Nipaipo / Nepai

Quick Facts

About the kata

Nipaipo is one of the most advanced katas of Shito-ryu. According to karatephilosophy.com, Kenwa Mabuni created it based on Nepai, a form he learned from Go Kenki, a master of Chinese white crane boxing. The same source ranks it among the style's hardest katas: it has many advanced techniques, fast combinations and complex footwork, and mastering it, per that source, takes many years. For the original Nepai, koryukan.london cites a typical movement, the open-palm windmill mawashi uke roughly halfway through the form, and a backfist strike at the start. The blog karateyalgomas.com highlights joint locks and strikes to sensitive body points in the older Neipai version. We have not been able to find the full step-by-step breakdown of Nipaipo; a dojo in Basingstoke lists around 47 movements, among them punches, kicks, blocks, locks and throws. The same dojo usually ranks it from 2nd dan upward, in some groups up to 6th dan. In WUKF competitions, per the official kata list of 7 April 2024, it is among the optional tokui katas for Shito-ryu and Shukokai.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

Nipaipo is usually translated as "twenty-eight steps" (二十八歩); the dojo in Basingstoke notes, though, that some practitioners read the name as "two eight steps". Koryukan.london offers an explanation: in the Fuzhou dialect, nepai literally means "two-eight", a shortened way of saying twenty-eight. The blog karateyalgomas.com, citing Patrick McCarthy's Bubishi, translates Neipai as "twenty-eight strikes", and koryukan.london adds that Xie Wenliang's version shows Nepai as 28 technique sequences described in the Bubishi.

Creator and history

Go Kenki, in Chinese Wu Xiangui (1886-1940), was, according to karatebyjesse.com, an expert in the crane boxing style ming he quan; koryukan.london states he moved from Fuzhou to Okinawa in 1912, and that both Kenwa Mabuni and Kyoda Juhatsu studied under him. According to Patrick McCarthy's Bubishi, as cited by karateyalgomas.com, Nepai was one of the main forms of Xie Zhongxiang's crane boxing. Worldbudokan.com notes the Bubishi describes Nepai but without illustrations, and calls Nipaipo Mabuni's adapted version of Go Kenki's Nepai. Per the dojo in Basingstoke, the kata was further modified in the nineteen-eighties by Teruo Hayashi.

Differences between styles

Alongside Mabuni's Nipaipo, an older Neipai has survived on Okinawa in the Toon-ryu style, brought there, according to the English Wikipedia, by Kyoda Juhatsu from Go Kenki. The current soke of Toon-ryu, per the same source, disputes this, since his Neipai differs markedly from the Nipai of Shito-ryu, which Shito-ryu is known to have taken from Go Kenki. Karateyalgomas.com describes Toon-ryu as the only Okinawan style that preserved Nepai, and Mabuni's version as substantially different, practiced only in some branches of Shito-ryu. Per the dojo in Basingstoke, the kata was also adopted by other styles, such as Shorin-ryu.

Competition status

• Sport karate (WKF) — Official kata list · valid from 1/1/2026 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shito-ryu — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗