Bassai Dai Kata

What is Kata?

In Karate, kata is a sequence of moves organized into a pre-arranged fight against imaginary opponents. The kata consists of kicks, punches, sweeps, strikes, blocks, and throws. Body movement in various kata includes stepping, twisting, turning, dropping to the ground, and jumping. Kata is not a performance or a demonstration, but is for individual karateka to practice full techniques– with every technique potentially a killing blow (ikken hisatsu), while paying particular attention to form and timing (rhythm).

The standard kata in (Shotokan) Karate are:

Bassai Kata

Shotokan houses two Bassai Kata, Dai and Sho. Dai means greater while Sho means lesser or minor. Bassai Sho is taught at the advanced level after mastery of Bassai dai.

Bassai Dai

This is one of the oldest kata in the system and is common, in many variations of both technique and name, to different styles of Japanese karate. This kata is known for its application of power and strength and changing disadvantage to advantage by the use of switching strikes to blocks and blocks to strikes. Extreme use of hip rotation is a hallmark of this kata, although all of the major hip actions can be found throughout it. This is a Shuri-te school kata of Itosu. There are two forms of Bassai taught in the Shotokan syllabus: Bassai-Dai, and Bassai-Sho. Bassai-Dai is considered one of the most important kata for shodan black belt level, along with Jion, Tekki and Kanku-Dai.