Suparinpei: The Last Kata of Goju-Ryu Karate

This Senseis books have fed my own impressions and thoughts on Kata. Not only is it a pleasant read but I am glad to know I am not the only student that came to these observations and conclusions.

The shortest of Hopkins’ books, about 60 pages are a detailed walk through the kata and around 100 are the bunkai analysis, it is also the most straightforward. He goes through the bunkai of Suparinpei. But there are so many tie-ins, call backs, and crossovers with the other Goju-ryu kata and Hopkins previous books, especially The Kata and Bunkai of Goju-Ryu Karate, that I would recommend reading that one first. Maybe it goes without saying, but this is not a book for learning the kata.There is a romantic view of Suparinpei that Hopkins does a good job pushing past to look at the actual bunkai and links those movements to the rest of the Goju curriculum. Suparinpei is a natural continuation of the Goju kata, not necessarily a summation. I know I fell into this thinking before – Suparinpei as the ‘ultimate’ expression of Goju– and it was good to have it contextualized as part of the Goju system.Lastly, there are two really good appendices at the end. One lists the main ideas from the bunkai analysis (a handy reference after you complete the book) and the other links together bunkai from Suparinpei with that of the other Goju-ryu kata. Here, Hopkins connects just enough of the dots for the reader to complete the picture themselves.

Good refresher

Firstly, I am a practitioner of Wado not Goju Ryu. However, my fellow student and I are working on a Wado version of Suparinpei kata which was dropped by the founder many years ago. This book is therefore to be used to achieve a better understanding of the kata. I have only just started reading this book but I would suggest it would be a good addition to any Goju students collection.

C'est un kata intéressant et original