HORDE Karate Academy

urning to Okinawa to formulate what is now known as Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate Do. Traditional Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate has a very pure lineage. Gojo-Ryu Karate is a traditional martial art that was handed down from the founder Sensei Chojun Miyagi to his student Sensei Anichi Miyagi and then to Sensei Morio Higaonna in an unbroken line, which means the art has not been diluted or embellished through the generations like many other martial arts have. Instead, Goju-Ryu Karate persists as a highly effective fighting system today. It is not a sport style of Karate but offers its students a practical method of self defence in any situation. Characteristics of Goju-Ryu Karate

Goju-Ryu Karate has a great variety of hand and foot techniques and employs hard and soft techniques with both circular and linear movements. Particular emphasis is placed on strengthening the body and mind with supplementary exercises. The basic idea of the hard and soft style is use a soft blocking technique to block a hard strike or to deflect the strike rather than to meet force with force. Likewise, when attacking, Goju-Ryu employs a hard technique against a soft target and vice versa. For example, in Okinawan Goju-Ryu a palm heel strike (using the relatively soft palm heel of the hand) is often used to strike something hard like the head. Another example for the hard/soft aspect is a kick (hard) into the groin (soft). History

The development of Gōjū ryū goes back to Kanryo Higashionna, (1853–1916), a native of Naha, Okinawa. Master Higashionna began studying Shuri-te as a child. He was first exposed to martial arts in 1867, when he began training in Monk Fist Boxing (Luohan Quan) under a master named Aragaki Tsuji Pechin Seisho, a fluent Chinese speaker and translator for the Ryukyu court. In 1870, Aragaki had to go to Beijing to translate for Okinawan officials. It was then that he recommended Higashionna to another master named Kojo Taitei, who he began training under. With the help of Taitei and a family friend, Higashionna eventually managed to set up safe passage to China, lodging, and martial arts instruction. In 1873 he left for Fuzhou in Fujian Province, China, where he began studying Chinese boxing under various teachers.[1][2]

Kanryo Higashionna, circa early 1900s

In 1877 he began to study under a kung fu master called Ryū Ryū Ko (or Liu Liu Ko, or To Ru Ko; the name is uncertain.) Tokashiki Iken has identified him as Xie Zhongxiang, founder of Whooping Crane Kung Fu. Zhongxiang taught several Okinawan students who went on to become karate legends.[3]

Higashionna returned to Okinawa in 1882 and continued in the family business of selling firewood, while teaching a new school of martial arts, distinguished by its integration of gō-no (hard) and jū-no (soft) kempo into one system. Higashionna's style was known as Naha-te. Gojukai history considers that Chinese Nanpa Shorin-ken was the strain of kung fu that influenced this style (1). Higaonna Morio noted that in 1905, Higashionna Kanryo sensei taught martial arts in two different ways, according to the type of student: At home, he taught Naha-te as a martial art whose ultimate goal was to be able to kill the opponent; however, at Naha Commercial High School, he taught karate as a form of physical, intellectual and moral education.[4]

Higashionna's most prominent student was Chojun Miyagi (1888–1953), the son of a wealthy shop owner in Naha, who began training under Higashionna at the age of 14. Miyagi had begun his martial arts training under Ryuko Aragaki at age 11, and it was through Aragaki that he was introduced to Higashionna. Miyagi trained under Higashionna for 15 years, until Higashionna's death in 1916.[5]

In 1915 Miyagi and a friend Gokenki went to Fuchou in search of Higashionna's teacher. They stayed for a year and studied under several masters but the old school was gone (Boxer Rebellion 1900). Shortly after their return, Higashionna died. Many of Higashionna's students continued to train with him and he introduced a kata called Tensho which he had adapted from Rokkishu of Fujian White Crane.[6]

Higashionna's most senior student Juhatsu Kyoda formed a school he called Tōon-ryū (Tōon is another way of pronouncing the Chinese characters of Higashionna's name, so Tōon-ryū means "Higashionna's style"), preserving more of Higashionna's approach to Naha-te.[7]

In 1929 delegates from around Japan were meeting in Kyoto for the All Japan Martial Arts Demonstration. Higashionna asked Miyagi to go as his representative; Miyagi was also unable to attend, and so he in turn asked his top student Jin’an Shinsato to go. While Shinsato was there, one of the other demonstrators asked him the name of the martial art he practiced. At this time, Miyagi had not yet named his style. Not wanting to be embarrassed, Shinsato improvised the name hanko-ryu ("half-hard style"). On his return to Okinawa he reported this incident to Chojun Miyagi, who decided on the name Gōjū-ryū ("hard soft style") as a name for his style.[8][9] Chojun Miyagi took the name from a line of the poem Hakku Kenpo, which roughly means: "The eight laws of the fist," and describes the eight precepts of the martial arts. This poem was part of the Bubishi, a classical Chinese text on martial arts and medicine. The line in the poem reads: Ho wa Gōjū wa Donto su "the way of inhaling and exhaling is hardness and softness," or "everything in the universe inhales soft and exhales hard."[10]

In March 1934, Miyagi wrote Karate-do Gaisetsu ("Outline of Karete-do (Chinese-hand)"), to introduce karate-do and to provide a general explanation of its history, philosophy, and application. This handwritten monograph is one of the few written works composed by Miyagi himself.[11]

Miyagi's house was destroyed during World War II. In 1950, several of his students began working to build a house and dojo for him in Naha, which they completed in 1951. In 1952, they came up with the idea of creating an organization to promote the growth of Goju-Ryu. This organization was called Goju-Ryu Shinkokai ("Association to Promote Goju-Ryu"). The founding members were Seko Higa, Keiyo Matanbashi, Jinsei Kamiya, and Genkai Nakaima.[12]

There are two years that define the way Goju-ryu has been considered by the Japanese establishment: the first, 1933, is the year Gōjū-ryū was officially recognized as a budō in Japan by Dai Nippon Butoku Kai, in other words, it was recognized as a modern martial art, or gendai budō. The second year, 1998, is the year the Dai Nippon Butoku kai recognized Goju-ryu Karatedo as an ancient form of martial art (koryu) and as a bujutsu.[13] This recognition as a koryu bujutsu shows a change in how Japanese society sees the relationships between Japan, Okinawa and China. Until 1998, only martial arts practiced in mainland Japan by samurai had been accepted as koryu bujutsu.