The Concept of Kiai

The January 2001 issue of Taekwondo Times magazine included an article I wrote titled No Point: The Case Against Competition in the Martial Arts. Over the next few weeks, I will publish edited portions of this article because I'm thinking about these topics often.

Please forgive the pervasive reference to Japanese and karate. Most of my references were written from the perspective of a karate practitioner and it helped the article's flow to stick with it.

In tournament competition there are often competitors “whose voiced kiai sounds like the squawking of a jungle bird with its tail feathers caught in a trash compactor.” [1] This type of banshee-like screaming does not accurately depict the true meaning of kiai. While the word “kiai” (pronounced key-eye) consists of the Japanese characters “ki”, meaning “energy”, and “ai” meaning “meeting” or “joining”, a definition of kiai to mean “a joining of energy” is not entirely accurate. Kiai (or “kiyap” in Korean) can be thought of as one’s entire mental state while focused during an action. “A true kiai can be completely without sound; this is an idea that more advanced karateka should consider carefully.” [1]

Many martial arts instructors insist on hearing students’ kiai, and though they might get a yell, they are probably not getting a kiai. This attitude is especially pervasive in children’s classes where the goal doesn’t seem to be performing effective techniques, but the volume at which the child can yell while performing them. More often than not, in these cases, the kids begin to focus more on the yell than the technique the kiai is supposed to reinforce

This attitude extends further when considering that many tournament forms are nothing more than a series of yells without any of the focus to back it up. This is not to say that tournament competitors are not focused, clearly they are. However their focus is not on the effectiveness of their technique, rather it is on how they look in performance of it. Christine Bannon-Rodrigues suggests that competitors “don’t forget to kiai. It not only draws attention to you, it makes your attack look stronger than your opponent’s.” [2] This reinforces the statement that competitors worry more about how they look than the actual quality of their technique.

For a kiai to be effective it must originate from the student’s ki and be timed properly as to induce a moment of distraction in their opponent. A series of high-pitched squawks will not accomplish this goal, and is more likely to interfere with the student’s breathing rather than the opponent’s concentration.

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[1] Lowry, Dave. “The Baffling Concept of Kiai.” Black Belt. January, 1999: 22.
[2] Banon-Rodrigues, Christine. “Popularity Doesn’t Count.” Martial Arts Training. May, 1996: 24.