What is 気合 (Kiai)?
Facebook is an interesting place. A lot of traffic that comes to my Substack comes from the various Facebook groups where I share my articles. Because my page is largely related to martial arts I get a lot of page suggestions for sports martial arts. In particular, a page called “Point Fighter Live.” (Facebook page here).
Whenever I see these “sports karate” videos come up on my feed there are two things that immediately come to mind:
This scene from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist:
This particular music video:
The Kung Pow scene comes to my mind because I honestly can’t tell if there’s some kind of joke going on or not, and the second video comes to mind because of all the screaming that goes on during these events.
One stereotypical part of martial arts are the shouts done by practitioners as they perform their techniques. These shouts are often referred to as a 気合 (kiai) in Japanese martial arts. But there’s a bit more to kiai than just shouting and once you’ve read this article you may also agree that maybe those screaming acrobats may have been purposely trained wrong as a joke.
気合 (kiai) : Linguistic breakdown
The term 気 (ki) is a word that is used to mean energy/spirit/mind/mood in Japanese (and Chinese where it is pronounced as qi or chi). In Japanese there are commonly used kanji and more traditional kanji. To understand a bit more about 気 we need to look at the traditional 氣 kanji. In the picture below I have broken down the kanji:
Rice is the staple food in China/Japan. Rice is full of energy (nutrition/calories). When you cook rice by adding heat (another form of energy), it produces steam. When you take the kanji for rice (米 : kome) and put the radical for spirit (气 : kigamae) above it, you get a pictogram representation of vapor coming off rice, and the kanji 氣. This kanji is quite commonly used so it is simplified to 気 for ease of writing.
When I say the kanji is commonly used I don’t mean people are talking about “spiritual energy” all the time in Japan. I mean it’s just used on a day to day basis. 電気 (denki : lit, electric energy) is electricity, 病気 (byouki : lit, sick energy) is illness, 気温 (kion : lit, energy heat) is temperature and 天気 (tenki : lit, heaven energy) is weather. Non-Japanese speakers associate a lot of mysticism with this word but it loses its mystical edge when you are able to speak the language. It’s literally just a general expression of energy.
The second part of the word kiai is 合 (ai), which means, to come together, to merge, to meet, or to join. There’s not much that can be broken down about this kanji, however the hiragana is often dropped from the end when combining it with ki, so the word kiai is expressed as 気合.
My dictionary tells me that kiai means, (fighting) spirit, motivation, effort, in addition to also meaning a shout or yell in martial arts. But this is a surface level definition.
What does it really mean for your energy (気) to meet/come together/join (合)? Some interpretation is required.
Interpretation
In a martial arts context, the word ki is used to mean your spirit, your intentions, and your focus. Where that ‘meets’ is when your intentions and your actions are aligned.
When doing traditional karate I have been in tournaments where techniques would not score if they were not landed with a ‘kiai’ in the form of a short shout. Your intention and your focus needed to be in line with your actions, which can be expressed by you shouting at the point of impact to express, “I intended to punch my opponent in the face at that exact time. My actions and my intentions were aligned.”
People who practice kendo know how noisy it can be. People who practice kendo express their intention in an even more specific way by yelling out the locations they intend to hit as they hit them. Shouts of 面 (men : face), 胴 (dou: trunk), 小手 (kote: wrist) are yelled out at the precise moment that the shinai connects with that body part. If you wildly swing your shinai and it happens to impact a point on your opponent it won’t score unless your actions and your intentions are aligned.
Another example of a kiai
People may not realize it but they do forms of kiai in their everyday lives. If you are about to lift something heavy and you grunt as you pick it up, that is your body naturally aligning its actions with its intentions.
If you are trying to attempt a deadlift without thinking about it or preparing your body by engaging your core as you are lifting then you are going to have a bad time.
You might not be screaming as you pick up the barbell, but that alignment of your intentions and your actions does translate to being a form of kiai.
Note: I know gyms can be noisy. Please respect other people at the gym.
Is kiai a war cry?
When I was training in the UK I was told by an instructor that the purpose of a kiai was to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. As cool as that sounds, it’s not really true.
While you can use vocalization to throw an opponent off, this isn’t much different to doing a feint. Many of the kicks I throw are done with the intention of getting my opponent to focus on my legs, right as my fist flies towards their head.
If you end up in a self defense style situation and make a lot of noise (as if you are trying to scare a bear away by doing your best Bruce Lee impression) then you are using a kind of war cry. That isn’t kiai. There’s no alignment of your intention with your action there. It’s just simply screaming.
Getting it wrong
Whenever I see videos posted by Point Fighter Live I see countless examples of people screaming for the sake of screaming.
When practicing kata in karate there are certain points when a kiai in the form of a short sharp burst of sound is used at certain points in the kata to indicate points of the kata where decisive blows are struck. On the Point Fighter Live page it’s not unusual to see people screaming not just at the point of impact but all the way through a technique, at totally arbitrary times, through multiple techniques, or sometimes after doing flip and landing in some kind of comic book hero pose. These screams have absolutely no utility and are not kiai. There’s no alignment of intention and action expressed in these screams.
To go back to my earlier example of lifting weights, have you ever seen someone start screaming then pick up and put down a barbell? I’m not about to ask anyone who lifts to go to the gym and try screaming through a deadlifting session, but an interesting experiment would be if you took a deep breath before the lift then tried to exhale through the entire duration of a rep. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the lift would be easier if you align your intention and your action, control your breathing, and manage the tension in your body at the appropriate times during the lift.
Non-vocalized kiai
Most English speakers are familiar with the term kiai through martial arts and martial arts alone. But there are forms of kiai that aren’t related directly to the use of breathing and tension as you move, and are more focused on getting yourself into the right frame of mind:
The 坊主 (bozu) haircut
It’s not uncommon for sportsmen in Japan to shave their heads before a serious game or event. This kind of haircut is referred to as a monk (坊主 : Bozu) haircut in Japan. Shaving your head before doing something big that requires focus is seen as “getting serious” about something. If someone suddenly shaves their head it’s usually an indication that they are focusing on something.
If you ask someone who looks pretty serious and who just shaved their head why they shaved their head it’s not uncommon to get a response of「気合のため」(kiai no tame : To focus). It’s a good conversation starter. Usually people are ready to talk about something they are fired up for.
Headbands (鉢巻 : Hachimaki)
In some circumstances people in Japan focus themselves by wearing a headband called a 鉢巻 (Hachimaki). These headbands usually have kanji on them with a slogan or goal such as 必勝 (hisshou : Certain victory), 闘魂 (toukon : Fighting spirit), 合格 (goukaku : Pass (an exam)), 一番 (ichiban : Number one), etc.
Students wearing “PASS” headbands are a bit of a stereotypical trope in Japanese pop culture (often seen in anime and manga). Passing entrance examinations to get into high school or university can be a mammoth undertaking in Japan, requiring long study sessions. Getting yourself into a studying frame of mind (matching your actions to your intentions) can be achieved by tying a headband round your head, then hitting the books.
Final thoughts
From my perspective I don’t see anything mystical about kiai. When you do something to align your actions and intentions then that is a form of kiai. If you grunt as you pick up a weight, yell as your technique connects with a target (real or imagined), or do something to bring your attention to a goal or action (cutting your hair or wearing a headband), these are all forms of kiai.
A kiai is not a war cry. Martial arts practitioners are not supposed to be screaming berserkers (with plastic swords). You can use sound to misdirect an opponent in the same way as you would do a feint, but if you are continuously screaming then it’s going to throw you off your game.
There are martial arts out there where a lot of vocalized kiai are required. Kendo is one example of an art like that. If you find screaming cathartic then I’d suggest taking up kendo where you will be able to scream (men, do, kote, etc) to your heart’s content. But if you are happy being purposely trained wrong as a joke then you can get a lot of engagement on Facebook by attending the events Point Fighter Live enjoys.
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Anthony
I will never see shouting and screams during the fight the same after hearing that song. 😂
Loved how well and simply you explained the idea of Kiai! 🙏😊
Well, thank you for explaining kiai to me. I've never really considered what it means, and, training in the UK, I've always been told it's about deterring the opponent and impairing his ability to attack you.
I was reading Tokitsu Kenji's "Ki and Martial Arts" (he also has a good annotated translation of The Book of Five Rings) a while ago. He explains how, in pre-modern times, people had a sense of the numinous in nature, in themselves and in everyday things. "Ki" in Japanese language, he says, is/was intended to cover "sensations and impressions that are mysterious and vague".
Is this an example of mystifying things for a Western audience or is there some truth to it?