Master Gichin Funakoshi Taught Tenryū no Kon

While there are, of course, others who have read this magazine article before, or who were training in karate at the time, it still isn’t information that is popularly known. Instead, the general consensus is that Master Gichin Funakoshi did not know any kobujutsu kata. However, the evidence otherwise is found in an interview with Master Shinkin (Makoto) Gima, published in Fighting Arts Magazine in the 1980s, and written in 1977, with the interviewers being Liam Keeley and Morio Higaonna. During the interview, Gima states that he learnt Tenryū no Kon, a bōjutsu kata, directly from Gichin Funakoshi. That is absolute proof that can perhaps go along with the photo of Gichin Funakoshi performing a bō technique on his own, which must have been from a bōjutsu kata. 

Additionally, during the interview there is other interesting information such as Gima practising koryū gojūshiho as his favourite karate kata. He didn’t state that it was from Funakoshi, but he did also learn from Kanken Tōyama and, more so, Yabu Kentsū, who both practised koryū gojūshiho as their favourite kata.

Here is a link to the interview:

https://www.gimahaamericas.com/uploads/4/5/8/8/45887721/interview-with-gima-sensei.pdf

S. R. Marshall

Tangshouquan 唐手拳 : Tang-hand Boxing – An ancient Chinese boxing system

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/funakoshikaratestudygroup/permalink/3261845780797792/

Tangshouquan (Tang-hand Boxing) is a kind of Chinese boxing that must date back to the Tang dynasty. They use the same ideograms as those used in Okinawa (Ryūkyū) for karate kenpō before they changed to mean “Empty-hand”. Whether or not there is a direct relationship, I’m not yet sure. Based on Master Sakugawa being called Tōdi or Karati (Karate) Sakugawa, the use of the term “karati” or “tōdi” dates back around 200 / 250 years or so, at least. However, does it date back to the time of the Tang dynasty? I don’t know, but perhaps further examination of Tang-hand boxing will reveal something. Or maybe not. … See the film footage below.

S. R. Marshall

Southern Shaolin Boxing: What Authentic Okinawan Karate Actually Is

Matsuyoshi karate kenpō is a lineage of Funakoshi karate. It is focused on the Okinawan style that Gichin Funakoshi learnt, and taught in the early 1920s in Japan. But it also, importantly, includes the later teachings of Gichin Funakoshi, as well as Gigō Funakoshi’s further developments of his father’s ever-evolving way of practising karate. They each practised a bit differently yet also similarly to one another. Ultimately, they both influenced the various lineages that originate from Gichin Funakoshi’s line. These days, some schools are more complete than others. But if you learn from one or more good teachers, you will learn whatever martial art it is, effectively &, therefore, authentically. 

Matsuyoshi is Shō and Gi / Yoshi, as in Shōtō and Gi-chin / Gi-gō / Yoshi-taka / Yoshi-nobu etc. It is after Gichin Funakoshi and the entire relevant Funakoshi family, out of respect and to reflect how the teachings strive to follow authentic Funakoshi karate. But I use the characters for Chinese-hands and include kenpō in the name as what is studied in authentic karate is Chinese boxing, with influences from Japanese and Chinese martial arts (directly), as that is what karate is; a mixture of martial arts, with a focus on Chinese boxing over everything else. It’s just an altered style of practising southern Shaolin boxing. Yet, it isn’t particularly different to actual southern Shaolin style. For the most part, it’s basically identical. That is, “genuine” karate is just the same. Sport karate and half-baked versions of karate are not like the authentic Chinese systems. There are many clubs that give a bad name to real martial arts of all kinds. The purpose of Matsuyoshi karate kenpō is to strive to study authentic Funakoshi karate, or in other words, authentic Funakoshi Okinawan-Chinese boxing. 

Karate: Okinawan-Chinese Boxing

The Chinese and Okinawan versions of minghequan 28-steps (nepai kata)

Karate, like jūjutsu and quanfa / kenpō, etc., has had various names in its history. We call it karate, as if karate is the name of a martial art. But if you were to take techniques from a jūjutsu school and turn them into an intricate kata (or potentially more than one), that would be the same as a karate kata. It or they would still be jūjutsu, but it or they could hold its or their own name/s as the karate kata do. That or those kata would be a kind of jūjutsu. The same is true for Chinese boxing, or quanfa / kenpō. Some systems have just one form, while others have multiple, and even many, forms. In each case, it is a kind of quanfa. Karate developed by learning various methods and combining them. So there are a range of systems that are all different kinds of karate. You could learn one, or a few, for example, and have learnt karate, or Ryūkyū kenpō, or te / tī, just the same as someone learning a few other kata. That would be equal to two people each learning a different kind of jūjutsu, or learning a different kind of Chinese boxing. Karate is like the term gongfu – when applied to the fighting arts – or like quanfa. After all, the old version of the name “karate” meant “Chinese-hands”. Karate is either just Chinese boxing, or it is the Okinawan style of Chinese boxing, with Okinawan and Japanese influence (Japanese not just being in more recent times, but from ancient times). 

Matsuyoshi Karate Kenpo: A Funakoshi karate lineage

Some examples of training in Matsuyoshi-den Shōtō-ha Shōrin-ryū Karate Kenpō to Kobujutsu.

Including:

Hojo Undō

• Striking finger-tips into sand / gravel

• Finger-tip press-ups

• Gripping Jars (Nigiri Game / Niji’in Gāmi)

• Iron-body + Recovery Methods (Dit Da Jow use was not shown, although I don’t believe it is entirely necessary as a practice. However, the principle of using treatments to help the healing process is useful for martial arts and health. But care must be taken with ingredients used.)

• Striking Heavy Bag

• Striking Wall

• Stamina

• Suburi Bokken

Kata

• Naihanchi (I, II, III)

• Sēsan

• Passai

• Ōkan

• Kūsankū

• Gojūshiho

• Passai nu Bō

• Kūsankū nu Bō

Kumiti (Kumite)

• Kata no Bunkai

*Note: Not all applications are shown. My training partner, a practitioner of Wudang Taiji Boxing, with about 13 years of experience at the time of filming, has bad knees, so certain application were omitted, and some she was more resistant to, such as the hip throw. In some cases, she was less resistant, which enabled cleaner illustrations of such techniques, especially considering showing techniques without applying maximum force, so as to demonstrate using softness in defence in karate, with counter-attacks being very controlled.

S. Marshall

Godan, Shōrin-ryū Karate

五段, 少林流 唐手

Bushoru.org Closure

I have closed Bushoru.org, which was intended to be a more official home for my group. It wasn’t really working as I wanted it to, so I decided to keep the site as this original blog, which is much easier to manage.

Gichin Funakoshi’s Side-up Kick (Keriage)

Uechi-ryu Karate Illustrating a Sword-foot Kick

Gichin Funakoshi Demonstrating Keriage in Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu (Karate Jutsu)

Gichin Funakoshi Performing Keriage, Illustrated in Karate Jotatsu Ho, by Yasuhiro Konishi (1956)

Gichin Funakoshi Specifically Noting Using the Sword-foot in Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu (Karate Jutsu)

Gichin Funakoshi’s keriage (keage / rising kick / side rising-kick / side snap-kick / side-up kick) was different to the modern version usually seen. In an article for Black Belt Magazine, Tsutomu Ohshima, a student under Gichin Funakoshi, stated that he had asked Isao Obata, his senior, about the side-up kick, to which Obata replied by enquiring as to if Ohshima had seen the way their teacher, Funakoshi, had performed it. That is how Obata had continued to practise it, and Ohshima realised that it was a better way physiologically. 

“For a long time there was confusion about the right way to perform the side-up kick. When Master Funakoshi was showing us how to do it, he just made a small, low motion with his foot, exactly like the front snap kick except with the body facing to the side. Many of us assumed he did the kick that way because he was old. At that time, we thought the side-up kick should be delivered higher, with the knee turned in, which looked fancier but was harder to do. That was the way I practiced it when I came to the United States. 

“I practiced that way for many years, but I began to develop problems with my back. Finally Senior Obata, the first captain of the Keio University karate club, was visiting this country (at my invitation) and I mentioned this to him. I said, “You know, I think there is something wrong with the side-up kick. If you perform it this way, it is very bad for the back.” Obata said, “Of course. That’s not the way to do the side-up kick. Didn’t you see how the Master did it?” Master Funakoshi was showing us the right way all along, but we didn’t understand what was wrong with our own way until many years later.”

(Black Belt Magazine, March 1982)

The Name of the Kata Wansū

Images from the books Karate Jutsu (English translation of Gichin Funakoshi's Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu, 1925, by John Teramoto), and Karate Kenpo Zen by Mutsu Mizuho, 1933, as well as from footage of Hironori Otsuka performing wansu.

In Funakoshi karate, wansū was later (by 1935) called enpi, meaning “flying swallow”. It is a relatively swift and light form, and resembles the flight of a bird, specifically a swallow. In Chinese martial arts, and as wansū was originally Chinese, as with many of the Okinawan karate kata, any bird system is within the crane / white crane style as a matter of generality. 

In Karate Jutsu, and therefore in Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu, Gichin Funakoshi used kanji for wansū when listing the kata, and katakana later when describing it. There are only a few kata listed with kanji, such as gojūshiho and kūsankū, despite the fact that sēsan, for instance, is known to be “13 [hands / skills]” for certain. It must be, then, that the kanji for wansū were known, unusually. Was it someone’s name, or were they chosen in Okinawa (Ryūkyū) a long time ago? 

Apparently wansū was [potentially] a system taught in Tomari village in 1683 or from the 1600s. There are a few versions, so it may have been a system of techniques that were formalised by various experts in Okinawa, or there was one kata / quan which was changed over time by several exponents. 

The ideograms used by Gichin Funakoshi in Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu are not listed in Collins Chinese Dictionary within W and J, as in Wang Ji. Those meaning “prince” are different characters, and are written “wángzi” (the “i” has an upsidedown arrow above it) when Romanised. Andreas Quast wrote an article about wansū. However, with respect, the characters used for Wang Ji are different to those used by Gichin Funakoshi and Mutsu Mizuho, so, assuming accuracy of the characters written by Gichin Funakoshi, wansū is not from that Wang Ji. Additionally, again with respect, and also considering that Quast’s article is from 2015, and a researcher might form one conclusion at one point, but a different one later with further research, the article states that Gichin Funakoshi used only katakana for the name wansū, while he actually used kanji in his kata list and katakana in addition when describing the kata later, as I have already noted. Mutsu Mizuho, a student of Gichin Funakoshi’s, used the same characters as his teacher, but Hironori Otsuka seems to have used different symbols that mean “late” based on the translation provided by Google Translate, which seemed to manage to accurately scan the symbols. In Collins Chinese Dictionary, the first symbol used by Otsuka reads as “wan” (with an upsidedown arrow above the “a”) and means “late”, but the second character doesn’t appear anywhere you would think it should, such as ji, shu, su, shou, zhi, zi, and others. However, they’re different to the ideograms used by Gichin Funakoshi, so I would suggest that they are incorrect. Also according to Google Translate, the kanji noted by Gichin Funakoshi and Mutsu Mizuho are Wāng Jí in Mandarin, meaning Wang Ji in English. So even with different symbols there is a similarity to the suggestion that wansū is Wang Ji. Though, of course, the accuracy of the characters is important. Therefore, I would suggest that wansū is named after a Chinese person called Wang Ji who was an expert in Chinese boxing and who taught some Okinawans, maybe in the 1600s.

Sean Marshall