Saifa or Seiyunchin? Analysing historic Goju Ryu photographs
Recently I saw some discussion around which kata was featured in a histortic photo of Chojun Miyagi and some of his students; was it Saifa or Seiyunchin?
After some thought, I think that it shows Saifa, I will explain below.
This is the photo in question, and in a vaccuum it is potentially ambigious, this posture does feature in both of the kata in question. However there is another photo from this day and time.
Enter exhibit B, now this is clearly from the end of Seiyunchin, but what is important to note is the direction that the students are facing. We can take this direction to be the 'shomen' or front.
Given that it is likely this direction remained the 'front' for all the kata that they performed, then it becomes quite probably that the first photo features Saifa.
As the students are looking off to the left, they are either performing the block and uraken in shikodachi from Saifa, rather than the agezuki in shikodachi from Seiyunchin, as in Seiyunchin they would be facing towards the back on a 45˚ angle.
You could make a similar argument that this kata could be Seisan as it features the same posture, however:
- This is not a posture that is held during that kata, it is transitory as you quickly move onto the next movement
- You are facing the 'back' of the performance area when performing that move
Of course we can never truly know what kata was performed on the day without clearer evidence but I think we can say it is Saifa with relative certainty.