Seisan Seisan The karate kata (alternate names Sesan, Seishan, Jusan, Hangetsu) literally means '13'. Some people refer to the kata as '13 Hands', '13 Fists', '13 Techniques', '13 Steps' or even '13 killing positions'. However, these names have no historical basis. Seisan is thought to be one of the oldest kata, being quite spread among other Nahate schools. Shito-ryu has its own version and different versions are now practised even in Shuri-te derivatives like Shotokan (called Hangetsu) and in Wado-ryu (called Seishan). Isshin-ryū also adopted this kata. This kata is also practiced in Korean styles such as Tang Soo Do and
Tachikawa-ryu developed by Kakuban and Dōhan. (Sanford 1991) The two main schools of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (vajrayana-tantra, Japanese: mikkyo) are Shingon and Tendai. Tachikawa-ryu belonged to the first of these schools. It was injected into Shingon from Tibet via Taoism. First off, Tachikawa-ryu as a school of tantra is first and foremost a system of correspondences between microcosm (male) and macrocosm (female). Thus Tachikawa-ryu, as Shingon and Tendai, can be thought of as a reintegration of the world into the soteriological path, since man and world, man and the universe, are now fundamentally the same. In any case it is important