Okinawa
Okinawa is the birthplace of Karate. There are at several major styles of Karate that arose in Okinawan. The histories differ on whether the common man in Okinawa was allowed to learn it or not. Okinawa had a class system of nobles, warriors and common people. The theory now is that only the warrior class learned Karate. Karate had a number of names, such as Te, Tang Te (Chinese hand in Okinawan), and eventually Gichin Funakoshi changed it to Kara-te – empty hand.
It inspired a firestorm of controversy when Funakoshi did it. But today, most Okinawans refer to it by that name.
The irony of it is it’s spelled exactly the same between Tang Te and Karate, just a different pronunciation.
There apparently was two or three different persons who came to Okinawa from China, who taught Kung Fu. Most are familiar that it was Fujian White Crane that brought Kung Fu to Okinawa. This is a brutally fast form that features a large variety of eye jabs. This developed the form of GojuKarate (hard/soft).
Shorin Ryu and Shorei Ryu were a pair of styles of Karate, one featuring strong techniques, the other fast techniques.
Isshin Ryu featured fast techniques, and uses almost exclusively the sunfist strike of Hung Gar kung Fu. This is a jab punch, but in speed it’s much faster than the powerful Karate punch. This is important, because it shows that it was not only Crane style that made it to Okinawa, but also Tiger style.
The sunfist is also taught in Fu Jow Pai.
Gichin Funakoshi was of the samurai class in Okinawa, but the Meiji restoration was decreed by the emperor of Japan, outlawing the class system separating peasants, farmers, merchants, Samurai and nobles. Now everyone was equal in rank except the Emperor. Funakoshi developed the idea that Karate should be for everyone, and he combined Shorin Ryu Karate and Shorei Ryu Karate. The sunfist strike of Hung Gar can be found in some advanced Shotokan kata, as well as modified tiger claw techniques. The kata Unsu features the single finger technique of Hung Gar kung fu, and Wankan actually includes a variation of one of the opening moves of the first Fu Jow Pai forms. Sanchin features some moves very similar to Fu Hok (Tiger Crane form).
Techniques include spear hand (which can pierce skin), crane hand, punch, backfist, elbow strikes, knee strikes, sword hand, upper block, lower block, inside block, augmented block, front snap kick, front thrust kick, side snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick, back kick, spinning kicks, hook kicks and crescent kicks. When you’re thinking linear karate, you’re probably visualizing Okinawan Karate.
The most correct way of analyzing the difference between Okinawan/Japanese arts and Chinese is that the Ryukyu-Japanese are more scientifically streamlined. Chinese Kung Fu masters often tell their students not to fight against Karate practitioners, because Karate practitioners usually win.
In Kung Fu, one learns sequences of two to five moves, often with names such as “fierce tiger sharpens claws”. In Karate, the concept is more immediate. It’s not to fight with – it’s to save your life. You are expected to take a beating and walk away in Karate. But if they are beating you to death, and you feel you are about to die – then you use the Karate. One strike, one kill. It is a last resort only martial art in Okinawa. Among the Japanese forms, only Shotokan still stresses this to my knowledge. If you train in another Japanese style and this is still stressed, please let me know so I can update this for accuracy.
Common training forms are Naihainchi (known as Tekki in Japan), Pinan (Heian in Japan), and Kushanku (Kanku Dai). In old Okinawa, you learned a form and practiced it until you had mastered it. It took at least a year.
Then you started the next form.
Most Okinawan forms and Japanese forms are a quarter of the length of the original chinese forms. Gung Gee and Fu Hok are 108 moves in five minutes. The average length of a Shotokan kata are 34 moves in 60 seconds.
Training equipment (Hojo Undo)
While in the 1950’s through the 2000’s moves were made to get away from Hojo Undo and traditional body training, the 2000’s have featured a resurgence, even in America. There has even been talk in traditional Shotokan of returning to Hojo Undo, traditional body training, and a return to kobudo weaponry.
There are a number of okinawan training aids to Karate, including Hojo Undo. These involve barbells with concrete on the ends, the chi ishi (a wooden dowel stuck into a concrete ring), tubs full of small stones one jabs your hands into repeatedly, and wooden striking posts covered with straw rope called Makiwara. If you’re training, don’t get the American Makiwara. That’s canvas over foam, and it actually can cause injury. The Okinawan form moves under the strike, then hits back. Okinawan karate schools also use a small shield that you punch, walking across the floor with your knuckles, and hitting and kicking a radial belt tire!
Kobudo
Kobudo weapons are the traditional Okinawan weapons – kama (handheld sickle), Bo (6 foot staff), Tonfa (t shaped baton), sai (piercing blade with handles), and Nunchaku (flail). My description of a sai is pretty lacking. They’re very cool. They apparently are handheld versions of a jutte, a metal pole with a handle designed to trap a sword. Many people have tried to depict the sai as a potato digging tool, but lately experts think the sai literally is what it is – a handheld tool to fight a sword wielding opponent. Just as in China one had hundreds of weapons one could learn, in Okinawa one has five basic weapons, and a couple of variations, such as the furigama, a kama blade with a short strap on the handle. I got very good with this terrifying weapon. You could whip the blade so fast the blade whistled in the air.
Japanese arts add two more weapons, the naginata (blade attached to a pole – once the weapons of the front ranks of Samurai, now considered a woman’s weapon), and the katana, one of the most feared swords in the world.
It is interesting that a century after Funakoshi became a black belt, Shotokan is debating returning to the use of Kobudo weaponry and to the use of Hojo Undo tools. I would encourage them to do so.
Dojo
The training is done in a dojo, sometimes the basement of the house of the sensei. Okinawan karate often features a special form that has little or no combat intention – Sanchin. Sanchin has combat applications, but few practice it in this way. You learn through the practice of it how to internalize and concentrate. You know you’ve got it when someone can hit and kick you and you don’t feel it.
There is stretching and calisthenics, then practice of basics, and then kata (forms), then kumite (sparring).
It’s interesting to me that although the traditionalists criticized Funakoshi greatly for his changes in how Karate was taught, most of the RyuKyu islands now teach and practice the art exactly the way Funakoshi changed it. Originally, one learned Okinawan Te by learning a form. You would then practice it a thousand times, and that was how you learned the basics. When you’d learned a dozen forms, by that time the Sensei would begin involving you in discussions with other sensei’s about the various techniques and their applications.
Funakoshi learned by teaching Karate in Kendo schools and in the Kodokan, the judo hall. He adapted the concepts he learned there and applied it to Karate instruction. This change in the traditional ways has spread even back to China.
this of course has led to some claims of historic revisionism, other sensei’s who claimed to introduce these novel new methods prior to Funakoshi, but history shows otherwise. There was fierce letter writing campaigns to newspapers decrying Funakoshi, who just humbly kept doing what he was doing. Today, he is called the father of Karate, and for good reason. He very humbly dedicated his life in the service of making sure this Okinawan art was spread worldwide, for everyone.
