edited by Muhammad Tsani 12 years, 3 months ago

Kūsankū (クーサンクー、公相君) is an open hand karate kata originating from Okinawa. It was renamed to Kankū-dai (観空大) by Funakoshi Gichin in the 1930s. This is because Okinawans were considered second class citizens and in order for the form to be taken seriously by the Japanese, the katas name was translated to Japanese and the form slightly altered. The kata is taught as a high-level kata, due to its difficulty, in Shotokan karate.

The movements in the kata are contained to a small area, and you should finish about where you started. This design is based on the size of the Okinawan throne room with multiple people doing the kata. The forum contains a drop move (exaggerated in the video) which represents avoid gunfire (at the time, the time it took to get to that part in the kata is how long it took to load a gun). Some believe the drop is to disorient the opponents when fighting in a poorly lit area, though there is little historical evidence of this. Here is a video of a variation of the Kusanku kata performed by Nathan Carroll.