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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The history of the Asian martial arts in general is cloudy. There are some aspects that people can agree upon, amd then there are the differences. What I will tell you is in no way the ultimate history. It is the general history of martial arts as I know it, which will lead us to Shotokan. The history of Shotokan itself, where it started, who started it, how it spread is known, and verifiable, due to Shotokan’s brief history (It’s been around less than one hundred years).

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The Martial Arts leading to modern Karate-do are thought by many to have originated centuries ago in China. It is known, however, that in the 6th Century AD a Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, travelled from the Indian subcontinent to the Temple of Shaolin in China. On his journey, and at the temple itself, he discovered devout monks observing spiritual Zen practices with great zeal, but who were physically feeble and weak. Bodhidharma undertook to improve their fitness as a part of their religious observance, since physical well-being is a core precept of Zen philosophy.
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The true history of traditional karate is almost impossible to verify due to the secrecy surrounding the arts and the lack of written records. It is known that the martial arts of Okinawa and Japan were influenced in the development of their martial arts by various Chinese sources. It is also clear that at least one source of influence on Chinese martial arts came from India.
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