Bassai Sho 抜塞小
To storm a fortress, minor
What Bassai Sho is.
The shorter companion form, and not simply an abbreviation. It shares the floor pattern and the family resemblance but spends much of its length on sequences widely read as taking a staff away from an opponent — trapping it, levering it and turning it. It is lighter and more evasive than its larger namesake, and where that form drives through a position, this one takes the position away.
What it develops
- Deflecting and redirecting rather than meeting force head on
- Two-handed trapping, which only makes sense once the application is shown
- Lightness and mobility in a form built on the same pattern as a heavier one
- Reading old technique as something other than punching and blocking
MMAKF has not published a grading syllabus.
So this page tells you nothing about where Bassai Sho 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 Sho.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| 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. |
| mikazuki-geri | 三日月蹴り | crescent kick | The foot travels in an arc across the body, striking with the sole. In kata it usually lands in the opposite palm, which is not decoration: the palm is the target being represented, and the sound it makes is the audible proof the kick arrived where it was aimed. |
| 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. |
| bo-dori | 棒取り | staff-taking | A sequence read as disarming an opponent holding a long staff — trapping it, levering it and taking it away. Two kata in the canon carry sequences that are widely interpreted this way, which is a reminder that these forms predate the idea that karate is unarmed by definition. |
| bunkai | 分解 | analysis of application | Taking a kata apart to work out what each movement is actually doing against a real opponent, then practising it with a partner. Without it a kata is choreography; with it, a sequence that looked ornamental usually turns out to be a grip break and a throw. |
The full glossary, and every kata that uses each term, is on the kata library index.
Watching Bassai Sho.
There is no verified video of Bassai Sho 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.