Empi 燕飛
Flying swallow
What Empi is.
Named for the flight of a swallow, and the name is a description rather than a decoration. The form rises and drops repeatedly — dropping low onto one knee, springing up, turning in the air — so that its height changes as constantly as its direction. It is among the oldest forms in the canon and one of the most distinctive to watch, because almost no other Shotokan form spends so much time leaving and returning to the floor.
What it develops
- Changing height under control, dropping and rising without a stumble
- Turning in the air and arriving in a stance already correct
- Sudden direction change, which the swallow image is describing literally
- Light, quick footwork inside an otherwise heavy style
MMAKF has not published a grading syllabus.
So this page tells you nothing about where Empi 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 Empi.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| age-uke | 上げ受け | rising block | The forearm rises in front of the face and rotates so the outer edge takes the impact, deflecting a strike upward and over the head. The rotation is the whole technique: an arm raised without it stops the attack with bone rather than deflecting it away. |
| 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. |
| uraken-uchi | 裏拳打ち | back-fist strike | A whipping strike with the back of the first two knuckles, the elbow acting as the hinge. It travels the shortest distance of any hand technique and returns as fast as it goes, which is why kata use it against the face and then continue as though nothing happened. |
| 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. |
| gyaku-zuki | 逆突き | reverse punch | Punching with the hand opposite the forward leg, driven by rotating the hips. It is the most-used scoring technique in karate because the hips can turn faster than the feet can step, and the power comes from that rotation rather than from the arm. |
| zanshin | 残心 | remaining mind | The alertness that continues after a technique finishes and after the kata ends — the attention that has not yet been put away. It is the difference between finishing a kata and stopping one, and it is the quality most visible from the back of a hall. |
| embusen | 演武線 | performance line | The floor pattern a kata travels — the map of every step, turn and direction change. A performer who finishes away from where they began has lost ground somewhere, and because the pattern is fixed, the kata itself reports the error without anyone having to point it out. |
The full glossary, and every kata that uses each term, is on the kata library index.
Watching Empi.
There is no verified video of Empi 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.