KishimotoDi has a total of four kata; Naihanchi, Nidanbu, Passai, and Kusanku. The foundation of the system is Naihanchi, which is not unusual for karate that comes from Shuri-Te/SuiDi. All of the other kata build on the material and methods in Naihanchi, so unless you get good at Naihanchi and its applications, the other kata won’t make sense. I find this cohesiveness to be unique, as most karate systems claim that a kata is their foundation (Naihanchi, Sanchin, or Seisan, typically) but you don’t usually see the methods carried over from their foundation kata to their other kata. In KishimotoDi, on the other hand, you can see and feel the methods that are carried over.
Tachimura no Naihanchi teaches the footwork, stances, and power generation necessary to make the applications for its movements work. The other kata contain other methods of entry and dealing with attacks, but any follow-up techniques go right back to Naihanchi. In the video, above, you can see me practicing Karlsson Sensei’s “Walk the Line” drill, which is used to develop smoothness in application by defending against one attacker after another while continuing to walk along a line. All three of the techniques I used were KishimotoDi applications for Naihanchi, although I didn’t do them nearly as well or as smoothly as Karlsson Sensei does.