Bassai Dai 抜塞大
To storm a fortress, major
What Bassai Dai is.
A form about reversal. The name is usually rendered as breaking into a fortress, and the whole shape of it is a fighter with the disadvantage repeatedly turning the position around: blocks that become attacks, a defence that changes from one arm to the other without conceding ground, hips that switch the direction of a technique halfway through. It opens with one of the most recognisable movements in karate, a driving entry from a crossed-feet posture straight into a heavy inside block.
What it develops
- Changing a technique from defence to attack without an extra movement
- Hip rotation as the thing that switches a block from one side to the other
- Committed forward entry against a stronger opponent
- Sustained power across a long form without the technique shrinking
MMAKF has not published a grading syllabus.
So this page tells you nothing about where Bassai Dai sits in an examination, because the federation has not decided it. There is a named, empty place in the library for that association, and it stays empty until the federation fills it. What the federation has published about belts and progression is on the belt system page.
The belt system & grading →The Japanese in Bassai Dai.
The words a student meets in this form, with the English beside them and an explanation of what each one actually is. These definitions are shared across the whole library, so they mean the same thing on every page.
| Term | Kanji | English | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| kamae | 構え | ready posture | A deliberate posture taken up before or between techniques, hands and stance already arranged for what is coming. Kata open with one, and the pause it creates is not empty time — it is the moment the performer states the distance and the intention. |
| kosa-dachi | 交差立ち | crossed-feet stance | One leg crossed behind or in front of the other, feet close, knees bent and the body compressed. It is a transitional shape rather than a place to live: kata use it to land a jump, to cover ground quickly, or to wind the hips up for the technique that follows. |
| uchi-uke | 内受け | inside block | The mirror of the outside block: the forearm sweeps from inside the body outward, taking the attack on the inner side and opening the opponent up. Beginners regularly swap the two names, and the way to keep them straight is to name the direction the arm travels, not where it ends. |
| soto-uke | 外受け | outside block | The forearm travels from outside the body inward across the chest, meeting an attack on its outer side and turning it across the opponent. The elbow stays low and bent, so the block ends in a position from which the same arm can immediately strike. |
| shuto-uke | 手刀受け | knife-hand block | An open hand, fingers together and thumb folded in, striking or receiving with the muscled edge below the little finger. Almost always performed in the back stance, it is a block that is already a strike, which is why so many kata use it to turn a corner. |
| yoko-geri-kekomi | 横蹴り蹴込み | side thrust kick | The same sideways line as the snap kick, but driven through the target with the hip behind it and the heel leading. Snap and thrust look similar and do completely different jobs, and telling them apart in a kata is one of the first things an examiner watches for. |
| tettsui-uchi | 鉄槌打ち | hammer-fist strike | The fleshy bottom edge of the closed fist swung like a hammer. It is the safest heavy strike in the art for the hand that throws it, because nothing lands on the knuckles, and it is often the technique kata choose to break a grip with. |
| gedan-barai | 下段払い | downward sweep | The forearm sweeps down and across to clear an attack to the lower body, finishing just above the front thigh. It is the first block most students learn and it is a sweep rather than a stop — the arm brushes the attack off its line instead of meeting it head on. |
| zenkutsu-dachi | 前屈立ち | front stance | The long forward stance: front knee bent over the toes, back leg straight, roughly seventy per cent of the weight on the front foot. It is the stance that lets a technique carry the whole body behind it, and the reason the first kata a student learns is mostly walking. |
| kime | 決め | focus | The instantaneous tightening of the whole body at the end of a technique, followed immediately by release. It is what makes a karate technique stop dead rather than push, and a kata performed without it looks like a dance no matter how correct the shapes are. |
The full glossary, and every kata that uses each term, is on the kata library index.
Watching Bassai Dai.
There is no verified video of Bassai Dai here.
MMAKF has not recorded a performance of each kata, and this library will not present another organisation's video as the federation's. Where the federation's own kata footage exists it is published below, described as what it is: training, not a performance of any single form.
This page would rather carry no recording than a guessed one. A video is published here only with the evidence of its check attached — the id, the channel it actually resolved to, the date and the method — and nothing that has not been loaded and read is linked as though it had been.
The federation’s own kata training footage — general practice, not a performance of this or any other single form — is listed on the library index.