Simplicity in Chaos - the aesthetic of kata (and keeping tabs on what you know)

It's well into 2026 now, but the catalyst for this rather freewheeling essay was something that is particularly noticeable around the end of the year, when everything is thoroughly swept and tidied in preparation for the New Year holiday – the aesthetic of neatness and simplicity. 

You can almost feel it as you walk along the streets, even in some of the downtown areas. It is also there in the stripped down aesthetic of the tea ceremony, as well as the look we have come to call, however erroneously, ‘Zen’. More to the point, in terms of this blog, it is also reflected in the clean lines and spare movements of many styles of Japanese martial arts.

It's slightly later in the year, but you get the idea... a quiet temple entrance in north Kyoto

Simplicity and chaos

Yet, in reality, this simplicity exists alongside a dense visual clutter that is common in many aspects of daily life: street signs, websites, kimono designs, homes and offices – sometimes overwhelmingly so. Even the natural world seems chaotic –  with plants and insects in great profusion in untended parts of the city, let alone the countryside.

It might very well be that, from very early times, when land first needed to be cleared for agriculture and habitation, people felt a need to bring some sort of order to the world, and strong, precise boundaries became important, the decisiveness of the boundary line being a statement in itself. In a form of agriculture that involves flooding rice fields every year, there is also a very obvious value to marking clearly what is going to be underwater, and what is not. Many of the farmhouses themselves, some in the countryside no longer, can look like raised islands, mounted on a base of stone. A similar effect can be seen in some of the famous rock gardens.

Certainly, there is something attractive in the way inessentials can be pared away and clarity imposed upon the seeming chaos of the natural world, and this has become a feature of the Japanese aesthetic. 

The chaos of combat – distilled but disorganised?

Combat is another kind of chaos so it may not come as a surprise that a similar approach can be seen in the way unpredictability is reduced in Japanese martial arts by concentrating on the essentials, both in the clarity of the movements themselves, and the variety of movements or techniques that are taught. 

These are typically organised in kata, which may be seen as a distillation of a vast array of potential techniques, rather than a full catalogue of techniques or an approximation of a realistic exchange.

A distillation it may be, but one that may appear somewhat ad hoc, with little obvious sense of organisation (in many cases) beyond the progression through the various kata. To an outsider, this can seem lopsided or incomplete (and perhaps to some insiders, as well), but is this just a matter of perspective? Could it be analagous to another well-known aspect of Japanese aesthetics –  asymmetry (fukinsei)? This is often mentioned as an important feature of Japanese aesthetics (coming from China, of course, and closely linked to Zen), and although few in the west would think anything unusual about asymmetry in design, it may be that this kind of principle in knowledge is more difficult to appreciate.

If a more profound framework exists, it is well hidden. (Which is not to say the art itself or the skills it develops cannot be profound). Instead of a broad organising principle, there are fundamental movements, examples of approaches or solutions to particular problems – a set of ideal or abstracted responses. The shape of the whole remains undefined – the student seeks depth of understanding – a refinement through which he or she develops the ability to deal with the unrehearsed nature of real combat.

A progression

But perhaps I am looking at the wrong model – maybe a framework does exist, but a radically different one, one that is not primarily visual. I began by considering the way organisation of space might affect organisation of knowledge, but if we are going to go down that route, it might be a good idea to look at other ways that might influence the organisation of knowledge in early bujutsu. 

The study of bujutsu is a process – it takes time. In Chinese and Japanese culture, it has been seen as a path – as is clearly referenced in the very word 'budo' (martial way/martial path) – and the major philosophical and religious disciplines are also referred to as ways or paths. 

Early bujutsu seems to have had a particularly close relationship to what we now know as Shinto, and many of the early founders and practitioners of bujutsu had close connections with shrine traditions, particularly those of the Kashima and Katori shrines. Architecturally, there are many points of interest in shrines and temples, but it is the layout that I think may have some relevance here. 

As you can see in the picture above, shrines are laid out very much as a progression with various stops on the way. A visitor enters through the torii on the right, rinses their mouth and hands, then proceeds along the main path, perhaps stopping to pray at one or more of the smaller shrines, before arriving at the main shrine building. Bigger shrines are more complex, often with more subsidiary shrines, and usually with a number or torii on the main route, not to mention the ones at the smaller shrines.

If we return to bujutsu ryu-ha, we can see how the teachings might be compared to this: the student passes through a gate (maybe several) into the knowledge of the school. There might be a whole series of discrete stops on the way (different weapons, anomalous kata and so on) but you know where the main path leads - the inner teachings of the school. You may get there, or you may not, but even the wayside stops are within the precincts of the school.

It is a simple way of organising information, but a natural one, which allows packets of knowledge to be added whole, without the need to do more than find a place for them.

 

An ideal view

Durer's woodcut of an artist and his grid

Of course, kata can develop many facets of skill – positioning, timing and control of distance, for example (for 2 person kata). This is to view kata as, essentially, drills, but it brings us back to the relatively partial coverage that they offer. (You will have to forgive me if you practise a style that takes a maximalist approach). Effective drills tend to have multiple variations and well-articulated aims. Kata, especially with the start and finish sections, which tend not to be strictly combative in nature, are clearly doing something else.

If we ask exactly what that is, it is not immediately clear. This is the way things are taught, and who are we to argue why?

In a sense, perhaps, they can be regarded as a kind of overlay on reality. It reminds me of the kinds of visual tools used by artists: holding up your pencil to gauge proportions, using a grid, or a camera obscura. These are tools by which 'reality' may be grasped (or rendered onto paper, at least). They require discipline to use well, but once mastered, they no longer constrain, but allow the artist to produce pieces of extraordinary power and beauty.

Raphael's School of Athens. The imposed single-point perspective helps us to see the order in the composition. It is worth noting that ideas of order and harmony were central to the aesthetics of the day, not just an add on because it looked nice.

Perhaps, my sense of the underlying order of the world is too deeply rooted in my own background (Greco-Roman art and architecture always did appeal to me) to sense the structure of traditional ryu-ha at a deep enough level that it feels well organised. But then, this is also part of bugei themselves – hidden, secretive, privileged, so that full understanding emerges after long study, rather than being presented in a transparent and fully comprehensible whole. I admire those who can pull abstractions and principles from the techniques and schools they practise, but that has never really been one of my strengths. Maybe, that's not such a bad thing.