Seipai

Quick Facts

About the kata

Seipai belongs to the Okinawan Naha-te tradition and is practised today in Goju-ryu, Shito-ryu and Kyokushin. Jaap Kooman describes it as a kata that combines hard and soft movements with grips, arm locks and throws. The English Wikipedia's entry on Goju-ryu adds that the kata takes movement in four directions as well as diagonally at 45 degrees and prepares practitioners for combat at both long and short range. According to Kooman, Seipai is typified by circular, swinging movements, body evasion tai sabaki, feints and a lowering of the body from which the practitioner drives upward and unbalances the opponent. GKR Karate calls it its most demanding kata to date, because it forces the practitioner into frequent turns and alternation between long and short stances; in its programme Seipai is taught at 1st kyu and practised for the Shodan grading. In the Kyokushin version, as recorded step by step by Kooman, the kata has 30 steps and three kiai shouts and begins in fudo dachi. The 2024 official WUKF kata list places it among the sentei katas for Goju-ryu, and among the optional tokui katas for Shito-ryu, Kyokushinkai, Shukokai, Sankukai, Shisui-ryu and Nanbudo.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

The name Seipai means eighteen. According to Jaap Kooman, the pronunciation is taken from the dialect of the Chinese province of Fujian, where sei means ten and pai eight; the spelling used today, 十八手, is read as eighteen hands. Sources explain the number eighteen differently. USA-IFK Kyokushin derives it from a Buddhist product of six senses and three states. Karatephilosophy.com gives two readings: eighteen pressure points and eighteen kinds of techniques, or six times three, where six stands for colour, voice, scent, taste, touch and justice, and three for good, evil and peace. Katastepbystep.com links the number to the eighteen disciples of the Buddha. We have not been able to decide from the sources which explanation to prefer.

Creator and history

Sources disagree on the origin of Seipai. The English Wikipedia's entry on Kyokushin says it was originally a Chinese kata brought to Okinawa by Higaonna Kanryo, and GKR Karate states that Higaonna introduced it into Naha-te. The entry on Higaonna himself, however, names only Sanchin, Seisan, Sanseru and Bechurin among the katas he learned in China. Jaap Kooman, by contrast, believes the kata was probably created by Okinawans even before karate settled into styles. According to GKR Karate, Miyagi Chojun slightly modified it while teaching Goju-ryu, and the Traditional Japanese Karate Network website names him as a key figure in its transmission; according to that site, much of his knowledge was taken up by the Okinawan dojo Jundokan. The English Wikipedia lists it as a speciality of Toguchi Seikichi.

Differences between styles

Seipai came into Kyokushin among the southern katas, which according to the English Wikipedia derive from the Naha-te tradition, chiefly from Goju-ryu, which Oyama Masutatsu learned from So Nei Chu and Yamaguchi Gogen. Jaap Kooman explicitly traces the Kyokushin Seipai to Oyama's training under So Nei Chu, and writes of the southern katas that they work with shorter movements and a closer maai distance. The entry on Shito-ryu cites it as an example of the circular movement and close-range combat on which Higaonna's curriculum was built. GKR Karate practises the version taken from Japanese Goju-ryu, not the Okinawan one, which it describes as resembling kung fu more closely. Katastepbystep.com points out that Goju-ryu lineages differ in the opening stance, the circular blocks, the passages in a square stance and the ending, and regards this as a difference between lineages, not as mistakes.

Competition status

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