A question which has been in the back of my mind for a very long time is why did Miyagi Sensei feel the need to create Tensho kata? What was going through his mind? What did he feel was missing or needed a different approach in his current system?
There are of course the common theories such as it came from the kata Rokkishu, or it was inspired by a chapter in the bubishi etc, but none of these theories cut it for me. If it came from Rokkishu, why not just keep Rokkishu, why change it? I’ve also been told that Rokkishu was never a kata as such, but a short collection of techniques consisting of the wrist strikes/blocks and palm movements contained in tensho and elsewhere in Uechi Ryu.
In fact I find the whole white crane lineage to goju a little bit tenuous too. Again there are very similar ideas and principles shared between them, but if goju came exclusively from white crane, why are none of the kata the same? And why is the execution so different? In fact even at a extremely basic level, the sanchin stance is completely different in that in Goju the front foot is angled inward, whereas in white crane the back foot is angled outward. Differences such as this which apply to the very common structure, so important in the Gojuryu lead me to doubt the common held theories into the historical evolution of the system.
I think Miyagi Sensei isn’t given enough credit regarding how much he actually did to further develop his teachers art.
The $50,000 question is where did the rest of the kata come from (the ones unique to goju which were previously unrecorded in okinawa ie saifa, seiunchin, shisochin?, seipai, kururunfa).
Regarding Tensho again, another theory was that Miyagi Sensei came up with the idea after studying the section of the bubishi relating to different hand forms. Again I find this a little hard to swallow, for a start there are many of the hand forms completely omitted from the kata.
Again it may seem a bit of a tenuous link but I’ve been finding many similarities between sanchin / tensho with bagua and xingyi. A lot of the ideas and principles have a massive cross over, and I wonder if Miyagi Sensei introduced Tensho in order to develop some of these ideas.
In order to get some idea of what Miyagi Sensei may have been thinking it’s important to look at what information would have been available to him around the time of the early 1900’s. No doubt he would have been in contact with other martial artists, including his friend Gokenki and other Chinese from Kumemura. We also know that he had many books destroyed during WW2, what books would have been available to Miyagi Sensei around the pre-war era?
We will never be able to tell exactly what Miyagi Sensei had in mind, but if our research leads us to our own discoveries that add further depth to our practice then the effort will be worthwhile.
I do not know either where tensho came from, but it is the first time I heard that goju ryu comes exclusively from Crane. Crane is one of the elements, usually in the more advanced section of the goju ryu curriculum; the other strong influence is Tiger: so in goju you find strong linear attacks with tiger claws, and small circular evasions and attacks with circular blocks and finger tip attacks. Of course, Tiger and Crane are not the only influences in goju ryu. However, the strong-hard-linear principle and the soft-circular principle can be seen in the two main goju kata: sanchin and tensho. They both complement each other. So advanced gojuka shifts constantly and quickly from hard to soft according to the fight. The more advanced the gojuka, the more soft and circular his goju, that is what my instructor told me.
A good friend of mine practices bagua and xingyi. We occasionally discuss similarities and differences, there is indeed a lot of crossover. It’s always very interesting to train a little together.