Bunkai, work and skills
Peter Thomas, director of FORWARD — The RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation, on bunkai — the process of analysis of karate kata — and its relationship to work and skills.
As anyone (including me) who is learning karate knows, there is one fundamental thing you learn: kata.
Kata (Japanese 型 or 形) means form. Kata are sequences of movements — usually 50 or more punches, kicks, blocks, stances and turns, executed on a pattern (embusen) that starts and ends on the same point. The karate practitioner (karateka) learns successively more complex kata at each stage of their training.
Kata, as practised by experienced karateka, are almost an artform — elegant, powerful, precise, flowing and infused with energy and focus.
But they are not just an elaborate ballet, no matter how elegant they are.
Kata were originally designed to encode practical fighting techniques and to teach them to students who could practice them repeatedly. The punches, kicks and blocks in kata were not for show but for combat. The pattern, the embusen, on which kata are practised, solves the practical problem of moving in a confined space, helps students practice each of the movements, helps students practice changes of direction and makes the sequences more memorable. Kata are mnemonics.
Alongside kata, students are also taught bunkai (分解) meaning analysis or disassembly.
Bunkai analyses a specific part of a kata — such as a block or a strike, or a sequence of blocks and strikes — to figure out how it could be applied in a practical fighting situation. This analysis results in what is called oyo — the technique extracted from the kata.
Through bunkai, oyo can be adjusted for timing and rhythm and to address issues like the size and skill level of an opponent. Facing a taller opponent, for example, might require one to change the direction of a punch; combat in a confined space might require modification of a kick— or not using a kick at all. Bunkai is when form meets function, when theory meets the messy real world where the aim is to fight effectively.
The relationship between kata — the form, and bunkai — the application, is complex. You might ask “Why not just teach the techniques and forget about the kata? Why go to the trouble of teaching kata when you just have to break it down and extract the application of the techniques in the kata?”
One of the answers is that karate, and other martial arts, have shifted away from their roots as practical fighting systems. Karate is much more about becoming fitter, more disciplined, more aware of your body, and being part of a social network of like-minded people than getting into fights. In reality, very few karateka will end up in a street fight — the aim should be if at all possible, to avoid a fight as the outcome can be uncertain.
Another answer is that kata serve the function of making learning much easier. The blocks, kicks, punches and stances in a kata are better learned and executed as sequences than just isolated moves.
Another is that the form-based movements in a kata represent ideals. For example, the basic ‘fighting stance’ known as zenkutsu dachi, or front-stance — front leg bent over the toes, rear leg straight, rear foot pointing out at 45 degrees, feet at least two knuckle widths apart — is one that, as far as possible, gives the karateka a solid base from which to execute blocks, strikes and kicks and to move between one stance and another. When fighting, it may be impossible to achieve this stance — because of how quickly fights happen, because of the position you are in or because of something an opponent does — and so compromises have to be made. If you find yourself close to an opponent your stance might be modified to be shorter so you can strike quickly, for example.
Or, take the position of the hands. In a kata, your non-striking/blocking hand is quickly pulled back tight under your armpit. This both prepares it for the next movement so that when the hand is used — for a punch, say — you can rotate your hips for maximum power. But in a fight, you have to strike quickly, and to speed up a punch it may be you need to hold your hand out in front of you. The resulting punch may not be as powerful or elegant, but it will take much less time to hit an opponent (and your hand can be used to protect yourself). This might be the difference between your opponent being hit or you being hit.
Practising the ideal stances in a kata, and then analysing them through bunkai, teaches the karateka how to intelligently translate the ideal form into its practical applications.
While kata are about mastering your own form, bunkai is about mastering an opponent.
What does this have to do with work?
The term kata in connection with work was most prominently used in a book by Mike Rother about continual improvement at Toyota called Toyota Kata.
He talks about using ‘the improvement kata’ and ‘the coaching kata’ to teach “scientific thinking” through “small, structured routines or protocols that are used to start developing a new skill.” The kata in Toyota Kata are ways of developing habits, skills, and a culture of continuous improvement.
But this is really just an analogy— kata as practice —and anyway, perhaps the interesting thing might not be the kata but the bunkai.
One of the problems with any process, model, approach, or strategy is when the strategic rubber hits the road's hard, uneven, potholed surface.
No plan survives contact with reality, it is often said, and that perfectly describes why, while the form of a kata is essential to practice, it’s the bunkai — the disassembly and the implementation of the kata in pragmatic and workable ways — where the action is. Once you know the form and have practised it, then you can analyse it, and then you can adapt it so it can be applied.
So what would bunkai look like in a work setting?
An example of our own. We are using an Agile-inspired/infused set of processes to help us ideate, sort and filter ideas, assess them, choose what to implement and then monitor them.
But rather than adopt the perfect form of whatever system, methodology approach or process — such as Agile, or an ideation methodology— we analysed their bunkai, asking: What does it represent? What is it intended to achieve? What are the principles it enacts? How can we draw from it to use it in practice? Our best version of Agile, or an ideation process, is the one that we can apply in practice. It’s our oyo.
Agile is of course an interesting example of this form/application division. Organisations often describe themselves as (small-a) agile (they are responsive, flexible and dynamic) or, in some cases (big-A) Agile (they use the principles and processes of the Agile movement first created for software development). But in reality, this often amounts to practising kata: the ceremonies, the tools, and the artefacts of Agile are there but not the bunkai — the practical application in a specific context, organisational structure, culture and level of understanding. The Agile Alliance says there are 8 Reasons why Agile Projects Fail, but I’d add a ninth: a lack of bunkai. Bunkai would help you to solve, for example, the Agile Alliance’s reason #2 (“Company Philosophy or Culture at Odds with Core Agile Values”) by looking for a practical, pragmatic, workable implementation of Agile that doesn’t scare the hell out of Simon from People and Culture who thinks he’ll be doing five standups a day, talking to someone called a “scrum master” and having to huddle, scrum-like, with his colleagues in the coffee room.
Another example. We have a (relatively simple) set of tools that support our work: Miro boards, Notion workspaces and pages and Slack channels. But we have tried to apply them practically, often idiosyncratically, and so while it might not be perfect form, as in a kata, our bunkai ensures we use them effectively. Because we do know the perfect form, the kata, we can practice bunkai — disassembly, extract the oyo and then apply them. (Of course, these types of collaboration tools lend themselves — because of their open, permissive, thoughtfully designed, well-functioning and flexible features — precisely to this).
Outside of our own ways of working, perhaps there is a need to focus on bunkai elsewhere — certainly in the skills area, where the practical application of skills is a necessity.
One of the principles that underlies the learning of skills in karate — or any skillset (in Japanese terminology, the waza) — is the idea that learners add their own creative interpretation to the skills that teachers teach them. This contextualising of specific skills and the constant repetition of them — whatever they might be — helps learners to make them become automatic, reflex actions. Time spent learning kata and practising bunkai helps learners to be able to exercise skills without thinking. This is incredibly useful when reacting in the moment to an attacker in karate, but also useful for many of the skills we use in everyday life (driving, eating, navigating around spaces) and those that are relevant to work (discussions in meetings, how to communicate, skills for safely working in physical roles). This ability to move from learning to unconsciously acting is, in French Sociologist Marcel Mauss’ term “habitus” — the set of automatic skills that allow us to perceive and interact with the world.
And maybe the notion of bunkai can be applied in other areas — strategy or organisational change, for example. In Stowe Boyd’s term, the approach of ‘rewilding’ organisations for resilience has exactly this character — drawing from form (in this case ecological models) into practical applications in different types of organisations.
A final example. One of our inflight projects concerns bildung — the Nordic approach to ‘inner development’ that sits somewhere between individual development, learning and collective culture. The principles of bildung —meaningful personal development, deep education and understanding and a focus on sustainable prosperity — are like kata, which can be applied in practical applications. An example might be Citymakers Eindhoven, a bildung-infused place-based leadership and development programme for young people.
Of course, organisations, in a very real and practical sense, are suffused with bunkai.
‘Organisational insiders’ — those who have learned to navigate the complexity of organisations and their people and structures — could be said to be using bunkai and extracting oyo. They have become adept at translating ‘how we should do things’ to ‘how we make things happen’. Similarly, transformational leaders must engage in intensely practical, situational behaviours to make change happen. This is not to imply that bunkai is some form of coercive realpolitik, but it certainly requires, as in karate, a certain realism and pragmatism.
While the bunkai taught to most karateka is effective in practical fighting, it is said that there is another layer of applications, only taught to a selected few practitioners, that can be decoded from the kata — but only if you use a set of rules called kaisai no genri.
One of these rules is techniques executed while advancing implies attacking techniques. So looking at a karateka stepping forward while performing a block (by moving the arm across the body to stop an attacker from punching you) you can’t assume it is a block — it may, in fact, be an attacking move.
Another rule is there are no pauses in the application: in contrast to the highly stylised kata performed by 2020 Olympic competitors such as Rita Usami which show incredible, speed, grace, form, rhythm and timing, the kinds of fighting techniques extracted through kaisai no genri are likely to be applied quickly without any pauses and intended to end the fight as fast as possible.
Finally, a kaisai no genri rule is that angles are important. Although kata are performed in specific patterns, what matters is that a technique is performed relative to a single attacker, who is usually (but not always) in front of you.
What kaisai no genri suggests is that there are a set of rules we can use to decode forms and uncover practical, useable, effective actions that are relevant to specific circumstances.
This is not to imply of course that work is combat, but that analysing, understanding and applying ideal forms of behaviour in action may be one route to becoming more effective, impactful and transparent in the work we do.
My thanks to Sensei David Y. Lees (4th Dan) and Sensei Marco Mazzanti (6th Dan) from Kimekai Martial Arts, for insightful comments on this story.
FORWARD is the RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation.
Our role is to build an innovative learning ecosystem at scale, create new collaborative applied research and invent next-generation skills solutions that will catalyse workforce development in the future-oriented industries crucial to Victoria’s economic renewal.
We lead collaborative applied research on future skills and workforce transformation from within RMIT’s College of Vocational Education, building and scaling the evidence and practice base to support Victorian workforce planning and delivery and acting as a test lab for future skills to develop and pilot new approaches to skills training and education through digital transformation and pedagogical innovation.
We leverage RMIT’s multi-sector advantage to translate research insights into identifying workforce requirements and the co-design of practice-based approaches with industry.
Contact us at forward@rmit.edu.au
