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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Today there are four main styles of karate-do in Japan: Goju-ryu, Shito-ryu, Shotokan, and Wado-ryu:

Goju-ryu developed out of Naha-te, its popularity primarily due to the success of Kanryo Higaonna (1853-1915). Higaonna opened a dojo in Naha using eight forms brought from China. His best student, Chojun Miyagi (1888-1953) later founded Goju-ryu, ‘hard soft way’ in 1930. In Goju-ryu much emphasis is placed on combining soft circular blocking techniques with quick strong counter attacks delivered in rapid succession.

Shito-ryu was founded by Kenwa Mabuni (1889-1952) in 1928 and was influenced directly by both Naha-te and Shuri-te. The name Shito is constructively derived from the combination of the Japanese characters of Mabuni’s teachers’ names - Ankoh Itosu and Kanryo Higaonna. Shito-ryu schools use a large number of kata, about fifty, and is characterized by an emphasis on power in the execution of techniques.
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