Where our karate comes from

Gichin Funakoshi and the birth of Shotokan

Gichin Funakoshi (1868–1957) was born in Shuri, the old royal capital of Okinawa, where the fighting art then called tōde or Okinawa-te had been practiced quietly for generations. He trained in the two main Okinawan streams of the time, Shōrin-ryū and Shōrei-ryū, under masters Ankō Azato and Ankō Itosu, and later combined what he had learned into a simpler, unified system.

In 1922 Funakoshi traveled to Tokyo to demonstrate karate at a national physical-education exhibition. He never went home: he stayed in Japan, teaching at universities and writing the first books on karate in Japanese. He introduced the art to mainland Japan and dedicated the rest of his life to promoting its values — karate-dō, karate as a way.

Funakoshi wrote poetry under the pen name Shōtō (松濤, "pine waves"), after the sound of wind in the pines where he walked. When his students built him his first permanent dojo in Tokyo in 1936, they named it the Shōtōkan — "the hall of Shōtō." The dojo was destroyed in the 1945 air raids on Tokyo, but the name stayed with the style. Funakoshi himself never called his karate a "style"; other schools that appeared in Japan took names like Shitō-ryū, Gōjū-ryū and Wadō-ryū, and "Shotokan" came to distinguish his approach from theirs.

Two things mark Shotokan out. First, Funakoshi gave the Okinawan kata Japanese names written in kanji — Pinan became Heian, Naihanchi became Tekki, Passai became Bassai, Kūshankū became Kankū — names that, in the words of the JKA's chairman, "convey the image of the respective kata as if it were a painting." Second, his son Yoshitaka (Gigō) Funakoshi (1906–1945) developed the long, low stances, the dynamic kicks and the introductory Taikyoku kata that give modern Shotokan its powerful, athletic character.

Funakoshi taught that "karate-dō is the martial art for a gentleman." His Dōjō Kun — five precepts recited at the end of training — and his twenty guiding principles (the Nijū Kun) remain the moral core of the style. Its most famous line: karate ni sente nashi — there is no first attack in karate. He died in 1957 at the age of 89.

The Japan Karate Association

After the war, Funakoshi's senior students organized to carry his karate forward. The Japan Karate Association (日本空手協会, Nihon Karate Kyōkai) was established in November 1948 and formally created by his followers in 1949, with Funakoshi as its supreme master. It built its first headquarters dojo in Yotsuya, Tokyo, in 1955, and in 1956 set up the first full-time instructor-intern (kenshūsei) program in karate — the rigorous course that has produced the JKA's professional instructors ever since. On April 10, 1957, the JKA gained legal status as an incorporated association, and in October of that year it held the first JKA All Japan Karate Championship in Tokyo.

In 1958 Masatoshi Nakayama became Chief Instructor. Under Nakayama the JKA turned karate into a modern, scientifically taught discipline: it standardized the kihon–kata–kumite curriculum, developed the sparring methods (gohon, kihon ippon, jiyū ippon and jiyū kumite) that we still grade with, and sent instructors abroad from 1958 onward, taking Shotokan to every continent. The first international world cup was held in 1975 and the first Shoto World Cup in Japan in 1985. Nakayama died in 1987 at 74.

The 1990s brought a difficult split and years of court cases before the JKA's legal status was fully restored in 1999. Motokuni Sugiura was appointed Chief Instructor in 1991, the association published its authoritative kata textbook series from 1994, and in May 2001 it opened its present headquarters dojo in Tokyo. On March 21, 2012, the JKA was recognized by the Japanese government as a kōeki shadan hōjin — a public-interest incorporated association.

Today the JKA is the largest single-style karate organization in the world. Its Shihankai (council of master instructors) sets the technical standard; kyu and dan gradings follow one published guideline everywhere; and the kata you learn here are the same 25 kata practiced in JKA dojos from Tokyo to Indiana. The JKA's chairman puts the priority plainly: "kata is the foundation of karate and the most important element."