Kata and Bunkai of Goju-Ryu Karate: The Essence of the Heishu and Kaishu Kata

A wonderful book shedding light on bunkai for the gojo ryu katas. Great for any karate practitioner who has stumbled across gojo katas but brilliant for a student of gojo- I bought myself a copy which I intend to make notes on and a copy for my husband as he prepares for his Shodan.

Well explained with pictures and easy to understand it, value of money 💡✨️

The pictures are lacking in the angle they present

Master Giles Hopkins is a very interesting person. I have had the pleasure to exchange ideas with him, to discuss with him and also to finally met him in my Country, Italy. The book contains lots of the answers I were looking for, that I was unable to collect during our Italian meeting. I suggest this book to each real Goju Ryu pratictioner with an open mindset. The ideas of Master Giles will probably crush your belief, and will arise in you doubts as well to point out critics. For the Okinawan Goju enstablishment this book is a HUGE problem, since it brakes (with cold logical facts) much of the teaching out there. Master Giles changed the way I was used to think about bunkai, and gives new fresh points of view to start a new study. I enjoyed the book, very well written as well as goog presented. But I suggest to go deep in the Blog of the Master before reading it. In fact many of the aspects described within the book seems too difficult to the newbie on the Hopkins approach. I think Master should start thinking a new entry-level book, more easier to the outsider, to prepare the reader and give the proper value to this one. Anyway, I consider this work a real Jewel, since I never came across anything similar to this one. Read it and think about it. Probably you will be not with the same opinions of the author, but this allow you to think differently. This will be a new journey in your loved art: OKINAWAN GOJU RYU KARATE. Andrea

I have read Giles Hopkins’ blog (goju-ryu.blogspot) for several years now and have always found it thoughtful and challenging. So when he posted that he was working on a book, I pre-ordered it immediately. Now Hopkins is an English teacher and the book benefits from it. It is structured basically as a 200+ page argument for what the kata of Goju-ryu mean. How they all follow the same principles, sometimes showing remarkable similarity, and are self-referential. Just as you would expect from the people that put this style together. Each chapter on each kata can be seen as evidence for this argument, culminated in Appendix A and Appendix B where Hopkins lays out the tools/ideas used to construct this argument. In between discussing the bunkai, Hopkins includes short vignettes of his own training experiences, a nice touch which was enjoyable to read and (I think) made his argument stronger. It is clear that this view of bunkai – radically different than what most karate-ka practice- wasn’t something he came up with overnight, but instead was a slow realization over time. Fair warning, the book is dense. It is something I had to read slowly to understand and I took my time visualizing the kata and bunkai being discussed. This is definitely a book that is worth bringing TO the dojo to work through some of the ideas with a partner. You’ve heard of active listening? Well this is active reading. Be prepared to stand up and go through the kata in between paragraphs. If you have been studying Goju-ryu for a while or if you know most of the classical kata, I cannot recommend this text strongly enough. It will probably challenge you – I know Hopkins’ view of bunkai was not the one I grew up training with. But his argument has convinced me that Goju-ryu is a system that works together in a way that is consistent and does not treat any random bunkai equally. If you would like to see a different view of bunkai, then order this book.