About five hundred years ago a national policy came about in Japan under which possession of any and all weapons by the people of Okinawa were forbidden. Then about two hundred years later weapons on the Ryukyu Islands had been confiscated by the government when the islands came under the scrutiny of the Satsuma Clan of Japan. Since the people were not allowed traditional weapons with which to defend themselves they had to use improvised weapons made from common farm implements, refine the art of unarmed combat, and train in secret.

In those bygone days when bandits roamed the countryside armed with sword and staff, and the nobility had the right to maim and kill at their slightest whim Karate was not a sport were the loser went home. It was life or death with no time or room for hesitation or doubt. The movements had to be automatic, precise, and lethal.

Kata is one of the training tools that the Karataka used to condition their mind for instant response to attacks. Kata contains in them stances, blocks, strikes and combinations of techniques that must be used with out the slightest hesitation in order to insure your survival. Mind and body must be one when you have a sword that can shatter wooden armor sweeping toward your neck, welded by a man trained from childhood in the arts of war.

In that day and age the peasant worked from dawn to dusk with little rest, and small profit due to the fact that their masters demanded their pound of flesh. This did not promote the ideal musculature required for fast responses and attacks need by the karate practitioner of that time. Loose muscles respond faster than due tight muscles so in order to stretch their body out kata was an ideal aerobic workout allowing them to move faster and respond more readily and to improve their balance.

When one trains in secret one does not always have a training partner. You can't just get four or five friends together for a few hours of round robing sparing on any given evening so to keep their reflexes sharp they use kata to maintain their combat skills, and to make their fighting smoother, and more fluid.