While this event is not directly related to the internship, I wanted to upload some videos as a helpful resource for everyone in terms of Wado competition kata.
Maruyama's Chinto, high school division!
While originally from Kanagawa Prefecture, Mashiro Maruyama is currently a high school student living in Setagaya Ward of Tokyo, he is a Wado Ryu Renmei member and he has been doing well in competition with Wado kata since he was an elementary student.
He won his first two rounds with Chinto, but in the third round when he did pretty snappy Wanshu, he 'arranged' the kata in such a way it seems the judges didn't like it. You can see just a bit of the other competitor doing his kata at the same time on the other half of the mats. That other athlete didn't look overly strong so I think Maruyama would have won had he kept more to the original form of the kata.
While originally from Kanagawa Prefecture, Mashiro Maruyama is currently a high school student living in Setagaya Ward of Tokyo, he is a Wado Ryu Renmei member and he has been doing well in competition with Wado kata since he was an elementary student.
For example, he took 1st place, 4th Grade Boy's Kata (10yrs old), at the JKF All-Japan National Elementary Championships in 2001! His winning kata was Wanshu, the first time I've seen a Wado kata listed as the winning kata in an open JKF tournament, let alone a Nationals!
He also won 2nd place, Junior High Boy's Kata, at the JKF Kanagawa Prefecture Championships in 2003.
In last weekend's 38th Tokyo Karate Athlete Championships he placed Best 16 out of 93 in the High School Boy's Kata division.
He won his first two rounds with Chinto, but in the third round when he did pretty snappy Wanshu, he 'arranged' the kata in such a way it seems the judges didn't like it. You can see just a bit of the other competitor doing his kata at the same time on the other half of the mats. That other athlete didn't look overly strong so I think Maruyama would have won had he kept more to the original form of the kata.
From the Machida Ward (Tokyo) Wadoryu Renmei club, Takaaki Yokoyama lead Mori-san and Honga-san to a second place finish using Wado kata only. Yokoyama is a multiple WadoRyu Renmei Nationals Men's Kata winner, plus he won the JKF 2007 Master's Championships for Men's 40-45yrs Kata using Wado Kata!
Here I have loaded their Chinto they used to get through the first two rounds, and then Niseishi plus it's bunkai - which is very Wado-esque, so that is nice to see! They were beaten by a strong Shotokan team from the Sumida Ward (Tokyo) JKA club, and I've also included their bunkai for Unsu. It's very interesting to see the different approaches to bunkai looking at these two teams perform Wado and Shotokan visions of karate quite clearly.
Sumida Team Kata, Unsu Bunkai!
