Karate @ FightUK.com

Bubishi.

The name Goju Ryu was derived from a Chinese Kempo poem of an ancient Chinese Text written on Military Science called “Bu-bi-Shi”.  The proper Chinese translation would be “Wu Bi Shii” and the proper spelling is something like ‘Wu pei Chih’.  The Chinese sound for ‘P’ and ‘W’ are sometimes pronounced as the roman letter ‘B’ in English (just as Kung fu is English where it is actually or truly spelled as Gung Fu and pronounced closer to G instead of K).  In the poem that follows; on the third line you can find the statement of Goju.

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Read Part one.

The name Goju-Ryu.

The naming of Goju-Ryu came about more by accident than design. In 1930, one of Chojun Miyagi’s top students, Jin’an Shinzato was attending a Martial Arts convention in Tokyo. He was asked by numerous martial arts masters as to what school of martial arts he practiced. As Naha-te had no formal name he could not answer this question. Feeling his art would be looked down upon and given amateur status, he quickly picked Hankry-ryu, which means the Way of Half Hard. On his return to Okinawa he reported this incident to Chojun Miyagi. He liked Shinzato’s idea and took it one step further. After much consideration, Chojun Miyagi decided on the name ‘Goju-Ryu’ (hard and soft school) as a name for his style. He took this name from a line in the Bubishi (a classical Chinese text on martial arts and other subjects). This line, which appears in a poem describing the eight precepts of the martial arts, reads “Ho Goju Donto” (the way of inhaling and exhaling is hardness and softness). The whole poem reads as follows:
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India.

Based on mans’ instinct of self-defense, different fighting arts were developed in most cultures, especially in central Asia, Egypt and Turkey. The principles of the Asian martial arts are believed to have spread from Turkey to India, where they were further developed to sophisticated arts (”kalaripayt”).

The history of Karate as we know it today can be taken back to India, perhaps two thousand years before the Christian Era. India was the birthplace of a bare-handed martial art called, in Sanskrit, Vajramushtthi. Evidence seems to indicate that it was commonly practiced by the Kshatriya, which was the Warrior Class of that time, and which can be compared to the Japanese Samurai and the medieval Knights of Europe.
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Karate is a form of self defence and was developed in Japan and on the island of Okinawa. It uses punching, kicking, striking and blocking techniques on an attacker / opponent, making the most of the laws of physics to increase the damage caused by each blow.
The karate student will learn (over many years) to perfect each technique enabling him or her to deliver a knock out blow after only a few moves or even one technique.
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Hi,
I am thinking about beginning to study shotokan karate and I was looking at the philosophy posted on this site. One of the precepts listed was to avoid violence. My questions is, is it against the philosophy of shotokan to participate in competitions, particularly full-contact matches?

Re: Shotokan philosophy


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I had a discussion not to long ago with a few black belts (all different styles one TKD, another Shotokan, some others) about learning from books and videos. They all said that you can not learn a martial art from a book or video, i of course, disagreed, but didn’t really make enough point to make them think otherwise… but now i was wondering what do you guys think ? My point to the discussion is this, are we stupid ? are we not the most intelligent mammal we know of? we are quite capable of learning anything from a book or video, especially if your dedicated and willing, of course it doesn’t hurt to have a few private lessons on proper form of the basic techniques, but that too can be learned from a book, you can pretty much tell if your doing something proper if it has a natural feel, and you feel strong and stable… plus, if you have visual aids in the books(which are most definitely needed if learning from a book) and you have a body size mirror, you can easily correct yourself… what do you all think?
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if you are good at sparrign does that make u good at fighting in a real situation

Re: fighting

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Hello. I am looking for a list of Shotokan technique names in Japanese. I would like to know the names of each technique when I practice kihon, such as forward punch, reverse punch, front snap kick, etc. This website provides some of the information, but I would like something more comprehensive. Thank you.

Re: Japanese names of techniques

Here”s a starter list with pronunciation

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I have asked my father to allow me to take Karate in a local dojo, but he said no. “Karate is too violent, and I don’t want you breaking stuff all over the house and getting into fights in school.” I have tried to tell him that Karate is to help prevent those things. I have already shown him this site, but he does not believe that the creator has a credible opinion. Does Anyone have any ideas to help me educate my father so that he may allow me to take Karate? (more…)

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