Why Most Bunkai Doesn’t Convince Me
I was watching a karate teacher break down bunkai the other day on YouTube.
He was thoughtful. Technical. Precise.
And I didn’t believe any of it.
Not because he didn’t know his kata.
Not because he wasn’t skilled.
But because what I was watching didn’t look like a fight. It looked like two people agreeing to do karate together.
That’s the problem.
The moment it stops feeling real
Most bunkai demonstrations share a tell.
They require:
A cooperative attacker
Perfect timing
Exact distance
Clean angles
Mutual understanding
The uke steps in just right.
The defender responds just right.
Everyone stays upright. Balanced. Polite.
Nothing collapses. Nothing panics. Nothing goes wrong.
But real situations are nothing like that.
The quiet lie we tell ourselves
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
A lot of bunkai exists to preserve the shape of the kata, not to solve a real problem.
People start with the movement and ask,
“How could this work?”
Instead of starting with the reality and asking,
“What problem is being solved here?”
So the bunkai ends up looking like the kata — clean, formal, recognizable — even when the situation it’s supposed to represent is messy, close, and chaotic.
When bunkai still looks like kata, it’s usually already broken.
What real application actually looks like
If a movement is meant to work in a real situation, it should survive things like:
Bad timing
Wrong grips
Awkward angles
Forward pressure
Resistance
Real application:
Happens at clinch range
Uses gross motor actions
Breaks posture and balance
Works even when the other person isn’t “doing karate”
And honestly?
It usually doesn’t look very pretty.
If it still looks elegant under pressure, I’m suspicious.
Kata isn’t the problem
This part matters.
I don’t think kata is useless. I think we misunderstand what it is.
Kata isn’t a list of techniques.
It’s compressed information.
It’s constraints.
Vocabulary.
Body lessons.
Not a script.
The mistake is treating kata like choreography instead of a map of problems:
Someone grabbing you
Someone crashing into you
Someone swinging badly and too close
Someone pushing, clinching, or falling into you
If your bunkai can’t function inside those realities, it’s not bunkai. It’s reenactment.
Why this matters at Good Fight
At Good Fight, I’m not interested in preserving karate’s appearance at the expense of its honesty.
I care more about:
Pressure than perfection
Function than form
Truth than tradition
That means some of what we do won’t look like traditional karate.
It also means it has a chance of actually working.
And yes — that comes with a cost:
Less approval from traditional circles
Fewer clean demonstrations
More uncomfortable questions
But what we gain is something better.
Karate that doesn’t require belief.
Karate that doesn’t fall apart under pressure.
Karate that respects reality.
The good fight
If your bunkai only works when everyone agrees to play karate, you’re not training application — you’re rehearsing culture.
The good fight is choosing truth over comfort.
Even when it makes things messier.
Even when it breaks the illusion.
That’s the work.
That’s the practice.
