Wankan

Quick Facts

About the kata

Wankan is among the shortest katas of Shotokan, yet it ranks among the advanced ones. The number of moves differs depending on how they are counted: karatevancouver.ca lists 16 moves, themartialway.com.au 24 counts. Both sources agree that the kata has a single kiai shout, while other Shotokan katas have two. According to themartialway.com.au, it is also the only Shotokan kata that begins at an angle. The kata rests on the neko ashi dachi stance and on techniques rarely found elsewhere in Shotokan: the scissor block hasami uke, the technique koko ("tiger mouth"), the mountain strike yama zuki in sochin dachi stance, and steps in which the mae geri kick lands into the oi zuki punch. Karatecoaching.com notes that the kata is harder than it looks: balance is easily lost in the turns into neko ashi dachi. According to karatevancouver.ca, the hips stay very low throughout. According to the English Wikipedia, the Okinawan master Shoshin Nagamine valued Wankan because defense and attack often merge into a single movement in it. In Shotokan, by contrast, it is rarely practiced; historyoffighting.com links this to the fact that Masatoshi Nakayama did not include it, along with the kata Jiin, in his Best Karate series.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

The characters 王冠 mean royal or imperial crown. In standard Japanese they would be read Okan; Wankan, according to karatevancouver.ca, is the Okinawan reading. The name is usually explained by the shape of the opening moves: according to karatevancouver.ca, moves 1 and 2, seen from the front, form the crown's side points and move 3 its center, while themartialway.com.au speaks of the first six moves. Historyoffighting.com questions this reading: Okinawan kings did not wear European-style metal crowns, so the resemblance may be coincidental.

Creator and history

The kata comes from the Okinawan school Tomari-te, and karatevancouver.ca places it among the katas associated with Kosaku Matsumora. Shoshin Nagamine wrote that it is the work of a master from ancient times whose name has not survived, and counted it among the old katas. Gichin Funakoshi tried to rename it Shofu (pine wind) and Hito (flying waves); both names contain part of his art name Shoto, but the original form prevailed. According to themartialway.com.au, the kata entered Shotokan late and may have been adopted from another style and modified by Yoshitaka Funakoshi. We have not been able to confirm, with a source more reliable than a blog, the claim by some teachers that he shortened it.

Differences between styles

Besides Shotokan, Wankan is practiced in Shorin-ryu, Matsubayashi-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Gensei-ryu; in some schools it carries the name Matsukaze (松風, pine wind). Karatevancouver.ca notes that the Shotokan and Shito-ryu versions differ. Historyoffighting.com adds that some styles practice a kata with the same name but entirely different movements, and suggests that both may be fragments of a longer, lost original kata. Even within Shotokan, execution differs: according to the Kenseis Shogyu blog, Kanazawa performs the whole kata without the back stance kokutsu dachi, only in neko ashi dachi, so his version looks different from Tanaka's.

Bunkai – applications

Karatecoaching.com sees in the technique koko hiza kuzushi an attack on the opponent's knee joint, and in the scissor block hasami uke an attack on the wrist. The Kenseis Shogyu blog, in the Shotokan version, likewise emphasizes locks on the knee joint, catching the opponent, grips, and heavy hip work.

Competition status

• Sport karate (WKF) — Official kata list · valid from 1/1/2026 ↗
• 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