Unsu

Quick Facts

About the kata

Unsu is one of the most advanced Shotokan and Shito-ryu katas; shotokankarateonline.com says many Shotokan dojos teach it around 3rd–4th dan. Its best-known feature is a jump with a 360-degree turn, which themartialway.com.au calls probably the hardest technique in all Shotokan katas. The same source notes the two mawashi geri kicks in Unsu are the only circular kicks in Shotokan katas, performed lying on the ground. The kata relies mainly on hand techniques. Themartialway.com.au lists the one-finger strike ippon nukite, keito, haito, seiryuto, and the lower-palm strike teisho; shotokankarateonline.com describes soft, flowing techniques alternating with fast sequences and changes of direction, including a transition to the ground. The English Wikipedia sees it as a condensation of Bassai, Kanku, Jion, Empi, Jitte, and Gankaku. The movement count differs by counting method: Wikipedia and themartialway.com.au give 48, karatevancouver.ca 37. Themartialway.com.au places the two kiai on movements 27 and 37. Wikipedia counts Unsu among the most common tournament katas; the 2024 WUKF list places it among Shotokan's tokui katas and Shorin-ryu's sentei.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

The name is written with the characters 雲 (cloud) and 手 (hand), as karatevancouver.ca explains; it translates as cloud hands or hands in the clouds. According to the English Wikipedia, Masatoshi Nakayama derived the name from the body's constant transformations during the kata – expanding, contracting, and shifting, much as clouds keep changing. Another interpretation, given by both Wikipedia and karatevancouver.ca, links the whole kata to a storm: the "hands in the clouds" movement sweeps aside the opponent's hands and is meant to represent gathering storm clouds. Themartialway.com.au mentions a conjecture that the kata derives from an Okinawan folk dance, perhaps in honor of the wind and thunder gods Fujin and Raijin.

Creator and history

The English Wikipedia attributes Unsu to Seisho Arakaki and places its origin roughly in 1860–1870. According to it, Arakaki (1840–1918) was an interpreter of Japanese and Chinese at the royal court in Shuri and a master of the monk fist and white crane styles. Themartialway.com.au counts Unsu among three Shotokan katas that can be traced back to Arakaki. Karatevancouver.ca is more cautious: it considers it a very old kata of uncertain origin, adopted by Shotokan and Shito-ryu, and writes that it first appeared in the book Ryukyu Kenpo Karate, published by Gichin Funakoshi in 1922. We have not been able to establish in the sources who brought the kata into Shotokan and into Shito-ryu.

Differences between styles

In Okinawa, alongside Arakaki's lineage, Unsu Motobu Choyu has also survived. Motobu Naoki, who has documented the history of this version, writes that the Unsu of Arakaki's school and the Unsu of Motobu Choyu have so little in common that they are almost two different katas: Motobu's version opens with crossed hands in juji uke and relies on joint locks and throws tuiti with the gripping hand tsukami di. It is passed down in some Kobayashi-ryu and Goju-ryu dojos. In Shito-ryu the kata is called Unshu, and under this name the 2024 WUKF list places it among the tokui katas.

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 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shorin-ryu — Sentei (selected) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shotokan — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗

Techniques in the kata