This topic has come up several times recently in some discussions I've either had or read, so I thought I'd talk about it here. Our second kata is called Hanasu (loosely "wrist releases"). It presents eight ways to diffuse binds that come about from uke and tori being hooked together and rotating around each other in various ways.
We have used (more prominently in past years) a way of teaching hanasu to beginners in which each of the releases is done in three steps. If you look at the first release as an example, the steps are approximately:
as uke crosses ma-ai and grabs tori's wrist, tori evades outside so that uke and tori are in body drop at the same time.
as uke starts to rise and recover, tori turns toward uke while correcting the distance between them such that tori can stay centered and unbendable.
as uke takes his second recovery step, tori steps in behind uke's arm and follows him one step wherever he is going.
Well, since the kihara innovations that took place in the art around 1998 or so, hanasu has been somewhat de-emphasized and more emphasis has been placed on a set of exercises, called chains, that are derived from hanasu. The chains emphasize flowing with uke for greater periods of time in varying situations. This does not de-value hanasu as an exercise or a kata. We still teach hanasu as a kata to beginners and we still run through it 1-2 times per class in 'kata-mode' as a warmup for whatever chain we're working on that day. But the question of some of the folks that learned the 3-step hanasu is how come it isn't 3 steps anymore? Should or shouldn't it be 3 steps? Is the 3-step thing THE kata form of the exercise?
Well, here's how I think about it. Both the chains and the hanasu kata are approximations of randori (free play). They teach similar subsets of aikido principle. The chains are a little closer to the motion and feel of randori, which is close to the reality we want to learn to deal with, so we emphasize chains more than hanasu. But you have to start somewhere in order to learn chains, so we break the first move of each chain down into about 3 steps that tori can pretty easily emulate and learn. Then we begin to progress toward the chain (flowing) forms. Someone suggested the other day that maybe we should teach the 3-step Hanasu to beginners and only later expect to see it become more flowing like the chains as the students progress. You're right. We should and that's pretty much what we do.
Hanasu is not a complete set of the things that can happen with wrist grabs. There are other wrist release katas within Tomiki aikido, including Yonkata and Rokukata. The first two moves of yonkata are commonly known (tongue-in-cheek) in our circle as the "lost wrist releases," because they are release situations that do not occur in hanasu kata. I have started calling the grip switch that happens often in the chains and in randori the "really lost release" because it is obviously a viable and valid release option that is not explicitly explored in hanasu or yonkata, though it does pop up here and there in various kata.
Interestingly, there is a thing that was taught to me by a taichi guy that I have everafter relied on heavily in my aiki practice. He called it the "rule of three." The Rule of Three states that any motion may be broken down into three steps and practiced as steps in order to gain deeper understanding. Then you take each of those steps and break it down into three steps and so on... This is similar to a quote by Aristotle in his Poetics that says any whole is comprised of a beginning, a middle, and an end. But then, you have to look at the thing from the other point of view. You cannot ever create a smooth and perfect mirror from fragments just like you can't create a perfectly seamless, free movement from broken chunks of kata.
The bottom line: You have to find some acceptable compromise between a holistic intuitive practice (i.e. Ueshiba) and a stepwise analytical practice (i.e. Tomiki). In many ways, Kihara is that compromise.
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